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posted by martyb on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the click-and-shoot dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:58PM

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:58PM (#274712)

    Not true, you're just spouting propaganda. The US does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the US is number 28, with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people. I guess you're qualifying it with "developed"? Maybe you don't consider Argentina "developed"? The rate there is 3.02, higher than the US (though only slightly). It's 18.1 in Brazil, which Brazilians would certainly argue is "developed". And while Liechtenstein's rate at 2.82 is somewhat lower than the US, it's pretty close.

    The point is, if you try to ban guns in the US like was done, for instance, in Australia, the rate would go way up, because the murderers (the gang bangers and the police) will NOT be giving up their guns, and it just leaves the citizens defenseless. That's where the worst murders happen - where citizens are left defenseless (for instance, public schools, San Bernadino

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