HBO will air a gun control-related documentary this coming Wednesday called Gun Fight. Most of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia reckon that Oscar-winning documentarist Barbara Kopple is set to sandbag the gun rights movement. The fact that it will air on the anniversary of the Virginia tech massacre combined with the central role survivor and gun control activist Colin Goddard plays in the film, lends credence to this pre-judgement. Ahead of Wednesday’s debut, NPR has aired an interview with Kopple . . .

in which she professes to have looked at gun life from both sides now, from up and down, from in and out. And still somehow . . . Kopple’s deeply entranced by Goddard’s perspective, to the point of abject hero worship. It gets worse.

When NPR host Liane Hansen asks Kopple if there’s an equivalent focus on a gun rights proponent (3:28), Kopple trots out Richie Feldman as her “balance.”

Mr. Feldman is the author of Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist. The audio clip from his own interview with NPR reveals Feldman as a whole lot less than enamored with the NRA. Here’s a description of Feldman’s anti-NRA animus from NPR:

Former gun lobbyist and National Rifle Association (NRA) insider Richard Feldman explains how he came to believe that the NRA is — as he writes — a “cynical, mercenary political cult.”

Kopple says “he’s in the middle now.” The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Looks that way.

The clip from Gun Fight indicates that Kopple’s given Feldman the role of the gun nut. Of course, Kopple’s audio appearance on NPR, rather than, say, Fox News, tells us pretty much all we need to know about her target audience (so to speak). But not everything. We’ll be watching.

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26 COMMENTS

  1. As I read the interview, it was interesting how Hansen kept asking Koppel about the “tone” of the documentary. He set her up by asking about Goddard and his recurring appearances, and then asked her if she had anybody from the other side. If she really wanted to get someone from the other side, she would have interviewed Suzanna Hupp.

    Just makes you go hmmm.

  2. HBO? Nobody watches HBO anymore. In 2010, HBO lost about 1.6 million subscribers. HBO had 28.6 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2010, according to newly released numbers from SNL Kagan, its lowest total in four years and the second of its first back-to-back quarterly declines in at least six years. This cable network is losing steam. I wouldn’t worry too much about them airing their rhetoric documentary – all of 5 households will be watching.

    • We have HBO. I subscribed last year so that I could watch ‘The Pacific’. I do watch a few series on there (really liked Boardwalk Empire) and an occasional movie. Overall, I don’t think that it is probably worth it, and I’ve been looking at dumping it. Maybe this biased documentary will be what pushes me over the edge. If it does, I’ll make sure and let HBO know why I am cancelling.

      • I recently canceled all my movie channels. I found that, at most, 2-3 movies a month from all of them combined captured my interest. Some of the channels have decent series that I have watched, but I can get those on DVD from Netflix. Those that I actually watched were also available from Netflix. The money I saved is more than enough to pay for the Netflix subscription.

      • If you’re going to cancel HBO, you don’t have to call them up and tell them anything. Cancel your subscription the day after something controversial airs, and you’ll have made your point in their databases, which are incontrovertible. They pay close attention to these numbers, and companies invest millions of dollars in data mining tools that help them to identify events such as this and try to figure out how prevent them in the future.

  3. Anti-gunowner advocates love Feldman because of his fight with the NRA. The problem they have to watch out for with Feldman is that he will also explain how most claims about guns made by anti-gunowner advocates are bogus (i.e. “gun industry controls the NRA”).

    However, if they have the ability to edit their Feldman interview then that’s not a problem for them.

  4. Am I supposed to care about whether this “documentary” has any impact on the current conversation about gun rights?

    Because, seriously, I don’t and doubt it will.

  5. I ain’t afraid of no ghost. Never in my life paid for HBO, Showtime or any ‘premium’ channel. Ain’t missing nothing.

    But hey, let HBO tell the libtards what they want to hear. Keep ’em sedated until it’s too late. After all, how they gonna cope in the aftermath? I gots lots o bullets, and several lead projection mechanisms. To quote Billy Joe Shaver ‘you know I’m gonna get my share of mine’.

  6. I canceled HBO last month, along with my entire cable. Screw those libs. The crap they make these days is rotten to the core. There’s more exciting things to do in life than be a couch potato anyway.

