Sub Movie-Night - TONIGHT: "Under the Gun"

Overall, I have to reluctantly admit this documentary was weak. If you're completely new to the gun control debate, this documentary will probably be persuasive for you. If you already have a strong opinion on the issue, this film won't likely cause you to reconsider your position or do anything but make you more supportive of enacting gun control laws.

  • Too much time spent emotionalizing the victims and their families, e.g., home videos, shots of people crying, grieving, etc. I know, I know. Hear me out. Of course, the victims and their families obviously must be recognized and we need to see their faces so we can at least glimpse their grief and understand why it's so important we do something. But as a persuasion tactic, I don't think it works.

  • The documentary clearly had an agenda from the get-go, which I understand may have been the point of the filmmakers, but ultimately detracts from persuasion.

  • Not sure it was necessary to go through the horrifying chain of events at Aurora at length.

  • What the hell happened to the pro-gun panel at the beginning of the documentary? They were in it for like 10 minutes and then gone, and I don't think we heard Couric ask them more than a couple questions.

  • Or the open carry people at the beginning. Where'd they go? Were they anything more than caricature puppets in this documentary to show how scary and fanatical the pro-gun crowd is?

  • I wanted to see more connection between the violence itself and gun ownership, how they correlate, and at least attempting to prove a causality. The documentary touched on that only briefly, by comparing US gun-related deaths per year vs. other countries, and how increased gun ownership in some states leads to more gun deaths than in states with less gun owners. This is where I think the real meat is for the gun control argument. Those data comparisons need to be threaded a lot deeper.

Some things I didn't know:

  • The al Qaeda video. They actually made a video instructing people on how to purchase guns and how easy it is in America to get them. What. The. Fuck.

  • Didn't realize the Aurora shooter literally just walked into what looked like a Wal-Mart and walked out with two assault rifles. No questions asked. Seriously fucked up.

  • ATF can't computerize their records. All those boxes looked like something out of a nightmare. Can't imagine working there.

  • (My own ignorance) Didn't know the CDC was pretty much restricted from even researching gun violence. That's just dumb.

Worth the watch, I guess. But a run-of-the-mill doc with an agenda bias. If you're pro-gun control, you'll enjoy it. I guess personally I was hoping for something a little different, something more data-driven and less of a purely emotional call to action.

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