Review of Under the Gun (2016) by Andy T — 31 May 2016

(A European's view.).

I suppose US citizens are already aware of the several mini-debates surrounding gun control/ownership but for me this powerful new documentary was a real eye-opener. I recommend it to gain some understanding of the complexity of the debate and the powerful lobbying carried out by the NRA.

The smear campaign against the documentary and its makers has already started. All for a minor edit which, at best, is misleading. Specifically: in the documentary, a group of gun rights activists are stumped by a question about background checks ("If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?" ), taking a few seconds to respond. In reality, they responded right away.

If this is the biggest criticism that the guns rights lobby could find against the documentary then presumably everything else is correct. And it's heartbreakingly sad and depressing that there has been no real change despite the repeated mass killings of innocents.

Perhaps if one of the parents of someone who was slain by a gun killer would attend the NRA Annual Convention and do the same to some of its high-ranking members, there would be real change and at the same time this would expose two fallacies that the NRA promotes:

- that you can neatly place people into "good" and "bad" categories. IMO, even if all background checks were performed efficiently and properly (far from the case) and loopholes removed, you would still get mass killings carried out by hitherto good people just because they got mad about something and had easy access to a gun.

- that the "only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun". Even if the scene is not one of total and utter panic and chaos, you will only be able to stop the killer after the damage is done (if he has not killed himself anyway).