Trump blames gun violence on movies despite one of favourite films being 'Bloodsport'

In his attempts to speak out against gun violence and suggest a solution to the problem, Donald Trump chose to reference the old argument that movies and video games are too violent.

The President was speaking to survivors of the Parkland shooting, who had been invited to the White House to discuss their concerns about the availability of weapons in America.

When hearing the students and parents concerns Trump decided that it would be a good time to consider whether movies and video games are still too violent for kids.

Here is a full clip of his argument courtesy of CNN.

Now, we don't really have time to explain why Trump's statement here is a little misjudged but if you want to learn more about how movies and video games of that nature are appropriately censored for the correct audiences, please visit the BBFC or MPPA websites.

However, we should take some time to appreciate the irony of Trump's statement about movie violence.

Should the President choose to wage a war on filmmakers in the thinly veiled hope that it will quash gun violence, he'll probably have to quickly forget one of his favourite films.

During a profile piece on Trump by Mark Singer in the May 19, 1997, issue of The New Yorker, the journalist was invited aboard the future President's private jet for a flight to Mar-A-Lago.

Shortly into the flight Singer describes a bizarre incident:

We hadn’t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie.

He’d brought along 'Michael,' a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favourite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called 'Bloodsport,' which he pronounced 'an incredible, fantastic movie.' 

Even if you haven't seen Bloodsport you can probably guess from the title that it is a fairly violent movie and not the sort of film that someone criticising movie violence might enjoy.

Bloodsport, which has a cult following,is hardly the most explicit movie ever made but it is primarily focused on martial arts battles to the death, i.e. it's not innocent family fun.

Should you be interested here is a trailer for the movie.

Interestingly what Singer reports next is something that should be just as worrying as Trump seemed only interested in the violence of the movie and not the narrative.

By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition—Trump’s goal being 'to get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes'—he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking.

When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed.

'Admit it, you’re laughing!' Trump shouted.

'You want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?'

So, not only is one of Trump's favourite flick one that is heavily focused on violence, the violence was, in fact, the only element of the movie he appeared interested in.

Of course, the discussion around violence in movies and games has been around for decades and isn't likely to go anywhere soon.

It is worth noting that numerous studies have been conducted, such as this one from Berkeley, which suggests that movie violence does not encourage a viewer to carry out such acts in real life.

More: A judge just said that Donald Trump encouraged violence