Military-style weapons get the star treatment in Hollywood

Now that serious discussions are underway in Congress about how to reduce gun violence, it is time to consider a factor that is often ignored: Hollywood’s glorification of military-style firearms.

Our team of researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has documented the increasing use of firearms since the late 1980s — including military-style weapons — in movies and television shows available without restriction to children, namely, those with PG-13 and TV-14 ratings. These shows particularly glorify the use of firearms for virtuous purposes, like defending one’s friends and family. Think, for example, of Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise, protecting his wife and daughter.

Our research has also shown that when parents see these movies and shows depicting firearms this way, they are more willing to allow their children to watch them. By implication, children and adolescents are likely to learn that using these high-powered weapons is both acceptable and expected if one feels threatened.

The role of entertainment media in promoting harmful behavior in adolescents has been demonstrated previously — notably with cigarettes. Concerns about the potential promotion of cigarettes in movies led the states to develop a strategy to prohibit the use of product placements for cigarettes in entertainment media. Known as the Master Settlement Agreement, this 1998 agreement between the states and the tobacco industry, along with public pressure, curtailed the display of cigarettes in movies and on television.

Nothing like this has occurred with firearms. On the contrary, the use of guns in popular entertainment keeps increasing. While the industry’s ability to promote its products in ads in mainstream media is limited — you won’t see ads for firearms on broadcast television — that has not stopped the industry from using other types of promotion. 

The gun industry has long used its marketing power to place its weapons, especially military-style weapons, in movies.

And while the use of guns in movies doesn’t explicitly tell viewers to buy guns, the use of dramas to promote products is a well-known strategy that can be as successful as regular advertisements.

A 2016 analysis by the Economist magazine showed that commercially identifiable firearms are heavily displayed in movies. And the company that manufactures the Glock handgun, which is a military-style weapon, won a lifetime achievement award for product placement in 2010 from a brand-marketing organization. It is no surprise therefore that handguns are the most frequent firearm used for violence in the United States.

Critics argue that this evidence is not persuasive because homicide rates have declined since peaking in the 1990s. What this critique ignores is that the use of firearms as means of harming others has steadily increased since that time, especially among young people, who are more likely to die from firearms assaults than older people. Injuries from firearms are now the leading cause of death among the young from ages 1 to 24, even more than vehicle crashes.

The symbolic power of military-style firearms has now migrated to the political world. It is now common to see political candidates showing off their love of AR-15 rifles in campaign ads. They even have their children proudly holding these weapons — as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) did with her family last year at Christmastime. 

The ability of screen media to influence behavior has a long history, starting with the studies done by psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1960s. His work showed that children will imitate violent behavior when it is seen on screen as much as when it is seen in person, a form of imitation called social learning. More recent research co-authored by Brad Bushman of the Ohio State University has shown that children ages 8 to 12 will be more likely to pick up and shoot a real (but disabled) gun after they have watched a movie or played a video game that involved guns than if they watched a movie or played a game without guns.

Although critics might say that the effects of violent media are weak or nonexistent, the media can be an enormously influential teacher of behavior, even if acting on that learning only becomes apparent under the right circumstances. For young people, those circumstances are all too prevalent as we see in the high rates of homicide and even suicide committed with firearms in youth.  

It is high time we looked to Hollywood’s love of guns and insist that it take more responsibility for its promotion of military-style firearms.

Dan Romer is research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.