Contributors

Friday, February 23, 2018

Time Again to Blame Movies and Games for School Shootings

Instead of blaming the NRA for the glorification of guns, Donald Trump is blaming the Internet, video games and the movies for mass shootings in the United States:
We have to look at the internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds and their minds are being formed, and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And you go the further step, and that’s the movies. You see these movies, and they’re so violent. And yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved, and maybe they have to put a rating system for that.
A rating system? Gee, what a brilliant idea. Why didn't the MPAA (the organization that rates films) think of that? Wait -- they have! If Trump ever went to a movie like a real person, he would have seen the MPAA ad that runs during the previews that explains how the rating system works.

The movie Republicans really enjoy attacking these days is John Wick, a 2014 Keanu Reeves film about a former hitman who hit back at the mobsters who killed his dog. Its MPAA rating is “Rated R for strong and bloody violence throughout, language and brief drug use.”

Video games also have a rating system with the ESRB, something Trump would know if he paid any attention whatsoever to what his son Barron does. How can Trump run a country when he doesn't know anything about anything?

Incidentally, guess who the bad guys are in John Wick? The Russian mob! Imagine that! Republicans are attacking a movie where Russians are the bad guys! Where do Republicans get their talking points from? RT News? Sputnik? Pravda? Izvestia? Vladimir Putin?

The fact of the matter is, Hollywood movies like John Wick make as much overseas in countries like China, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Russia as they do in the United States.

And the entire rest of the world doesn't have weekly school shootings like we do. Because they don't let any random idiot buy guns.

No comments: