President Trump’s War On Violence In Entertainment Is Just The Latest In Decades Of Politicians’ War On Freedom Of Expression

It’s nothing new.

It actually does not matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, YOUR party has a bad history in trying to censor and limit freedom of art and expression in video games and movies. Whether it was Al Gore’s late eighties play at the music industry that resulted in the legendary PMRC hearings which saw Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider crucify the one time Senator’s wife live on television or the W. Bush administration’s war on The Howard Stern Show where millions of dollars of fines were levied in a failed attempt to silence the shock jock, politicians have always had issues with art freedom.

Yesterday, President Trump noted that he may want to look at the level of violence in video games and movies as potential impetuses for the increase in gun violence over the last couple of decades as an alternative to an assault weapons ban. The President further mentioned that he wanted to see ‘rating systems” on the level of violence that may be in movies and games, despite the fact that we have that already.

Our Take

The fact is there have been numerous scientific studies on the correlation between violence and media and nothing has been connected. As a matter of fact, if you go down the list of mass murderers over the last 50 years, you’re not exactly seeing a correlation between Grand Theft Auto’s violence and the actual violence committed by Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, etc. One could make the argument that mass killers get a whole bunch more famous than the victims and whether or not an argument could be made that there’s an increased allure to killing celebrities or notable figures so that one day an unheard of personality could be mentioned in the same breath as say Mark David Chapman or “The Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Or the most likely of all reasons…religion.