Kerby Anderson

Whenever there is a shooting or a statistic about gun violence, many instinctively call for gun control. But I also know that some of my listeners instead point to the violence we see in movies and television.

One of my recent guests provided some alarming statistics. Matt Philbin with the Media Research Center did an analysis of the top five movies in theaters during the week of the attack in Las Vegas. Because The Lego Movie was animated, they eliminated that movie and only focused on four movies: Kingman: Golden Circle, American Assassin, It, and Mother!

These four movies featured 589 incidents of violence, including 212 incidents of gun violence. The body count for the four films was at least 192. It is worth mentioning that at least 108 times, some kind of automatic weapon was used. These are only estimates since those guns were fired so rapidly, it was hard to get an accurate tally of the shots or even the shooters.

These were the films that were in the theaters when the gunman in Las Vegas opened fire on the crowd. It is unlikely that he had been watching them, but you can’t document this level of visual violence and say that it has no impact on people’s perceptions.

A few days later, the story turned to the sexual revelations about Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. His initial response was a bluster that he would “need a place to channel his anger. So I’ve decided I’m going to give the NRA my full attention.” It was a perfect Hollywood ploy—target the guns, not the media companies that feed endless streams of violence to America. Don’t take responsibility; deflect responsibility. Brent Bozell quipped, “Hollywood’s hypocrisy about Harvey Weinstein is only outdone by its hypocrisy about gun control.”

Hollywood bears at least some responsibility for the violence in our society because of its glamorization of guns and violence.