“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”
This is the tag line the NRA has been repeating mantra-like for years to convince us, logically they would claim, of the silliness of gun control efforts. Tonight as Americans and many throughout the globe struggle to make sense of yet another shooting rampage, some are pointing to the perpetrator’s choice of location for his rampage and his supposed Joker costume as proof that violence in movies and other media lead to such tragedies.
“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”
Literally, I suppose, the NRA is correct. Guns aren’t sentient; they are incapable of the passions or the psychoses that lead one person to take another’s life. But the NRA’s mantra is fallacious by proposing an either/or argument. Either guns kill or people kill. Resolving the fallacy might go something like this:
People with guns kill people.
No thing, except perhaps nature itself, kills unless under the control of a human. A bottle of vodka cannot on its own harm people. It only becomes a weapon when drunk by people. Heroin left in is natural form is not a hazard. It only becomes a menace when used by people.
In this respect, movies are not like guns or booze or drugs. You can’t pick up a movie and shoot your neighbor. Movies don’t chemically alter the human brain, making it unable to control the actions of the body. Movies, while sometimes violent, are stories we see and hear. From the cradle we are conditioned to distinguish between reality and story, between fact and fiction.
Sadly, for a few people and for a variety of reasons, that distinction between reality and fiction blurs. Yet this condition is not limited to contemporary film, television, or video games. Few films, whether presenting action, horror, or superheroes, can present anything as violent or horrifying as Grimm’s original tales (a wolf eating grandma!) or ancient Greek tales of murder and vengeance.
So I’d like to offer my own answer to both the NRA with their irrational rhetoric as well as those who once again are using fictions to explain human behavior:
Movies don’t kill people; people with deadly weapons kill people.
As we again open the national dialog about gun violence in America, I hope we remember this. We owe this much at least to the victims of today’s rampage in Aurora, Colorado.
""We impose meaning on the chaos of our lives. We create form, morality,
order. It's a choice we have to make every second of every minute of
every day."
Batman: Absolution
This is the tag line the NRA has been repeating mantra-like for years to convince us, logically they would claim, of the silliness of gun control efforts. Tonight as Americans and many throughout the globe struggle to make sense of yet another shooting rampage, some are pointing to the perpetrator’s choice of location for his rampage and his supposed Joker costume as proof that violence in movies and other media lead to such tragedies.
“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”
Literally, I suppose, the NRA is correct. Guns aren’t sentient; they are incapable of the passions or the psychoses that lead one person to take another’s life. But the NRA’s mantra is fallacious by proposing an either/or argument. Either guns kill or people kill. Resolving the fallacy might go something like this:
People with guns kill people.
No thing, except perhaps nature itself, kills unless under the control of a human. A bottle of vodka cannot on its own harm people. It only becomes a weapon when drunk by people. Heroin left in is natural form is not a hazard. It only becomes a menace when used by people.
In this respect, movies are not like guns or booze or drugs. You can’t pick up a movie and shoot your neighbor. Movies don’t chemically alter the human brain, making it unable to control the actions of the body. Movies, while sometimes violent, are stories we see and hear. From the cradle we are conditioned to distinguish between reality and story, between fact and fiction.
Sadly, for a few people and for a variety of reasons, that distinction between reality and fiction blurs. Yet this condition is not limited to contemporary film, television, or video games. Few films, whether presenting action, horror, or superheroes, can present anything as violent or horrifying as Grimm’s original tales (a wolf eating grandma!) or ancient Greek tales of murder and vengeance.
So I’d like to offer my own answer to both the NRA with their irrational rhetoric as well as those who once again are using fictions to explain human behavior:
Movies don’t kill people; people with deadly weapons kill people.
As we again open the national dialog about gun violence in America, I hope we remember this. We owe this much at least to the victims of today’s rampage in Aurora, Colorado.
""We impose meaning on the chaos of our lives. We create form, morality,
order. It's a choice we have to make every second of every minute of
every day."
Batman: Absolution
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