Introduction
Gun violence has been part of American culture, but it has been increasing significantly over the years, especially after the calls to repeal the Second Amendment emerged in 2013. Both the proponents and opponents of this debate have valid reasons to support their side of the argument. Despite the long-standing debate on gun ownership and violence in the US, there is little potential to move forward and address the issues underlying this widespread public health problem. The major problem is the tendency to think that people make choices on whether to own a gun and how to use it based on rationality instead of probing this issue within its broad social-cultural context. Instead of understanding the reasons that contribute to gun violence, the proponents of gun control focus on banning firearms from the citizenry, and this approach has borne insignificant fruits as Americans continue to suffer and die due to misuse of guns. In the process, the debate on gun control and ownership has become emotional and politicized thus robbing the involved parties of the objectivity needed to address this problem. This paper argues that repealing the Second Amendment would not stop gun violence because the gun does not pull the trigger but the criminal. The attention that the media puts on criminals contributes significantly to the majority of mass shootings as the perpetrators seek to get fame. If the media directed the attention to the victims as opposed to the shooters, it would likely lower the indiscriminate rate of mass shootings in the US.
The Second Amendment and Gun Control
The proponents of gun control have erroneously accused the Second Amendment of standing in the way of gun reform policies in the US to curb the increasing cases of gun violence. However, this view lacks a solid foundation in law or American history. Regulations on firearms have been in place since the existence of guns in the US. The Second Amendment reads, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (Cornell & Cornell, 2018, p. 868). On the one hand, gun rights groups and other organizations such as the National Rifle Association mainly focus on the latter part of the amendment to justify their position that gun ownership should not be overregulated. On the other hand, the proponents of gun control focus on the section that talks about a well-regulated militia. However, moving away from the legalistic aspects of this debate, it is important to understand the main underlying problems contributing to gun violence in the country. The insidious issue that has been fueling the runaway gun violence in the US is the twisted reporting of this problem in the media with the focus being on the shooter as opposed to the victims.
Sensational Reporting of Violence in Media and Pop Culture
The major problem with the rampant gun violence in the US lies with how the media and popular culture over glorify this problem through unbalanced reporting. Every time a mass shooting happens, such as the case of nightclub killings in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, media outlets and online social medial platforms are awash with images of the shooter with little focus being directed to the victims. The culture of sensationalizing violence, which is prevalent in media and pop culture, is highly pervasive as perpetrators of these heinous crimes pursue celebrity status. The vulgar reality shows whereby deluded individuals are given fifteen minutes of fame are highly pervasive in contemporary American society. As Faria (2013) argues, “It is not a big step to link extensive coverage of shooting rampages in both the press and the colorful electronic media as a major contributing factor in the pathologic and even morbid attainment of celebrity status even in death” (p. 6). Therefore, it suffices to claim that the problem of gun violence in the US primarily lies with how the media and pop culture reports such incidences. Importantly, trigger-happy individuals pull the trigger, and thus such individuals will always find a way of perpetrating their crimes with or without the repealing of the Second Amendment.
The contagion effect could be applied in this discussion to explain how the media and popular culture ultimately contribute to increased cases of gun violence. The contagion effect is similar to the “copycat” effect, which implies that behaviors are learned and they could be transmittable, and as such, they could easily spread across a population. According to Meindl and Ivy, 2017), in the case of mass shootings, “a contagion effect would be said to exist if a single mass shooting incident increased the likelihood of other instances of mass shootings in the near future” (p. 369). Some people suffer from the “hero worship” syndrome whereby they can do whatever it takes to imitate their heroes or attain celebrity status. In this case, perpetrators of gun violence crave the attention that shooters, especially mass shooters, draw from the media and pop culture. This behavior has been documented in other scenarios including the hijacking of planes, suicide, smoking cessation, and binge eating.
One interesting observation to support the foregoing argument is that after a mass shooting incident, a similar occurrence is likely to happen within days or weeks afterward. Towers et al. (2015) conducted a study to assess the contagion effect on mass shootings and found that on average, “mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the US, while school shootings occur on average monthly” (p. 1). As such, it is important to understand why and how the contagion effect works in the context of gun violence to support the claim that the underlying issue for this problem in the US is not the presence of guns or lack of them thereof. The main problem is shooters who have been deluded by the false promise of gaining celebrity status through the widespread coverage of their thoughtless actions by the media and pop culture.
