Here is an article from Ronald D. Rotunda from The Washington Times saying that removing violence from movies will not stop gun violence and that there is very little anyone can do if someone is mentally ill and willing to risk their own life:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/20/blaming-hollywood-for-gun-violence-doesnt-work/
After the carnage at a Colorado movie theater, timed to coincide with
a massacre scene in a Batman movie, many people blamed Hollywood for
glorifying gun violence. A few months later, we saw the horrible
bloodbath of children at a Newtown, Conn. elementary school. Again,
people complained that the entertainment industry glorified guns in
movies, television and video games.
We all search for answers, but
Hollywood is not one of them. After the Columbine tragedy, in 1999,
where two teens killed fellow high school classmates and themselves,
President Clinton ordered the Federal Trade Commission
to study whether Hollywood was to blame. It found no causal link:
“Whatever the impact of media violence, it likely explains a relatively
small amount of the total variation in youthful violent behavior.”
Other
psychological studies also show no causal connection between watching
violent video games or movies and acting violently. The best one can
find are minuscule effects, such as children making louder noises for a
few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent
game. Moreover, if juveniles shifted from televised gore to children’s
literature, they would find no shortage of carnage. The Brothers Grimm
Fairy Tales (the book, not the Disney movie) tells us that after the
wicked queen tried to poison Snow White, her punishment was that she had
to dance in red-hot slippers “till she fell dead on the floor, a sad
example of envy and jealousy.”
Commentators routinely criticize
Hollywood for “aggressively marketing violence” to children. What does
it mean to “market” to juveniles, anyway? MetLife markets its life insurance products using Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. Is MetLife trying to scare young children by talking about death? Perhaps Hollywood and MetLife are conspiring to get children accustomed to death so they will be less reluctant to attend scary movies.
Owens Corning features the Pink Panther touting, of all things, insulation. When Owens Corning
uses the cuddly panther to publicize a forecast that winter heating
bills could be 40 percent higher than last year, it must assume the
little tykes will nag their parents to buy more Owens Corning insulation.
We
have traveled this road many times before. For example, there was an
effort to blame society’s woes on the entertainment industry in the
1940s and ‘50s. A psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham
crusaded against violent comic books. The Senate Subcommittee on
Juvenile Delinquency held hearings on how violent comic books (like
Superman) were responsible for corrupting youth and causing crime. More
than 2,400 years ago, Plato’s “Republic” complained of the “decaying”
morals of the youth, who “riot in the streets inflamed with wild
notions.”
It would be funny were it not for the important First
Amendment principles at stake. The Supreme Court has made it clear that
Congress cannot censor movies, CDs, video games or comic books unless
they are constitutionally obscene — a term of art that the case law has
defined in a very limited way. Violence, even gory violence, is not
“obscene” in the constitutional sense. The government violates the First
Amendment if it attempts to regulate simply because violent movies,
video games or music lyrics are “marketed” to children.
Of even
greater concern is the precedent set by government regulation. Will the
government try to prevent children from watching violent portions of the
evening news on television? Will we remove newspapers from classrooms
if they contain pictures depicting violence?
Will plaintiffs’
lawyers jump into the fray, arguing that Hollywood should be liable if
people see a movie and then engage in a copycat crime? If the
plaintiffs’ lawyers succeed against Hollywood, what will prevent them
from turning to the news media? That’s the problem when politicians
start toying with the First Amendment. Once the genie is out of the
bottle, it doesn’t want to return.
A study by the Secret Service
after the Columbine tragedy found no easy answers. We cannot create a
profile of these people. They rarely make direct threats before they
act. Expelling students for minor infractions would not help Newtown,
and, if the shooters are students, the expulsion may spark them to
return to school with a gun. Metal detectors do not help because
shooters usually make no effort to conceal their weapons. Newtown
Elementary did not admit visitors until after an identification review
by a video monitor, but the shooter shot his way through a locked glass
door. When people are mentally ill and willing to die, laws do not help.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
ROTUNDA: Blaming Hollywood for gun violence doesn’t work Attacking constitutional rights won’t save lives
1:33 PM
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