[WS:] So do gun owners. The point is that most Americans fetishize guns - they differ only it attaching different values to the fetish. The pro-gun folks attach a positive value while the anti-gun folks attach a negative one.
As to your claim about evidence, it is a really tricky business. I am all for evidence, but in reality social science seldom provides the proverbial smoking gun on any social phenomenon - most of the evidence it provides is weak, circumstantial, contingent on circumstances and qualified with caveats. This does not make a good political or even legal arguments, as shysters will use these qualifications and caveats to portray what is scientifically warranted as mere conjectures. They do this with evolution, they do that with climate change, they did that with tobacco, and they do it with guns. Basically what these folks argue is that since there is no 100% certainty (which it will never be) so all the claims of the critics must be false, which gives us justification to do business as usual. And if there is a body, after all, then someone or something else must have done it.
That is why rational argument on political issues, anything from corporate responsibility to health care to climate change to gun control, is simply not possible - especially in the US that perfected the art of brainwashing and bamboozling to unmatched levels. Lobbyist are immune to rational criticism because they can manufacture their own facts, evidence, and distractions much better than their critics can. A more effective strategy is to pull a Michael Moore on them - to ridicule them instead of reasoning with them. That is why I think that all jokes of the big gun small penis variety, while rather crude are far more effective that the most sophisticated social science arguments.
Finally, regarding your statement that not only Hollywood makes violent movies - it goes without saying, but my point was not that Hollywood has a monopoly on this form entertainment. My point was to underscore its glorification of gun violence property by contrasting it with a different way of portraying action scenes that do not rely on that property. So the fact that others make violent movies does not invalidate my point that a great deal of Hollywood production glorifies gun violence.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."