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Mike McPhate reports in The New York 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 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."
Critics suggest that Gun TV could make the decision to purchase a weapon seem trivial—on the same level as ordering a Snuggie or a vertical egg cooker. "Buying a gun is a serious decision," says Laura Cutilletta, senior staff attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "If you are going to buy a gun for your home, it's not a decision you should be making at three in the morning because you are watching TV."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Fishscene on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:00PM
"If you are going to buy a gun for your home, it's not a decision you should be making at three in the morning because you are watching TV."
...yes it is. Especially if you've been waiting for it to be sold at a price you can pay.
Purchasing isn't the problem. Responsibility is. And we're a society trying to make *everyone* responsible except the person who commits the crime. Shame on you Laura Cutilletta for diverting responsibility *away* from the buyers and on to the sellers, selling a 100% legitimate product through legitimate channels (pun intended).
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:04PM
Have you ever known TV shopping to actually sell something valuable rather than a pile of tat? QVC et al are crap, just because they're selling your favourite item doesn't make them less crap.
(Score: 1) by Fishscene on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:19PM
lol. I've seen a few good items on back in my youth. But does that mean we should banish 24-hour shopping channels because people can't make informed decisions at 3am (sorry all you late-night shift people!) or is this a problem because *guns!*?
I agree purchasing a gun isn't something one should do casually, but let that be the fault of the buyer. Not the seller. The price (at least in the USA), if anything, enforces the idea that purchasing a firearm isn't a casual decision.
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:35PM
I'd like to point out the fact that nearly every single violent crime isn't caused by casual decisions with gun ownership, but by passionate and hasty decisions with gun ownership. The ones you need to be sincerely terrified of would be purchasing a gun casually, and then murdering scores of people. We have names for these people, and it all falls under serious issues with mental health, that are thankfully rare. Those people are just as dangerous in a world without guns.
Some accountant purchasing a handgun casually at 3am will probably be the least of all of our worries. Especially, when the thug we *are* worried about sure as shit isn't ordering his criminal equipment on QVC, but from somebody in a back alley with no background checks and no questions.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday December 10 2015, @09:03PM
Those people are just as dangerous in a world without guns.
I see the argument that the cat is out of the bag and the prevailence of guns means, however to suggest that a mentally ill person with a knife is just as dangerous as a mentally ill person with a gun is beyond the realm of "stretching it a bit" into "pure fantasy".
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday December 11 2015, @02:29AM
I think it's cute you assumed a knife. Quite frankly, that's "pure fantasy" right back at you. Also, you put words in my mouth. I never suggested a knife was as dangerous as a gun, and in fact, made no comparisons about weapon choices at all.
What I suggested was that mentally ill people are just as dangerous regardless of the prevalence of any one particular weapon. Let's use the Oklahoma bombing of that Federal building (Timothy McVeigh??) as an example. Just like I said, that mentally ill person was just as dangerous in our world with a gun as he was without.
Guns are not the only readily available tools for mass murder. They're chosen as a matter of preference to be more direct and upfront in explaining their mental illness to the world.
Pure Fantasy would be a world in which "all the corners are padded" and the most dangerous weapon was "this very intimidating pillow". At that point a mentally ill person isn't that much more dangerous than I am. We don't live in that world. We live in a world where I can make tools for mass murder that don't involve anything near a gun.
Pretty please, let's explore the reverse. Please demonstrate that a mentally ill person is *as dangerous* as one who isn't in a world without guns. I contend that you can't, and regardless of the presence of guns, these people will still be just as dangerous.
Until.... you remove all:
1) guns of all types
2) all knives over certain dimensions and types not required for domestic work.
3) Nuklear anything
4) Castor beans make Ricin, so no Castor beans.
5) Cars. That's a multi-ton object moving at speed
6) Fertilizers & Chemicals. Regulate and monitor the living crap out of this, lest you fail horribly.
7) Scores of plants that can be used to mass produce toxic substances
8) Pencils. Remember Joker in the new Batman movie? Yeah. Pencils are dangerous objects, although I'm struggling to figure out how to kill hundreds with them. Gimme a minute.
9) Potatoes & Grapefruit. I can freeze them and fire them from a shoulder mounted exhaust tube with sufficient velocity to penetrate a brick wall. The crewed Grapefruit Death Cannon could probably take out dozens of unprotected civilians at a time.
You see now? Guns are simply popular, that's all. The dangerous part truly is the mental illness, nothing more. If it's happening more and more often, then you need to solve the problems of mental illness, not trying to "child proof" the world. The latter truly being the realm of Pure Fantasy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Friday December 11 2015, @05:16AM
The primary unstated, false assumption you are making in your argument is that the people who commit crimes using guns are all perfectly rational people able to make long-term plans and delay gratification while designing well-thought-out plans to kill as many strangers they have no personal beef with as possible.
