By Brandon Morse
If you’re a Hollywood actor, there’s a solid chance that firing a gun is something you’ve done many a time in your career. If you haven’t yet, then that time is coming. Yet, outside of a group of actors (Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt being two notable pro-gun celebs) the accepted mainstream opinion in Hollywood is that guns are bad and they should be wiped from the face of the Earth. You’ll hear some of them tell you that guns are one of the biggest problems in America and advocate for the elimination of the 2nd Amendment, mandatory buybacks, or at the very least, gun laws so strict that you might as well not even have a gun.
Alec Baldwin was one such celebrity. The 63-year-old actor was has been a part of many an anti-gun campaign and even attached his support to an anti-NRA movie.
Now, as my colleague Nick Arama reported, Alec Baldwin has accidentally shot two people on set when he fired a prop-gun that judging from reports with actual rounds.
I’m not here to jeer at or mock Baldwin. While he’s insulted my friends by name and relentlessly mocked conservatives unfairly, this is not an incident with which we should do any sort of victory dance. An innocent was killed as a result, and another was injured. To mock him would be to mock them.
Instead, I want to take this moment to highlight a very important fact about how this incident was born of Baldwin’s approach towards firearms.
Hollywood actors would like to tell you that what they’re trying to push is “common sense.” You’ll often see that phrase attached to everything the left does pertaining to guns. “Common sense gun control,” or “common sense gun laws” are phrases used frequently and that’s by design. They’re attempting to generate a narrative where they seem like the sensible and wise people in the room.
What they’re actually pushing is blind fear of firearms. Their PSA’s are often laced with misrepresented or manipulated numbers, making gun rights advocates into evil boogie men operating in the shadows, and in some cases, even dramatizing horrific scenarios. The end game is to make people not just scared of firearms but also look at those who advocate for them as stupid, evil, or both. Their hope is that this will lead to America turning against firearms and making the elimination of the 2nd Amendment a supported issue by the majority of voters.
Firstly, it should be understood that ridding America of guns is a pipe-dream. Millions of Americans own firearms and millions more are bought every year. So saturated is America with firearms that it’s estimated some 40 percent of Americans own a gun, and that’s on the conservative end since Americans aren’t required to report their ownership, and many don’t want to. It should be noted that during the pandemic alone, gun sales skyrocketed to record-breaking heights as well.
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Moreover, America is a gun culture. Even if the government mandated the handing over and destruction of all firearms tomorrow, the numbers wouldn’t change too drastically in reality. In fact, it may wind up starting a civil war that the government would lose.
Facts and statistics also point to the fact that much of the firearm violence we see in this nation isn’t caused by law-abiding, gun-owning Americans. Suicides and gang violence make up the vast majority of gun violence in this nation, but this often goes ignored. Talking about mental health and crime involving people of color is usually dismissed pretty quickly.
The bottom line here is that celebrities who push blind fear of firearms are often pushing ignorance and putting unrealistic expectations on a nation that has a cultural attachment to guns. We are a nation built on blood, sweat, tears, and gunpowder.
Baldwin’s pushing of the anti-gun narrative and the embrace of fear and hatred was foolish, and this made him lack something the very important bit of education necessary to avoid the situation he now finds himself in.
Education about firearms isn’t just about learning how to load and fire them. Education is about learning how to store them safely and safely wielding them once you have them in your hand. In fact, much of firearm education revolves around safety.
If Democrats wanted to make their case for gun control and disarming citizens, they shouldn’t be defunding and dismantling police forces while super-charging violent leftist terrorist groups like BLM and ANTIFA.
Maybe like in the George Floyd case, Baldwin should go to prison for killing someone. Mitigating circumstances don’t seem to matter to leftists.
There are just four basic rules:
Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.
Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.
Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
I all honesty, this was a homicide. the moronic, over the hill POS actor should be charged with manslaughter or at best involuntary manslaughter . maybe his fake spanish wife can appear in court with her fake accent.
Just wait, the fake media and whore actors and actresses will defend him
Hollywood idiots supporting Gun Control while using guns in their movies Jim Carrey Jamie Fox many was ina fake little event Demand a Plan someone showed these same liberal celeberties using Guns in their Movies
It appears now that there were a supposed three prop guns to be used on the set. It seems one of this guns had been used extensively for target practice with live rounds.
Oops, that may have been the one handed to baldwin.
The gun, pointed at humans that were not, repeat NOT actors in the film. #1 saftey rule, Always assume it is loaded and lethal. What is this a 5 year old?
Manslaughter or murder, I wait til the full investigation is complete.
Baldwin does not skate on this. In as much as the prop handler, the assistant director as well as Baldwin all handled the firearm, none executed firearms handling protocols.
In my view, all three are culpable.