Understanding the Contagion Effect
According to Meindl and Ivy (2017), “contagion” is a metaphor mostly used in epidemiology to explicate how various behaviors could potentially spread across a given population. However, behaviors cannot be compared to diseases, such as Covid-19, that normally spread by contacting an infected person or surface. Therefore, the contagion effect is used to model an outcome by explaining that there is a high probability that when an individual engages in a certain behavior, other people could repeat the same. This argument invokes the concept of generalized imitation, which is a form of contagion. Meindl and Ivy (2017) define generalized imitation as “the learned ability to perform behaviors that are similar to behaviors observed or described, even when performance is delayed” (p. 368). Therefore, this behavior is a learned skill that grows over time and is strengthened through experience. This assertion could be used to explain why football starts will have children that are attracted to the game because they imitate what they see their parents do. Similarly, shooters are likely to imitate their fellow shooters because the media gives such people some elevated social status through unabated coverage. As such, it is important to examine the role of media in imitation and the link to increased gun violence in the US.
Media, Generalized Imitation, and Gun Violence
When shooters execute their actions, they do so in a given location with few witnesses around to narrate what happened. Therefore, the easiest way for the rest of the world to learn about such incidences is through various media avenues, such as social media, print media, and television among others. Therefore, it suffices to argue that any information that could model potential shooters through imitation based on any given occurrence comes from the media and popular culture. Meindl and Ivy (2017) argue that generalized imitation could occur irrespective of whether the model is presented live or via other mediums, such as films. Interestingly, people could choose to imitate a certain behavior by simply listening to narratives of what happened.
Additionally, the way the media presents a certain story could potentially influence the probability of such behaviors being imitated. For instance, when a mass shooting incident happens, all forms of media are awash with extensive news coverage of the occurrence, sometimes lasting for days and weeks (Jetter & Walker, 2018). The problem with such news coverage is that the focus is mostly on the shooters with their images dominating the presentation. Their manifesto, beliefs, life history, and other minor life details are aired and this aspect contributes directly to the probability of imitation. Unfortunately, social status is “conferred when the mass shooter obtains a significant level of notoriety from news reports” (Meindl and Ivy (2017, p. 369). Images of tough-looking shooters aiming their guns at cameras, in cases where video recordings of the real shooting are available, project an air of toughness and bravado. In some cases, different shooters are compared to establish whether they shared ideologies, and in the process, innocent people in the audience could start identifying with some of the things that these killers believed. Additionally, fulfilled manifesto by the shooters and accounts of the numbers that have been killed inadvertently create some sort of reward for the violence. Ultimately, these instances cumulatively work together to create an environment that fosters imitation.
In his research, Chen (2018) focuses on the images that are presented by the media and their effects in promoting the concept of generalized imitation through agenda-setting. For instance, once news on mass shootings is aired, the audience gets a topic for discussion, which ultimately fuels an even larger public presence. According to Chen (2018), “It has been shown that news stories that contain photos receive more attention from audiences compared to those without photos” (p. 9). Similarly, Adam et al. (2009) posit that when photographs are used to present certain topics, they could influence the segments that elicit more reactions, discussions, and attention. As such, when these photos are presented continually, the audience could form a false belief that such news is the most important at the time. The media mainly prefer using grim photographs of shooters and their victims on their front pages where people could see them even for those who do not prefer buying newspapers.
Critics would refute these arguments and claim that media portrayals play no role in influencing gun violence. Specifically, they would contend that photographs do not play any significant role in the way media contents are consumed and interpreted. However, the available evidence points in the opposite direction. Dahmen (2018) conducted in-depth research to examine how newspapers covered three major shootings in schools in the US. The study unveiled that the media used 4,934 photos in 9 days and compared how the media changed these images for the first three days (Dahmen, 2018). The study established that for every image and story about the victims of the shooting, the media gave 16 photos and stories of the shooters. One of the major issues that arise in this case is the media’s preference to use images of the shooter disproportionately. While the media has to present information to the public, it should balance between creating awareness and causing harm. Over sensationalizing this information makes the media biased and a major contributor to gun violence by planting seeds of celebrity status around the shooters. Based on the concept of generalized imitation, people are likely to start copying this behavior and normalizing gun violence.
