For those of you who have not cut the cord and ditched your cable/satellite service, a new cable channel could be joining your programming line-up: GunTV. It’s a 24-hour shopping channel for firearms and firearms accessories.
The channel will roll out on January 20, 2016, and will start with a six-hour daily broadcast and then move to a 24-hour programming schedule beginning 2017.
The New York Times writes, “The project is the brainchild of Valerie Castle and Doug Bornstein, two home shopping industry veterans based in Rancho Mirage, Calif., who saw what looked to them like an untapped market.”
And it is an untapped market. There were nearly 21 million background checks for firearms purchases in 2014. The Times writes that “Americans’ appetite for firearms has in recent years seemed insatiable.”
Insatiable. How adorable.
Americans can already purchase guns 24/7 online at places like gunbroker.com — and if these entrepreneurs think they can make some money selling guns on TV, good for them.
The parent company for the channel is the Social Responsibility Network, “a promotional video [for the network] puts heavy emphasis on the gun safety mission.”
The channel will run an 8-minute safety public service announcement each hour.
The Times explains to its 1%, liberal, elite, gun-ignorant readers, “Buying a Glock on GunTV won’t be quite like ordering a pizza. When a firearm is purchased, a distributor will send it to a retailer near the buyer, where it has to be picked up in person and a federal background check performed.”
Listen up, New York Times, buying a gun is NEVER like ordering a pizza. Ordering a pizza doesn’t require presenting two forms of government-approved identification. Ordering pizza doesn’t require certifying to certain statements under the penalty of federal prosecution. Ordering a pizza doesn’t require having a background check. Ordering a pizza doesn’t require a 10-day waiting period (where applicable).
The Times is unsure if “the channel will add to the enormous cache of weapons held by American citizens given that it is already fairly easy to obtain a firearm the traditional way, whether by the book at a retailer or illegally in a back alley.”
Is it illegal to buy a gun in a back alley?
No, it is not. I could sell a gun to my neighbor and conduct the transaction in a back alley. Entirely legal. Now this wouldn’t happen because my neighbor has a “Moms Demand” sticker on the back of her Honda Prius, but you get my point. In fact, I could take my neighbor to a licensed gun dealer and conduct the sale there, but that costs money (around $40 in my neighborhood). And if the same crowd of progressive gun-grabbers wants to say that the burden to purchase a $10 ID card for voting identification is too much for a citizen to bear, than surely they understand the reluctance of people to add an additional cost onto an already expensive firearm purchase. Consistency and all that good stuff.
We don’t know exactly how many guns exchange hands in a private setting or a back alley, although it’s fairly certain the 40% figure is false. To quote John Lott, “It’s hard to believe that the percentage of sales without background checks is above single digits today.”
The Times tells us that advocates for gun control are “frustrated.”
“This is something that’s definitely going to enrage a lot of people,” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Why is it going to enrage people? All the purchasers are guaranteed to have background checks. Isn’t that part of the “sensible gun reform” agenda?
But Mr. Everitt is heartened. The gun market “is pretty much saturated,” he said.
The GunTV folks declined to speak with the New York Times. Smart. Guys, call me. I’ll be fair.
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