ABC’s “The Bold Type” is about young women working at fictitious Scarlet magazine in New York City (think Cosmopolitan). Sutton Brady (Meghann Fahy) risks alienating her friends by owning a gun. When roommate Jane Sloan (Katie Stevens) finds out, she confronts Sutton and acts like she’s some unthinking conservative who doesn’t care about people’s safety. Jane makes the typical attacks about the NRA buying politicians. But the script has no balance, and there’s no mention that Michael Bloomberg spends far more trying to influence politicians (see point #5 here).
When Jane explains that “guns are meant to shoot people,” Sutton doesn’t respond by saying that guns are used to protect people and prevent bad things from happening.
Sutton gives a lame response that her gun isn’t responsible for mass public shootings. There is no mention that mass public shootings consistently occur in gun-free zones, or that guns are often used to stop mass public shootings or that these attacks occur at even higher rates in countries that have much stricter gun control laws. Worse, Sutton comes out in favor of the usual litany of gun-control regulations that would have nothing to do with stopping these attacks.
These clips only provide a portion of the anti-gun discussions in the show. Longer clips would have violated the show’s copyrights and couldn’t be shown on YouTube.
The suggestion is made to Jane that she should be more open-minded about Sutton having a gun, and Jane does accept Sutton’s reason in the end (it has to do with issues involving her mom). But this isn’t a replacement for solid arguments that rebut gun control advocates’ claims.
This TV show is from Freeform (formerly ABC Family) and is made to appeal to young women. It aired on July 17, 2018 (Season 2, episode 7).
Examples from other shows are available here.
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