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1D singer Liam Payne with bodyguard and friends at Duck Dynasty HQ (courtesy dailymirror.co.uk)

“[One Direction singer] Liam Payne has come under fire after posing with a gun in a photo with the stars of US TV show Duck Dynasty,” dailymail.co.uk reports, adding fuel to the fire. “The One Direction hitmaker reportedly visited the Robertson clan – whose patriarch Phil was previously slammed for his right-wing views –  in Louisiana this week where they shot clay discs. The 21-year-old is pictured grinning away next to his bodyguard Paddy, the Daily Mirror reported, in the same week that he was forced to strongly deny that leaked ‘gay’ photos were him.” Wow. Muckrake much? He’s gay and a gun guy? And hangs with fundamentalist freaks? A three-fer! Just how bad is the UK anti-gun sentiment sliming Payne? Well . . .

The newspaper quoted Sarah Summins as writing on Twitter: ‘Thanks for glamourising America’s gun crisis that literally kills countless numbers of innocent people.

Meanwhile Instagram user Sophia Deluxe added: ‘It’s not funny to hold a gun, because every day thousands of people die by gunfire!’.

Who? What? Seriously? They’re quoting anonymous Twitter and Instagram posters? What happened to the tabloid tradition of making up quotes and ascribing them to “one distraught fan” and “a former supporter”?

Judging from my 11-year-old 1D fan, this “story” registers a big -1 on the “who cares” scale. [The pot got 67 shares at the Mirror.] Now if it were Harry Styles . . . again nothing.

In fact this is nothing – save an indication of just how The Land of Hope and Glory – where our legal gun rights began – has fallen.

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47 COMMENTS

    • The guy on the left is clearly screaming for help. He’s stuck there with those deplorable gun toting rednecks, probably fearing for his life.

      By the way, what the hell is One Direction and why is this newsworthy?

        • Why do you have to lie to the man? They are just the most recent reincarnation of new kids on the block. I refuse to capitalize that. Or any other “boy band” crap.

          • LOL! Well, you’re free to not like them — music IS subjective — but I’ve been a DJ for the past 35 years and am not easily impressed. They’ve got a few good jamz IMO. Your mileage may vary.

    • I think he’s saying “What!? I don’t get a shotgun too? Man, this is bullsh!t…”

      Also, I think the Dailymail twats have their knickers in a twist because it happens that a British person that happens(or at least SEEMS) to enjoy the act of shooting; ALSO happens to have as much influence, if not more, than their politicians. And, at least in my book, they also have a lot more credibility.

  3. First off: Somebody tell the female to get her finger out of the trigger guard…

    Second: dude’s pants are falling off and he lost the laces to his boots somewhere. His shirt collar is also stretched out, time to retire that bad boy and cut it into strips for gun cleaning.

  4. This story could have used some background for us old fat white guys, like who the heck is Liam Payne and what the heck is One Direction?

  6. Gun-Grabbers take note.

    People kill people. Guns are a very small part of what they use to do it!

    Laws kill people. Like going to a fight unarmed because of the laws.

    Gun-control kills people, See previous para.

    Laws are written by politicians YOU gun-grabbers vote in. Politicians kill people.

    But ultimately YOU gun-grabbers kill people, with your laws, politicians, and gun-control, because you disarm the victims!

  7. “Countless” because UK “education” has dumbed them down so that they **CAN’T** count.

    A note to everyone in the UK: We kicked your asses back across the pond twice, the last time was 202 years ago, just so that we could tell you to fuck off when you complain about our country. How about you take care of your own little problem with muzzies before you complain about our “gun culture”. If the UK had the equivalent of the Second Amendment, you wouldn’t have had the beheadings in the street and the criminal activity that you have.

  8. This post had me laughing out loud!

    1.‘Thanks for glamourising America’s gun crisis that literally kills countless numbers of innocent people.’
    2.‘It’s not funny to hold a gun, because every day thousands of people die by gunfire!’.

    I swear if we were left to the ignorance of the ‘sensitivity’ movement we would all starve to death.

    LOL @ Matt Richardson says:
    ‘First off: Somebody tell the female to get her finger out of the trigger guard…’

    None of us care about 1D or anything that is written in this article other than these European’s who can’t own weapons jealous at us for being able to.

    When I went to Africa for work I met a guy who was from Scotland. He enlisted into the British military when he was of age and served a single enlistment. He later showed up an hour from my hometown and wanted to hang out. He was just one example of the many people from Europe that make trips to the US and enjoy the ability to fire a weapon or hunt game in the States.

