Denial cannot change this fact: WE DO have a GUN Violence problem in the US.
And no one is trying to take away our guns.
But we do have to take actions that help to end this tragic problem.
No can deny we have a Gun Violence problem.
Do any of you DENY we have a Gun Violence problem?
(The fact is: the Gun Violence Problem is the result of ALL OF IT: Anger issues, mental imbalance, easy access to assault weapon type of guns, a society that promotes guns, the NRA promoting the use of guns, especially assault weapons and semi autos for the purpose of shooting people. right wingers going crazy, crying fear and hatred toward the government, hoarding guns and ammo especially assault weapons and semi auto's and their high capacity magazines, violent video games promoting killing with guns, Hollywood movies promoting killing with guns....
IT IS ALL THE ABOVE!)
Although I agree we have a gun violence problem, I'm unwilling to just throw all offered explanations into a hopper and say "yeah, it's all of those things." As I've pointed out REPEATEDly, the violent video games explanation just doesn't fit with the known data.
Here's what the data tells us: violent video games, of the kind people worry about, first showed up in the early-to-mid 1990s. The first true "first person shooter" came out in 1992. Interestingly, in the year BEFORE that game came out, 1991, we had hit the all-time record for violent crime in this country. Since then, as violent video games became a multi-billion-dollar industries, with household-name shooters like "Call of Duty," and "Grand Theft Auto," outselling most Hollywood movies, do you know what happened to real-world violent crime rates? They fell by almost exactly half.
Let's restate that, since it just doesn't seem to be sinking in here. You were literally TWICE AS LIKELY to be a victim of violent crime in this country BEFORE the rise of violent video games as you are today.
I'm not saying that violent video games are responsible for the incredible improvement we've seen since 1991, or even some of it. I'm just saying that the data are consistent with that theory, and entirely inconsistent with the theory that violent video games were making things worse. And if you stop and think about it, maybe that makes sense. If you're an aggressive young man with some violent urges, revenge fantasies, etc., a video game gives you a place to work through those where nobody gets hurt. Would it really be that surprising to find that this "safe outlet" was acting as a release valve for urges that might otherwise build up until they exploded as real-world violence?
In the same sense, it seems quite likely that the rise of Internet porn (and the presumable increase in masturbatory release of sexual urges) has played a role in the dramatic drop of rape in recent years.
As for Hollywood movies promoting killing with guns, it's hard to draw any lines one way or the other on that one, since they've been doing so since the dawn of cinema. Check out 1915's "Birth of a Nation," for example. One way or the other, nearly every major nation watches the same movies as we do -- top-grossing American films, and particularly the violence-heavy action film, are typically among the biggest films in other wealthy nations, too. Usually at least half the annual top ten in places like Germany, the UK, etc., are films they share in common with the US top ten.
Check out the current Box Office champs around the globe:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/
The latest gun-obsess Die Hard movie is dominating throughout Western Europe, and in Japan.
In Germany, so far in 2012 the top grosser is the violent Tarantino revenge fantasy Django Unchained. In 2012, the latest Bond flick was number two (beaten only by the Hobbit).
The point is that we're all watching more or less the same movies, including those Hollywood films that "promote killing with guns." Yet, the US is all alone, among major wealthy nations, with its extreme violence problem. There is a huge gulf between us and the rest of our peers, with our murder rate between four and sixteen times as high as Western European countries have. If we want to get serious in our search of things to blame that on, we need to identify things that are DIFFERENT between us and those other nations, not things that are the same. Hollywood movies and violent video games just don't fit the bill.