  7. I am not in the least surprised that one of HBO’s dicumentaries leans left. I am only surprised that they have made it so obvious this time.
    As for Cable, I have seen the future, and it is Roku. Say goodnight, Cable…

  8. I dumped cable/satellite in 2008 when it became obvious that nothing was on except Obama and AlGore, it was the best thing I ever did. Now I read a lot more and order movies off Amazon (yeah, Netflix pissed me of too when they dissed on Americans.)

  10. If it’s an HBO documentary, it will almost certainly favor the left-wing side. I’ve seen ads for a bunch of them, from the Obama inauguration to border control, they are rather “progressive”.

  11. Those libertard blowhard know-it-all, fact-loving, overly sympathetic towards victims of gun-violence wussies need to stop shoving this garbage down our throats. Just get over it and buy yourself a locker of assault weapons. We all know when the eventual war between right and retard occurs we are going be the best armed and the best equipped.
    IMO we don’t need women either, all I need is a little cold-hard steel nestled between my loins.

  12. I only have HBO because the TV plans we have are tiered… HBO coming before any other movie channel.
    Just finished the part where the folks were carrying around pictures of a female victim. I really wanted to shout at the TV that, if she were *so* wonderful… why was her life not worth defending? (I’m sure she was a great gal, and my answer would be to allow for her personal defense.)

    Also, I’ll bet most of those anti-gun “leaders”
    are surrounded by armed security, and we know more than a few of them have permits, even in areas where it’s nearly impossible for “normal” Americans to acquire one.

  13. I think I’m watching the same one. The segment where they described the classroom shooting “experiment”, run by the antis, was hihgly suspect. If they really wanted it to be an honest test they would have allowed someone who knows the differecnce between a magazine and a clip to run it. Their spokesman, the VT survivor, made it obvious that even after he went through that, and became a spokesman for the org, he never bothered to educate himself about the weapons he wants to control.
    Moron.

    Speaking of morons. Philly, if you folks can’t control yourselves, please don’t try to oppress everyone around you. Blaming freer parts of the country for your problems says a lot about you, and your inability to take responsibility for your OWN HOUSE.

    • Yeah your right santiago. Philly should man up. If anyone tried breaking into my generic rural home, I’d shoot them or at least knock his ass out. Wouldn’t think twice about why an urban criminal resorts to theft or violence. In no way does another man’s problem entitle him to my possessions. I’m not gonna give away an Ak because some morons wanna shoot eachother? Seriously if they can’t control themselves… like what right do they have to impeach on mine?

  14. I just watched this documentary. What I took away from this is that there will never be any stricter gun laws, because the NRA and others are very powerful. The other thing I learned was that after the VA Tech shootings instead of stricter gun laws the Virginia legislature made laws making it easier to purchase guns…isn’t that like thorwing gasoline on a fire?

  15. Throwing gasoline on the fire would be disarming peaceful people further. This would only serve to embolden those who would do harm. The intellectual dishonesty I’m seeing is just absurd.
    Silly as it is, considering the utter disaster the Jim Crow gun-control nuts have dumped on this country, there will be further gun control legislation, even if it’s (as they so often do) slipped in a few minutes before a midnight vote. This is how the criminally oppressive trolls operate. Also, the backbirth who claims that not knowing anyone who has ever stopped a crime with a firearm, and using this questionable anecdotal statement as some sort of proof, well, that’s just beyond the pale.

    If the producers of this film actually had an honest leg to stand on, you’d think they would. Or has dishonesty just become so ingrained in their psyches that they don’t know any other way to operate?

  16. Just watched this documentary. I’m delighted to hear that there is so much talk about this amazing film. Glad to hear more truth is getting out about the total lack of conversation going on in our government right now about our sky-high homicide rates and absence of gun regulation. More killing, more sales – that’s all that matters, right?

    Fearful, ignorant, and violent people killing each other. We need to start legislating and stop placating big gun business, the NRA, and crazies like Timothy McVeigh.

    Let’s be honest – that’s the only kind of person who stands by and is infatuated by toys that only serve to kill and harm others: psychopaths.

    • Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people all at once and he didn’t use a gun. McVeigh constructed a bomb made primarily of explosive-grade ammonium nitrate fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other chemicals. The problem is not guns, the problem is people that desire to do harm to others. More lives are saved by guns used in defense, which aren’t even fired in the majority of the cases.

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