Recently I posted about the unserious solutions that anti-gun control advocates offer whenever there is a mass shooting. In the link below, the Rev. Franklin Graham gives a perfect example of what I am talking about.
The Rev. Graham’s solution to gun violence is to eliminate images of gun violence. The images of violence, in his mind, are far more dangerous than the actual weapons of violence. The sheer impracticability of his proposal is apparent from the start. Oddly enough, particularly coming from a Constitutional purist such as the Rev. Graham, the biggest impediment to his idea is the Constitution. The 1st Amendment guarantees the right to free speech. If Rev. Graham wants to ban gun violence in the media he would have to address this ban in context to the Free Speech Amendment. So he would face the same difficult task that gun control advocates now face with the Right to Bear Arms Amendment. Constitutional changes, as advocates of gun control are keenly aware of, are extremely difficult to enact.
Which brings me to workable. I am really scratching my head on how banning gun violence from media is any easier than banning specific high caliber guns. Rev. Graham is not wrong that gun control measures are difficult to enact for both constitutional and popular reasons. But to propose that banning violence in entertainment as a more practical alternate is baffling. It would face exactly the same resistance on constitutional grounds and, as far as I know, nobody, aside from Rev. Graham, wants such a change in the first place. So, how, Rev. Graham is this more workable than gun bans?
And, if people are the problem and not guns, doesn’t the same argument apply to free speech? If there are millions of media consumers who can watch gun violence without engaging in a mass shooting, why should they be restricted because of a few bad apples can’t. Media doesn’t kill people, people kill people. So, then, his ban is unfair.
Then there is the problem of what does he mean by images of gun violence? It is beyond vague. Does he mean images like the famous scene in the movie Bonnie and Clyde where bodies get graphically ripped apart by bullets or does he also include drawing room mysteries were a shot is fired, a man clutches his chest and falls to the ground wounded. Does Rev Graham find one image more offensive? Both? Neither? Images of gun violence are so pervasive in modern culture that censors would be spending years parsing what is and what is not actual gun violence. There is just too much of it around to eliminate, kind of like actual guns in America. For an urgent problem, how workable is that?
Finally, Rev. Graham is wrong. Every other country in the world gets exactly the same violent media images and they don’t have mass shootings like the United States. Why?
To sum it up, the Rev. Graham’s ban is unconstitutional, unpopular, unfair, vague and wrong.
But then, Rev. Graham knows this which is precisely why he proposes it. He knows it will never happen. He will continue to pontificate on the dangers of violent media because it is both an easy target and impossible to implement. It allows him to speak in meaningless bromides that satisfies his congregants while completely sidestepping the problem at hand. It gets him off the hook quite nicely.
Mind Stewing, Fingers Typing 