The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science, the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. This recent article about other sciences caught my eye:
Gun violence in popular prime-time broadcast television dramas has increased steadily over almost two decades, a trend that parallels the rise in U.S. homicide deaths attributable to firearms, according to research by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania.
Overall gun violence on popular prime-time dramas doubled from 2000 through 2018, according to the study, which was published in PLOS ONE. More important, gun violence as a proportion of the violence depicted in the shows rose significantly as well.
The problem. U.S. murder rate in 2000: 5.5/100,000. In 2018: 5.0/100,000. Okay, they did say "by firearms." The 2018 firearms murders were 72.6% of all murders, or 3.63/100,000. In 2000 firearms were 65.6% of all murders; that gives 3.608 firearms murders/100,000. Maybe I am bad at math, but how does that seem like it "steadily increased."
The 1950s were the Golden Age of TV Westerns, with shoot-outs in almost every episode, AIUI, Somehow that did not result in an murder epidemic.
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