Some people defend the music and say it is not responsibly for the gun crime, their argument Is that middle class children listen to rap and garage and they do not go running round with guns. Some mps are saying “The government needs to make some tough decisions. It’s not just a case of changing what people listen too. Blaming music is both too easy and fundamentally wrong”.
Ms Dynamite says that garage is not responsibly for violence. Violence is everywhere and the music is just a metaphor for life in general. She says that people in power are afraid of garage scene and that why they constantly try to shut them down. She also condemned other people in the music business like Ashley Walters of so solid crew, for going to jail for possession of a gun.
People have now even written slogans, defending the music and saying it is not to blame for influencing gun crime. For example the national rifle association’s slogan, ‘Guns don’t kill people, People kill people”. Other claims suggest though that the music is to blame. They are saying that music influenced people before and it is doing it again now. For example when the sex pistols were about they encouraged fans to spit on each other. Now people are saying this is the same sort of thing with songs going on about guns, just on a bigger scale. This is also proves that it is not just rap, hip-hop and garage to blame.
Culture minister Kim Howells got himself into an argument about the music. He said that rap artists are idiots. He was then labeled a raciest. The music industry thought back saying some rappers have a high level of education. Mr. Howells blamed English black rappers partly for the gun crime. He said, “For years now I have been very worried about these hateful lyrics that these boasting macho idiot rappers come out with”. The minister referred back to Victorian times saying people wrote about violence and thugs on the street but they did not seem to have this method of populating it. This quickly put a hole in his theory because it proves that violence has been around for years.
Connor McNicholas, editor of the magazine NME said that Howell’s outburst was raciest. Not all rappers are black, for example Eminem. He argued that gun crime is because of urban deprivation and not because of the music. He says that more rap music brought in Swindon than in Hackley. Nobody is talking about the gun crime in white suburban Britain. He then goes on to say young teenagers and the music today, they are just expressing themselves. Not causing or promoting gun crime.
Ben Bowling of Kings College in London who is studying the effects of gun culture, claimed rap was hugely misunderstood. He said some rap artists like Ms Dynamite and other bands sang out against violence and drug culture. But mps still think that the only what to stop gun crime all together is for communities is to reject it altogether including anything promotes it, including music.