The Morning News with Dave and Lance. is "gun country" plain and simple.  We strongly support the second amendment and it's no secret that we are all concealed carry permit holders and practitioners.  We talk about it on the radio show all the time because many of our listeners are too.

Some of us have come to an appreciation for firearms, shooting and personal safety rather recently, while I have been a shooting enthusiast since my pre-teen years.  Growing up, my dog and my .22 rifle were my constant companions.

As such, I have watched and enjoyed a lot of movies and TV shows that include the use of guns.  From westerns to army shows, from detectives, to spies, to the everyman who is just pushed too far by the bad guys, guns on the screen have been lifelong entertainment.

Not everybody "gets" guns and gun culture, obviously, and it seems someone somewhere is always searching for the source of gun crime and violence without every fully considering the individual pulling the trigger as his own cause.  But I digress....

Now a new study, reported online at Studyfinds  has found that the increase in gun violence on TV and in movies seems to mirror the rate as a rise in real-life gun violence. So the question is -Is there a connection, cause or correlation?

"University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the odds of guns appearing in violent movie scenes and real-life gun killings involving young people in the U.S. has soared by more than 80 percent over the past two decades." 

That seems reason enough to ask some questions.

"But which comes first, the machine gun wielding chicken or the concealed carry egg because research found "that gun use substantially increased from 2000 to 2018 on prime-time TV dramas in the U.S., a trend that paralleled the use of firearms in actual homicides."  Raising the question - Are the more unstable and impressionable among us susceptible to acting out what they see on the screen?

Study co-author Daniel Romer says, "Just as the entertainment media contributed to the uptake of cigarettes among vulnerable youth, our findings suggest that it may be doing the same for guns"

Case in point - There have three John Wick movies starring Keanu Reeves along with about 10-thousand rounds of ammunition.(call me stable, but they have been really enjoyable and successful - earning 580 million at the box office, with John Wick 4 scheduled for release in 2022)  Any one of those movies has put down more bad guys than The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Marshall Matt Dillion and Rifleman Lucas McCain combined ever did!  So what's going on?

Researchers say it's time to take a closer look at Hollywood's possible contribution to growing gun violence. On a side note, many Hollywood Hypocrites are quick to attack the second amendment and criticize guns and gun owners but are then more than happy to pick one up on the set and at the call of "ACTION", commence to shoot up the town and everyone in it.

 

 

More From 94.5 KATS