Gun Violence

Hollywood loves to lecture us on gun control but their shows are littered with violence, even normalizing school shootings and murder. This fall tv season has been no different with many shows showcasing gun violence while at the same time preaching gun control. Here are a few examples:

Black Panther set box office records on its way to becoming “a watershed in cultural history of African Americans,” wrote The Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts Jr. Yet, the movie was typical Hollywood – filled with violence, including 163 shootings, while Marvel stars call for gun control.  

Despite the facts eventually showing on Monday morning that the Somali-born Ohio State University (OSU) student who mauled fellow Buckeyes with his car and a butcher’s knife, Yahoo! News breaking news reporter Caitlin Dickson felt it was worthwhile to still flaunt the issue of control and how the early reports that the assailant had a gun “spur[red]” a “look” at Ohio’s gun laws. 

While it may have been surprising that all three broadcast networks covered on Monday evening the deadly violence in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend, what wasn’t surprising was that they looked to blame guns for the violence and advanced the cause of more gun control (as opposed to gang violence or the need for better policing).

On the Monday night edition of All In, Chris Hayes featured a segment decrying what he considered a racially-motivated overzealous prosecution of Marissa Alexander, an African-American Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot in the vicinity of her estranged husband, with whom she was having a dispute. [Link to the audio here] Hayes hosted a panel…