by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
On Jan. 6, 2015, PBS Broadcasting aired a documentary entitled “Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA,” a one-hour Frontline program that probably disappointed everyone connected with the show, and certainly was not objective journalism. It was also a far cry from the gun debate program produced and aired as a very early Frontline production called “Gunfight USA,” which examined the issue from a more realistic self-defense viewpoint.
The show was not a surprise to me, either in its slant or its seeming failure to score points with the general public and even the anti-gun, anti-self-defense community. I had been contacted many weeks earlier by a researcher for the production company who told me the documentary was supposed to examine the history of the transformation of the National Rifle Association from a “hobby target shooting organization” into a political juggernaut. He sought published historical documents and any photos I might have related to the “Revolt at Cincinnati” in 1977, but asked no questions about the individual NRA protagonists of that era. He also told me that the documentary would be televised on Jan. 6.
So it was a surprise when the program opened with a lot of focus on the Columbine school shooting on April 20, 1999 and the Sandy Hook school shooting on December 14, 2012 and the failure of Congress to enact new gun laws. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised given the media’s continuing attempts to sell to the American public various gun control proposals as worthwhile responses to acts of violence committed with firearms. That these proposals would not or could not have prevented the crimes which had been committed, or any future similar horrors, is never discussed.
But the point of this latest televised effort was further confused when the Frontline show went off in so many directions that it was unlikely to even comfort or encourage those who agreed with the anti-gun premise, let alone any viewer who still had not taken a position for or against guns.
Produced and directed by Michael Kirk, with co-producers Jim Gilmore and Mike Wiser, “Gunned Down” must have been a disappointment to the mostly anti-gun foundations that helped to fund it. They were the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation and the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, along with “viewers like you.” Most of those foundations have already helped fund other anti-gun enterprises, but many of those at least have a focus. “Gunned Down” did not.
It also spent very little time explaining the changes within the NRA that took place at Cincinnati and spent most of its time trying to demonize Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, and used interview clips with a few former NRA employees to paint a distorted picture of him and the Association. The program at least announced that no current NRA staff or officers had cooperated or participated in the production of “Gunned Down” as might have been expected.
The main theme the show had was that the NRA had blocked passage of the background check proposal offered by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WY) without mentioning the bill’s co-sponsor Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). The Manchin-Toomey bill was actually much more than just a universal background check proposal; it provided some common sense exceptions to the “universal” background check and it contained several pro-gun provisions. But even on the Manchin-Toomey bill, the program got its facts screwed up.
Ignoring the fact that Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had added several broader anti-gun amendments to the background check proposal, the PBS show focused only on the fact that the measure was defeated. It never mentioned that even with the killing amendments by Feinstein and Schumer the bill would not and could not have prevented the Sandy Hook shooting, the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords, or any similar future even.
First the program spent a lot of time blaming the NRA for the failure of the Manchin-Toomey bill to pass. Then it made the claim that the NRA only killed the bill in the Senate because of the opposition of smaller pro-gun groups such as Gun Owners of America and the National Association for Gun Rights. That might help those two groups appeal to the more extreme pro-gun community, but it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of NRA’s role.
But those were not the only errors in the PBS program. Another example was the claim that the Brady Act was designed as a background check bill, which is entirely inaccurate. The Brady people were pushing for a five-business day waiting period for handguns only, requiring local chief law enforcement officers to sign off on pistol and revolver buyers. The background check proposal for all firearms and the establishment of the National Instant Check System as a phase out of the waiting period was an add-on never proposed by the original Brady language.
This column was not intended to be nit-picking diatribe. I’ve only focused on some of the ways the show became a disappointment to even the people who leaned to the pro-control side. If they had some emotional comments that worked they were the clips from Tom Mauser, who lost a son at Columbine, and Patricia Maisch who grabbed the new magazine the Giffords shooter was trying to reload with. They were effective in their comments.
The people representing the Sandy Hook victims were less so. They as well as the producers forgot to mention that the shooter at the Connecticut elementary school had already killed his mother before going to the school, and that the guns he stole from her for his massacre of children and teachers had been purchased by his mother from licensed retailers after background checks.
I didn’t think “Gunned Down” added anything useful to the ongoing debate over firearms civil rights, and I suspect that even the usual anti-gun advocates were not helped.
All in all, even a hit piece on the NRA and LaPierre should have been more professionally done. Clearly the show proved that the anti-gun side has a hard time making sensible arguments.
