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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: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:27PM
Horse hockey. Cheap handguns are $150 on up, a good revolver $350, things go up from there. That isn't quite an impulse buy.
As someone else has already said, the people buying off this channel have been thinking about it for a long time, have a short list of what they want, and the "impulse" is the price is lower than has been seen elsewhere.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:28PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:31PM
Depends how poor you are. $150 is a half-decent bottle of wine, not exactly a large cost.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:46PM
"half-decent"?
$150 is several damn good bottles of wine if you're not just collecting it to gather dust in a wine cellar.
If you're poor, you can buy boxed wine for less than $20, $150 keeps me in wine for several weeks... Mostly because I make my own though.
I have no comment or opinion on guns, but I'd assume that's the equilateral to buying a MasterCraft band saw vs. an Ultimate Craftex series. MasterCraft is dirt cheap in terms of tools and will get the job done, but there's no comparison to the professional Ultimate grade tools. MasterCraft is what you buy on impulse when you need a tool now. Ultimate is what you dream of at night and save for years to get.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @09:03PM
Your taste in wine is like my taste in guns.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:38PM
Please buy a fast car so you don't have to compensate in directions where I can tell you're full of it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Friday December 11 2015, @05:52AM
You're being taken advantage of. Blinded studies confirm even wine "experts" can't tell the difference between different wines.
And, if you're a wine "collector", fine wine == tulipmania. Pray you're not the one left with the rotten grape juice if/when the bubble bursts.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:32PM
I understand that justification and it's outright bullshit.
Someone with a shortlist like that isn't going to be watching TV for hours straight to find their target toy. The internet has that approach completely beat. This is for idiots with more money than sense just like QVC is and you know it.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:49PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:05PM
On what other criteria besides decisions is it even remotely appropriate to judge people? Judging people on what they choose to do is probably the most honest and fair way to go about the very necessary process. Certain kinds of choices merit different amounts of judgement, say, what you eat versus breakfast versus whether you abuse your children. But whatever criteria you use to judge people, and you're lying if you say you don't, is either based on their choices, or it's super shitty.
Or to be more snippy: you're judging me for my choice to judge people based on their decisions.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday December 10 2015, @09:04PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 10 2015, @09:14PM
Yeah, and there's a line somewhere in there between being totalitarian and being being reasonable.
And our fight here is that setting aside the 2nd amendment and its relationship to rule of law, I view limiting gun sales as more that latter and you view it as more the former.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:43PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:29PM
It took less than a minute to find an SNS for less than $120 online. And I don't even know any cheap brand names to ease my search (SNS was enough, it seems).
Local pawn shops, under the counter or no, can probably undercut that.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday December 11 2015, @04:54AM
QVC and the like sell shitty jewelry for that price