Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
It seems like every time there’s an anti-gun hit piece in the news, there’s some nice B-Roll footage from inside a local gun store to go along with this. You know, the footage they cut away to while there talking with camera pans of the gun cases, stuff like that.
Why do local gun stores allow these anti-gun news agencies to come into their stores and shoot the B-Roll footage? I can’t imagine they’re promised anything in return, and whenever I see this on the news I can’t help but think less of the gun store that participated in this garbage.
Is there a delusion about gaining customers when their gun cases are seen on the news? Do people just not know how to say “no” to the request?
What’s worse is when a gunstore owner says something in support of the antigun measure. There is a local owner who the go-to guy for these quotes. In recent years when the state was on the verge of going from May Issue to Shall Issue CCW, he came out against Shall Issue claiming that folks would start carrying Kel-Tec PLR-16.
Oh yeah, we’ve got a local guy (who does a LOT of business in transfers) publicly come out in support of an Internet sales tax.
Two reasons why:
1. TV news producers are REALLY good at convincing people they are on “their side” and promise to do “a respectful piece that highlights your concerns”. They film it, turn it over to the editor and then proceed to do the opposite of what they promised.
2. The myth of “Any publicity is good publicity”. That’s true if you are a Hollywood celebrity and have the William Morris Agency on your side, not true if you run a small business.
We had a news anchor come in use a machine gun on our range for a pro-gun bit piece that was more about being able to use a machine gun legally on an indoor range and dispelling the myth that people could rent the machine gun and take it out of the store for a few days (a rumor started by an anti-gun opinion printed in a local newspaper).
At one point of the short video the camera pans from the counter in a 180 to the news anchor. That short bit of the camera rolling in a semi-circle showing all the black rifles on the wall has been reused a few times on any news piece about guns.
This is just one example and there are a few. Like during the 2008 gun buy craze in late autumn, photos of our shop wound up all over Yahoo news on the same topic. We are a little shop and none of us knew how it was that our photos became the photos representing the nationwide frenzy.