Does NRA Exploit Violent Movies to Sell Guns?

Washington, DC — A report issued Jan. 2 by author and gun industry expert Tom Diaz shoots down NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre’s recent attack on violence in films and games.

Bloody Reel: How The National Rifle Association And The Gun Industry Exploit Violent Movies To Sell Guns...And More Guns, documents in detail how the National Rifle Association and the gun industry it represents have promoted the use of guns in movies and exploited many of the very movies LaPierre recently attacked as the cause of gun violence in America. 

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On Friday, December 21, 2012 LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s chief executive, blasted the movie industry in a press conference, pointing to what he called “blood-soaked films out there” and exclaiming, “Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?”

“If violent movies are filthy pornography, Wayne LaPierre is the king of filthy porno,” said Diaz, author of two books on the gun industry. “For over 10 years, the NRA—through its National Firearms Museum, its websites, and its media outlets—has glorified the use of guns in some of the most brutally violent films ever made. The gun industry the NRA represents exploits violent movies for one reason: to sell guns.”

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Bloody Reel describes two special exhibits on Hollywood guns that the NRA has mounted at its National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, VA. The report also recounts how former movie critic Stephen Hunter – who wrote the introduction to the NRA brochure for its current exhibit, “Hollywood Guns” – dismissed the effects of violence in movies in his own book, and suggested that violent movies head off violence.

“Wayne LaPierre obviously never visits his own porno-packed museum,” Diaz said.  “He also seems not to have a clue that of one his favorite scriveners has in the past scoffed at the violent-movies-make-them-do-it excuse the NRA is peddling as the cause of gun violence in America.”

Diaz is the author of the forthcoming The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It (The New Press, Spring 2013) and Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (The New Press, 1999). 

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Tom Diaz is a lawyer, author, journalist, and was formerly Democratic Counsel to the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He worked for then-Rep. Charles E. Schumer. His principal brief covered issues related to terrorism and firearms.

Prior to his staff work for the Congress, Diaz studied and wrote about terrorism and transnational organized crime at the National Strategy Information Center in Washington, DC.  Before joining NSIC, he was assistant managing editor for news for six years at The Washington Times newspaper, where his earlier beats as a reporter included the Supreme Court and national security matters.

Most recently Diaz was senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, a non-profit, non-partisan public policy organization that studies the gun industry, its products, and their impact on crime, death, and injury in the United States.