A few are like that. People like the Unabomber are like that. The "best" (worst) Islamic terrorists are like that. Those people are extremely scary people. They are also, thankfully, extremely rare.
Most shooters are not like that. The reason is that choosing to kill a lot of people you have no personal connection with, or even those you do, is not generally a rational thing to do, either from the perspective of pure self interest or of the greater good. Therefore, most random shootings are not well-thought-out decisions. They are emotional decisions, made by people with poor emotional control. These people will not look up how to cook ricin on the Internet, buy the ingredients, put on goggles, and run a little chemistry lab so they can poison the world. By the time they've gotten to the supermarket, their anger will have subsided, and they won't feel like killing people anymore.
That said, the executive function of people making rash, stupid, emotional decisions is not completely compromised. Once the person has decided, "I'm going to go kill some people now!", the rational executive part of the brain says, "Okay, hmm, how should I best do that?". They're not going to go pick up a pillow and start charging people. They're going to go for a gun, if there's one available. If there's not, they'll go for a knife. If there's not that, maybe they'll go for it with their fists, or maybe the executive will say, "This is impossible to do right now." and successfully fight the emotional id for control.
It is for these flawed humans that the availability of guns matters. The ones who, on a whim, basically, decide to kill their ex-spouse, boss/coworkers, or just ... random strangers. These will pick whatever is the most effective weapon THAT IS IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE TO THEM.
If that's a gun, we can get up to 30 or so dead people each time before the shooter is killed. If it's a knife ... 10 injured, maybe 2 or 3 dead.
What I just said isn't the end of the gun control debate. You can make a rational argument that there are so many guns in the US, and their ownership is so legally protected, that full gun control isn't practically possible, so let's at least make it so the good guys can have guns, too. But that's not the argument you made. And the argument you made ... is bull.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday December 10 2015, @09:55PM
I agree purchasing heroin* isn't something one should do casually, but let that be the fault of the buyer. Not the seller. The price (at least in the USA), if anything, enforces the idea that purchasing heroin isn't a casual decision.
How does that read?
*At the moment, heroin can't be bought legally, but a LOT of problems would disappear if it could be (as a prescription item).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday December 11 2015, @01:45AM
Your post made me think of the stereotypical rusty milsurp SKS for $200. Due to (shrinking) supply and (expanding) demand those same rust buckets are going for $400 now, but still, conceptually, the era of nothing being on the market except exotic indestructible glock 9s is now gone. Or never was really here.
There's a thin smear of "tacti-cool" in the gun world too. Plenty of opportunity for $5 clones of $100 holsters made in fake black leather and sold for "only" $39.95.
This is before we get started with shooting accessories, fall apart tree stands and stuff.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:18PM
Not to mention has everybody forgotten the OKC bombing? If a scumbag wants to kill a ton of people you literally need nothing more than fertilizer and diesel, things as common as dirt. As we have seen time and time again that the places where they have the tightest gun laws, so no law abiding citizen can have them? They have insane gun violence because the predators know the prey is unarmed and yet the gun banners can't seem to follow the most simple of logic, because criminals? They DO NOT FOLLOW LAWS which is why they are fucking called criminals and not girl scouts,mmmkay?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:18PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 11 2015, @02:12AM
Europe. People like to cite one European country or another to the United States. "Great Britian has only 5% of our gun deaths!" Or some similar nonsense. When comparing, one must compare the fifty states and the District of Columbia to all of Europe. The sizes and populations are far more comparable than any single European country.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 11 2015, @08:48AM
Congratulations on being able to think of something else to put on the left hand column of the table, now the data for the right hand column please - with citations?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 11 2015, @02:57PM
Well, then, if you insist on deaths per 100,000, that's fine. But - INCLUDE ALL OF THE US AND ALL OF EUROPE, or else break it down.
You do realize that the highest murder and gun death rates in the US are in Democratic strongholds? If you want to compare the United States to Great Britain, then you have to take one of the less lethal states to compare.
http://www.ammoland.com/2015/12/three-u-s-islands-with-strict-gun-control-and-their-murder-rates/ [ammoland.com]
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-homicide-per-capita-20151117-story.html [baltimoresun.com]
The first article demonstrates that the availability of guns is far less important than the availability of murderers when a killing is desired.
The second shows that Baltimore, like it's liberal sister city Chicago, has an extremely high murder rate. If we can eliminate liberal cities from the US murder rate, then we will be on par with your "civilized" nations.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 11 2015, @04:33PM
Nope. That's called "cherry picking", and is right out. Either do stats properly or don't do it at all.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 12 2015, @01:55AM
That is exactly what I've just said - you're cherry picking small segments of Europe, and comparing those small segments to the entire United States.
