But as Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a research psychiatrist, writes in his book, “The Insanity Offense,” about 1 percent of the seriously mentally ill (or about 40,000 individuals) are violent. They account for about half the rampage murders in the United States.

quoted here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Granted, I don’t like the violent tones and metaphors that are used. But if I hear them, then I know something about the speaker and tune them out. There is more meaningful ways to communicate with the public, the media, “the crowd”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/13/obeidallah.loughner.muslims/index.html?hpt=T2

“All we had asked following this weekend’s tragedy was for prayers for the dead and wounded, and for all of us to take a step back and look inward to see how we can improve the tenor of our coarsening public debate.”

http://www.truth-out.org/jewish-groups-we-are-deeply-disturbed-by-palins-use-anti-semitic-term-blood-libel-she-should-apolog

Video games, political rhetoric, violent movies seem far too detached from the facts to account for the violent event.

That is true only if one is looking for a direct and simplistic cause/effect relationship. But who would argue that violent rhetoric and imagery could not add fuel to the internal madness? To assert that it has no impact at all seems rather naive to me.

It reminds me of folks who insist that anti-gay (or hateful racial/religious rhetoric) plays absolutely no part in the violence against members of minority groups. Rhetoric does not pull the trigger but it sets the tone.