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"Evolution
of Weaponry"
The
Role of Weapons Evolution in Domestic Violent Crime
Military
Conditioning as Entertainment for Children
The
tremendous impact of psychological conditioning to overcome
the resistance to killing has been observed in Vietnam and
the Falklands, where it gave US and British units a tremendous
tactical advantage in close combat, increasing the firing
rate from the World War II baseline of around 20% to over
90% in these wars. Through violent programming on television
and in movies, and through interactive point-and-shoot video
games, western nations are indiscriminately introducing
to their children the same weapons technology that major
armies and law enforcement agencies around the world use
to "turn off" the midbrain "safety catch" that Brigadier
General S. L. A. Marshall discovered in World War II.
The US Bureau of Justice Statistics research indicates that
law enforcement officers and veterans (including Vietnam
veterans) are statistically less likely to be incarcerated
than a nonveteran of the same age. The key safeguard in
this process appears to be the deeply ingrained discipline
that the soldier and police officer internalize with their
training. However, by saturating children with media violence
as entertainment and then exposing them to interactive "point-and-shoot"
arcade and video games, it has become increasingly clear
that society is aping military conditioning but without
the vital safeguard of discipline.
The observation that violence in the media is causing violence
in our streets is nothing new. The American Academy of Pediatrics,
the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical
Association, and their equivalents in many other nations
have all made unequivocal statements about the link between
media violence and violence in our society. The APA, in
their 1992 report Big World, Small Screen, concluded
that the "scientific debate is over." And in 1993 the APA's
commission on violence and youth concluded that "there is
absolutely no doubt that higher levels of viewing violence
on television are correlated with increased acceptance of
aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behavior."
The evidence is quite simply overwhelming.
Dr. Brandon Centerwall, professor of epidemiology at the
University of Washington, has summarized the overwhelming
nature of this body of evidence. His research demonstrates
that anywhere in the world that television is introduced,
within 15 years the murder rate will double. (And remember,
across 15 years, the murder rate will significantly underrepresented
the problem because medical technology will be saving ever
more lives each year.)
Centerwall
concludes that if television technology had never been introduced
in the US, then there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides
each year in the United States; 70,000 fewer rapes; and
700,000 fewer injurious assaults. Overall violent crime
would be half of what it is.
Centerwall notes that the net effect of television has been
to increase the aggressive predisposition of approximately
8% of the population, which is all that is required to double
the murder rate. Statistically speaking 8% is a very small
increase. Anything less than 5% is not even considered to
be statistically significant. But in human terms, the impact
of doubling the homicide rate is enormous.
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