If you're going to cherry pick your favorite parts of Europe, then I get to cherry pick my favorite bits of the US. I'm glad you're being honest now!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday December 12 2015, @01:28PM
1) The EU is not a country;
2) The US is a country;
3) Even if individual US states are compared to individual EU countries, the US will still lose the comparison (unless of course more gun crime is better, in which case, the US is winning bigtime);
4) Despite being asked for data and citations 4 times, you've still not presented a single fact, you've just wiggled annoyingly and ineffectually.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:03PM
I have made a very clear statement and claim:
You are the one who chooses to cherry pick those nations in Europe which support your point of view. The fact is, you compare those cherry picked countries against an entire nation. Neither the US nor Europe is a single, homogenous population enjoying a single religion, ethnicity, culture, or history.
I don't need any sort of data or citations to establish those basic facts.
In this nation, we have pockets with a lot of violence, in Europe they have pockets with a lot of violence. In the US we have safer areas, and in Europe they have safer areas.
It is common practice for progressives to point to the United Kingdom as some sort of standard, which we should strive to match. Unfortunately, the UK does NOT have any enviable standards.
4bitnews.com/uk/uk-cops-cover-20-crimes-including-sex-offences-violent-crime/
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/1846158/Cops-cover-up-crime-figures.html [thesun.co.uk]
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/justice/1850578/Labour-accused-of-covering-up-violent-crime-figures-to-meet-targets-after-police-figures-show-22-rise-Crime-in-the-UK.html [thesun.co.uk]
http://crimesofempire.com/2015/03/21/the-british-establishment-cover-up-must-end-right-now/ [crimesofempire.com]
Using a slightly different search term:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2702998/Migrant-crime-cover-up-row.html [thesun.co.uk]
https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/the-living-hell-for-swedish-women-5-muslims-commit-nearly-77-6-of-all-rape-crimes/ [wordpress.com] (I was using Great Britain - Sweden slipped in there.)
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kouri/060220 [renewamerica.com] (Europe in general)
http://kravology.com/the-european-rape-epidemic-and-its-systematic-coverup/ [kravology.com] (Europe again)
Granted, your pet peeve seems to be GUNS ARE EVIL! You're afraid of guns, we get that. But WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE WHETHER YOU ARE KILLED BY A MADMAN WITH A GUN OR A MADMAN WITH A KNIFE????
I'll bet that a large number of people have choked out their final breaths, lying in a gutter in an alley, wishing that they had been carrying a gun, which would have trumped their murderer's knife.
You fear guns. I do not. I fear criminals. I fear madmen. I fear zealots, religious or not. I fear a number of things, but I do not fear guns.
Tell me - if I do not force you to own or carry a gun, WTF gives you the right to deny me the right to own or carry guns?
I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm 60 years old. I'm still pretty strong and healthy - a doctor would probably tell you that I'm in great shape for 60. But, the doctor can't bullshit me - I'm not as strong as I was twenty years ago, or thirty, or forty. When I go to Shreveport, I pass through some shady areas. Shreveport has a high crime rate, as well as a high murder rate. A couple decades back, they rivaled Chicago's crime and murder rates. Why must I put myself at the mercy of the criminal element, just because you are afraid of guns?
At age 60, I've never been charged, much less convicted of, a violent crime. For almost fifty years, I've owned a variety of weapons, and never once have I misused a weapon.
But, today, because you fear guns, I must give my guns up?
PREPOSTEROUS!
Let me turn your logic around on you. A lot of black people are convicted of violent crime. Why don't we just lock up all black people? You want to criminalize guns, and lock up gun owners - are you comfortable with locking up all black people?
Not all Muslims are extremists, but progressives tell us that all gun owners are dangerous. Comfortable?
Not all Satanists sacrifice babies at Black Mass - but your MSM wants to paint all gunowners as - what, exactly? Baby eaters?
Your fear of guns is far less rational than America's fear of Muslims. I can demonstrate that Muslims have killed Americans. You cannot demonstrate that any gun has ever ventured out on it's own to kill Americans.
Read the links. Europe is not the safe place that you wish it were, and you cannot make the United States the safe place that you imagine.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 14 2015, @10:25AM
Nice frothing at the mouth though, but it nearly made the straw man too wet to burn.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 14 2015, @10:54AM
http://www.mcsm.org/miscreports/lott5_27.html [mcsm.org]
http://www.rense.com/general32/nine.htm [rense.com]
Oh - a reminder. Criminal's deaths are part of the gun death statistics. That is, the armed robber who attempts to rob a bank, and is subsequently killed by either a guard, a cop, or an armed citizen, is counted among the gun deaths. And, he should not be counted, or rather, he should be counted in a separate statistic. Justified homicides and unjustified homicides should always be clearly separated.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 14 2015, @11:58AM
6 strikes.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves