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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."
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.
"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
Actually, the NRA and gun manufacturers don't HAVE to do any marketing after a tragedy like this...the Democrats, led by Mr. Obama himself, often have their first or second words out of their mouths.."We need 'sensible' gun control"....they want to ban semi-automatic weapons that "look scary", etc.
The second something happens, many US citizens are afraid with good reason from many of our elected officials, that they want to start banning and removing weapons.
I added the removing of weapons, in that...if they banned the AR-15 tomorrow and the AK-47....unless they confiscate the existing ones, you'll not see a drop in their numbers for decades upon decades upon decades. There are just too many out there!!
So, yes, for gun owners, the left start jumping up and down about more restrictive gun laws while the corpses are still warm minutes after a tragedy like this occurs.
Funny thing is...it appears that overall, gun violence in the US has been in a downturn over the past number of years. It is just these "spree" killings that has seemed to have popped up lately.
I'm still wanting to know what "sensible" gun laws will be. So far, this last one, happened in CA which has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the US, yet all weapons seem to this point to have been made legally. What laws would they introduce to prevent the recent shooting? Any more changes over the CA laws and you start to seriously impede law abiding citizens' rights to buy, own and use weapons, which are the vast majority of gun owners.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How would you know that? TV shopping channels are all about impulse purchasing. That's why they have so many deals that have a timer on them.
The demographic they're going for may well be people who are sitting home alone watching cable TV at three in the morning, half-drunk and pissed at their ex-wives, angry at the boss. Let's face it, a lot of "GunTV viewers will be people channel surfing after an evening of watching Fox News and looking for solutions to their problems that are all focused on "them people out there".
You are welcome on my lawn.
"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. "
Clear evidence? Hate to say it, but even the Department of Justice under Clinton (no friend of lawful gun owners) says there are several million defensive uses of firearms per year.
Also check the studies by Kleck out of FSU.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles...
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
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.
Clear evidence? Hate to say it, but even the Department of Justice under Clinton (no friend of lawful gun owners) says there are several million defensive uses of firearms per year.
"Several million"? Did you actually read what you linked to? It directly contradicts what you are claiming. The estimates from a variety of sources vary wildly and many are no where near the millions. Furthermore the numbers were from a PHONE SURVEY which is detailed in the document. If you think that is a reliably way to estimate this problem you don't understand the problems with phone surveys. If you need to see a badly designed survey look no further. The numbers from these surveys are easily demonstrated to be nonsense. It says point blank that the estimates you indicate are clearly nonsense.
A sensible start would be, all guns locked away in gun clubs and in homes, jail time for carrying one outside the home or gun club.
How in the world is that going to make the slightest bit of a difference? Assume that these people obey all the laws on the books, and never carry a gun outside the home, so they never get in trouble. Then, when they want to commit mass murder, the law prohibiting them from taking the gun out of the home is going to stop them and make them think "well, I was going to shoot a bunch of people but it would be against the law to take the guns our of the house, so I'm stuck."
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.
Well, for one reason, the government has absolutely NO reason to know how many or what weapons I have. I"m law abiding, not committing crimes with them, and therefore they have no need to know.
But mostly, in many cases around the world, the FIRST step in confiscation of weapons, was registration of them. First they learn who has what, then they know where to come to take them away.
The government really has VERY LITTLE need to know much about my personal life, what I own or what I do. They should stay as much out of my life as possible. That's they way is it supposed to be set up here in the US.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, yes they did..they banned them and forced them to give them up..
Oz does apparently have a restriction from uncompensated confiscation of private property, so they got around that with a "buyback"..but you really didn't have any choice in the matter. A rose by any other name....
But yes, I consider Mandatory Buy Back of Guns the same thing as confiscation of guns.
And mandatory registration of guns is the first step for that....and Obama and crowd know this.
And really...name calling and insults? Why can't we just deal with facts and have a nice adult conversation?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well its obvious that you at least haven't so its likely they haven't either. Do you even know what sparked the Battles of Lexington and Concord? The British troops were sent to confiscate the American's guns.
Which is among the most bizarre reactions ever.
Yes, it seems bizarre because it's the writer deliberately misrepresenting the situation. People don't run out to get a firearm because of rare mass shootings, they run out to get one out of concern that low-information voters and/or disingenuous politicians are going to make it harder to get one in the future.
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.
What? It happens at least tens of thousands of times a year, and depending on how you want to measure it, hundreds of thousands (brandishing a gun to prevent or end an assault, for example, is a common use of a firearm in self defense, even though shots aren't actually fired). What's your definition of "almost never?" An Uber driver in Chicago - who has a conceal carry permit - used is personal weapon to end a "mass shooting" event on Friday. The only injury was to the guy with the illegal gun who was starting to shoot at a bunch of people on the sidewalk. Didn't hear about that one? Yeah, I didn't think so. Near here in Baltimore yesterday, a couple of guys stomped into a retail store waving a shotgun around and announcing a robbery with threats to kill anyone who resisted. Someone in the store shot the one guy dead, and the other ran (and was eventually arrested). This stuff goes on all the time, and it's only your deliberate choice to ignore it that (or more likely, pretend that you don't know about it) that makes you comfortable saying "never actually happens." It happens all the time. Start googling for women home alone who fend off home invasion assaults with a family firearm: I'm sure the long list of those women you think don't exist are very glad to have had the means to defend themselves.
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
Yup, just like people driving cars. Some are irresponsible or even malicious, and between them, kill far more people that murderers with guns. People with pipes, clubs, and bare hands kill more people every year than those with all shotguns and rifles of any kind combined (says the FBI).
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.
Now you're just lying. The NRA fully supports purchase blocks do to mental illness. What you're complaining about is that families, friends, and coworkers who know that somebody is dangerously unstable won't bother to subject those people to legal/medical scrutiny. That's a political correctness problem that is WAY up stream of the retail gun purchase layer.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Lots of things require registration & licensing.
How many of them are rights specifically called out in the constitution?
Name those cases.
1911 - Turkey, 1935 - China, 1938 - Germany, 1964 - Guatemala, 1970 - Uganda. I'm sure these come up a lot, without any background info. This seems to have actual supporting documentation.
are also the ones who want to impose their version of
Nice job spinning the conversation on to an unrelated topic. OP didn't make any mention of religion, abortion, or homosexuality, and those have no direct relationship to gun control. Excellent example of the backhanded ad-hominem attack.
file:
Keep in mind, though, the the second amendment starts with "In order to have a well-trained militia." So licensing gun owners is perfectly reasonable, requiring rigorous training is perfectly reasonable, and making guns unavailable to those who are not licensed is perfectly reasonable--in order to have a well-trained militia.
If the reason for personal gun ownership was to prevent government tyranny, I would think that probably would have been spelled out. Don't you?
No. The second amendment is "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." A part people get hung up on is the "well regulated" phrase and they think it means legal regulation. It does not. The phrase "well regulated" meant something different back then (similar to the way "gay" meant one thing in the 1920's and quite another today). At the time of drafting, well regulated meant essentially "well equipped". If you were to phrase it today, the second amendment should read, "A well equipped Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to possess weaponry, shall not be limited in any way."
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".