HughPickens.com [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 [nytimes.com], 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 [qz.com] 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 [theguardian.com],” 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 [desertsun.com].”
Original Submission