The claim that people would want fame by committing the crime of killing others is not anecdotal. The available research shows that individuals are willing to engage in this lawlessness in the quest to gain fame, even if for some minutes. For instance, in the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting, the perpetrator explicitly stated, ““Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight” and the 2012 Sandy Hook gunman wrote in an online forum, “Just look at how many fans you can find for all different types of mass murderers””(Dahmen, 2018, p.11). These messages are a clear indication of the motivations behind mass shootings in the US. The involved shooters are fame-hungry and they would do whatever it takes to gain that much-coveted stardom status.
In another study, Lankford (2016) found that fame-seeking offenders are likely to kill or wound double the number of individuals that their counterparts not after fame would, and this outcome is positively correlated with the nature and amount of media content that they consume. Apparently, the majority of fame-seeking killers would target to have the maximum number of casualties because it would draw the highest media attention possible, thus making them overnight celebrities. As such, it is clear the twisted media coverage of mass shootings inadvertently rewards the perpetrators with fame and at the same time creates incentives for future offenders. According to Cheng (2018), these individuals “believe their names, faces, and actions will be seen worldwide on newspapers, television, movies, magazines, and the Internet” (p. 11). The dark side of this misconstrued ideology is that those who survive become role models for upcoming killers who are at high risk of this behavior.
Counterarguments
The proponents of gun control stick to the claim that the Second Amendment should be appealed and give Congress legal backgrounds to censor gun ownership in the country as a way of solving the gun violence problem. At the center of this position is the view the more guns are available in the public, the more shootings would be witnessed. Therefore, any claims that media plays a central role in the advancement of gun violence in the US are inconsequential. However, these claims do not hold when subjected to objective research findings. According to Meindl and Ivy (2017), changing the way media reports gun violence and mass shootings could potentially reduce incidences of killings. This tactic has been “effective in decreasing imitated suicide, 15 and the World Health Organization, citing 50 years of research on imitation, has posted media guidelines on reporting suicides to prevent imitational suicides” (Meindl & Ivy, 2017, p. 369). Some of the suggested strategies to combating gun violence include the deliberate avoidance of evocative headlines and not sensationalizing suicide by media and popular culture.
Additionally, critics of the Second Amendment would argue that there is no sufficient evidence that media inspires people to engage in gun violence. It would be argued that people choose their behaviors not based on what they see on media but what they believe. However, this argument is shallow and lacking in a deeper understanding of the various factors that shape behavior. The FBI and the Advanced Law Enforcement Response Training team understand the role of media in promoting violent behaviors, which explains the launching of the “Don’t Name Them” campaign (Meindl & Ivy, 2017). This campaign aims at taming media-induced imitation mass killings and it proposes that those involved in mass shootings should receive minimal coverage. As such, by refusing to broadcast shooters’ statements and ideologies, those at risk of developing such behaviors would not have any role model to copy and this approach ultimately reduces sensationalism and the associated contagion effect tied to mass shootings. Additionally, Jetter and Walker (2018) argue that using live events during or immediately after a mass shooting could contribute significantly to the concept of generalized imitation due to the excitement associated with these occurrences. This strategy minimizes the perceived rewards by reducing the overall public interest in the event, thus curbing imitation in the end.
Conclusion
The issue of gun violence and control is contentious in the American context with both proponents and opponents of gun control trying to prove their side of the argument. Specifically, the proponents of gun control blame the Second Amendment for allowing allegedly unchecked gun ownership in the country. However, the evidence provided in this paper shows that repealing the Second Amendment would not solve the issue of gun violence in the US because the problem lies elsewhere. This paper has argued that the media’s over glorification of gun violence, specifically mass shootings, unwittingly inspires potential killers to take action on their inclinations in the name of gaining popularity and fame to ultimately become celebrities by drawing unparalleled media attention. Specifically, the prolonged coverage of mass shootings with the focus being on the shooter and gory images plastered on the frontlines of news coverage creates a false sense that such actions are heroic. Ultimately, the presence of guns in the American public sphere does not contribute to increased cases of gun violence. On the contrary, individuals choose to perpetrate these crimes after being deluded by the wrong perception by media that they would gain celebrity status.
References
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