Reel Magic Productions’ long-awaited project “Our Fathers’ Guns,” previously reported on in TGM, is headed to Netflix with scheduled airing sometime later this year, according to producer Alan Pezzuto, president of the company.
The project is unique in that Pezzuto is raising production money via crowd funding, so gun owners can actually help put this program on the air.
“Our Fathers’ Guns” is a pro-firearms series that is designed to entertain and educate the viewing audience.
“Our Fathers’ Guns is a television series tracking the life and times of specific weapons,” Pezzuto said.
By specific, he means tracking a single, particular weapon. One example is a Springfield Model 1873 (trapdoor) manufactured during the first half of 1880 which found its way to Utah in time for the UTE WARS. It was then taken from a fallen cavalryman and later, as a highly prized possession, gifted during a potlatch to a northwest tribal member in exchange for a “good horse and a productive wife.”
Another segment follows the path of a Browning Hi-Power owned by an armed citizen who happened into a restaurant only to see a waiter laying on the ground dying and an assailant with a revolver to the head of a customer. In order to save both of those people, the others in the restaurant and his 12-year-old daughter and several of her teammates coming in behind him, he fatally shot the assailant only to remember he had travelled 23 miles from home into a state that does not recognize his concealed weapons permit.
What happened to the weapon next? That’s what Pezzuto’s program finds out.
The program has entered the production phase, Pezzuto reported, but is still a ways from completion. When asked if the recent election of Donald Trump as president had anything to do with the timing of the project Pezzuto stated, “While it definitely doesn’t hurt our position, no, this project has been in the works for some time.”
Three years ago when Reel Magic Productions began “Our Fathers’ Guns,” they were attempting to raise a total of $1.5 million dollars to fund the 13 week television series/project that was met with more than a little resistance.
As the media spent every evening news broadcast vilifying rifles, shotguns and handguns as well as the people that owned them, he noted, those with firearms were either hiding in the shadows rather than being treated as a criminal or explaining, and quite often arguing, that without firearms there would be no United States for them to be complaining about in the first place.
As gun rights organizations, television programing and movies were being blamed for the violence, many firearms owners were sitting on panels and in debates where the moderators didn’t understand the difference between a long gun and a handgun, let alone the difference between single- and double-action or semi-automatic and fully automatic.
According to Pezzuto, someone had to do something.
Over the past three years Reel Magic Productions has raised approximately 75 percent of the required funding. To complete the project, Pezzuto and Reel Magic launched his crowd funding campaign.