TFC Short Shot: The Sandy Hook Promise Video: Propaganda Not PSA

The Sandy Hook Promise Video: Propaganda Not PSA

 

An anti-gun propaganda film was recently released under the guise of a Public Service Announcement or PSA as they are called. In a way, it really is a PSA, but the real message isn’t the one anti-gunners are trying to send. The message is loud and clear – witch-hunting did not end in the 1600’s!

When KHOU Ch. 11 TV in Houston ran a news spot on the video a few days ago, the anchorwoman stated that “one of the Sandy Hook mothers was involved with the film.” This may or may not be true, but the statement implied that she and a friend or two grabbed their camcorders and created this video. That’s hardly the case. From a cinematic perspective, the propaganda film was very good, rivaling those put out at Studio Babelsberg to help Hitler convince Germans that all Jews were evil. The video was allegedly produced by a group known as Sandy Hook Promise, but I suspect it was funded with Bloomberg money. It was too well done for amateur filmmakers.

The opening scene is a hallway in a high school, but it switches quickly to a boy named Evan vandalizing a desk in the school library. He’s scratching a note into the desk and here’s where the plot develops. Someone later responds by writing on the desk and Evan’s search for his dream girl is launched. The rest of the video chronicles his search for her, until he finds her on the last day of school before summer vacation. At that point, another student walked into the gym, racks the charging handle on a rifle, and everyone runs off screaming.

The video then fades to black and a message appears. It reads, “While you were watching Evan, another student was showing signs of planning a shooting . . . but no one noticed.” No one noticed because there was nothing to see!

The video then repeats a few very short scenes, any or all of which the anti-gun propagandists want you to believe contain warning signs of a budding mass-murderer. The first scene repeated shows a student reading a gun magazine. The next scene shows the same student brushing off a girl wanting to talk to him and I presume the third scene is supposed to show him being bullied by two other boys. The forth scene shows the student watching a YouTube video about guns. The fifth “warning sign” scene was of the student posting a selfie on a social media site. He was pointing a gun toward the camera and the caption was “see you at school tomorrow.” The post received 56 “likes.” The last repeated scene was of the student pointing a “finger gun” at a passing student.

Let’s focus on the cinematography first, then the bigotry and lies that make up the video. First, the focus is always on love-sick Evan and this is accomplished with different methods used by filmmakers to keep the audience focused on a given person in the scene. All of the six allegedly sinister scenes were short with one scene lasting only 1 second, three lasted 2 seconds, one was 4 second and one was 5 seconds. The only scene that should have raised a concern was the social media post with the gun and a warning “see you at school tomorrow.” But that scene didn’t last a full second!

When these scenes were replayed to show the viewer what they had missed and promote the witch-hunt, things were different. The gun magazine scene had Evan fading out with the “bad kid” shown in much brighter light than in the first part of the video. The social media post lasted much longer; long enough to read the threat and see the 56 “likes.” Joseph Goebbels and would be proud of this anti-gun propaganda effort.

Now let’s look at the message. It’s clear that the producers of this video want people, especially students, to believe that anyone who has an interest in guns is a potential mass-murderer. In their view, activities such as reading a gun magazine, or watching a gun-related video on YouTube are clear signs of someone plotting to shoot up a school.

That’s an outright lie and a despicable one at that. Imagine the reaction if someone were to duplicate the video and it’s plot, except instead of a student reading a gun magazine and watching a gun-related YouTube video, the student was reading an Arabic language newspaper and watching an Imam on YouTube. This student ultimately shoots up the school and the producers point to these activities as clear signs that he was an Arab terrorist plotting to murder his fellow non-Islamic students. Cries of “racist,” “hater,” “Islamophobia” and countless other comments would be denouncing the video and everyone in any way connected to it and rightfully so.

Why then do we not see righteous indignation in response to this blatant anti-Second Amendment propaganda? There are well over 110 million gun owners and over 300 million guns in the U.S. There are dozens of gun magazines and thousands of gun-related YouTube channels number in this country. The anti-gun propaganda video would have people believe that the millions of people who read those magazines and watch videos on those YouTube channels are mass-murderers waiting for their opportunity to pounce on unsuspecting victims. What utter garbage – an outright despicable lie that falsely slanders over a third of Americans.

There is a meme on Facebook dealing with the absurdity of the gun control crowd. It points out that there are over 300 million guns in the U.S., owned by over 100 million people, who possess over two trillion rounds of ammunition. The punch line is “Come on people, if we were a problem, you’d know it!” Like some memes, it contains a lot of truth.

The only true “warning sign” contained in the propaganda video was the social media posting where the boy posed with a gun with the caption “see you at school tomorrow.” Too bad the producers didn’t stick to facts and seek to make schools safer, rather than achieve a political goal.

To everyone involved with this tripe, shame on you for engaging in a slanderous 21st century witch hunt, and doing so while dancing in the blood of innocents to trample constitutional rights. There is one bright spot; no one outside of the anti-gun echo chamber is buying these lies, regardless of the quality of the cinematography.