    I think what is more scary than a bunch of people owning guns are a bunch of people too scared to own guns. We would be weak to another countries military and would easily lose what little freedom we have left. I still think it is interesting how during WWII Hitler completely avoided Switzerland. They aren’t afraid to own guns and they all know how to use them.

    • 1.‘Thanks for glamourising America’s car crisis that literally kills countless numbers of innocent people.’
      2.‘It’s not funny to drive a car, because every day thousands of people are run over!’.
      There, fixed it.

      • I wouldn’t totally discount the deterrent value of the Swiss military, but yeah, I think the financial arrangements between Switzerland and Germany had much, much more to do with their being left alone than a K31 in every chalet did.

        Not to mention the terrain – the Alps kind of make tactics like blitzkrieg difficult, if not impossible, to execute.

  10. Any celebrity wielding guns in a safe and recreational capacity is a win to me. And if it gets the antis’ knickers in a tizzy, so much the better.

    So you could say that this development lights up my world like nobody else.

  11. IHey I’m an OFWG and know One Direction is a major pop group. The boys caught some flack for smoking pot recently. Good for this kid. And “countless” dead folk? Yikes!

  12. Fleet Street, the urban left hipsters, and the village new-age types are just three more good reasons the upper class in Britain needs those vast estates on which to shoot…far from prying eyes, strictly invited photographers from The Field, if any. Other than golf, tennis, and sex, and riding…shooting is what they do, and that includes the royals….who can blame themselves for the sorry state of affairs. The UC’s terror of the ‘lower orders’ led to disarmament. Well, disarmament of the ‘lower orders’, at least. Get it? Harry’s a fiend for shooting and hunting….but everybody loves Harry! Conflicted nation if you ask me.

  14. Last weekend, a couple of British friends were in town. They called me, and the ONE thing they wanted to do was: Go shoot some guns! Naturally, I obliged the request. Smiles all around. Or as my friend said, “Brilliant!”

  15. When you are quoting social media for reactions from silly teenage girls who cannot even count, you know your newspaper is going down hill.
    Anyway, who are they to say people cannot got shooting? It is these sort of people that make me worry about the state of youth today.

  16. Again the very nature of things placed into the uninformed and unwitting. An inanimate object is by its very nature is devoid of life and unable to do anything on its own. So the unedumicated never cease to blame the gun for the actions of the criminals that use them to kill or harm. We don’t blame the car unless a component of the car fails when someone runs over someone else.

    • I had the exact same experience when a UK internet buddy felt the need for a mid-winter break from Leeds.

      I told him, yeah, he can hang out here in Florida, and he replied : “Looking forward to a Root’n, Toot’n Shoot’n Good Time!”

      And we did. The UK has a fascination with hard cider and he arrived with his luggage stuffed with the 3-liter bottles they use to sell the stuff in grocery stores.

      That cider gives nasty hangovers, enhanced by the muzzle blast from that .44 mag I had at the time.

      A Good Time Was Had By All.

  18. Here in the Orlando area, European tourists frequently visit the gun ranges. The last time my son and I went shooting, there was a large group of Canadian college students on the range firing handguns and a FN P90. Its has to be pretty bad when the UK media raises hell about shooting clay pigeons. And when you tell their citizens to enforce UK style gun laws and hate speech bans that millions of Americans would end up being jailed, their eyes glaze over.

  20. Love how Robertson’s anti-gay bigotry was treated as equivalent to “right wing views” as if no other view on any other issue mattered.

  21. I am a shooter from England. 1. The Daily Mail is a gutter press newspaper whose main purpose is to outrage bored housewives. 2. England is full of bored housewives who know nothing about guns but they do know how to drink wine during the day and sit on Facebook/twitter posting their uneducated views. 3. Hardly anyone in England knows anything at all about guns other than “they kill people”. 4. One direction are a hideous teen boy band. I’m sorry we inflicted them on you guys. …

  22. The amazing part is that someone actually used “literally” grammatically correct on social media. Not factually correct, because the number is both countable and small, but grammatically at least. Neva bin dun befoh!

  23. Gunsnzen is about the DM. It’s still fun to read though.

    As far as the comments and responses — they were actually overwhelmingly pro-gun. Not too unusual for them, though. Most of the actual gun articles, though, tend to be strongly anti-gun. And anti-knife – there seems to be a problem with knives there now that guns are so hard to get. What surprised me is that the DM didn’t have comments disabled or moderated for this article. Typically, they are moderated and good luck getting a pro-gun opinion through.

    Want to see them really go wing-nut, you should see what happens if there’s an article about hunting. It’s no holds barred on how wrong it is to kill that defenseless animal and the killer is evil incarnate. And that is if a lion kills an antelope. You should see it if it’s a human hunter!

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