The growth in firearm use for violent purposes in the most popular U.S. movies over more than two decades closely paralleled the increase in firearm use in real-world homicide rates among young people 15 to 24 years old, according to a new analysis published today.
The study also found an increase in gun violence in TV dramas that was less dramatic than in movies. As shown in the paper, from 2000 to 2021 the rate of firearm violence in the top 30 popular movies increased about 200%. In comparison, the rate of firearm violence in TV dramas increased by about 40% and did not display as great a recent increase as in movies. Nevertheless, that rise on TV was also consistent with the hypothesis that gun portrayal in entertainment may have played a role in the upward trend in firearm use among young people.
The study, by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania, examined the proportion of violence using firearms in 330 of the top 30 movies and half of the episodes of 49 of the top-rated broadcast television dramas in three genres from 2000 to 2021. These rates were compared with the proportions of homicide and suicide resulting from firearms among young people, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The research, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, was based on coding of over 8,000 five-minute movie segments that came from a random half-sample of the top 30 most popular movies each year from 2000 to 2021. These include such movies as “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” “Deadpool,” “Black Panther,” “The Matrix Revolutions,” “Watchmen,” and “Fast & Furious 6.” Coders identified segments that featured violence and noted whether a firearm (as opposed to other means) was used for violent purposes.
In TV, the coding focused on primetime broadcast dramas ranked by Nielsen as among the top 30 most watched shows each year in the police, crime, and medical genres. In all, over 18,000 segments from 49 series were coded, including such shows as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “ER,” “House, M.D.,” “The Good Wife,” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Rates of firearm use as a proportion of the violent segments for each movie and TV show were averaged for each year and compared to the national rates of firearm use in homicides and suicides as collected by CDC.
“Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the portrayal of guns in popular entertainment may play a role in promoting their use for violent purposes among young people,” said lead author Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Alternate hypotheses considered
The researchers also considered two alternative hypotheses but found that neither the increase in economic adversity following the 2008 recession nor the greater availability of firearms due to the rise of gun purchases provided as clear an explanation for the increase in firearm homicides among young people. The rise in firearm use in popular movies was as highly related to gun purchases as to firearm use in homicides. In addition, the increase in gun purchases over the study was not related to firearm use for suicide in young people, a frequently used marker of firearm availability.
The upward trend in deaths among young people
While studies have shown that comparable high-income countries have seen a decline in mortality among youth, U.S. youth have experienced growing rates of homicide and suicide which are heavily due to the use of firearms. Those deaths now surpass “motor vehicle crashes, cancer, and drug overdoses and poisoning,” as causes of youth mortality, according to a 2024 advisory from former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.
While paid advertising for firearms is generally absent from TV and streaming platforms, guns are often featured prominently in movies and some genres of TV programming, such as police, crime, and medical dramas. The firearms industry has paid to place its products in entertainment programming in the past, and commercially available firearms are frequently seen in movies, as catalogued by the Internet Movie Firearms Database (IMFDb).
The researchers also examined the incidence of firearm use in suicides beginning in 2009, when they began coding TV dramas for suicide. They found that the use of firearms for suicide was infrequent in both popular movies and primetime dramas, suggesting that the recent rise in firearm use for suicide in youth was not related to its portrayal in entertainment programming. In addition, the use of firearms for violent purposes in both movies and TV was not related to national rates of youth firearm use for suicide.
“Because modeling suicide in media can affect people who are experiencing suicidal ideation, we should celebrate the finding that such portrayals are the exception, not the rule, in TV and movies examined over this period,” said co-author Patrick E. Jamieson, director of the policy center’s Annenberg Health and Risk Communication Institute (AHRCI).
Further investigation needed
The researchers noted the findings are at a national level and require further study at the individual level. Nevertheless, the patterns were consistent both among white and Black young people, consistent with a media promotion effect that reaches wide audiences.
“In decades past, the public health community was successful in reducing the portrayal of tobacco use in movies and television,” Romer said. “Following that lead, the entertainment industry should do all that it can to highlight the need for safe storage of firearms and to consider whether firearm use is necessary to tell compelling stories.”
APPC’s coding project for movies and TV
The study is part of a continuing long-term project at APPC to catalog content in popular media that can influence young people, such as the use of firearms, alcohol, and tobacco. Under Jamieson, the CHAMP (Coding of Health and Media Project) and CHAMPION (Culture of Health and Media Portrayal in Our Nation) projects, each begun with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have coded health-related portrayals in over 1,000 movies spanning more than a half-century and 1,600 hours of TV programming since 1996.
Past studies based on this database found that:
- The rate of gun violence on TV dramas uniquely predicted firearm use in young people’s firearm deaths from 2000 to 2018.
- The rate of gun violence in the most popular PG-13 movies tripled from 1985, the first full year of the rating, through 2012, and in 2012 exceeded that of R-rated films, while the overall rate of violence in the top 30 movies more than doubled since 1950;
- Americans’ fear of crime is related to the amount of violence portrayed on prime-time TV dramas;
- The declining visibility of tobacco products on prime-time broadcast TV declined in parallel and correlated with the national decline in cigarette consumption.
The current study, “Firearm Violence in Entertainment Media as a Contributor to the Youth Firearm Health Crisis in the United States,” was coauthored by Dan Romer; Patrick E. Jamieson; Lauren Hawkins, assistant director of AHRCI; and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. It was published open access online on Aug. 13, 2025, in the Journal of Adolescent Health. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2025.06.016.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center was established in 1993 to educate the public and policy makers about communication’s role in advancing public understanding of political, science, and health issues at the local, state, and federal levels. Connect with us on Facebook, X, Instagram, and Bluesky.
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