Why there's no ambiguity about violent movies or guns

As per usual, whenever there is tragic mass shooting in this country (and we've had two in just a week) -- which insanely has become routine now -- the right inevitably tries to turn violent movies and video games as a scapegoat so they don't have to do anything substantive on gun control.

Violent crime pre-dates Hollywood movies. I don't see films getting dramatically more violent in the last 10 years, a period during which the number of mass shootings has jarringly spiked. And of course, as many people smarter than me have pointed out, our films and video games get exposure all over the world and there's not even a remotely close second to us when it comes to these kinds of mass killings.

And yet, the industry and movie buffs like myself frequently are made to feel defensive for championing violent films like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or popularizing movies with lots of gunplay like The Matrix or Heat. I used to be someone who felt ambiguous and self conscious about my consumption of fictional violence -- and then I grew up.

Shakespeare's writing is some of the most violent shit you will ever read in your life. How many of his plays end in stabbing orgies? And we really supposed to credibly believe that someone pre-disposed to massacring a bunch of people need only visual stimulus to carry out their crimes?

To me, violent films are like free speech, I don't like all of it, but I will fight tooth and nail to defend its right to exist. Here's the thing -- I've never been one for the torture porn genre in horror films. I don't consume but I get the sense that violence in them is well, pretty senseless.

But I also trust any age appropriate audience member's cognitive capability for separating the real world and their real world choices from what they see on screen. We are a long way from the first days of cinema, where naive audience members believed a train barreling towards the camera would run them over too.

I am not a parent yet but I want to be someone who expose my theoretical kid to as much cinema as possible. Why? Because I love it. Because I think it can be illuminating about the world. Because I think it can inspire creativity or conjure incredible emotions. But I'm also not insane. Some things are just not appropriate for some people.

But again, someone who is truly mentally ill might not be able to make these differentiations. The problem with the right's framing of this though ignores that in almost every one of these mass shooting cases, the killer knew exactly what they were doing, were pre-meditated and also knew that what they were doing was inherently wrong.

Now, these people may have been attracted to violent movies, music and video games -- but only because of how they made them feel not because they made them DO anything.

For instance, Taxi Driver (which coincidentally happens to be one of my favorite movies ever), is often cited as the inspiration on the attack that nearly killed Ronald Reagan in 1981. But that shooter, John Hinckley, Jr., was more preoccupied with actress Jodie Foster than say, her character in the film. The film, which does have a subplot about a would be political assassination, clearly had a big  impact on Hinckley, but it certainly didn't pull the trigger.

Video games seem to be an even more removed form of entertainment. At least films can have a real emotional engagement with its characters and the movie stars who play them. Video games, to me at least, and I'm not a 'gamer' -- seem to be uniquely straightforward about how they are disembodied from our experiences in the real world.

These commercial products don't make you to desensitized to real world violence, they simply may desensitize you fictional/fantasy violence. Even these mass shooters had to know that killing dozens of people and potentially dying themselves brings a lot higher stakes than an evening of playing Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption.

We know what the problem really is -- the guns. Even if this straw man were true, and these -- mostly white and always male -- killers are just going ballistic after spending too much time watching carnage on a screen, that means we need to keep them away from the guns.

Without the guns and bullets you have no mass killing. Period. Full stop. Blame who you want to blame I suppose, although you don't have to be mentally ill to commit a crime like this, you can simply be very very angry and hateful.

As a fan of the movies I feel compelled to stick up for them because I've enjoyed all kinds -- including my favorite, which is a violent horror film -- and they have in no way made me the person who I am or changed how I developed as a human being. They only reflect my personal TASTE, just other people may have a jones for rom coms or nature documentaries, and we should all leave it at that.