NYT/Nocera says gun advocates have a point regarding violent movies

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. As I understand it, research has not demonstrated causality between violent media content

and violence, at least in a one-to-one sense.

But the Mean World Syndrome research does demonstrate fairly definitively another phenomenon: violent medi content convinces people that the world is far more violent than it really is. In this sense, we don't draw the line from violent media content to violent intentions/acts. Rather, we draw it from violent media content to the kind of rampant paranoia and fear that drives many arguments in gun culture (hunting excluded, clearly). The big divide between gun proponents and opponents is probably to be drawn along the Mean World Syndrome lines, where gun proponents have a vastly inflated sense of how dangerous the world actually is. Indeed, it is this basic premise that drives most of their arguments, where both "the government" and "criminals" pose an ever-present, constant threat to their lives.

Violent media doesn't cause violent intentionalities. Rather, it produces a seriously skewed view of the world and human relations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome