RFK Jr. Suggests Antidepressants Could Be the Reason for Mass Shootings, Ignores Guns

The GOP will blame anything but the fucking gun.

By Lauren Tousignant  |  August 28, 2025 | 11:30am
Screenshot: Fox & Friends Politics
RFK Jr. Suggests Antidepressants Could Be the Reason for Mass Shootings, Ignores Guns

Two children were killed and 17 others—14 of them children—injured on Wednesday morning when a gunman used a rifle, shotgun, and pistol to fire “dozens” of rounds through a church window that was affiliated with the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The 23-year-old assailant, who had no criminal history and purchased the guns legally, died by suicide at the scene. In other words, just another week in America.

Wednesday’s shooting is the 44th school shooting in the U.S. this year, according to CNN—22 of which have been at K-12 schools. It seems to me, and I’d wager most Americans with any level of critical thinking skill, that the common denominator is that it’s really fucking easy to get a gun in the U.S. But for Republicans—who claim to be fierce defenders of the Second Amendment in case they need to take up arms against government tyranny, but who will happily cheer on Trump as he needlessly deploys the National Guard to cities he hates—the cause is always anything but the fucking gun. On Thursday morning’s Fox & Friends, the culprit in this latest tragedy was antidepressants.

Health Secretary and brain haven for worms RFK Jr. went on the show to continue his autism-theories press tour, but not before offering his own take on Wednesday’s attack, claiming SSRIs could be behind the violence.

“But the one thing is clear, you are dealing with a person who’s trans, that was transitioning, are you going to be examining at all some of the drugs that are used in order to make that transition happen, to see if it plays a role,” Brian Kilmeade asked. Court documents have revealed that, in 2020, the assailant’s mother filed an application to change her child’s name from Robert to Robin, writing that the then-17-year-old “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.” (The mom also retired from an admin job at the Annunciation church in 2021, according to the Washington Post.)

“We are doing those kinds of studies now at NIH, we’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence,” Kennedy responded. “Many of them have blackbox warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation, so we can’t exclude those as a culprit.” Of course, plenty of other countries have SSRIs—they just don’t regularly have mass shootings at schools.

Journalist Eric Michael Garcia, the DC Bureau Chief at the Independent, did point out that Kilmeade seemed to be teeing Kennedy up “to focus on transgender people” but that Kennedy made the pivot to SSRIs. But I’m sure Kilmeade, Trump, Fox News, and MAGA as a whole will have plenty of opportunities in the coming days to use this tragedy to further demonize trans people. Anything to not demonize their precious guns. 

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.

 
Join the discussion...