Guns in the media
I love shooting, but I pretty much hate guns in films, TV and video games, most of the time. They are
1. Overused - they create instant conflict and are used as a shortcut to avoid having to come up with good writing.
2. Used in a very unrealistic way:
A. People (even trained soldiers and cops) with guns in films can’t shoot straight (and can’t hit anything, even with automatic weapons), so gunfights in films go on for minutes, instead of seconds, like in real life.
B. People deliver lines after being shot. Not bloody likely.
C. Other people can hear those lines after the gun fight. Not at all possible. Guns are loud as fuck and you can’t hear right after one bullet is fired, let alone after hundreds of rounds.
D. That RIDICULOUS shit of holding the gun sideways. It makes you less able to control your shot, no matter how cool you think it looks. Nobody serious about hitting anything would hold their gun sideways. 
3. I really think the way guns are used in the media increases actual violence in the real world, rather than just reflecting it. I think kids today think shooting people is an appropriate solution for a verbal dissing. I think shooting people is appropriate only to save your life when someone’s aiming to kill you.
4. I really think the way guns are used in the media makes people have worse opinions of all guns, including those owned legally by sane non-criminal people.
Thoughts?
(Extra credit thought: thoughts on Airsoft guns as toys for kids? I fucking hate it. There’s two ten-year-olds who run around my hood shooting exact visual replicas of 9mm semi-auto pistols, and they’ve painted the red tip black. Aside from me having to clean up all the fucking pellets in my garden, kids get shot from playing with those things, by cops with real guns who think the Airsoft guns are the real thing.)
Michael “grumpy old man” Dean
(post inspired by Ayoob)
More of me and the wife on guns (and everything else under the sun) at our podcast, Radio Free Nestlandia (the voice of a two-person nation in suburbia.)
September 12th, 2008 at 4:54 am
I agree with what you’ve said here.
RE: the kids playing with the Airsoft guns.
I learned about guns from my father, starting early. In those days the toy guns we played with bore very little resemblance to actual guns, so there was no danger of cops getting mixed up, unless they were unbelievably nervous. But had I come up today instead of back then, I imagine the old man would have lectured me about the stupidity of trying to make my toy guns look too real—-and described unpleasant personal consequences quite beyond the dangers of getting shot by nervous cops.
I dunno. I just think most parents these days are unbelievably ignorant about almost everything, and even things they know about don’t get properly passed along to their kids.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Nunzio’s right; most parents these days ARE unbelievably ignorant. Perhaps decades of middle class privilege was a way of softening people up, just as fluoride dulls the mind, television scars the heart… and passes along all the lies and contortions of truth that make most Americans untrustworthy of even a super soaker.
ALTHOUGH, airsoft guns do offer cheap target practice and combat training. But yeah, I don’t blame cops for reacting to that hundred buck airsoft AK with that orange tip blackened like it’s a real gun. Crooks have long ago figured out that their real guns could be misconstrued as airsofts by painting the muzzles orange. True.
Anyway, great piece. You get to the heart of the matter.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:17 am
The guns protrayed in the media are predominantly the guns of the state against the individual. We see nothing but cops, doctors and lawyers - the collaborator class - as the main subjects of most sitcoms. The state protagonists are almost always of Aryan chiseled features with scientists’ minds and dead-on aim. Not to mention they’re always selfless and devoted to duty to a fault, where real-life abuses of power and authority are propagandistically chalked up to ‘bad apples’ instead of examining bad institutions and bad laws. Guns in the media are also used to scare the middle class about the poor while driving them into the arms of an increasingly communist-style police state.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Kids dont play with toy guns much in China.
(they work in the factories that make them!!!)
I had to make that joke before michael did. (*:
Nobody points a gun at a cabbies head , and armed robbery is so very very rare.
The extant gangs get it on like a good ol’fashioned Rumble, with no innocent victims.
I like this. I love Beijing City. No fear… and the cops wont do anything to you unless your really asking for it. They’re too lazy. Dont piss of the central govt though.
Anyway, Too bad that Amerikas “communist style police state” is SO much less safe than red China.
In the current USA, you fucking need a weapon, OK I accept that. Id get one too.
But in hindsight, would it have been better to have eradicated them long ago?
Or no… cause second amendment says you need in case you wanna revolt. A fair fight between the People and the Gov’t!…. sure
I like this ‘right”, but I dont expect you will start shooting cops and local politicians anytime soon.
Just admit it. IT Sucks that you feel the need to own a gun,
just to level the playing field. You vs the authorities AND the poor.
Sheesh, how much stinkfight mileage are we gonna get out of this topic??(*:
Its seems infinite, because the pro and anti cant seem to compromise.
Well I will begin… In Amerika ,….Yes, I want a gun.
Now can someone meet me halfway, or do ya’ll think its just freakin awesome to be gun owners?
September 12th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
>Kids dont play with toy guns much in China.
(they work in the factories that make them!!!)
LOL! Good one. Because it’s true.
>Nobody points a gun at a cabbies head , and armed robbery is so very very rare. The extant gangs get it on like a good ol’fashioned Rumble, with no innocent victims.
Didn’t you have a good friend stabbed to death there in China?
People are barbaric, it’s in their DNA. But I’ve evolved, that’s why I own a gun. And guns ARE fun.
Today, I just spent a grand on a good alarm system. Yay! Nestlandia’s borders become more secure with each passing day. (And while it is a brand-name USA alarm system, I’m sure the components of my alarms and sensors are made in China, probably by kids.)
MWD
September 12th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
>Now can someone meet me halfway
Switchblade?
September 12th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Didn’t you have a good friend stabbed to death there in China?
The stabber was not from China.
My friend was a good old drunken aussie boy who Jumped into the fight, “standing up for his mate”. Not an innocent bystander.
If guns were available, they wouldve likely shot wildly, and the truly innocent would have gotten it as well..
I’m sure the components of my alarms and sensors are made in China, probably by kids.
2. OK, so everything in China is made by kids. everything.!!!
You can blame amerika for that too, cause we love those low low prices.
and we love putting our own citizens out of work.
without that, those kids would be “exploited by their parents” working the field ……….like i did when i lived on a farm.
September 12th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
> If guns were available, they wouldve likely shot wildly, and the truly innocent would have gotten it as well..
That’s why it’s imperative that if you’re going to use guns for defense (ESPECIALLY if you carry outside the house) that you are a killer good shot.
September 12th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
[....this has been a public service announcement from MWD]
September 12th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
My life is public service. Something I got that stuck with me from those damn 12-step meetings.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Screw the $100 laptops, …I wanna see an automatic weapon in every home!
Go America, Go.