Santa’s Got a Gun

The world’s worst gift idea comes in a four color full page ad on the back of today’s TV Week – a gun! A big old Smith & Wesson handgun on sale for $200.

There’s a poem about Rudolph shopping at the gun store. And worse, a picture of Santa on the rooftop stuffing various rifles into the chimney.

In his hands might well be a gun. But at the last minute somebody might have had a tinge of conscience (he’s carrying a sticker advertising the store – to hide what’s really in his hand?).
Showing Santa with a gun in his hand may not be in the best taste, even on the truncated TV section.

Of course this is also a section with John Goodman dressed as Santa pictured on the front cover alongside Delta Burke as Mrs. Santa to promote a perfectly terrible holiday movie running Monday --  bad taste pretty much envelops the listings.   

Comments

[MSgt White (USA-Ret)]

If the thought of giving a gun for Christmas, or a birthday, strikes you as the zenith of bad taste, one has to wonder just what would be in better taste -- yet another cheap plastic electronic toy made in China from Radio Shack? Something from the ghastly shelf displays at Toys 'R' Us or the local mall -- whose annual offerings of tricked-up garbage and polypropylene gew-gaws will be broken or forgotten before Valentine's Day?

Perhaps in some cozy suburban Fantasyland people no longer hunt or shoot competitively, or even have any interest in idly plinking away at old soda cans. Perhaps they think that waddling from their golf cart to the green is an actual "sport," more so than hiking for hours to hunt food that people will eat. No doubt many of these people also expect their local police to protect them from all harm, and arrive within seconds when things go wrong -- though this also presumes a belief in the Easter Bunny and elves ....

Some people -- and statistically I believe gun-owning households are still in the majority -- believe that guns are not inherently evil, but simply tools. Like chainsaws, power tools, kitchen knives or cars, one has an obvious obligation to ensure that children don't have access to them, which shouldn't be difficult for an adult with an IQ higher than room temperature. Kitchen knives, barbecue lighters and electrical outlets present a far more constant and difficult problem than merely securing a gun safely.

I simply fail to understand the hysteria surrounding guns, or why one would think giving someone a gun as a gift would be in bad taste. My son is 23, and probably the only birthday or Christmas gifts he has kept and used regularly for a dozen years are labeled "Smith & Wesson" or "WInchester," and it's likely he'll pass them on to his children, since some of them -- and other ones I'll pass on eventually -- are now in their third generation.

I'm sure neither of us has the time, nor the inclination, to debate the range of gun issues, but your rather cavalier treatment of guns, per se, as being somehow in bad taste strikes me as a bit self-righteous. I personally find professional and college sports especially revolting and nothing in which one should encourage an interest by intelligent children, but I'm not arrogant enough to suggest to others that they shouldn't buy their kid a Raiders shirt or an Oakland A's baseball bat (assuming said kid can be trusted not to bash his sister's skull in).

Though I am not even remotely religious, I am offended by the ugly commercialization of the Christmas season, which now stretches almost from Halloween to New Year's Day, and its degeneration into little more than a repulsive celebration of greed and fleeting pleasures, wherein children are taught only the art of becoming proper little consumers.

There is plenty to criticize about Christmas advertising and our collective reaction to its shameful pandering to children, but I think singling out this one particular category is less than fair.