Guns for sale - inside an American gun show - BBC News
This video is an opportunity for Americans to see what those
who get BBC News as a broadcast or cable TV commodity see. Something that’s ordinarily
unavailable to them. When it comes to straight reportage of events, this would
not likely seem very remarkable to them. After all, a BBC reporter is likely to
read copy about an airliner crash in China, for instance, pretty much the same
as an American reporter might. But what about opinion pieces, editorial pieces
that show attitudes and values? About
America? The video becomes, therefore, a
peculiar lens through which to view and understand oneself. This view is not
communicated intentionally; it's something like accidentally overhearing people
talk about you in an unguarded, opinionated way.
Americans and guns/guns and Americans... Americans, like me,
either think people should have guns or the right to have guns or maybe they
believe America needs gun control of one sort or another. But if you are an
American you know and accept that there are guns, plenty of guns... and you
know people who own them, own them unapologetically or proudly or maybe you
know some folks who own them and don't want to advertise or talk about that
fact. Still, Americans understand at the cellular level that guns are a fact of
life and that if you take a wrong turn in the toiletry aisle of Walmarts and
wander past the toothpaste into house wares, before you realize you're lost and
make a U-turn at sheets and pillowcases, you just may wind up in Sporting Goods
where you are within self-serve reach of firearms the way you would be of
facial tissues and school supplies a few aisles over. No biggie!
This video, though,
was produced for others, people who live in a society in which guns are
something seen on Television, are props held by villains in hour long dramas,
but are rarely encountered otherwise.
I think it's fair to say that what's communicated to the
intended audience is incredulous disbelief that what's being observed, up close
and personal, could actually be happening anywhere, at all. That the producers
and reporter are sharing their catching Americans in the act of being themselves.
That is, unabashedly indulging what for (the producers feel) any civilized or
sane people would be considered a dangerous and bellicose vice, getting
satisfaction from owning devices intended to seriously maim and kill their
fellow humans.
It's not hard to imagine what their day of shooting (video
footage, that is) and editing might have looked like. Producers assistants
scouting a likely gun show to cover, checking with the organizers to get
necessary permissions or reminding them of the press' right to cover public
events, pre-viewing the various vendors' stands to line up likely sources of
footage of military grade firearms about to be taken home by ordinary people
(ordinary Americans, not ordinary civilized world citizens). And while they
likely took several hours worth of footage, what makes it into the final 2
minute, 48 second cut are shots of a pretty American housewife-type with her
bored, middle school aged son in tow shopping for a laser sight for her
handgun; the reporter getting his hands on a creepily World War III looking
'short barrel' firearm; display after display of rifles, shotguns, and
handguns; a variety of American gun nut-types; and people talking about why
they own guns. Their comments include the expected rhetoric about self defense,
terrorism, and how gun control will only "help the terrorists." And
towards the end, the reporter gives us his summation voice-over, "In
America guns are seen as symbols of freedom and liberty, an intrinsic component
to national identity... and it's part of the national psyche from an early
age!" And then we see how the news crew got lucky. Edited in at the tail
end is a 3 second shot of an American woman wheeling a stroller through the gun
show with her toddler inside and her young child looks into the camera while
waving an (is it a toy?) assault rifle.
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