Opinion: "You see this in bad television"

I am writing this as a media student and as a gun-owner. Shooting and hunting are hobbies that I enjoy but that I’ve unfortunately not had time for in recent years. Hopefully, when I have enough opportunity and money, I can rekindle such hobbies, but for the moment the best I can do is to keep my gun cleaned, well-oiled and safely unloaded.Guns are just a hobby for me, but film and television is a passion and a career and I must say, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting and the renewed debate over American gun violence, we media makers have managed to avoid the harshest criticism – to dodge a bullet, as it were. It is true that the time has come for gun enthusiasts to take some responsibility for gun violence, but to my fellow media students I say our time has come as well.In the world of the gun enthusiasts, the National Rifle Association and such, guns are tools to be respected and shooting is a skill to be honed and disciplined and used against a person only as a last resort. But in the world of media, guns are props. In fact, they’re better than props; guns are toys.We have made guns into toys. We have made killing look fun. We have invented entire genres, such as the “zombie apocalypse” craze, as a means of justifying mass killing with no consequences and for the sake of entertainment. By doing so we have created the gun culture of America; a culture that covets firearms not for the skill they require but for the destruction they can wreak, a culture that values high magazine capacity over careful and cautious aim.Such criticism has been leveled at the media industry before, most frequently and conspicuously by gun control critics like NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, who blamed violent media for the Sandy Hook shooting. This sort of criticism, though from a dubious source, still ought to be considered by media professionals. Yet such questions are often easily dismissed by people such as director Quentin Tarantino who became irate during a Jan. 2 interview on NPR when asked about excessive movie violence, declaring, “Obviously the issue is gun control and mental health.” It should be noted that Tarantino’s 2009 film, “Inglorious Basterds,” depicts a movie theater massacre as having ended World War II, and recently certain gun control critics have contended that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only Jews had been allowed to have guns. Such is the relationship between the world of media and the world of guns.In response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the NRA actively supported the Gun Control Act of 1968, and yet today such a reaction to a national gun tragedy by the organization is almost inconceivable. Today the arguments against the restriction of high capacity magazines or military style assault rifles are not the carefully articulated concerns of avid hunters, sportsmen or collectors. The modern NRA speaks of tyranny and apocalypse, of the need for militias and posses. They speak of dystopias and hypothetical futures. They speak of fiction. The America of relaxed firearms regulations in which we live is the result of people who live in the ultra-violent fantasies that we, the media makers, have created.Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility. The First and Second Amendments are sacred; to sacred to be misused by weak and disturbed minds which fetishize violence. I hope that my fellow gun owners will see an opportunity for gun control to limit the tools we respect to those who can respect them. Likewise, I hope that my fellow media students will seriously consider the consequences of the content we produce. We can no longer scoff and dismiss the challenge that violence in video games and on TV and in the movies is responsible for mass shootings. As one particularly ultra-violent film put it, “Television is the explanation for this – you see this in bad television.”