Gun control advocates are once again pushing the entertainment industry to produce anti-gun propaganda with the explicit goal of advancing failed firearm legislation. The renewed overt effort will strike some as superfluous, given Hollywood’s lengthy track record of anti-gun agitprop and left-wing political monoculture.
In early January, entertainment industry magazine Variety published a lengthy interview with former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of the eponymous gun control organization Giffords. The piece outlined the group’s plans to influence Hollywood, noting,
One of Gabby Giffords’ priorities for 2021 is to forge relationships with writers, producers, celebrities and decision-makers in Hollywood who can leverage their powerful platforms to speak out against gun violence, call for commonsense laws and support local community efforts to raise awareness about gun safety.
The Giffords organization came about as the result of a 2016 merger between gun control groups Americans for Responsible Solutions and the San Francisco-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Legal Community Against Violence). In 2008, as Legal Community Against Violence, the group submitted a brief in the District of Columbia v. Heller case that argued the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense.
Giffords explained the “importance” of her group’s efforts in the following exchange with Variety,
Interviewer: Do you believe that the entertainment industry can play an important role in helping address the nation’s cultural and political divide?
Giffords: Stories are important. Elected officials use them to help get their points across, and for centuries artists have used them to inspire, make us understand points of view different than our own and bring people together. Hollywood and the arts are vitally important to helping us through a period of isolation, bitterness and divisiveness.
It’s not quite clear how pampered Hollywood elites belittling the lifestyle choices and attacking the fundamental rights of America’s 100 million gun owners would help to resolve the nation’s “bitterness and divisiveness.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time gun control advocates have sought to directly influence a receptive entertainment industry.
Since 2000, the Entertainment Industries Council, whose purported goal is “Encouraging the entertainment industry to more effectively address and accurately depict major health and social issues,” has urged content producers to explore anti-gun scenarios and talking points in their television programs and films. The messaging effort was developed with the participation of Brady (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) and handgun prohibitionist organization Violence Policy Center. For a time, anti-gun benefactor the Joyce Foundation even granted awards for television programs and films that most faithfully followed their anti-gun directives.
In an April 27, 2016 item, Variety detailed the ongoing efforts of Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety and Brady to use Hollywood to condition the American public against guns.
Sadly, many so-called “creatives” appear all too eager to take artistic direction from a septuagenarian Wall Street tycoon.
The Variety piece pointed to a NRA-fueled storyline in the Netflix political drama “House of Cards” as one example. Everytown President John Feinblatt consulted with the show’s writers, supposedly in order to “make sure they got it right.” As is often the case with propaganda, Feinblatt and the show’s writers did not get it right when it came to their characterization of federal gun laws or NRA’s grassroots activism. Everytown also arranged that the website for the show’s fictional gun control group redirects to their own.
Illustrating the scope of Everytown’s effort to conscript the entertainment industry, the Bloomberg front group has several employees devoted to this effort, including a “Director of Cultural Engagement,” a “Senior Manager of Cultural Engagement,” and a “Senior Director of Cultural Engagement.” On her Linkedin page, Senior Director of Cultural Engagement Noelle Howey described her duties to include “Manage storytelling endeavors, including creation of digital assets, collateral, and a wide variety of activations that bring together artists and cultural creators with advocates for gun safety.”
The gun control group has also attempted to marshal Hollywood’s support through its “Everytown Creative Council.” Established in 2015, the Everytown website describes this campaign as “a group of actors, directors, musicians, artists, designers, producers, and writers, along with other partners and allies in the entertainment industry” intent on “using their communications skills and the power of culture to galvanize Americans” to support further gun control.
Not content to indoctrinate the public with television and film, Bloomberg’s lackey’s have even sought to pervert the culture through literature. According to Everytown, its “Authors Council” “is open to authors, illustrators and editors; agents; and others deeply connected in the literary community” and “is designed to harness the power of the literary community to amplify” the gun control agenda.
Detailing an example of the Brady organization’s efforts to re-educate the public, the April 2016 Variety piece explained how officials from the gun control group consulted with the writers of CBS’s legal drama “The Good Wife” on an episode advocating the organization’s position on gun dealer liability and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In a press release that accompanied the episode, Brady noted their ongoing efforts to engage “celebrities and partners in the entertainment industry,” and explained the “valuable role Hollywood and cultural influencers can play in facilitating essential conversations.” Additionally, Brady worked with “Grey’s Anatomy” writers to interject an anti-gun message into an episode of the ABC medical drama, titled, “Trigger Happy.”
Gun control groups have made clear their intent to use a willing Hollywood to indoctrinate the public against the Second Amendment. Therefore, it is NRA members and other gun rights supporters’ duty to help neutralize this brainwashing campaign by alerting their family and friends to gun control groups’ wide range of propaganda techniques.
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