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The Push to Demonize Private Gun Ownership Never Stops
Townhall.com ^ | April 10, 2019 | John R. Lott Jr

Posted on 04/10/2019 5:29:47 AM PDT by Kaslin

The push to demonize private gun ownership never stops. Michael Bloomberg and other gun control advocates are continuing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into research that the news media uncritically disseminates.

Entertainment television shows are no less one-sided. 

Americans use guns defensively about 2 million times a year — about 5 times more frequently than guns are used to commit crimes. But don’t expect to see gun owners saving the day on television. Instead, gun owners are bigoted, hotheaded, and dangerous.

ABC’s The Rookie has a scene where an armed neighborhood watch group is patrolling its neighborhood. One man wears a red baseball cap and picks up a Hispanic-looking man who is trimming a hedge in his yard because he “looks guilty as hell to me.” The police arrive and tell the patrol members to put away their guns because protecting the neighborhood is a “job for law enforcement.”

CBS’s SWAT had a similar theme. After a hit-and-run driver injures gay men, and others are threatened, a gay “gun rights group” tries arming itself for protection (February 21, 2019, Season 2, episode 16). The police explain that the job of protecting people is their own, and that the gay men are just “amateurs.” Letting people defend themselves is described as “shooting up the streets.”

An April 1st episode of CBS’s Bull begins with a man shooting his wife in the back and then successfully persuading a jury that he thought that she was an intruder (Season 3, episode 18). The stereotypical Texan is also attacked as the jury is only too gullible to believe that the shooting was an accident. The show hits all the misleading rhetoric from gun control groups about spousal violence, and makes it look like anyone can just snap and kill someone else. 

In a recent episode of Chicago PD, a criminal leaves a gun at a crime scene and the gun registration system allows the police to eventually trace the gun back to him (March 27, 2019, Season 6, episode 17). It is nice in theory, but reality never works this way. Registration is just a lazy way for writers to solve crimes, as we've seen for many years on NBC’s Law & Order. 

In real life, crime guns are very rarely left at the scene of incidents, and the only exceptions occur when criminals have been seriously injured or killed. Also, crime guns are very rarely registered. In the exceedingly rare instances that they are, they aren’t registered to the person who committed the crime. That's why police in Chicago, Hawaii, DC, Pennsylvania, or Canada can’t point to any crimes that have been solved as a result of registration.

In “The Rookie,” police discuss how valuable gun registration and gun buybacks are to making Los Angeles safer (January 21, 2019, Season 1, episode 11). PoliceOne, the largest private organization of police officers in the US, recently asked its 450,000 members, “Do you believe gun buyback or turn-in programs can be or have been effective in reducing the level of gun violence?” Only 11.2% of police answered “yes,” whereas 81.5% said “no.” In just a minute and a half, the program hit on people’s fears about guns, including the risks of having guns in homes with children.

In NBC’s Chicago MED, doctor Natalie (played by Torrey DeVitto) asks Will (Nick Gehlfuss) to move back in with her. But she has a condition: he must give up his handgun. Will's handgun has been a major stumbling block in their relationship, and Natalie has frequently warned him about the dangers of owning a gun. This time, Will finally relents and promises to turn in his gun to the police. But Will fails to follow through and has his gun stolen shortly afterward. The criminal shoots a young man, seriously injuring him.

The lesson is clear: If Will had only listened to Natalie and gotten rid of his dangerous gun, there would have been no robbery and shooting. But criminals in Chicago don’t need to steal guns from law-abiding citizens. They obtain guns from drug gangs about as easily as they obtain drugs from those very same gangs.

Sure, things going wrong with guns makes for good entertainment. But so does law-abiding citizens heroically stopping attackers, as occurs so many times every year in real life. The one-sidedness of our entertainment shows and downright preachiness of some scenes betray a strong political agenda. Our entertainment shows should be a form of escapism, and political agendas ruin that for a lot of us.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: banglist; dncstrategy; entertainment; guns; hollywood; lott; nra
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1 posted on 04/10/2019 5:29:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Which is why I don’t watch any of that crap.


2 posted on 04/10/2019 5:38:22 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (Being woke means you can be nasty, hateful and use racist slurs yet feel morally superior.)
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To: Kaslin
I'm shocked!! Shocked I tell you!!

Parable of the rattlesnake and all.. Oy vey. **eyeroll** d;^)

3 posted on 04/10/2019 5:44:01 AM PDT by CopperTop (Outside the wire it's just us chickens. Dig?)
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To: Kaslin

The left hates gun owners more than guns. Any law that makes life harder for gun owners is their real goal. The real crime in their view is disagreeing with them.


4 posted on 04/10/2019 5:50:04 AM PDT by Spok
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To: Kaslin

The government should outlaw crime.


5 posted on 04/10/2019 5:50:09 AM PDT by MrBambaLaMamba (Bigoted, hotheaded, dangerous gun owning demon)
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To: Kaslin

The left hates gun owners more than guns. Any law that makes life harder for gun owners is their real goal. The real crime in their view is disagreeing with them.


