The Shield has a segment where a young girl turns in her family’s gun without the knowledge of their knowledge. Regarding the gun, she tells the police officers: “I don’t like it.” The segment also plays on parents fears because this young girl was able to get a hold of the family gun and carry it around outside their home. It also plays up the supposed benefit of gun buybacks, though most of the guns that are turned in don’t work and the vast majority of academic research shows no benefit from these laws.
All of our other examples are for very recent television shows, but a reader of our website brought this to our attention.
Recent examples from television where the characters say that they “hate”/”dislike” guns can be seen: here, here, here, here, here, and here.
(The Shield Season 2 Episode 4 “Carte Blanche.” Tuesday, January 28, 2003)
I gave up on The Shield over an episode where an elderly woman had been raped twice, the second time despite “police protection”. She bought herself a gun. One of the female(!) cops took it away from her, essentially for her own good.
I have a vague memory that she was raped and murdered after that, but my memory is prejudiced, so I can’t say for sure.
Anyway: in a show about a corrupt cop, a supposedly honest cop leaves an abused, honest citizen defenseless.
No. Melt the Shield down into bullets, since it’s worthless otherwise.