I'm pretty sure we've all heard of what happened at Columbine. I was watching some of the news from the time, and they kept on mentioning how these children were listening to Marliyn Manson. Then, in a report about two weeks later, they were full-on blaming his music for what the kids did. So my question is: Does music have an influence over people's actions?

I think it's a load of bull shit when people blame any form of art for other's or their actions. I listen to MM sometimes and I also listen to heavier stuff as well. The only time I would ever do anything violent is if it's in self defense. Everyone just wants a scape goat and they don't want to take a look at mental issues the kids may have or the way their parents raised them. I think that at that age if you can not separate reality from fiction or music then you have serious mental issues.

Not in any way that means the artist[s] should be to blame, no.
Music has powers over our emotions and can touch us and speak to us in a way that words can't. It can amplify our emotions (who hasn't been happy, then listened to a happy song and felt even better? Or been sad, and had a sad song bring them to tears?), but it can't create them. You're never powerless to music. Listening to violent-sounding music make amp up an already violent person, but it won't create a killer of a saint.
But there are paranoid people, and people who were looking for an answer to the "WHY?" For the former, they looked at something they didn't understand and took it too heavily at face value and worked themselves into a paranoid frenzy coming up with what it might mean; for the latter, it was just an easy scapegoat.
Marilyn Manson is most certainly not to blame, no more so than the creator of any sad song that a person has listened to when committing suicide, or any other song that's amplified anyone's emotions to the point that they did something.
So in one way, yes, the music is sort of to blame. But the music does not cause the mental instability, the depression, the anger, or the happiness, it only fuels what is only there. Listening to violent-sounding music certainly did not help them, but Marilyn Manson cannot be beaten for creating music, they were unstable to begin with. To take more radical example, look at Marilyn Manson. He took a Beatles song and warped it into something that agreed with his own twisted views. Are the Beatles to blame? Absolutely not. Is J.D. Salinger to blame for writing Catcher in the Rye because it caused another very unstable man to shoot John Lennon? No. If it wasn't that, it would have been another thing.

Ok wow...to say that music they were listen could be an influence to those boys decision is just a bit far fetched. I mean yea sure some music could be a bit violet or creepy but I highly doubt the fact that they had been listening to Marilyn Manson had anything to do with them deciding to pull a school shooting. Those boys had a lot of other things that could have been influences besides the music. Like the fact that they seem to have been bullied quite a bit and had very few friends. They'd been doing other things before the shooting incident as well. So there is no way I would believe anyone saying listening to Marilyn Manson or any other music for that matter was a contributing influence to that tragedy.

Yes, music can influence people's moods. As far back as the ancient Greeks it was observed that music could do that. (Thank you Music History) Music is one of the few universal languages of the human race, so it does have a lot of power.

However, it does not cause things like Columbine. Incidents like Columbine are the result of numerous factors like the perpetrator's mental health, family life, and social status.

And in my experience people listen to music that speaks to them. For example, a person who is usually happy listens to upbeat music. A person who is usually more pessimistic listens to pessimistic music. I'm not saying that people who listen to Marilyn Manson are all angry, disturbed teens or that happy people only listen to upbeat music etc. but that your personality influences your musical tastes. The teens who shot up Columbine were already angry, thus they listened to angry music. Listening to Manson did not make them angry, they chose his music because they already were.

And this discussion actually reminds me of a Three Days Grace song that I like:

Blame the family, blame the bully,
blame it all on me
Maybe he needed to be wanted,
Blame the family, blame the bully,
Maybe he needed to be wanted

;)

I agree with everyone else, the media and so on are using the easiest scapegoat. It's pretty pathetic that people do that. Kids who go on killing sprees in schools must have some really serious issues that have built to monumental sizes for them to actually do something this appalling. And have no-one that they feel they can turn to for help. So instead they'll immerse themselves in listening to violent music and probably playing violent games, and didn't the Columbine kid hang out in chatrooms full of people who were egging him on, or was that the kid in Norway who did much the same thing?

The figures alone should show what BS these accusations are. If violent music really did make people go kill other people then half the world would be dead by now. I think games are probably more of a culprit for making young and easily influenced kids think that violence is ok, but in general that will only be those who are playing a game that they're not actually old enough for according to the certificate.

And I'm going off topic a bit , but I do think that most people have no trouble distinguishing between real violence and make believe in games and movies and on TV.
A teenage guy might think someone getting blown away on some form of media is hella cool, butI'm pretty sure that if it happened right on front of them out on the street then they'd be tossing their cookies and wanting their mum...

Basically I think music is the least influential when it comes to the possibility of effecting a person's behaviour so dramatically, as most people are visual creatures and what they actually see has a far greater impact on them.