Under the Gun

Name: Under the Gun
Genre: Documentary
Released: May 13, 2016
Duration: 110 min
Rating: 72

2016

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Generally favorable reviews based on 5 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 7 Ratings

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4.6

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4.6	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 7 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Lionsgate Premiere | Release Date: May 13, 2016 | R

Summary: Under the Gun examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase. Through the lens of families impacted by the mass shootings in Newtown, Aurora, Isla Vista and Tucson, as well as those who experience daily gun violence in Chicago, theUnder the Gun examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase. Through the lens of families impacted by the mass shootings in Newtown, Aurora, Isla Vista and Tucson, as well as those who experience daily gun violence in Chicago, the documentary looks at why politicians are finding it difficult to act and what is being done at the state and local levels.… Expand

Director: Stephanie Soechtig

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: R

Runtime: 110 min

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Critic Reviews

The Guardian Lanre Bakare

May 13, 2016

It’s a tight, slick polemic which doesn’t shy from the complexity surrounding the debate or the fact it wants you the viewer to get up and do something about it. Read full review

Geoff Berkshire

May 13, 2016

It’s not necessarily artful, but it’s also never less than compelling. If anything, Soechtig has only refined her skills at packaging a slick, audience-friendly documentary with a subject that feels even more urgent. Read full review

Robert Abele

May 13, 2016

Director Stephanie Soechtig’s passionately contended, slickly produced film may not sway the most fervid 2nd Amendment defenders, but in its problem-solving vigor could spur a lot of others who believe in change to make that call, join that group, or vote a certain way. Read full review

Boyd van Hoeij

May 13, 2016

It’s a sobering, collage-like overview of a problem that sadly hasn’t much changed since Michael Moore’s angrier and more provocative (if perhaps less rigorously journalistic) feature came out. Read full review

Kenji Fujishima

May 25, 2016

Tragic anecdotes put a human face on this still-polarizing issue and serve Soechtig and Couric’s broad argument in Under The Gun better than any heavy-handed music cues and animated statistics ever could. Read full review

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patrulje68

May 26, 2016

Deceptive editing, unbalanced presentation of the perspectives on the issue. Agenda driven propaganda masquerading as serious journalism. Those involved should be ashamed. If you want a neutral documentary on firearms in the US, look elsewhere.

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

Steven_Allred

May 23, 2016

Who wants more baseless, fact-free virtue signaling?

Anyone? No? That's what I thought. I don't, either. Yet, here we have precisely that - and only that. At no point was there any time or credence given to any opposing view points, whatsoever. This "documentary", if you can even callWho wants more baseless, fact-free virtue signaling?

Anyone? No? That's what I thought. I don't, either. Yet, here we have precisely that - and only that.

At no point was there any time or credence given to any opposing view points, whatsoever. This "documentary", if you can even call it that (SPOILER: you can't because it's not one), knowingly and deliberately mischaracterizes not only the NRA but everyone who believes in the right to keep and bear arms. Katie Couric does this through demonstrable half-truths and whole lies, from her Straw Man fallacies concocted from cherry-picked and selectively-edited soundbites which she knocks down with harrowing anecdotes, to her out-right demonization of tens of millions of peaceable people who just so happen to own guns.

Even the so-called "news" media has repeatedly called out the many lies woven into this smear piece. From CNN's cursory and effortless debunking of the "rash" of school shootings following Sandy Hook, to the mythical "increase" in mass shootings revealed by Mother Jones to be nothing more than a giant Moving The Goal Posts fallacy writ large. Not to mention a four-hour interview with John Lott left on the cutting room floor. While Couric likes to pretend that his work has been debunked many times, he has actually eviscerated the lies spun into this high-dollar AgitProp. His work has been replicated many times, in many journals, and by many researchers regardless of the methodologies or data sets used.

She clearly knows nothing of what the Second Amendment means, its history, its context in today's society, nor the case law at any level centered on its interpretation. What's worse is that she conveniently forgets that gun control laws - past and present - are meant exclusively to disarm, not "protect", the poor and minorities. This is a widely-known, well-documented, and long-settled historical fact. In fact, it was the very same NRA she openly loathes and openly lies about that armed black activists during the Civil Rights Movement. To this day, nobody else spends anywhere close to as much time or money teaching actual "gun safety" - that is, safe gun handling and not gun control - than the NRA. She either doesn't realize or consciously ignores that the National Shooting Sports Foundation is the lobbying arm of gun, ammunition, and accessory manufacturers - and that the NRA has collectively received very little money from them. All you have to do is look at their publicly-viewable IRS 990 forms to see for yourself.

It's absolutely disgusting that she preys upon the emotionally-traumatized victims and relatives, practically standing on the graves of their children herself and using their parents as props to shield herself from criticism to advance an anti-rights and anti-Humanist agenda. But, I guess that's what you're forced to do when you have literally not one shred of empirical evidence to draw from. Gun control advocates only care about dead children enough to use them as a weapon against anyone who disagrees with them, and that's literally all there is to it.

Gun control advocates like to talk of "compromise", a "middle ground", or "an open and honest debate." But, that's all it is or ever will be: talk. Compromise requires both sides to give something, and only gun owners have ever given up anything. From the National Firearms Act of 1934, to the Gun Control of 1968, the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners "Protection" Act of 1986, and the Brady Law in 1993. Only gun owners have continually ceded their rights from absolutely not-one-damn-thing in return, period. Not lower crime rates, which many dozens of studies say gun control has absolutely zero effect on, whatsoever. Not further assurance of their civil liberties, where in some states they can revoked in-absentia with no warning, no due process, and no recourse for the recovery of those rights, whatsoever. Not lower rates of accidents, which are actually the result of public education programs like the much-maligned NRA's Eddie Eagle. Nothing that was promised by deceitful gun control advocates. There is no "middle ground" with people dead-set on taking your gun away, which is in fact happening in states like California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York - and may be set to begin soon in Connecticut, as well. There is none with civil rights to begin with - which like-it-or-not includes the right to keep and bear arms. You either have that right or you don't. There can be no "open and honest debate" when on literally every social media channel, it's gun control advocates that are flat-out blocking dissenters without any warning and without any discussion whatsoever, no matter how polite, contrite, or factual the counter-arguments are.

This is purely a work of fiction, as is every other pro gun control "documentary" to date - regardless of whatever talking head "news" caster, celebrity, politician, or unqualified academic thinks, says, or does to the contrary.… Expand

2 of 3 users found this helpful21

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