If you’re London’s Metropolitan Police, and you want to tell Britain’s hip-hoppers that picking up a firearm is not going to make a Saturday night club brawl end pleasantly, I guess some spots on MTV might seem like a logical place to advertise.

But if you’re MTV, do you take the money? You know … since three out of four music videos these days are about “gang banging” (which I was shocked, shocked to find out no longer means what it used to…), pimpin’ (which still means what it used to), and firing guns at rival gangs — mostly sideways, like you can really hit anything that way.

What? MTV doesn’t show music videos anymore? Well, they still do in England, believe it or not. MTV has almost a dozen channels in the UK. And they produce a good deal of new material at MTV Studios in Leicester Square. Much of it glamorizing street culture & guns.

Sky News reports that at least one of the spokespersons in the “Drop The Weapons” ad campaign is now having second thoughts:

One role model branded the broadcaster “totally hypocritical” for also glamorising violence.

Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Laban Roomes said music videos are a big influence on those carrying guns.

The businessman, whose 21-year-old son was badly injured in a gangland attack last year, said: “It is totally hypocritical.

“That thought occurred to me ‘Hold on a minute, we are in the MTV studios’.

“This is where the majority of strong influences are in terms of people living on the road, on the street, perpetrating gun crime.”

Now here’s the part where you Americans can really get angry. From the last sentence of the BBC’s coverage:

Since January three teenagers from the black community have been shot dead in London.

Not to sound insensitive, but … THREE? Since January? I think Los Angeles probably lost that many since breakfast. I hope the Brady Campaign people don’t start advertising on MTV too. If you ask me, they’d have better luck printing anti-gun-violence messages on packs of Kool, cans of Red Bull, and bottles of Courvoisier.

Is that wrong?