http://youtu.be/b6UC_JKhdvA

To Whom it May Concern;

Count me as a viewer of your wonderful show! I love Elementary. I love Sherlock Holmes. I have been watching this show since it began airing; it is currently my only “must watch” show every week. In the past, there have been negative comments about firearms in your show, both through misinformation and more directly from the characters at times, but I have always accepted it as a simple cultural difference between myself and both the NY based characters and/or the (presumably) more politically liberal show leadership. Your episode this week however (Feb 19, 2015) truly frustrated me for the first time. I felt there was a direct and overt attempt to create a political, anti-firearm message . . .

First of all, the handgun used was traced back to it’s point of sale by utilizing the bullet/case left at the crime scene. That is really not how ballistic science works in its current form, and more advanced forms of ballistic fingerprinting are simply not feasible and would be easily defeated by an intended evil-doer.

The one that really stuck for me was the obvious shot at gun shows in general (the non-background checked, perfectly legal because it’s a gun show, “Merica!” comment). A quick quote: “A 1997 Justice Department survey of more than 18,000 state and federal convicts revealed… 0.7% of criminals purchased a gun at a gun show.” (A URL for your reference: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/11/where-criminals-get-their-guns/)

Allow me to also quote a prominent blog to clarify the legalities of gun show background checks (edited for length).

“…Not all people at gun shows with tables… are dealers. While dealers are required by law to perform background checks… private citizens who are selling their own collection to other citizens of the same state are not. These are the same rules that apply everywhere else. The only difference is that because these citizens have a table at the show, they may appear… to be the same as gun dealers… In other words, the EXACT SAME REQUIREMENTS for background checks exist at a gun show as anywhere else at any time. There is no difference.” (http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/02/foghorn/the-truth-about-the-gun-show-loophole/)

I understand that you likely don’t care about my feelings that much, and I also understand that I will not be seeing any sort of retraction. My only hope is that if I give Elementary an extension of patience and continue to watch that you will refrain from making untruthful, pointed attacks against something that I appreciate, and in so doing allow me to continue to spend my time watching your show and the advertisements of those that support it. Don’t force me to abandon Elementary in the same manner I have Liam Neeson, Matt Damon, Mr. Schwarzenegger, and Mr. Stallone.

Your Faithful (for now) Viewer,
Justin

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63 COMMENTS

  1. Breaking news, its a fictional show, no need for the facts to get in the way. They probably used the pioneering micro stamp technology that is so popular in California ;-). I enjoyed the first season or so of the show, then like many shows it goes from semi-believable fiction to bizarre as they scrap for new plots. Person of Interest has suffered a similar fate.

  4. I saw the same show and I was deeply offended. I have also seen the same anti-gun bias in CSI, NCIS (oddly enough, not NCIS: Los Angeles, yet) and many other “entertainment” programs, and frankly, I’m pissed.

    Note to Hollywood: Keep your political bvllsh1t out of your TV shows and movies. It’s part of the reason that your media are dying. And your ultimate business demise can’t happen soon enough.

    And while I appreciate the popularity of “American Sniper,” I’m sorry that it rescued the movie industry from a financially horrible 2014.

    • Mark Harmon is the executive producer of “NCIS” as well as the star of the original version.
      He reportedly also donates large amounts of money to anti-gun rights groups, in so-often typical Hollywood fashion.
      Having shot hundreds of people to death in some of the most hard to understand gunfights while in character, Mr. Harmon would have us unable to have the same tools of self-protection.
      I apologize for being unable to cite the source.

    • Longmire pulled the same stunt. I too am an avid Elementary watcher with my DVR set to stun. Its just another NY or CA driven mindset in a fictional plot. Though it does educate our foreign friends. I had a discussion with an Aussie colleague a few years back who had gotten most of his gun law and statistics from watching US crime dramas. Boy was he surprised how the laws really work.

    • The BBC Sherlock (Cumberbatch) is pretty neutral on guns, by and large, but it is riddled with all kinds of other moonbattery. I love BBC TV shows, but you have to keep your filters up. I watch them with my kids, and annoy the hell out of them by pointing out the (probably unconscious) leftist twaddle scattered though the show. The cool thing is, you don’t have to do this for long before people start to notice it themselves.

  7. The heck with American Gun Shows; the Belgian Train Station Gun Kiosks are where the action is really at! We need to close the Train Station loop hole!

    • Or the gang loophole. You know, when gangs steal guns from people! All we have to do is make theft illegal and wait a second…

    • We need to close the politician loophole — you know where politicians like anti-gun California Senator Leland Yee smuggle illegal firearms into the U.S. so he can sell them to violent criminals.

  8. I watch the show, too, and was really struck by that scene’s stupid lack of understanding. And for a character who is supposed to be at the farthest reaches of understanding in every corner of science and technology, I thought the ignorance was WAYYY out of character. But then, on the other side of the coin, the character is a Brit! And we all know Brit’s are reflexively anti-gun and, thus, gun-ignorant. Perhaps it wasn’t so out-of-character at all.

