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" The NRA executive vice president has just proposed a plan that many predicted the NRA would come up with: The solution to guns is more guns. Liberal commentators are already lambasting it, but I think the news that the NRA is even discussing the matter is a positive sign. They have put a proposal on the table, and that implies that there is a problem. What was really worrying about Wayne LaPierre&amp;#039;s remarks was the return of a very old trope \u2014 blaming Hollywood violence for real-life death. LaPierre even mentioned &amp;quot;celebrities&amp;quot; in his talk \u2014 as if Megan Fox were plugging thoughts into Adam Lanza&amp;#039;s mind. The relation between culture and murder simply does not exist and has never existed. It just doesn&amp;#039;t. Below is the most relevant part of the NRA&amp;#039;s statement, all italics theirs:  And here&amp;#039;s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here&amp;#039;s one: it&amp;#039;s called Kindergarten Killers. It&amp;#039;s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn&amp;#039;t or didn&amp;#039;t want anyone to know you had found it? Then there&amp;#039;s the blood-soaked slasher films like American Psycho and Natural Born Killers that are aired like propaganda loops on &amp;quot;Splatterdays&amp;quot; and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it &amp;quot;entertainment.&amp;quot; But is that what it really is? Isn&amp;#039;t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes \u2014 every minute of every day of every month of every year. A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.  I have to say this lengthy piece of paranoid rambling really brought me back. It was like being in the nineties all over again, with the claim by very old, very uncultured people that youth and culture were really alibis for murderousness. The good news is that because we had to go through all this in the nineties, we don&amp;#039;t have to go through it now. The studies have been done. Here&amp;#039;s the clearest one, which the Atlantic republished three days ago. Common sense says as much as any study, though. Widespread mass slaughter by guns is an American disease. Everywhere else in the world consumes American culture voraciously, and yet they don&amp;#039;t have murder as a public-health problem. Canadians and Koreans play more video games than Americans, but manage to rein in their shooting impulses. Ever seen Japanese slasher movies? Or Japanese pornography? It redefines exploitation and disgust. Japan has virtually no gun deaths. Why? One answer \u2014 I&amp;#039;m just saying \u2014 is that it has virtually no guns.  People much more serious than Lapierre are tempted to listen to the cultural argument about gun death. Joe Scarborough mentioned &amp;quot;the culture of violence&amp;quot; on his show, and so did President Obama during his first legislative proposal. It is imperative to note, right now, that this is garbage. There are many fascinating and difficult questions to be had over guns. Even the possibility of armed guards in schools should seriously be discussed. But the question of culture is not worth discussing. There&amp;#039;s nothing to discuss. Culture products do not lead to an increase in murder. Period. Leave Megan Fox out of it.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a17613/culture-mass-murder-14886100/>