Review of Under the Gun (2016) by Kathleen N — 14 Jul 2016

I have seen this film 4 times, in both large and small venues. UTG weaves personal interviews with several families who have lost children (both young and adult) in a shooting. It is hard to watch these without an emotional reaction, but this is the truth about gun violence, people die and you are never the same. Hard to watch, but this is reality.

Seeing the history and changes in how the NRA developed over the years was fascinating and some of it was new to me. The NRA used to be non-political, simply teaching gun safety classes to kids and adults, and supporting hunting and target shooting. Boy, has it changed!

There has been a lot of brouhaha over one bad editing choice, which Couric herself admits now that she questioned at the time but then let it stay. When asking a group of Citizen's Defense League members a question about background checks, Stephanie Soechtag chose to not show the group's answers to the question and to instead leave in several moments of silence, as if they had no answer to the question. Dramatic, yes- but true to what actually happened, NO! The missing dialogue has been published now but critics (gun rights' supporters, for the most part) are using this questionable edit to discount the entire film, which is ridiculous.

The section showing how ATF is stymied in tracing guns used in crimes through their inadequate non-computerized filing "system" (boxes and boxes of papers, some stored in outdoor unheated carton containers) was devastating, almost unbelievable. Congress passed a law making it illegal for ATF to computerize these records!

The charts and gun violence numbers and per cents in UTG are taken from several sources, and most are accurate. The "40% of gun sales happen without a background check" statistic is questionable, partly because we really have no records of all gun sales. It could be lower, but it also could be higher! The number of gun deaths includes the highest individual cause, suicide, which some people don't think is fair. But it's fact that suicide by gun is much more effective than suicide by other means, so it seems important to include it in the numbers, in my opinion.

Go see it, and then talk about it afterwards and do your own research on issues that you want to know more about. And then, watch it again! Not available in theaters, as far as I know, but it should be! You can buy it on Amazon.