That’s the subhead of Director Stephanie Soechtig’s and Executive Producer and Narrator Katie Couric’s “documentary,” Under the Gun, which premiered Sunday, May 15th on EPIX. The film, which “examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase,” is touted by the Sundance Institute as “a fair look at both sides of the national debate.”
Well, I have to be honest…I respectfully disagree. I had a chance to watch the entire film, and “fair” is the last word I’d use to describe the level of reporting found therein.
From the very first scene, when a warning appears—“Before this film is over...22 people will be shot. 6 of them will die.”—to the very end, when we see a list of the film’s “partners”—Moms Demand Action, The Brady Campaign, and Everytown for Gun Safety, among others—the narrative falls almost exclusively on the side of those who support gun control.
In fact, before the film’s release, Dr. John Lott, Founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the country’s leading authority on guns and crime, tweeted something incredibly telling:
“Couric bait & switch. Pretext of providing balance for movie & don't use any of it. 1hr max interview goes for >3.5hrs.” (Translation: Lott was interviewed for almost 4 hours and not a single bit of that footage made it into the film.)
When The Guardian noted that “Most of the experts in [the] film are very strongly tilted toward gun control” and questioned whether or not [the Director] attempted to “hear from researchers or experts who aren’t gun control advocates, who are more on the gun rights side,” Soechtig responded: “We spoke to John Lott; he will be featured in a digital companion that we have. We did a great piece on him. He’s the originator of the idea that more guns equal less crime. His research has been criticized and largely discredited, and when we went to include it in the film, it felt like unnecessary real estate to put in the film, because we know his research has been debunked many times. We kept going back to the idea that we wanted to reserve the real estate in the film for the responsible gun owners.”
And yet, at every opportunity, the gun owners who appear in the film are painted not as “responsible” citizens but as outliers.
For example, the film shadows a young mother who’s part of the pro-gun-rights group Open Carry Texas. Instead of focusing on her desire to protect her young daughter, the film focuses on the group “very aggressively carrying firearms” into places like Chipotle and Chili’s.
The film also shows Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action sharing a clip of a crazed man shouting obscenities at her online. She goes on to say that he is an example of the people “who call themselves responsible gun owners.” (Yes...I almost turned off the film at that point.)
Over and over again, the film demonizes the NRA and other pro-gun organizations and utilizes decidedly anti-gun (and inaccurate) rhetoric. I can’t even count the number of times I heard the words “universal background checks,” “gun violence,” “common sense gun legislation,” “assault weapons,” and more.
The film does a fantastic job of showcasing the pain and sorrow of the families who have lost loved ones to the evil actions of deranged individuals (what the film inaccurately calls “gun violence”). I feel for those families. I really do.
But to call Under the Gun “a fair look at both sides of the national debate” or to insinuate that it in any way tells the whole “truth” is to completely deny the benefits of the legal use of self-defense with firearms and to completely ignore all the lives saved because of our God-given right to keep and bear arms.
Take Care and Stay Safe,
Tim Schmidt
Publisher - Concealed Carry Report
USCCA Founder
More info please find at: www.usconcealedcarry.com