Slashdot Mirror
GunTV Aims To Premier 24-Hour Shopping Channel For Firearms
HughPickens.com writes: Mike McPhate reports in the NY Times that two home shopping industry veterans, Valerie Castle and Doug Bornstein, are set to premier GunTV, a new 24-Hour shopping channel for guns, that aims to take the QVC approach of peppy hosts pitching "a vast array of firearms," as well as related items like bullets, holsters and two-way radios. The new cable channel hopes to help satisfy Americans' insatiable appetite for firearms. The channel's forthcoming debut might seem remarkably ill-timed, given recent shootings at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs and at a social services center in San Bernardino, California but gun sales have been rising for years, with nearly 21 million background checks performed in 2014, and they appear on track to a new record this year. The boom has lately been helped by a drumbeat of mass shootings, whose attendant anxiety has only driven more people into the gun store. The proposed schedule of programming allots an eight-minute segment each hour to safety public service announcements in between proposed segments on topics like women's concealed weapon's apparel, big-game hunting and camping. Buying a Glock on GunTV won't be quite be like ordering a pizza. When a firearm is purchased, a distributor will send it to a retailer near the buyer, where it has to be picked up in person and a federal background check performed. "We saw an opportunity in filling a need, not creating one," says Castle. "The vast majority of people who own and use guns in this country, whether it's home protection, recreation or hunting, are responsible . I don't really know that it's going to put more guns on the streets."
Every time there is a mass-shooting or similar, gun sales go up because the marketing department of the gun manufacturing lobby (NRA) goes into full swing about how the gubement is gona take yer guns. So this is perfectly timed to capitalize on the latest shooting.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Cheaper than Dirt is where most guys that really like guns go as you can get all the parts you need. Cabela's lets you fondle them and will have prices better than most gun shops. And ordering a gun online or from a shopping channel will have to be picked up with the added fees at a local gun dealer anyways so unless they are 30-50% less on everything than normal sources it will be an epic failure of a channel.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
>> debut might seem remarkably ill-timed, given recent shootings at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs and at a social services center in San Bernardino, California
The market for this channel (hunters, rural or suburban gun owners) isn't the demographic that kills for its political beliefs (Planned Parenthood), religious beliefs (San Bernardino), shoots up schools, or is involved in street gangs. Selling more guns and accessories to these folks won't increase violence one iota.
"Guns Are for Pussies,"
Timothy Kreider, February 8, 2013
One of several reasons why the “debate” over guns, like a lot of other debates in this country, has been so intractable for so long is that neither side trusts in the other’s honesty or good faith. Each side believes its own stated arguments to be, quite simply and truthfully, their real arguments, and sees their opponents’ arguments as transparent smokescreens for their "real," more insidious agendas.
In my more charitable moods I ascribe gun owners’ passionate attachment to these weapons to fear. Their fear is grotesquely distorted--cultivated by the media and exacerbated by their own chosen propaganda--and guns are a delusional means of placating that fear, a semiautomatic security blanket. But fear is at least a motive I can empathize with. But I also suspect that some gun owners are driven by something deeper and creepier—a kind of castration anxiety or overcompensation, for which guns serve as fetish objects.
It’s clear enough to me that gun-owners’ need for their guns is just that—not a liking or a right but a need, something irrational and scary, the sort of thing that, when you try to take it away, makes them not just sorry or mad but frantic, insane, dangerous. They remind me of those types on the other end of the political spectrum for whom the legalization of hemp is the single most important issue in the United States today. It’s not that I disagree with those guys, exactly--our nation’s drug laws are ridiculous and unjust, a waste of resources and a crime against all the people in prison for a piddling offense, and by now pretty much everyone from the President of the United States on down has done bong hits, so it obviously should’ve been legalized decades ago--it’s just that I don’t think any of those perfectly valid reasons are the real reason the issue is so important to them. It’s because they’re addicts. In fact gun advocates' behavior is scarily similar to that of addicts when you try to gently divest them of their required substance: they offer up every good argument in the world why this thing is harmless, beneficial, even, it's vitally necessary, a God-given right, and it’s none of your goddamn business anyway, until finally they abandon all pretense of debate and bare their teeth and start foaming at the mouth threatening to kill someone.
It’s sort of a pro forma convention of editorials about gun control to insert a disclaimer about how you, the author, grew up in some backward gun-happy Red state and owned your first rifle when you were twelve and enjoyed many happy hours sitting in a duck blind with your grandpap. Unfortunately my parents were Mennonites and pacifists and I grew up thinking of people who owned handguns as fearful and weak, and of people who killed animals for fun as sick. To be fair, I have met some gun owners in adult life who’ve given me cause to moderate these judgments, like my friend Randy, who worked with me going door-to-door for the environment back in the day, campaigns for local Democratic candidates, and makes his own excellent barbecue sauce, and once shot a 600-pound boar, an animal so large there was literally not one room in his house big enough to contain its mounted head. Or Erik, who is cooler than me for many, many reasons, including, obviously, having the same name as the Phantom of the fucking Opera, as well as being the front man of a punk band, a Baltimore City public school teacher, and a collector of Orwell first editions, but also because he has a sleek steel G-man briefcase that turns out to contain several handguns cushioned in custom-contoured foam rubber, including a .357 Magnum, the kind Dirty Harry uses.
Erik once took me to an indoor shooting range in Baltimore, where I got to fire a rented Thompson gun (it’s Baltimore—you can do anything there). I was
The boom has lately been helped by a drumbeat of mass shootings, whose attendant anxiety has only driven more people into the gun store.
