On TV shows, machine guns always seem to be the weapons of choice for bad guys when they get in shootouts with police. Some hyperbole is to be expected on television, but the level of exaggeration has become pretty over-the-top. In real life, criminals use machine guns so rarely that a 2016 survey of prison inmates only broke down the numbers for uses of handguns, rifles, and shotguns.…
CBS’s Blue Bloods pushes the notion that easy access to guns and street causes suicides. The claim that suicides with guns have a higher success rate than other methods of suicide is simply false. This is not the first television show where the causation between guns and suicide is pushed (e.g., see this other CBS show from 2019).…
CBS’s Bull continues its consistent bias against gun ownership (previous shows during Season 3 include this episode). In Season 4, episode 8, the episode fits gun control advocates claims about the dangers of guns in the home, particularly their assertions about the risks of children getting a hold of guns. We think that the focus here is to greatly exaggerate the risks of having guns in the home.…
This segment of Elementary has all sorts of biases against guns: on not liking guns, how the mere presence of guns lead to violence, to the benefits of gun buybacks.
…Evil Tech billionaire Odin Reichenbach: I think that you should put that down. You don’t believe in guns and so we both …
Sherlock Holmes: You shoveled some money to the gun buyback program in Watson’s name.
CBS’ Elementary has yet another episode pushing gun control. In this episode, a New York City man who was planning to attack a speaking event got a gun from Vermont. He picked Vermont because of its supposedly weak gun control laws (the episode is about a year behind the times). Why he had to do that isn’t apparent.…
This episode of Chicago PD tries to show the risks of a woman having a gun at home for her protection. In this case, the woman’s son takes the gun to school. As the pictures from the boy’s notebook indicate, he had planned to engage in a mass public shooting. But there is no balance, as the show never seems to show anyone successfully using a gun for self-defense.…
When informed that a former police officer is suffering from PTSD and might be having trouble, Jon Michael Hill, who plays Detective Marcus Bell, asks: “Are any of his guns missing?” The former officer’s wife responds by saying: “He doesn’t have any, not any more.” The notion seems to be that once all the guns are removed there isn’t a problem.…
On Netflix’s police drama Unit 42, a female police officer is reticent to go into after a criminal because she doesn’t want to take her gun with her.
…Female officer: Aren’t we waiting for the tactical unit?
Male officer: I am surprised you don’t want to go in solo.
Female officer: I am not a huge fan of weapons.
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.…
A Shield agent, Melinda May (played by Ming-Na Wen), is asked by a villain whether she doesn’t have a gun because she also doesn’t like guns. May responds that she has never needed them in fighting bad guys.
Examples from television where the characters say that they “hate” guns include here, here, here, here, and here.…
