{"id":2084206,"date":"2025-10-11T17:34:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T17:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2084206"},"modified":"2025-10-11T17:34:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T17:34:48","slug":"alarming-surge-in-gun-violence-among-american-youth-mirrors-popular-movies-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/alarming-surge-in-gun-violence-among-american-youth-mirrors-popular-movies-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Alarming surge in gun violence among American youth mirrors popular movies: study"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Violent movies and real-life murders involving guns and young people could be linked, a new study found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rising number of violent gun scenes in blockbuster movies over the last two decades closely mirrors a surge in firearm-related murders among Americans aged 15 to 25 over the same period, concluded researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center <\/a>at the University of Pennsylvania.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The analysis, which examined over 25,000 random, five-minute segments from the top 30 movies and TV series every year from 2000 to 2021, looked at how often characters used firearms to injure or kill others, then compared those rates to national data on homicides and suicides among young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 2021 hit action film \u201cThe Suicide Squad,\u201d starring American actors Margot Robbie (pictured) and John Cena, had the most gun bloodshed with 15 shooting scenes, the study found. \u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers found the rise in gun violence in movies coincided almost perfectly with the surge in youthful firearm homicides \u2014 both rising at a rate of nearly 200% over the 21-year period.\u00a0They found no parallel to suicide rates.<\/p>\n

The 2021 hit action film \u201cThe Suicide Squad,\u201d starring American actors Margot Robbie and John Cena, had the most gun bloodshed with 15 shooting scenes, the study found. <\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Sniper\u201d \u2013 one of the most popular films in 2015 \u2013 followed with 14 depictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Sniper\u201d \u2013 one of the most popular films in 2015 \u2013 followed with 14 depictions of gun violence. \u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Episodes of the hit American crime thriller series \u201cThe Blacklist\u201d released in 2016 portrayed gun violence 33 times, the most of any popular series in that period, followed by the 2015 season of \u201cHawaii Five-0,\u201d in which there were 31 scenes depicting gunfire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gun violence in television rose 40% between 2000 and 2021.<\/p>\n

The findings suggest that Hollywood blockbusters may be modeling deadly behavior for teens and young adults, just as smoking scenes once did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Episodes of the hit American crime thriller series \u201cThe Blacklist\u201d released in 2016 portrayed gun violence 33 times. \u00a9NBC\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIn decades past, the public health community was successful in reducing the portrayal of tobacco use in movies and television,\u201d the study\u2019s lead author Dan Romer said. \u201cFollowing that lead, the entertainment industry should do all that it can to highlight the need for safe storage of firearms and to consider whether firearm use is necessary to tell compelling stories.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Violent movies and real-life murders involving guns and young people could be linked, a new study found.\u00a0 The rising number of violent gun scenes in blockbuster movies over the last two decades closely mirrors a surge in firearm-related murders among Americans aged 15 to 25 over the same period, concluded researchers at the Annenberg Public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2084207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[326620,392167,21741,392168,348402,22205,37798,368265],"class_list":["post-2084206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-action-movies","tag-analysis","tag-entertainment","tag-guns","tag-reports","tag-television","tag-us-news","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Alarming-surge-in-gun-violence-among-American-youth-mirrors-popular.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2084206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2084208,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084206\/revisions\/2084208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2084207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2084206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2084206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2084206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}