Crime statistics have clearly become a paramount concern to the U.S. public during the last decade. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 1990, 56% of the adult population personally feared becoming a victim of a violent crime (Huesmann, L. R., Moise, J. F., Podolski, C. L.,1997, p.181). The

One such case was one in which a young fan apparently interpreted his favorite singer's songs literally and committed suicide. In the case of McCollum v. Osbourne, the parents of John McCollum, Jack McCollum and Geraldine Lugenbuehl, sued Ozzy Osbourne and CBS records for negligence when their son listened to one of Osbourne's songs, "Suicide Solution", for five hours while heavily drinking, after which he killed himself by means of a .22 caliber revolver fired into his right temple. His parents asserted that the content of this song had been an immediate cause of their son's death. Their attorneys, Thomas Anderson and Doug Miller, filed suit on a product's liability line of reasoning (Dee, p.124). They claimed CBS records had sold a defective product. The lyrics were introduced as evidence and contents are herein noted: "Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker; suicide is slow with liquor/Take a bottle, drown your sorrows; then it floods away tomorrows/Breaking laws, knocking doors, but there's no one at home/Make your bed, rest your head, but you lie there and moan/Where to hide, Suicide is the only way out/Don't you know what it's really about?"(Dee, p.125). The prosecution argued that the defense should have realized that these suggestive words "could produce an uncontrollable impulse to commit suicide" (Dee, p.125). CBS attorneys, William Vaughn and Douglas Abendroth, cited other examples where characters expressed desires of suicide such as, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Willy Loman, and the theme song from M*A*S*H*. Anderson fired back with claims that "Suicide Solution" called for immediate action on the part of the listener. The preciding judge on the case, Joe Cole, ultimately sustained the defendant's objections and dismissed the case on First Amendment grounds. The ruling handed down by Judge Cole states that:

Although many experts fear that adolescents are taking this violence to heart and reenacting the suggestive themes, our courts have yet to uphold this belief. The courts interpretation seems to be that the meaning that teenagers take away from media is partly determined by their stage in life. People do not so much uncover the meanings so much as they construct them, forming their own interpretation. They draw from a pool of knowledge and experiences they already possess. Christenson (It's Not Only Rock and Roll, p.7) cautions these critics not to lose sight of the violent reality that many kids may be monsters already, and simply seek out musical fare that spurs t

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1690
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)