Violence Portrayed in the Media Essays

Submitted By jmmc1978
Words: 885
Pages: 4

GE217: Composition - II - DE - V5.0 > Week 7 > Lesson 1: Using Evidence: Thinking Like an Advocate > Assignment > Major Writing Assignment

When it comes to real-life violence being the responsibility of what we seen on television, in the media, or on the Internet, I am very one-sided on this debate. I am completely against this theory and this is why; first is my personal life experience, as growing up with my cousins and uncles, who are really close in age with me, I have rough housed around, played army men, wrestled, watched violent movies, played violent video games, grew up in a violent neighborhood that was constantly and is still constantly displayed in the media and to this day have never thought about wanting to kill someone because of what I have seen on television or on the Internet. Violence has been a part of every culture in this world. There are wars waging everywhere, whether it be war against crime, drugs, or political and yet not every single person in this world who views and watches these actions on television or looks up news stories on the Internet turns around and goes on a killing spree. I have sat and played countless hours of an army type of video game called Call of Duty with my younger nephews for years and none of us have had any violent outbursts or intentions to want to go out and hurt someone. To me it is like the article stated at the end in where there were violent tendencies there prior to reading up on guns and bombs on the Internet. There is something much deeper with the person internally that sparks the desire to want to research such things as “How to kill with guns” and act out on them. Let us look at history itself. We have been waging wars since the beginning of time. We teach classes on history based on these wars. We teach these lessons to our young and old alike and yet statistically do we see everyone out there wanting to shoot up a classroom full of kids? Through-out my high school days there were fights sure, but most occurred and then were over. I guess I can say maybe I am blessed to have a graduating class in where no one was ever shot or killed during or after our school years. I know this because I still talk to a majority of the people I went to school with and we all grew up in a very rough area of Detroit, Michigan, which is one of the most violent cities in America. People are responsible for their actions, not information provided from a source. Are we to blame our school curriculum for teaching about violence in history? We might as well because that is what we are doing with the Internet, television media, and video games. They are just another source. We are a curious people and we like to learn about things and the Internet has just made it easier for us. It is just a little more convenient to us then having to go to a library. It is easier to access is the way I see it. I agree that monitoring needs to be done. Individuals such as Kip Kinkel have much deeper issues than just turning the Internet on and saying “Oooooo. I like this gun. Hey what about this bomb. Let me go shoot up some kids in a school to see what