Recently, in the wake of yet another senseless school shooting and ramped up pressure on the NRA and politicians to enact gun control ( something that most countries have done already, but that's neither here nor there), many different people have had different reactions.
This one, however, bothers me.
http://tvline.com/2018/02/23/the-blacklist-megan-boone-assault-rifles-liz-keen-tweet/#more-918594
In the article linked above, Megan Boone, who plays an FBI Agent on the NBC TV series The Blacklist, declares to her Twitter followers that her character, AN FBI AGENT, will no longer carry an assault rifle in the program. She tweeted:
"Liz Keen will never carry an assault rifle again and I am deeply sorry for participating in glorifying them in the past. Yours, girl from Florida"
Sigh.
The reaction she got to this statement was mixed. I have several thoughts about this, most of them leading to the idea that I think it's a dumb idea.
1. You are playing an FBI Agent. As your character, you should, sometimes, be required to hold and use an assault rifle. A person on Twitter pointed this out to her and she responded "I'm not SWAT."
IT DOESN'T MATTER. Eliot Ness was not SWAT either and yet he carried around a tommy gun all the time. It is unrealistic for you to declare that you will never handle an assault rifle. Which brings me to point 2.
2. Most people who watch a program should be able to distinguish the fact that you are participating in a fictional TV show. It seems to me that the line between fiction and reality is dissolving away, not just in terms of actual situations, but in terms of people being able to clearly separate the two sides. Now of course, you are going to get crazy people who just can't distinguish between them. These are the people that gun control should be for. But for the others, who make up the majority of society, what is the point of doing this? If you felt so strongly about the use of guns personally in the first place, I don't think an action show would have been the right situation for you. Plus it seems that you indicted yourself by glorifying guns in the past. Which brings me to point 3.
3. You are not glorifying guns. You are using a gun in an action show. The glorification of guns has already been done. It's been done by Westerns, War Films, Spy Films etc. So IMO, you have added nothing to the glorification of guns. You are simply using a prop in a television series. BTW, I know that several shows and movies have probably done it, but showing the difficulty and physical/mental strain of using a gun would be okay. I once shot a rifle at a Boy Scout camp and the recoil hurt my shoulder. Never fired a full on rifle agan. Guns are hard to use, in both aspects. Show that more.
4. I believe she has said that she will continue to use a handgun. Great because that can't be smuggled in and used to kill people in enclosed spaces. I am usually a proponent of compromise and against extremes, but in this case, given what she has said about the subject and her intent, she has backed herself into a corner. If she doesn't want to be labeled a fraud, either dump guns altogether or leave them all in. One or the other. Otherwise, the whole action looks self serving and phony.
IMO, she should just keep the assault rifles in. Because it just seems like she is trying to make a stand for something that she doesn't really have responsibility over. It feels like she's doing it just for the sake of doing it. I don't mean to be mean to her, but it's what I think.
What do you think?
I never even heard of this woman until I read your article. It's disgusting how many people want to tie themselves to this tragedy for there own personal attention. Her ridiculous notion that this makes one iota of difference goes beyond typical Hollywood ignorance. Maybe she should remove the FBI logo from her wardrobe too since they failed her more than any gun law.
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