Which is among the most bizarre reactions ever. I'm amazed how many people have the delusion that they are going to defend themselves with a gun despite the clear evidence that it almost never actually happens. Do you really want to live in a world where everyone is packing at all times? I sure don't. I have no problem against people owning firearms (I have some myself) but I think everybody arming themselves out of fear is anything less than insane.
The proposed schedule of programming allots an eight-minute segment each hour to safety public service announcements in between proposed segments on topics like women's concealed weapon's apparel, big-game hunting and camping.
Which is pretty much akin to Anheuser-Busch having anti-drunk driving messaging right after an ad showing how much fun you'll have with their product. More than a little hypocritical and arguably a mixed message. The NRA is nothing more than a (very effective) lobbying arm of the firearms industry. It's remarkable how many people have bought into their propaganda.
"The vast majority of people who own and use guns in this country, whether it's home protection, recreation or hunting, are responsible . I don't really know that it's going to put more guns on the streets."
The fact that most gun owners are responsible is true but irrelevant. The problem is that some people ARE killers and we can't tell who they are in most cases prior to them putting bullets into people. It just takes one unhinged person to commit a mass murder. You can do all the background checks you want but they aren't perfect and the simple fact is that would-be criminals continue to have easy access to firearms and continue to commit murders at an alarming rate. It is simply ludicrously easy for mentally ill people to get firearms and ammunition and groups like the NRA fight even the most reasonable efforts to contain the problem tooth and nail.
Although few would accuse Slashdot of anything even remotely resembling "good journalism", blatantly editorializing right in the FP comes off as just a smidge gauche.
The factual correctness of the writeup has no connection with its blatantly biased tone.
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
I don't care who said it. That quote is demonstrably false and the notion behind it is asinine. If you really need a gun to get people to speak "politely" to you then you are doing something REALLY wrong.
Fear doesn't respond to evidence.
Which is why we need policies that aren't based on fear. People are going to be afraid sometimes and our laws should help them engage in evidence based good practices. Sadly our leaders are too often willing to pander to fear to obtain power rather than work to eliminate the need for the fear.
CTD has done horrible price-gouging in past "black gun" and "ammo shortage" scares, so I wouldn't give them the time of day, let alone my business.
It's called "supply and demand".
When there is a sudden spike in demand, and those bidding don't want to order for later delivery, after more are made, because they are hedging the possibility that no more WILL be made, sellers would be stupid to keep the price below market-clearance and run out of stock, when they could both make more money for themselves and route the available stock to those for whom having product NOW is important enough to pay the premium.
If "Cheaper Than Dirt" tracks the market on the downslope, too, giving good service and better-than-the-competition prices (going for the fast nickels rather than the slow dimes), I have no problem whatsoever if they track it up on the occasional peak - and maybe still have some stock available when there's a crunch. The money from the perceived "gouging" can help support their low prices at other times. (Or it can support their lifestyle or other projects: It's their choice.)
If you don't like their prices today, don't buy today. If you don't like their policies, of course, you're always welcome to shop elsewhere. That's the "free" part of a free market.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Intel debuted its new Core i9 CPU today. This seems remarkably ill-timed, given recent attacks on Tokyo and LA by giant killer robots sporting intel inside stickers."
Yep, perfectly neutral tone. Just reporting the facts, ma'am!
Talk is cheap. He ain't done shit. If he actually cared, he would have done it during his first two years, it wasn't on his top 10.
Clinton might try to push through a gun control law, but you can't "ban guns", you know it, I know it, and she knows it. Examine the law they propose and then form an opinion as to whether it is tolerable or not, then act accordingly. It would not be horrifying, for example, if purchasing weapons required having a license that the government was obligated to grant, unless you met certain explicit criteria. Such as a background check for violent crimes, mental disorder, and maybe having had a basic gun safety class in the past 5 years. You could still have all the guns you wanted, we could reduce some trivial gun crimes, continue to bitch and moan about the remainder and call it a day.
I didn't say it wasn't biased, nor did I say that the bias and factual correctness are connected. wolfgang_spangler claimed the summary was ill-informed in addition to being bias-filled, and I was asking which bits of information were bad.
a gun is a general purpose tool as well to anyone who understands them
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Here's one interesting data point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is a European country with probably the most liberal gun laws in Europe (they even have shall-issue concealed carry). Yet it doesn't seem to have a gun violence problem - they only had one killing spree in 25 years since they enacted those laws after the fall of communism, and their overall murder rate is lower than UK, France and Canada, to name a few. So it seems that they're doing things right.
Of note are the things that they don't have:
- assault weapon ban
- ban on handguns
- ban on carrying firearms
- magazine capacity limits
- gun-free zones
And they do have:
- stand your ground (not as law, but as absence of duty to retreat)
- somewhat limited form of castle doctrine
So what else do they have? Universal licensing for gun ownership (and not just carry) with a "shall-issue" but thorough vetting process, complete with psych exam.
Perhaps we should start there, and see how well that works, before piling more restrictions, many of which (like AWB) are evidently absurd to anyone who knows how guns work.
While we're at it, universal background checks have massive popular support. 92% of all Americans support them. 90% of gun owners support them. 86% of Republicans support them. There's no excuse not to implement this.
Full disclosure: I am a gun owner with over 30 firearms in possession, including several "assault weapons".