Apparently National Geographic has a difficult time doing a story on guns and getting everything right. One thing I would note, that Ride Fast mentions as positive:
People shown shooting machine guns were all regular folks enjoying shooting machine guns. Lots of big smiles and fun.
It’s hard to say without some context whether this is positive or negative, but since he saw the show and I didn’t, I’ll take his word on that. There is a risk in presenting this issue to the public, in that if you don’t put it in context, you just help promote the Josh Sugarmann canard that public confusion over full auto and semi-auto can only help pass legislation restricting semi-autos.
Machine gun shoots are part of the American gun culture, and I think that story should be told, but it’s hard to trust the media to tell it, and give all the right context. I hope they did so in this case.
UPDATE: Looks this was originally aired last December. Goes to show how much attention I pay to National Geographic Explorer.
I remember hearing about this around the time it aired, and, as the SOF link you posted describes, I heard that it was the supposedly the usual “Guns are bad, mmmkay?” story.
It looks like Ride Fast broke it down pretty thoroughly, too. Thanks for the link to his write up.
interesting. this popped up on my netflix suggestions a week ago. I ordered it and it just arrived today. Haven’t watached it yet, but plan to tomorrow
You have a good point about the “context” of the MG shoot presentation. I’ll still call it good, even though there was much negative about guns elsewhere. The show tended to follow a sort of alternating curve. Good for bit, then bad for a stretch, then good again.
They, like much big media, did not do their homework and presented small facts, large anti-gun bias, small fact, large anti-gun negative propaganda, etc.