Mike “the Gun Guy” Weisser is at it again, helping huffingtonpost.com demonize guns, gun ownership and gun owners. This time he’s taking the National Shooting Sports Foundation to task for a completely benign gun safety video [above]. MTGGW claims it’s a thinly-veiled attempt to hook young consumers on cigarettes. I mean, firearms. He reckons that “the notion that guns might be potentially dangerous no matter how they are used” is “remarkably absent from the NSSF’s safety campaign.” Remarkable if you’re looking to make snide remarks about the NSSF’s safety campaign for no good reason . . .
The video goes on to showcase a few cutesy testimonials from what is now the standard racial and gender inclusive group of kids, who relate how their parents did or didn’t talk to them about guns. At which point Julie reappears and chants the usual refrain borrowed from the NRA’s phony safety program, Eddie Eagle, about not touching the gun — leaving the area — telling an adult, which is then followed by a new lyric for the older kids involving telling them never to touch a gun unless being supervised by an adult, never point a gun at anyone and always assume that every gun is loaded.
How, pray tell, is the NRA’s Eddie the Eagle safety program “phony”? I have no idea how many children have been saved from injury by the NRA’s “Stop, don’t touch, leave the area, tell an adult” message but I bet it’s a lot more than one. To borrow a page from the antis’ anti-gun agitprop playbook, if the Eddie the Eagle program saves even ONE child . . .
By the same token, kudos to the NSSF for acknowledging and promoting a message TTAG’s been advocating for years: muzzle discipline is The One Gun Safety Rule to Rule Them All. What’s wrong with that? Mike’s upset that the NSSF didn’t spend the majority of its message urging adults to lock-up their guns: “the only valid statement about gun safety in this entire message takes up 2 percent of the message.”
Wait. What? Is Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser seriously suggesting that ‘lock up your guns’ is the ONLY valid statement about gun safety in a video that tells parents to tell youngsters to stop, don’t touch a gun, leave the area and tell an adult? A video that recommends that parents instruct their older children to never point a firearm at someone and assume all guns are loaded? Why would he write that?
Because Mike knows his audience. Short of surrendering their firearms to the proper authorities for destruction, gun control supporters would be happiest if all gun owners locked away their guns. Period. Out-of-sight. Out-of-mind. Truth be told, you’d have to be out of your mind to rely on a single”lock up your guns” safety measure. Children can breach security. Children and teens encounter guns “in the wild.” The only reliable gun safety protection lies between the ears of children, teens and, yes adults.
As I said at the beginning of this commentary, you’ll have to excuse me for sounding a bit sarcastic. But when the organization which represents the gun industry in every legislative and public discussion about gun safety can produce a public service announcement that is, to put it bluntly, an exercise in cheap hucksterism, then when it comes to safety the gun industry is inviting itself not to be taken very seriously.
As anodyne as it is, the NSSF safety video is anything but a “sales spiel.” By labeling it as such, Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser is sealing his reputation as a left-leaning literary huckster, shamelessly pandering to prejudice without regard for facts, reason or the safety of our children. Another good reason no one should take him seriously.