    • You raise a very good point. For somebody who is supposed to be a ‘walking sage’ of ridiculously detailed info on the most obscure artifact of every crime scene and theory of criminal modus operandi… how could such a character be so ignorant on the truth about guns? The show’s writers need to stay clear of such material to avoid killing the magic for those of us who are gun-aware.

  9. Well, I will keep my hard earned dollars and buy more weapons and ammo! Not interested in supporting the elitist Hollywood types.

  12. The letter is nice sentiment, but they do not give a crap what you say because your non-progressive non PC opinions do not count. Anyone remember Al-Jazeera purchase of Al Gore’s failed CuurentTV? He basically said he would go bankrupt before he would sell it to any conservative voice. Hollywood believes their propaganda is to help bring forward the DNC messages via their make believe worlds you watch. Sadly, TV has large influence on how people think.

    I recently heard an interview with Eddie Trunk (producer of MegaForce records and many heavy metal bands) and basically he said if you want to succeed in Hollywood or the record industry you better believe in or pretend to believe in their far left utopia or you will starve. There is zero tolerance for other ideas until you have made it to certain point where you have enough money making clout to tell them f off or you are basically out of the business. He said he found it easier to simply nod and agree to their ideology than to confront it but now that he is out, he finds it “awfully nice to say no, I disagree.” Something he could not do for years.

    • Bingo!

      Money comment for the night, Pascal..

      I despise those hopelessly fantasy-ignorant and stupid error laden pretty girl pretty boy wannabe cop shows and the false drama tonic they feed the uninformed viewers every week. Talk about brainwashing the ignorant. Other than Amazing Race, Survivor, and 60 Minutes (which has its own bias issues) I pretty much ignore network TV.

  13. I expect that anyone who watches network TV expecting anything other than leftist dribble, particularly about guns, is just setting himself up for disappointment. Not that I could tell you from much experience, it’s been years since I spent a night in a hotel room, which is about the only place I ever watch TV.

  14. Any show about Sherlock Holmes that doesn’t have Jeremy Brett in it is absolute rubbish.

    I stand by my statement.

    • Brett’s Holmes is the definitive moving-image personification of the character for me. But BBC’s Sherlock has a fun homage/pastiche/postmodern-remix of the characters and themes.

    • Jeremy Brett was an atrocious Sherlock Holmes; a twitchy nervous wreck who never once showed any other of Sherlock Holmes’ characteristics.

      The show many times transferred some of Sherlock Holmes’ lines to Watson in some politically correct attempt to make Watson appear smarter than he was in the books. Watson was never as dumb as Nigel Bruce, but he was never as smart as in the Jermeny Brett shows.

      The shows at least a few times began each episode by showing the crime as it happened, entirely contrary to the spirit of the books, which were always from the viewpoint of the investigators.

  15. This show is still on my DVR and I haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet. But I have noticed that a lot of the shows I enjoy make little ‘passive-aggressive’ comments that suggest ‘civilian disarmament’ is an obvious practical solution to the ills of ‘Merica’. Another of my favorite shows, “Justified”, had the main character saying that the gun-owning hillbillies of that show were either criminals or paranoids that think the government is coming to take their guns away. If we continue to watch TV, we’re going to have to be prepared for more of the same … because that’s just how Hollywood rolls!

    • The new version of Hawaii 5-0 has had its gun ban lobby moments. Scot Bacula’s new show, NCIS New Orleans has as well.

      • Jack Lord, the star of the original series, was a BIG anti 2A guy and I stopped watching it and the reruns because I couldn’t stand his face and snarky attitude, knowing he wanted to outlaw my guns. I never watched the new show, just on principle, except for the opening…still love the music and scenery and island girls.

    • He was referring to a certain section of the county where they were interviewing someone but yes the sentiment was felt. I too am an avid Justified fan.

  16. The travesty about this and MOST television programs which focus on firearms are that these are thinly veiled anti-gun missives.

    The continual references to “gun violence” and firearms “registration” create a mindset in most of the viewing public that these phenoms are acceptable.

    Hollywood……you know, where EVERYONE has armed body guards……is doing it bit to shift the culture to acceptance of the “evils” of gun ownership and use.

  18. Bah. American network crap. Get some Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlocks from the 30’s and 40’s or the new ones with Cumberbatch…

  21. I saw the same episode and was so pissed when I saw it that I considered making a post on FB. One thing the writer left out was that there was a suppressor used with no mention of how the killer got it, implying that it was also bought at the VA gunshow ‘without a background check” and no mention of NFA requirements.

  22. Well, here in Virginia, we don’t require paperwork for a private sale. If this person bought it at a gun show from another Virginian walking around, then yeah, there might be no record. Of course, that prompts the question: if there’s no paperwork, then how was the gun traced?