6 posted on 04/10/2019 5:50:27 AM PDT by Spok
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To: Kaslin

The left wants to take guns from non-violent citizens and leave them in the hands of violent criminals.


7 posted on 04/10/2019 5:52:35 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Lying Media: willing and eager allies of the hate-America left.)
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To: Blood of Tyrants

“In NBC’s Chicago MED, doctor Natalie (played by Torrey DeVitto) asks Will (Nick Gehlfuss) to move back in with her. But she has a condition: he must give up his handgun.”

AND...that’s the episode I quit watching Chicago Med.


8 posted on 04/10/2019 5:52:48 AM PDT by moovova
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To: Kaslin

Because when people like Bloomberg and Wendy Cukier (in my country) go to sleep at night, they care far more about how much money is in their pockets and how good they looked on camera that day they were on TV or that their remarks were published in newspapers or magazines with very little question or qualification from reporters who gave them that sort of deference; all of this basically having their worldview legitimized as being the nanny that wants to take away the toys they regard as not suitable for civilians.

Confronting the culture of drug abuse, neglected mentally ill, illiteracy, broken families, generational welfare dependency, gangs, and other things that go hand in with the criminal misuse of firearms (and violent crime overall) is that far less of a priority for such people compared to the aforementioned.


9 posted on 04/10/2019 5:55:13 AM PDT by OttawaFreeper ("The Gardens was founded by men-sportsmen-who fought for their country" Conn Smythe, 1966)
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To: I want the USA back

“The left wants to take guns from non-violent citizens and leave them in the hands of violent criminals.”

That’s an ancillary goal. The real reason the Left wants to disarm you is so they can kill you.

Period.

See my tag line.

L


10 posted on 04/10/2019 5:57:43 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: MrBambaLaMamba

They’d never do that as they’d be outlawing themselves.


11 posted on 04/10/2019 5:58:24 AM PDT by AmericanCheeseFood (Fox Shadowbans People On Comments)
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To: Kaslin

The Warsaw Uprising fighters:

Had they first been disarmed by THEIR OWN PEOPLE..?

I don’t know, but that would reallllly fit.

Because they own our media.


12 posted on 04/10/2019 6:00:25 AM PDT by gaijin
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To: Kaslin

I am happy that the arms I bear is their most coveted prize. I hope to one day use them against the people that have destroyed my nation.


13 posted on 04/10/2019 6:03:00 AM PDT by The Toll
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To: Kaslin

“The police arrive and tell the patrol members to put away their guns because protecting the neighborhood is a “job for law enforcement.”

When we have our Neighborhood Watch meetings half of the members are carrying their firearms. The area cop just smiles and tells us to be sure we are within the law should we ever half to use it.

Stop watching these shows. If you do watch this trash send a letter or an email to their sponsors politely informing them why you will not be buying their products or using their services. Tell them you’re sick to death of seeing honest, law abiding citizens portrayed in this way.

This Twitter crap can cut both ways. It’s time those Hollywood idiots were taught that lesson.

L


14 posted on 04/10/2019 6:07:38 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: Kaslin

15 posted on 04/10/2019 6:08:15 AM PDT by null and void (If socialism is so grand, why are Guatemalans coming here instead of going to Venezuela?)
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To: Spok

The left LOVES guns.

They just don’t want YOU to have them.


16 posted on 04/10/2019 6:14:03 AM PDT by taxcontrol (Stupid should hurt - dad's wisdom)
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To: Blood of Tyrants
I do not watch television, period. I do not go to movie theaters or rent videos. Because each dollar Hollywood receives is used in some manner to destroy or enslave me. Unless mandated by law, I do not give the enemy any ammunition to use against me.
17 posted on 04/10/2019 6:17:49 AM PDT by sport
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To: Kaslin
protecting the neighborhood is a “job for law enforcement.”

Warren v. District Columbia in SCOTUS said otherwise in 2005.

18 posted on 04/10/2019 6:24:56 AM PDT by afterhoursarmory
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To: Kaslin

This is nothing new. Back in 1968, after the murder of Bobby Kennedy the TV shows all went so anti-gun it was almost impossible to set and watch anything without their “guns are bad” propaganda. It was really bad in the 1970s and 80s.

Detective shows, comedy shows, westerns all had to spew some anti-gun anti-hunting Rhetoric.

Here are just a few I remember. There are many, many more.

Heck Ramsey
McCloud
All in the Family
Streets of San Francisco
Quinsey, M.E.
Barney Miller
A Gun in The House
Revenge For A Rape
The New People
Say Goodby
The Guns of Autumn


19 posted on 04/10/2019 6:36:49 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: taxcontrol

Like when obama ordered all kinds of federal agencies to purchase million rounds of ammo. With our tax money.


20 posted on 04/10/2019 6:43:06 AM PDT by Texas resident (Democrats=Enemy of People of The United States of America)
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