Conclusions on guns in movies study unsubstantiated, misleading

• Providing access to modern and ancient technology – both biotechnical and psychosocial.

• Improving bonding, attachment, and connectedness between people; resiliency research shows that if a young person has a good relationship with a caring adult who has the youth’s best interest at heart, that relationship is protective of the youth’s successful outcome.

• Providing an opportunity to improve self-esteem – a sense of power, a sense of models, a sense of uniqueness, and a sense of connectedness.

• Increasing opportunities to learn social and emotional skills of target recipients; a good example of this is anger management skills (technically known as affect regulation).

• Reestablishing the adult protective shield and monitoring risky behaviors by adults, thereby providing a sense of safety; a good example are the security procedures at the entrance to Chicago public schools.

• Minimizing the effects of trauma by cultivating learned helpfulness out of learned helplessness (aka, mastery), thus generating hope.

In summary, the authors are to be commended for documenting the increase in gun violence in the movies. However, to leap to unfounded conclusions that this has resulted in an increase in violence is an error.

Dr. Bell is professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as a staff psychiatrist in the psychosis program in the department of psychiatry at the university, staff psychiatrist at St. Bernard’s Hospital, and staff psychiatrist at Jackson Park Hospital’s Outpatient Family Practice Clinic in Chicago. Dr. Bell is the former president and CEO of the Community Mental Health Council and former director of the Institute for Juvenile Research (birthplace of child psychiatry) at the university.