Would banning gunplay on television reduce gun crime?

[Tejas]

If 3,000 round mag dumps from a Glock weren't standard fare on CSI, would it help?

[Drale]

1. I believe there has been many many studies

that have shown the violence in movies, on TV or in video games does not translate into violent behavior.

[MadMaddie]

2. If you are talking about influencing children perhaps but why

would you ban the tv versus holding parents accountable to make sure that their kids aren't watching programs that are not age appropriate?

If you look at the cigerette industry they banned smoking commercials from tv for the last 20 or so years peopple still smoke.

Banning things doesn't necessarily fix the problem.

Current gun laws need to be enforced and perhaps strengthened.

[hollowdweller]

3. Hard to say

I know for sure that having certain guns featured in TV and Movies does stimulate sales of them. The 44 magnums really flew off the shelves after Dirty Harry. AK's , badass looking stuff people who are not really gun collectors will often go buy certain guns after then see them in film. Now whether that translates into more crime I don't know.

I think pretty much US culture worships the gun and violence and we have it in our films, in our foreign policy and even in our penal system so with violence as a solution institutionalized in so many things it's hard to say which ones are worse.

[RSillsbee]

5. If you know for sure I'm certain you can produce a cite

I know for sure that having certain guns featured in TV and Movies does stimulate sales of them.

A cite please , just a little one will do.

If I had to guess I'd be more likely to believe it was the other way around. It wasn't until GLOCKs started hiting the headlines that all the TV cops started carrying them

[krispos42]

11. I read the same thing a couple of different times in gun magazines

For example, purchasing at a good price a one-fired Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum because somebody with more money than sense bought one at a premium, fired it a few times, couldn't handle the recoil, and put it away in the safe.

:shrug:

fwiw

[gejohnston]

10. Based on the number of .44 mags and AKs used in crimes, zero.

[ileus]

4. CSI's pretty crappy when it comes to gun play...I recommend Justified

[GKirk]

6. There wasn't much sex on TV in the 50s

but lots of people were having babies.
So I guess I'm saying no.

[Gman]

7. Not immediately

but it would eventually change the culture.

[SheilaT]

8. It's hard to tell. On one hand TV and movies do

a lot of modelling of all sorts of undesirable behavior. On the other, as many TV shows and movies I've seen in my lifetime where various characters use guns to shoot (and often kill) other people, I have never once had any desire to own a gun.

But I do know that young children often pick up very bad behavior from what they watch. I recall back in the late 80's an elementary school teacher saying she'd never had a problem with kids kicking each other until the show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out. My kids were at the right age to watch it then, but I was pretty rigid about what I'd let them watch. I never worried about what they saw when at someone else's house, but at home there were very strong limitations on what they could see. I'm convinced it paid off. I realize a kiddie show, no matter how obnoxious or bad isn't the same as what you're talking about, but I think there's a correlation.

I do occasionally wonder to what extent the gun usage I see on TV or in movies is particularly realistic, such as how many rounds the particular gun can actually shoot without reloading, or the relative accuracy. Stuff like that.

[gejohnston]

14. The gun usage is totally unrealistic

Since the only cop shows I watch these days is a Canadian cop show, and low shooting ones like Criminal Minds etc, so I don't know about now. But the 1970s used to have stupid stuff like putting suppressors on revolvers and really being silent.
The worst part is that every episode ended with a shoot out. The reality is that the chance of a cop having to shoot someone in his career is slim. Even the US. Instead of showing the IA investigation and the cop's mental trauma that would be realistic, the episode ended with the everyone hanging out having a party the next day.
I will say, that while Switzerland, where private gun ownership is common, shooting is a national sport where kids ride their bikes to the range. Milita members keep their assault rifles, the real full auto ones not the Frank Luntz created ones, at home. Their murder rate is half of Japan's. They ban violent movies and video games. Japan of course is just the opposite. But then, both countries have strong communities, almost zero poverty, national health care, and no insane war on drugs.

[eqfan592]

17. "But then, both countries have strong communities, almost zero poverty, national health care....

...and no insane war on drugs."

You hit the nail on the head right there, gejohnston! All of those factors play a much more significant roll when it comes to violent crime than firearms EVER have (which appear to play no roll at all in increasing the violent crime rate).

Yet so many people around here would have us waste our time with gun control legislation that failed to address any of the key issues. The massive logical disconnect simply astounds me.

[eqfan592]

9. Not really.

The culture is being driven by the people around the kids that become violent criminals much more strongly than just in the media. Not to say the media isn't a factor, but the media is driven by the culture at least as much as it drives the culture itself. It's a two way street.

I think legalizing drugs would do a LOT more to reduce our violent crime problem than anything we could do with the media. Not to mention we don't run into any first amendment type issues either.

[rrneck]

12. The question to ask is

how does the media get selected?

[petronius]

13. If anything, it would increase crime. TV would get so boring that more people would turn it off,

go outside, and wind up robbing someone... :silly:

[Katya Mullethov]

15. No ....but it would create jobs

This is exactly the kind of innovative thinking that is driving our national economic recovery ! Keep up the good work !

[GreenStormCloud]

16. First Amendment protects them. N/T

[AtheistCrusader]

18. I blame this mentality for the loss of Briscoe County Jr., and Sledge Hammer.

[Tejas]

19. Sledge Hammer was a horrible influence.

A LEO that talked to his gun? Far too many viewers assumed he could defuse a nuclear bomb, they found out he wasn't so special. :rofl:

[AtheistCrusader]

21. "I call it; a Loudener"

*Puts fist-sized hole in silouette*


Edit: Obligatory "HAAAAMMMMMMMMEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

[Ready4Change]

20. Why Not? Buffy the Vampire caused the plague of stakings.

Remember the thousands of people impaling others with wooden stakes while that show was on the air? Then after it was over, all those stakings just ceased. Clear cause and effect, there.