    • I believe she said it was ballistically traced to the original owner from a casing left at the scene–which, if memory serves, has never been done, despite the millions of dollars spent on building a casing data base in NY. You can match a casing to a gun, if you have both, but that’s it.

      • In “The Lincoln Lawyer”, an otherwise good movie, a .22 casing is traced to a specific model of gun (a Colt Woodsman). You’d think twenty seconds on Google — ah, never mind.

        • If I remember correctly, the novel explained this. The Colt Woodsman was used in a homicide. The father of the protagonist was able to successfully argue self defense and the gun was returned to the owner. The owner, a mobster I think, gave the gun to his lawyer as a gift. The lawyer’s son inherited the Woodsman. The ballistics were matched with the evidence from the previous homicide.

  23. It’s reasonable to complain as these shows act as propaganda and even subliminal messaging. So don’t be naive, the show very likely at its root has an anti-gun agenda.

  24. Sad, this is the same network that hosted 4 quite good seasons of The Unit, which showed quite a positive view of guns and personal defense.

  25. Of course a wee bit of irony is that even British movies and TV depict, truthfully, that all their guns laws do not prevent criminals from getting illegal guns. (Though I did laugh when a criminal unlocked a box then loaded his pistol before illegally using said illegal pistol to try to kill someone. Is the penalty less if one is caught with an unloaded gun?)

    • Nah, they were exemplifying common sense gun safety procedures they learned from … uh … I guess … never mind.

  26. I have yet to see any show involving guns even peripherally that doesn’t mangle some aspect of their use or laws. Hoplophobia may be involved, but the primary culprit I see is that gun laws vary so much from state to state in ways that the ignorant can’t imagine. Magazine size, racking the slide multiple times without ejecting unspent ammo, cocking hammers on semi-autos, cocking hammers on any handgun multiple times. The list goes on and on.

    I don’t think it’s intentionally misleading, or even propaganda. It’s the same mindset that adds tire squealing sound effects to dirt road starts and stops, or had the Bullet chase scene lose the same hubcap several times, or has people drive from known place to known place on impossible routes.

    Hollywood is about telling stories. Everything else is secondary.

    My favorite idiocy was some scene with a Marine at a high school graduation, from which he had graduated the year before, with a sleeve full of stripes like a 20 year sergeant, except when they filmed it in a different take from a different side, they had a different jacket with a different rank. (I was a squid; jarhead ranks are a mystery to me, other than knowing that it takes a lot longer tha one year to get either rank đŸ™‚

  28. This is also the show that put in a dig on “American Exceptionalism” by making a crack about centimeters and inches in the Zebra caper. Apparently Sherlock doesn’t real the UK papers where people still talk about losing 10 stone, drinking a pint, and getting a dram of something. I even received directions in miles when I was in Ireland. There is a chip on the shoulder when it comes to some of the show’s writers.

  29. What a wimpy to whom it may concern! Here’s my advise: just don’t watch this libtard crap, ever. Rent or buy your favorite war or sci-fi movie or go read a book – you know, the thing with lots of paper between hard or soft covers. Some even have pictures! There are literally thousands of good ones out there. On a multitude of good subjects – science, history, technical, non-fiction, fiction, etc. I like WWI, WWII, Korean War, warships, warplanes, armor, weapons, aviation, submarines, trains, conservative politics, exposing Barry’s bullshit, etc. TV? Baseball, football, golf, auto racing, occasional movies, washing rocks for gold, Band of Brothers, Combat reruns, Nova, American Experience, The First 48, Tales of the ER, Frontline, Discovery Channel, The Hitler Channel, The Great Course DVDs, war movie DVDs. That’s about it, but it’s plenty. Hell, they canceled my favorite cop show – Southland. Speaking of cop shows – how many times have you seen the Hollywood “Mexican Standoff” where the cop and bad guy wind up pointing their guns at each other with a clear shot? And then the bad guy tells the cop to lose his gun or he’ll shoot some hostage or victim. Then the cop slowly obeys the command and becomes another unarmed hostage. WTF??????? For crying out loud, shoot the SOB right between the eyes! And what about all shots sound like they’re fired from weapons with suppressors? Instead of, “Huh, what did you say? My ears are ringing!”

  30. My wife loves this show. Sometime I will lay on the couch and watch it with her, if I’ve got nothing better to do. When I heard that doofus bit about gun shows and tracing by ballistics, I rolled over and went to sleep. I’m looking for something better to do next Thursday.

  31. I’m sorry, but Sherlock has really spoiled Elementary for me. I’ve tried giving Elementary a chance, but I just can’t keep the comparisons away.

    On a similar note, though, I’m a huge fan of The Blacklist. I keep seeing these anti-gun jabs, however. They are not only annoying/distracting from an otherwise brilliant show, but they are beyond hypocritical.

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