The problem with either of those arguments Cadre is that they fundamentally and inherently require an increase in violence to occur in the real world in order to not be utterly disproved. Now... it's a common knowledge fact that media consumption (especially gaming) has risen to incredible levels, nearing absolute if not for the amish and extremely elderly.
According to the argument that media consumption, especially of violent media, leads to increased violence (or chance of violence) we should be up to our armpits in blood and corpses and the graphs brought forth always seem to show that... until you remember that while the violent crime rate has been rising fairly linearly our population has also been rising as well at a far greater rate and
adjusted for population the actual rate of violent crime has been dropping fairly impressively ever since about 1994-1996 when it
dropped like a stone.
The first gulf war ended in 1991, and most of the veterans would've probably been back by around 1993. The crime rate going up a little bit until then makes sense, but why would it take an immediate and almost violent 8 year nosedive starting in 1995-1996? What happened across the entire nation to cause that? My personal theory can be summed up in two words:
Multiplayer Gaming. I admit correllation is not causation but for such a profound societal change to happen when nothing else particularly interesting was going on...