Study: Kids who watch movies with guns likely to use guns

By Andrew Shepperson

Kids who watch movies that depict people using guns are more likely play with firearms for longer periods of time and to pull the trigger, a new study suggests.
For the study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Ohio State University researchers had children ages 8-12 watch 20-minute clips from movies containing guns and other children watch movies in which no guns were used. After the movie clips, researchers recorded children playing for 20 minutes in a room with a cabinet full of toys, including a drawer that contained a disabled .38-caliber handgun equipped with a sensor to count trigger pulls.
While researchers did not see a noticeable difference in the number of kids who picked up and played with the gun between the two groups, they did notice a difference in how the kids played with the gun once it was handled. The children who watched the movie with characters firing guns played with the real firearm for longer periods of time and also pulled the trigger more often than children who had not seen a gun in their movie clip.
Researcher Brad Bushman told Reuters that he was not sure why the movies did not influence the

Source: Guns.com