I recently ripped the Huffington Post’s pet firearms enthusiast a new you-know-what. My post The Truth About Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser slated the anti-ballistic Bay Stater for telling doctors to warn patients not to keep a gun in the home. Mike got the memo. Check the headline hovering over his latest “common sense” gun control screed: A New Video Tells the Truth About Guns and Some Folks Don’t Like It. Again, we own rights to that phrase. Again, we’re not going there. In fact, TTAG owes Mike a debt of gratitude for bringing our brand to the attention of the HuffPo’s hoplophobic readers. Thanks Mike! Now about that post . . .
Mike’s defending the Public Service Announcement that encouraged youngsters to break the law. Well several laws. We’ve already taken the video to the proverbial wood shed in our post Gun Control Cultists Call for Children to Steal Parents’ Firearms, Bring Them to Schools. But WTH. Let’s examine MTGGW’s take on a video so bone-headed even the Campaign to Stop Gun Violence disavowed it (after recommending that it be shortened for impact).
Know what crime wasn’t depicted in the video? The crime that would have occurred if that same kid had taken his mother’s gun to school, walked into a classroom and opened fire at other students and adults. How do you think that Jaylen Fryberg got his hands on the gun he used to kill four students at Marysville High School on October 24? And it really didn’t matter how many other crimes Fryberg committed that day in order to bring the gun into the school because after shooting the four other kids, he then used the gun to kill himself.
This PSA video has provoked such an intense reaction from the pro-gun community because it strikes directly at their most sacred cow, namely, the idea that guns in homes make us more safe. The gun industry has been tirelessly promoting this crap for the last 20 years ever since they noticed that the traditional reason for owning guns — sport shooting and hunting — were beginning to fade away. But if you can make people believe that the protection afforded by a gun far outweighs the risk of that weapon lying around, you’ve created a new and unending market for guns.
If you’d like to examine the dubious math Mike “The Guy Guy” uses to discourage people from buying guns, feel free to click over to the HuffPo. Suffice it to say, you know what statistic wasn’t mentioned in his article? The number of defensive gun uses in America. Even the lowest estimate for which is 60k per year (the highest is over two million). Not to coin a phrase, it’s the inconvenient truth about guns.
I happen to think that Stop Gun Violence is the best gun PSA I have ever seen. It says what we all know, namely, that a gun in the home is a safety risk and an unlocked gun is a much greater risk. I notice that all the critics who were busily counting up the felonies depicted in the film forgot to mention that in most states, leaving an unlocked gun around is not a crime at all. Shouldn’t we be talking about that issue rather than attempting to discredit a teen-age boy who showed a lot more common sense than the owner of that gun?
I love that “what we all know” line. It’s a shorter version of “pay no attention to that fact behind the curtain.” The fact here being that the PSA made it seem acceptable, make that desirable for teenagers to commit various gun-related felonies. No wonder the ad’s been pulled. The same should happen to Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser’s praise of the polemic. Then again, we need the publicity.