So Flo Guns can help people understand that America's gun situation is historic and intractable – but not hopeless.
Perhaps it’s not about eliminating guns, but de-risking them. Get it back to what it was when the Kentucky Long Rifle was state-of-the-art, back when the 2nd Amendment was written. Because it doesn’t take a genius to see that Daniel Boone’s rifle bears little resemblance to an AR-15.
Perhaps it’s not about eliminating guns, but de-risking them. Get it back to what it was when the Kentucky Long Rifle was state-of-the-art, back when the 2nd Amendment was written. Because it doesn’t take a genius to see that Daniel Boone’s rifle bears little resemblance to an AR-15.
Kentucky Long Rifle
|
Assault Rifle
|
The fact is that in order to solve issues related to gun violence in the USA will require constituencies with very different points of view to see it in their best interests to agree. Not unlike what Marjorie Stoneman Douglas accomplished when she brought environmentalists and hunters (gun rights activists) together to defeat the Everglades Jetport, create the Big Cypress Reserve, and save the Everglades. Big solutions require big ideas and big compromises. In our case, the NRA and gun-control advocates will all have to buy-in - together.
So Flo Guns’ big idea? Offer to trade-up existing assault rifles for even better, more valuable, less lethal rifles. For instance a limited-edition Kentucky Long Rifle like Daniel Boone would have been proud – and worth twice what the AR-15 is worth. Or maybe a Winchester 1873 like Jimmy Stewart used in the movie of the same title. Or maybe a Sharps carbine/rifle like the Texas Ranger Glen Campbell and Matt Damon played in the two True Grit movies. Total price tag to the USA? Maybe $15-$20 billion and all into gun manufacturer’s coffers. USA jobs and profits. What’s in it for the gun control crowd? Greater regulation on assault rifles, not unlike how Tommy guns from Al Capone’s day have been regulated for close to a century.
So Flo Guns’ big idea? Offer to trade-up existing assault rifles for even better, more valuable, less lethal rifles. For instance a limited-edition Kentucky Long Rifle like Daniel Boone would have been proud – and worth twice what the AR-15 is worth. Or maybe a Winchester 1873 like Jimmy Stewart used in the movie of the same title. Or maybe a Sharps carbine/rifle like the Texas Ranger Glen Campbell and Matt Damon played in the two True Grit movies. Total price tag to the USA? Maybe $15-$20 billion and all into gun manufacturer’s coffers. USA jobs and profits. What’s in it for the gun control crowd? Greater regulation on assault rifles, not unlike how Tommy guns from Al Capone’s day have been regulated for close to a century.
Matt Damon in True Grit with a Sharps Rifle
Quixotic? Not really. Are there better ideas? Likely. But they all need to get outside the box because we are just hitting our heads against the proverbial wall expecting to get different results doing the same old responses. Einstein might have called this insanity. Seems like the perfect word for our situation.
We (Steve and Bobbie Richards) began shooting footage for So Flo Guns in February 2018 immediately following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Being newly returned to Miami from New Haven, it was easy to do and felt urgent – and cathartic to feel like we could do something. Personally, I (Steve) was devastated by the event both in terms of horrific-ness as well as the seeming insensitivity of my neighbors, who seemed to have grown numb to such things in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting and the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale Airport.
We (Steve and Bobbie Richards) began shooting footage for So Flo Guns in February 2018 immediately following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Being newly returned to Miami from New Haven, it was easy to do and felt urgent – and cathartic to feel like we could do something. Personally, I (Steve) was devastated by the event both in terms of horrific-ness as well as the seeming insensitivity of my neighbors, who seemed to have grown numb to such things in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting and the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale Airport.
Don Quixote fighting windmills
With all this as background, we need to now go back even further to an essay I wrote in July 2016 in the aftermath of the Pulse shooting. Having just left Yale Divinity School I was tuned into the idea that the 2nd Amendment had become a kind of holy scripture and had led to a kind of religion, which is explored in the essay, that became the impetus for the film when Parkland inspired then-high schooler Bobbie and I to get to work.
It is the combining of the collective insights of all these projects that make our team uniquely positioned to tell this story about guns and their impact on our society. Hopefully, we can illuminate a bridge between constituencies and a way of looking at things that can reduce the violence and the seditious threat the gun culture inadvertently represents.