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March 7, 2025
While Gun Control Plays Theatrics, Firearm Industry Pursues Real Solutions for Safer Communities
Gun control group Giffords is calling, “Lights. Camera. Action!” The group bent on restricting Constitutional rights put out an all-call for theater pitches to highlight criminal firearm misuse.
“Attention teen writers: Gun violence is the leading cause of death for young people in America. That’s unacceptable, and your voices deserve to be heard,” the post on X, formerly known as Twitter, stated. “Submit a 10-min play to @enoughplays for a chance to have your story told nationwide. Learn more at http://enoughplays.com/writing.”
Giffords’ pivot to actual theater matches their overall approach of using theatrics to push gun control laws that do little to hold criminals accountable for their crimes and instead only penalize law-abiding Americans seeking to exercise their rights to keep and bear arms and the lawful and highly-regulated industry that provides for the exercise of that Constitutional right.
It all makes more sense now.
Stage Left
The Giffords gun control group’s call from theater pitches is just that – theatrics. It won’t lead to safer neighborhoods. It won’t lead to more violent criminals being locked up for committing acts of violence. It won’t protect families, homes or businesses from those choosing to ignore existing laws and instead harm innocent lives.
The theme is similar to Everytown for Gun Safety’s recently launched high dollar ad campaign, which mocks the hard-working and law-abiding Americans who comprise the firearm industry. Everytown, of course personally funded by billionaire gun control stalwart Michael Bloomberg, spared no expense to create a glitzy caricature of the firearm industry, repeating tired and inaccurate tropes about who is buying firearms today and who safeguards the Second Amendment right to do so.
Needless to say, these ad campaigns and the theatre pitches haven’t yet and won’t put any meaningful dent in the occurrence of violent firearm crime or the criminals who commit heinous crimes.
Advisory Committee
The theater call by Giffords is in coordination with ENOUGH! – Plays to End Gun Violence, a non-profit that seeks to “create space for teens to confront gun violence by creating new works of theatre that will spark critical conversations and inspire meaningful action in communities across the country,” according to the group’s webpage.
One of the ENOUGH!’s listed previous selection advisors is Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was tragically murdered at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in the Parkland, Florida. Oliver attended multiple gun control events at The White House and other ceremonies during the Biden-Harris administration. He protested at The White House Rose Garden during a ceremony when the former president was announcing more executive actions on gun control. Oliver wasn’t satisfied and was angry at the president.
“You have to do more!” Oliver shouted.
Manuel also worked with March for Our Lives, the Bloomberg-funded student-led gun control group previously led by now Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg, and created an Artificial Intelligence (AI) voicemail using his murdered son’s voice, and other past firearm crime victims, to flood the offices of Washington, D.C. legislators and urging them to pass gun control legislation.
Whether it’s the high-dollar, high production mock ad campaign, AI phone calls or theater plays, the message is clear: these gun control groups will focus more on optics and show rather than working toward meaningful policies to hold criminals accountable and reduce criminal firearm misuse.
Real Solutions
Since its launch in 1999, NSSF’s Project ChildSafe® has distributed more than 41 million firearm safety kits that include a locking device and partnered with more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies across the country to give out the locks – no questions asked, free of charge – to promote secure firearm storage practices. The program, part of NSSF’s Real Solutions. Safer Communities® campaign, is just one facet of the firearm industry’s multi-pronged effort at true firearm safety. 2025 marks the 26th anniversary of Project ChildSafe, with many more years ahead of promoting safe and responsible firearm handling and storage.
Other initiatives include Operation Secure Store®, a partner program with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)to educate and help firearm retailers make well-informed security-related decisions to deter and prevent thefts. There’s also Fix NICS®, an effort by the firearm industry, which has changed the law in 16 states and in Congress to get all disqualifying background records entered into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Firearm retailers must have confidence that FBI NICS has all the information necessary to ensure firearms are not transferred to prohibited individuals.
The Don’t Lie for the Other Guy™ program helps frontline firearm retailers detect and prevent illegal “straw purchases” in their communities. That program is a partnership between NSSF and ATF, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Don’t Lie for the Other Guy educates firearm retailers to spot and stop illegal straw purchases, or when someone attempts to buy a firearm for someone else who cannot pass a background check or doesn’t want to be associated with the sale of a gun. NSSF also partners with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to help encourage “brave conversations” and safe firearm storage to help save lives, especially among our veteran community; and more.
NSSF’s Faces of Firearms™ campaign highlights that today’s gun owners, who are from all walks of life, and the firearm industry are united in true firearm safety. Like Giffords and Everytown often do themselves, gun owners have been often depicted as long-outdated stereotypes to paint gun owners and the firearm industry as detached, uncaring and disinterested in true firearm safety. Faces of Firearms celebrates the diversity of gun owners and their unity in advancing safe, responsible firearm ownership.
More than 26.2 million Americans have become first-time gun owners in the past five years and the law-abiding gun-owning community has never been a safer community.
While gun control groups continue to spend money on gimmicks and theatrics, the firearm industry will continue highlighting that law-abiding gun ownership is the Constitutional right of every American. Safely exercising that right is as American as apple pie and should be celebrated.
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Update: Make That 26.2 Million New First-Time Gun Owners Since 2020
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