At the risk of igniting yet another firestorm over gun control, is it worth pointing to an Iver Johnson Revolvers ad that ran in 1913 which claimed its guns will “shoot straight and kill” while at the same time claiming ‘accidental discharge impossible”? Of course it is. What better way to get your brain working on a Post-Thanksgiving Monday?
So this ad, which shows a little girl in bed holding a gun has a quote which reads, “Papa says it won’t hurt us.” By today’s standard’s the ad would be freakishly out of place. However – and please don’t lump us in the pro-gun category becasue we are clearly not – properly cared for and stored guns don’t kill people. Carelessly and foolishly handled guns do.
My former father in law was a farmer and had many guns in his possession. They were used to hunt deer during the season. And not for sport, Every last bit of the animal was used to feed the family. His lectures on gun safety were legendary. And respected to the letter.
Yea, it’d be stupid to leave a loaded gun in the hands of an unattended child. Which is why this ad is so freakishly out of place today. And probably was a bit back in 1913 as well.
While gun supporters like to claim “people kill people, not guns (or something like that”, the fact remains; if there were no guns, there’d be no shooting. And bullets would never find there way into a living creature. It’s really that simple.
Sadly, what’s also very simple is the fact people kill people. We do it all the time. Many people and many countries can’t have a simple debate without lifting a gun and blasting the shit out of several hundred people at a time. All in the name of freedom, of course. Or religion. Or a fucking geographic border.
We are violent. It seems clear that will never change. And as long as we are violent there will always be an endless supply of killing devices to enable one human to kill another. And as long as that’s the case, there will always be ads promoting guns. Maybe not with little gils holding a revolver in bed but ads promoting guns nonetheless.
