Acceptance of guns in sitcoms
Watched The Big Bang Theory last night and the guy that used to be on Roseanne took his girlfriend to the shooting range. Seems she shot a lot back in her home state of Nebraska and off they went (show takes place in Cali). Then, he mishandled the gun, after joking about how video games gave him prowess at handling them, and shot himself in the toe.
But I was amazed that a sitcom would actually show a range trip. They even had eye and ear protection.
Since it ended with him negligently shooting himself, I wouldn’t call it winning. But going to a shooting range being shown as fun in a sitcom is something.
January 27th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
I saw it last night too. My first thought was “Wow, those shooting stalls are incredibly wide!”
January 27th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
“How I Met Your Mother” has had range trips and other positive references, the sensitive new yorker male lead character is anti-gun but the hot brunette Canadian is fiercely pro.
January 27th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Don’t ask me how I know, but in one episode of keeping up with the Kardashians, the mother took the 3 kardashian girls to a shooting range and urged them to obtain firearms for self defense. One of the girls was your typical “eew yuck scary” type, but the entire segment was produced in an entirely professional and serious manner. No unsafe handling, no horseplay or any other type of nonsense I had expected.
We certainly are winning when the defensive use of firearms is given a serious look on Keeping up with the Kardashians.
January 27th, 2012 at 1:54 pm
“I was wounded, that’s pretty badass”. I was thinking it was more like dumbass. But I guess that was the point.
January 27th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Thirdpower covered two anti-gun propaganda moments in the 90s
http://daysofourtrailers.blogspot.com/2011/10/television-stereotypes-gotta-love-em.html
http://daysofourtrailers.blogspot.com/2011/07/social-indoctrination-90s-style.html
January 27th, 2012 at 2:17 pm
They also played paintball in at least one episode of “Big Bang Theory”. They lost horribly, and no actual paintballing was shown, but my friend who owns a paintball field was horribly upset that they had improper face masks and their paintball hoppers on backwards. I try not to read too much into how they do things on TV for that reason. It’s good that they’re showing it. Negligence can be dangerous, and I don’t see how showing that in a comical way is bad for the sport.
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” in the ‘A Christmas Story’ taught me to always wear safety glasses.
January 27th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
In the current TV drama, “Revenge” the main character, Emily Thorn, has a gun for self-defense and in one episode she goes to a gun range with friends and shoots extrmely well with a large semi-auto. SO FAR, in the series it’s depicted as a positive thing for a youn single woman.
January 27th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
I’ve never seen the show but will check it out if they can portray guns as less than evil.
January 27th, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Big Bang Theory has had lots of paintball in their show. Reasonably positive but while they have the little vest on for some reason, they don’t protect their face, throat or groin. I understand the face as it interferes with the actors looking pretty. But then two university professors must share an apartment due to cost while a waitress lives alone across the hall.
Last night was a little sad as they could have done so much but as soon as the guy picked up the gun, his handling was of concern.
They do tend to use the paintball as positive but then snark when relating guns to Penny from Nebraska.
January 27th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
I am thinking of Always Sunny in Phildelphia’s “Gun Fever”…
It certainly portrays very reckless gun handling, but the whole point of the show is that “The Gang” are a bunch of idiots. It was quite funny, and I didn’t take it to be critical of guns at all.
January 27th, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Actually it was impossible for Leonard to shoot himself in the foot. After arriving at the range, Penny racked the slide on the handgun, then she put the magazine in the gun, then she handed it to Leonard. You would think the writers and actors could get that sequence right.
January 27th, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Tim Allen’s new show “Last Man Standing” has lots of guns in it. He works at a sporting goods store and his boss has a wall full of gun, from bolt action rifles to Ar-15 and Aks. In the halloween episode he went as John Wayne in “Green Berets” and there was a m-16 with a 203 on it in the living room. The best sceen was when he was cleaning a black power rifle and his wife was saying that it was not safe to do it in the house with a toddler and Tim listed off all the reason she was wrong.
January 27th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
The new cop show “Prime Suspect” is pretty pro gun, even though it’s set in NYC. In one episode the showed the main character, a NYPD detective, had a safe full of rifles and shotguns. She wound up moving them out of the house to placate her BF’s “babby mommy” so the kid could visit their apartment. But, the babby mommy was shown to be an unreasonable shrew about it.
In another episode she talked with a little kid who witnessed a murder and was drawing pictures of guns. She said she had a Remington shotgun like the one he drew and that it replaced her Mossberg after the Mossberg jammed. She then showed him her duty pistol and said if anyone tried to hurt him she’d shoot them (or something very similiar).
