or about the prison systems of those other countries.
or about the prison systems of all of ours.
or about the moral fiber of our population.
Advertisors spend millions putting commercials on the air with the expectation that it will effect the actions of people.
Then we have a multitude of tv shows and movies where the line between good guy and bad guy is blurred and all alike solve their problems with a gun. Is it any wonder that we have high crime rates.
There is a show called Dexter in which the "hero" is a bona fide sociopathic serial killer who only kills those who deserve it.
When I was a kid if there were violence in a cartoon then it was a cat trying to kill a mouse. Today the cartoons show the good kids killing the other kids.
This list could go on and on. And that is not even discussing the level of violence. Hitchcock panned away as the gun shot - you were left to imagine what happened. It actually made the movie better. CSI dwells on making the images as graphic as possible.
I am not saying tht everything old is good and everything new is bad. I am saying we should be evolved enough to make what is good entertaining at the same time.
It tells us about the prison systems of other countries if their crime rate is higher than ours, yet they have fewer prisoners, yes. The countries of Western Europe have fewer prisoners, and less crime. I'm not sure just why that is, but it is.
You have brought up a rather chilling point when you mention the moral fiber of the population as a factor. I'm not going to say that you're wrong, but I hope you are.
As for TV, I was brought up on TV and movie westerns, in which the good guys fired twenty rounds from each of two six shooters while on a galloping horse, shooting the guns out of the hands of the bad guys. If the good guy was hit, it was a "flesh wound," but if the bad guy was hit, he died by falling backwards out of view. Totally unrealistic, unlike today's movies. Could the advent of realistically violent TV, movies, and video games be a part of it?
How about our appetite for drugs, both legal and illegal, could that be a factor?
Could it be t hat we're too quick to lock people up for non violent crimes?
Or is it a combination of all of the above?