Another school shooting goes down and is preyed upon by the media for a gripping new story. Jonesboro, Arkansas, West Paducah, Kentucky, and Littleton, Colorado all have one thing in common. All these places are sites where school shootings have occurred. Why do school shootings happen and who is to blame when they do happen?. These are two questions that are still trying to be answered. Some people say that school shootings are due to the excess marketing of violence in movies, television, video games, and music.
“‘There is a difference between what one has the right to do and what is socially responsible’, he says. It appears that they have targeted a mass audience for this material, and then they’re ‘horrified’ when it’s discovered what they’ve done. They’re being duplictous-in the end, they’re lying; says Andrew Schwartzman, president of public interest law firm the Media Access Group(Holland). I tend to agree with this point but I believe that there is a bigger and more substantial factor when looking at school shootings. I believe that parents have to take most of the blame for school shootings. Why should parents have to take blame for something that their child has done wrong.
Well, it is pretty simple. Parents are the only people who can control what kind of music their kid or kids listen to, what movies they see, what video games they play, and what kind of programs they watch on TV. The parents should be held accountable because it is not possible for the school to control what the kids do out of the classroom. Since the Littleton, Colorado shooting, school shootings have attracted attention to laws that make parents criminally liable for their children’s actions. Since then, twelve states including, Alabama, Arkansas, California and Ohio, have come up with parental responsibility statues.
Under these laws, parents can be prosecuted based on the failure to supervise their children(“Parents”). Tom Lynch also believes that he is responsible for the violence that his kids are exposed to saying, “because as a parent, I can do something about the entertainment viewing habits of my children. As far as I know, my wife and I are still in charge on the home front, and we plan to keep it that way as long as we’re still paying for the Nikes;(Lynch). Even with some new laws and regulations many music businesses are still marketing to kids. The RIAA announced new guidelines on September, 1, shortly before the original Senate hearing (Holland). They included three major updates: that advertising for labeled records should not appear in publications or Internet sites where fifty percent of the audience is under seventeen, that all consumer print ads of explicit-content albums display the advisory sticker , and that all E-tailors clearly display notice of stickered material through all phases of the transaction (Holland).
These regulations may help when trying to get CD’s with explicit lyrics over the Internet or in stores but the advertising towards kids still continues. The federal trade commission shows that US Record companies continue to advertise violent songs on TV through such outlets as BET, MTV, and the WWF Smackdown wrestling show. The ads appeared during the after school and early-evening hours when children were most likely to be watching. The FTC also found that the five major labels placed ads for albums with explicit content in such teen oriented magazines as Vine and Right On, which focus on rap and R&B, and Thrashers and Metal Edge, which celebrate metal rock music. Only 45 off 147 (31%) print ads reviewed for labeled recordings displayed any parental advisory label, the FTC noted, and those were frequently “a black-and-white blur, often too small or inconspicuously placed to be noticed or seen”(Holland).
So why can’t parents just go out and fight these advertisement companies that are marketing violence to their young kids? It would just be simple to go and sue the companies and make them pay for the destruction that they are causing in schools. But that is to hard considering all the money and power that these companies have. So if parents can’t fight these companies then who can? The only other solution to .