The kicker was the episode where the detectives had to requal at the range. They were ragging on each about it all ep, putting it off, etc. The ep ended with her rival qualifying and shooting an “acceptable/good” score and acting proude. Then they showed Jane finishing up and the RO commenting on her perfect score “as usual.” The RO then said, “Didn’t you qualifty last week?” and she replied, “Yeah, but I like it here.”
Of course, on the other extreme, there’s the old Frasier episode where Niles goes with his Dad to the gun range and finds out he really likes shooting. He likes the zen and skill of it and plans to make it a hobby. Then his ‘shooting buddies’ are revealed to be redneck miliia racists at the end and he gives up on the idea
January 27th, 2012 at 4:53 pm
There was a trip to a shooting range in season six of “That 70’s Show”. There was even a little poaching as Fez shoots a rabbit that wandered onto the range and announces “I got dinner!”
It’s nice to see trips to the range going more mainstream.
January 27th, 2012 at 5:03 pm
The show “Chuck” is kinda a mixed bag on guns. The titular geek Chuck apparently doesn’t like guns and likes to pack tranq dart guns… but that doesn’t seem to be a problem that prevents him from using a real gun later in the series. Of course John Casey has veins filled with red, white and blue colored Hoppes #9.
The real analogue to the BBT bit you decribed was when they finally had to check out Chuck’s nerd friend Morgan on firearms. Morgan thought he could handle the pistol. After all, he’s sniped so many in Call of Duty with that particular model. He lined up, pulled the trigger, missed fairly badly and the pistol flipped out of his hands as he cried, “Oh My Gawd! I think it just blew up in my hands!”
The trope in play isn’t “guns are dangerous”. The trope in play is “FPS skills don’t translate to actual gun skills, but nerds don’t know that”.
January 27th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
In that “Revenge” episode…WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY SHOOTING???
Seriously, they were tearing 6″ gashes in the targets from maybe 15 or 20 yards away with handguns? WOW! I’m pretty sure I want whatever they had.
On American Idol (last night) they had footage of a contestant, a 17 year old girl, shooting a rifle.
First time I’ve seen something like that on the show…and she was pretty good, too.
January 27th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
In an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” there was a trip to the gun range to try to soothe a jilted lovers broken heart. It was Season 2, episode 1 I believe. The show is located in NYC … and it aired in 2006.
January 27th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Aren’t guns in sitcoms just pratfall devices? Something to bounce off of?
January 27th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Importantly, too, is that it is the female character that likes guns- it isn’t portrayed as a dumb macho guy thing. Same thing with How I Met Your Mother.
+1 to dsmith512 too. One second before he shot himself, I said to my bride, “it’s not actually loaded”.
January 27th, 2012 at 9:39 pm
The problem (for us) is that a gun is uses as a dramatic plot device. Name me a single movie/TV show where a character/characters has a gun and the presence of that gun doesn’t then go on to be the cause of further drama? The outcome of this is that non-gun owners then think that a gun precipitates drama.
The truth is that, for most of “us” (everyday, gun owners), if somebody ever made a movie about or lives, our guns would be sooooo boring and soooo undramatic, that they wouldn’t ever be filmed.
January 27th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
It does show true to life though.
Playing Halo does not prepare you for the real thing.
Training training training.
January 28th, 2012 at 4:46 am
One thing I did notice about the Big Bang episode was NO SERMON ABOUT HOW GUNS ARE EVIL WORKED INTO THE STORY!
That would have been standard not that long ago.
The character did a dumbass thing and it was treated as such. Blame was clearly on the character and not on the weapon.
January 28th, 2012 at 6:29 am
I saw the epi and wondered if it would get a mention here. I thought the segment was positive. Leonard didn’t actually express any real opposition to the idea, other than that it wouldn’t be something he’d choose to do (which, obviously, it wouldn’t). But yeah, I noticed the odd sequence of events regarding the loading of the gun. And don’t most ranges frown on hand-to-hand exchanges?
It seems that in a lot of shows, going to the range is seen as something relaxing, therapeutic, and fun. Castle has handled it this way as well. As for How I Met Your Mother, sure they snark about guns. But they’re from New York. How else would they feel? Note, however, that their distaste is non-specific–you get the idea that they don’t know anything at all about guns. And the gun-lover is, of all things, Canadian. Heh.
January 28th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
great sceen from “Last Man Standing”
January 28th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Cormac,
Not only were they tearing up the target, the target was ripping towards the shooters.
January 29th, 2012 at 7:36 am
Cute scene from ‘Last Man Standing’. Thanx for the link.
Though I thought it was odd that after Tim (correctly) described the firearm as a flintlock musket, he then talked about placing a percussion cap into the lock during the rant about the complex loading procedure!
The final punchline, “Honey this whole gun is a safety”, is golden!
January 30th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
I used to watch How I met Your Mother, but stopped. My digital converter broke, and my son would rather watch Bob the Builder, Thomas the Train, or other things.