Rise in gun violence in top US movies parallels growth in gun homicides among young people
Research from Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center have examined the potential imitative effect of firearm use in entertainment media as a factor in the rise of their use in youth homicides in the U.S.
2 min. read
The growth in firearm use for violent purposes in the most popular U.S. movies over more than two decades closely paralleled the increase in firearm use in real-world homicide rates among young people 15 to 24 years old, according to a new analysis published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
The study also finds an increase in gun violence in TV dramas that was less dramatic than in movies. As shown in the paper, from 2000 to 2021 the rate of firearm violence in the top 30 popular movies increased about 200%. In comparison, the rate of firearm violence in TV dramas increased by about 40% and did not display as great a recent increase as in movies. Nevertheless, that rise on TV was also consistent with the hypothesis that gun portrayal in entertainment may have played a role in the upward trend in firearm use among young people.
The study, by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), examines the proportion of violence using firearms in 330 of the top 30 movies and half of the episodes of 49 of the top-rated broadcast television dramas in three genres from 2000 to 2021. These rates were compared with the proportions of homicide and suicide resulting from firearms among young people, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The research is based on coding of over 8,000 five-minute movie segments that came from a random half-sample of the top 30 most popular movies each year from 2000 to 2021.
Rates of firearm use as a proportion of the violent segments for each movie and TV show were averaged for each year and compared to the national rates of firearm use in homicides and suicides as collected by CDC.
“Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the portrayal of guns in popular entertainment may play a role in promoting their use for violent purposes among young people,” says lead author Dan Romer, research director at APPC.
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