Like it or not, popular culture has a major impact on our society. It introduces ideas into the subconscious, ideas that permeate the mind and shape how people think about different things.

It’s one of the reasons fiction has been so effective in changing people’s minds about a myriad of issues. Perhaps most famously was the book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

However, when these ideas are bad or ridiculous, they need to be challenged. For that, we can thank none other than John R. Lott. In a column at Fox News, Lott takes aim at some of the stupid things being pushed out by the media which amounts to little more than indoctrination by fiction.

The media’s pro-gun control bias doesn’t just distort news coverage. TV networks have used their primetime entertainment shows to portray gun rights advocates as dishonest, extremist and unconcerned about the loss of innocent lives. At the same time, advocates of gun control are portrayed as caring, upstanding and responsible citizens.

The gun control debate isn’t portrayed as having two sides. It’s a morality play of good versus evil.

NBC might be the worst network, but it’s a tight race. It seems to have given marching orders to its TV writers to churn out scripts demonizing law-abiding gun owners and lionizing those who want to slap strict new controls on gun ownership, even if that means disregarding the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Recently the NBC show “Taken” (Season 2, Episode 11) tried to convey to viewers that gun-free zones work because the criminals won’t disobey the bans.

Santana (Jessica Camacho) asks Bryan Mills (Clive Standen), if he is “OK with this whole no-guns thing.” Mills replies that it is OK because the gun-free zone means that “bad guys won’t have them either.”

Do people really think that a group of paid, professional killers couldn’t find some way to get guns into a hospital, a school or some other place just because a sign is posted saying guns are not allowed? There’s no mention that over 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where guns are banned. This is precisely because criminals prefer unarmed victims.

Lott gives plenty of other examples, as well, so I recommend you go and read his original column.

However, this one tickles me to no end. It tickles me because it’s so freaking stupid that I have a hard time believing anyone is dumb enough to buy that argument.

But they do.

Yet this line of thinking pops up in actual discussions. People watch these shows and think, “That’s right!” Then, when someone who actually studies something known as “reality” starts to talk about the problem of gun free zones and how they disarm the law-abiding, someone will pipe up with, “The bad guys won’t have them either.”

They’ll actually think that’s true. That’s the really sad part.

While fiction is never going to be a true reflection on the real world–otherwise, who would need fiction?–it doesn’t need to have some basis in reality. Otherwise, people get stupid ideas.

You know, like bad guys won’t have guns in gun free zones.