On American television last weekend, NBC newsman, Brian Williams said: "A whole lot of parents woke up this morning across the country and said, 'What were young kids doing at that movie, at that hour, in that theatre?"

He posed this question in the wake, 10 days ago, of a young man walking into a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, and opening fire on the audience watching the midnight premiere of the Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. A six-year-old, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, was among the 12 dead. Her mother, Ashley Moser, had tried to shield her, but was shot three times herself, once through the spine, and has been left without the use of her legs.

A baby and a four-year-old, taken to the screening by their parents, survived the onslaught. Answering Williams' question, presenter Ann Curry said: "Parents, especially young parents, need a break," and added that perhaps this was also "an opportunity for them to be together – to have a family moment."

Given the gravity of the tragedy, it may seem inappropriate to question taking a small child to a midnight screening of a dark, and moderately violent film, but many such comments have surfaced across the web and media doing exactly this. "What was a six-year-old doing at a midnight screening of such a violent film?" asked Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph.

The movie had, she pointed out, "a 12A rating in the UK, which means a child under 12 cannot see it on their own. In the States it's a PG13, which permits kids under 12, though parents are 'advised' that it 'might not be suitable'." A post on the newspaper's site argued that children "are being taken to these films by parents who have become more selfish in a couple of generations".

The concern is twofold. Many are asking if the roots of violence in the USA might stem from a savage and bloody entertainment media, and, indeed from early exposure to it. But commentators are also troubled by those parents they perceive as self-centred and lacking in judgment; mothers and fathers who do what they like, and if that means dragging the kids along, so be it.

I am one of those parents. While I can't imagine taking my boys aged three and five to a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, I have lugged them along on many late-night escapades, and I am not alone. Only the strictest of parents these days have never stumbled back to a tent at a "family-friendly" music festival or at least tried a small party at the neighbours' dressed up as a sleepover for the kids.

Earlier this month, in a small town in France, I kept my boys out until after midnight for the July 14 fireworks. They were not alone, and many other French kids sat on the bridge, awaiting the first rocket, playing on the ground. When we do these things we take risks. And, of course, we would feel dreadful if anything bad were to happen. But are these risks really any greater than an average romp in a play park or kid's party?

The truth is that, in taking her child along to the cinema, Ashley Moser was not committing a physically risky act. Since the fire dangers associated with cinema's early years were snuffed out, the movie theatre has generally been one of the safer places to go for entertainment – less dangerous than going to a restaurant or pub, and certainly safer than being dragged along to a booze-fuelled party.

The mass shootings of the past have generally taken place in family spaces, work places and malls. Arguably, Veronica would have stood more chance of an accident in her own home. Statistically, she was more likely to be shot down while out shopping. The notion that violence might visit a cinema theatre is new, but in fact one study by economists at the University of California concluded that the screening of violent movies actually reduced the level of violent acts in the days around them, since they resulted in people being confined in a non-social, alcohol-free space. We need to distinguish physical risk from the feeling many have that a movie represents a psychological menace to a child.

Nevertheless, this snapshot we have seen highlighted at Aurora, of an under-age cinema-going public, stands out as a marker of what we as a society deem acceptable. And while I see nothing wrong with keeping a child up late on a midsummer night for a fiesta-type treat, I do think the debate on how much screen violence children and adults are exposed to is worth having.

But is this the right context? The problem is that this unique, recent shooting in Aurora so much invites this interpretation that we forget that the majority of shootings have not involved a filmic influence. Indeed, most reports state that those involved in mass killing sprees often have little involvement in popular culture.

It is all too easy to read The Dark Knight Rises tragedy as a story of modern America and Europe, in which the violence of adults is a result of their exposure to it as entertainment from the cradle to the grave. It is almost as if the act was designed with this message.

Certainly, Allison Pearson interprets it this way. "Unreality," she writes, "the failure to distinguish between what's true and what's make believe, is the crux of this tragedy."

Screen violence may not be good for us, but there is little evidence to indicate that it is actually the fuel of mass shootings. According to the FBI these shootings are still relatively rare, representing around 4% of homicides.

Though more common now than at some other points in recent history, their levels are the same as they were in the 1920s, when the Depression brought on a spate of family killings by suicidal farmers. If these bloody acts were spurred by an even bloodier movie industry, we would expect their numbers to be far greater now.

Veronica Moser-Sullivan's grandmother this week described how she would probably have been babysitting that night, if she had not just left for a holiday to New York. When Ashley Moser was told she had lost her daughter, she screamed: "I want to die." It's hard to imagine the many thoughts that must be passing through both minds right now. When something bad like this happens, we always wonder what decisions we could have made that might have made it different.

In fact, Veronica and Ashley Moser were both tragically unlucky. It is hard to know who or what is to blame for this – gun laws, societal disintegration, inequality, a surfeit of violence in our media – but it is certainly not a parental decision to take a kid to a late-night movie.

Theories will abound, since we can't help clutching at straws to explain why someone might commit such an atrocity and, indeed, why someone else, particularly a six-year-old with so much life ahead, might be ill-fated enough to get caught up in them. But by no means does this offer a straightforward moral parable on why it is wrong to let our kids stay up late or disregard the ratings guidelines of the movie theatre.