By Dan Griffin
If you are a gun owner, or even somewhat knowledgeable about guns, sometimes watching television shows or movies can be frustrating. The depiction of anything firearms-related often seems to have no basis in reality. You’ll see someone stalking another person with a gun, then several minutes into it decide to rack the pistol and actually load a round. What would that person have done if he encountered his adversary, politely ask him to wait while he loaded his pistol? You’ll see people rack empty guns, then insert the magazine, then shoot the gun. You’ll see people shoot with deadly accuracy pointing from the hip without aiming. Just today I watched a modern British murder mystery where someone used a “silencer” to make a modern revolver whisper quiet.
Being ignorant of firearms and too lazy to actually learn anything about them for your job is one thing. Intentionally misrepresenting the truth and slanting your tale to present your leftist agenda surreptitiously is another.
That brings me to the Entertainment Industries Council. They are an award-winning non-profit organization founded by leaders in the entertainment industry to influence the entertainment industry. They claim to provide information so that health and social issues are accurately depicted onscreen in feature films, TV and music videos, in music, and within the pages of comic books.
Here are just some of the suggestions they present to writers to guide their scripts so they present the proper view of guns – depicting them as evil, without utility, and unworthy of ownership.
- Write stories exaggerating the emotional consequences for the shooter if a gun is used
- Write stories showing a gun owner accidently being shot by his own gun
- Write stories showing a gun accidently misfiring while loading it
- Write stories showing a gun misfiring and shooting someone else when dropped
- Write stories that depict a family suing gun manufacturers
- Write stories showing that introducing guns makes people more prone to anger and violence
- Write stories showing that gun owners are ultimately too afraid to get and use their guns
- Write stories showing a teenage girl threatening to break up with her boyfriend if he doesn’t get rid of his gun
- Write stories showing parents getting prosecuted for leaving a gun out
- Write stories showing that women are more likely to get shot by husbands than by an intruder
- Write stories showing guns misfiring or jamming at critical times
- Write stories showing people feeling less safe when their neighbors have guns
- Write stories showing people getting criminally prosecuted for brandishing a firearm
- Write stories showing a self-defense firearm use where the person is charged with murder because it’s determined that excessive or unjustified lethal force was used
- Write stories showing that having a gun in the home actually increases the likelihood of a home invasion
No, I’m not kidding. And that isn’t all. That’s only about one-third of the anti-gun agitprop given to Hollywood writers. You can read them for yourself here.
Even Michael Bloomberg has gotten the memo and has now launched a new campaign aimed at stigmatizing guns and gun-owning men among young women. (See point #8 above). His latest campaign, titled “Singled Out,” seeks to drive young women to the gun control cause by disparaging men who own firearms, and he does so using the same misrepresentations and strawman arguments the entertainment industry is seeking to do. As the NRA said, “Few things are as painfully uncool as a 73-year-old billionaire’s desperate attempts to be relevant.”
But this is nothing new. In 1995, future U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that we must “brainwash” people (his word) against guns; that the media need to change the way that people think about guns. He said that we must indoctrinate people into thinking that guns aren’t cool, that they’re not acceptable, and that we need to make guns evil in the minds of Americans like we have tobacco. Holder asked the creative community to come up with solutions to demonize guns in the popular culture, in advertising, and the media. He petitioned TV and radio to follow his script. I think many have been doing a pretty good job of it.
Dan Griffin is an engineer, project manager, and primary author and editor of the Michigan Open Carry Newsletter. He can be reached at dannylgriffin@gmail.com.