Hollywood Loves Guns in Movies — In Real Life, Not So Much

“Hollywood is helping to lead the charge to destroy the NRA while giving money to the pro-gun control campaign,” former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said on Friday night, filling in for Fox News host Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle.” “But if they want to take a stand on violence, then perhaps they should look at their own material.”

Chaffetz was referring to the scores of liberal celebrities who have attacked the Second Amendment in recent years, all while their shtick on TV and movies is centered far too often around using guns. Sixty-one percent of broadcast prime-time TV episodes featured violence during the “November sweeps” period. Plus, 39 percent of those 287 shows had gun-related violence in them, according to the Parents Television Council.

This is all pure hypocrisy from Hollywood. The entertainment elites say they want to ban guns — when these weapons are the very reason many of them are successful.

“These are the same people who thought Hillary Clinton was not only going to be president, but a good president,” actor Antonio Sabato Jr. told Chaffetz. “She left people to die in Benghazi. Let’s not forget that. We had the Academy Awards the other day protected by LAPD, armed bodyguards and guns all over the place.”

“The NRA has done more to protect people than Hollywood ever can, so let’s make sure people know the truth here,” he added.

Since Hollywood’s violence in films has increased by 13 percent since 2013, Chaffetz asked Sabato if the industry had any sort of moral obligation to stop showing so much violent programming.

Sabato agreed he would like to see better morals within the profession.

“Why don’t they make more movies about positive stuff?” Sabato asked. “What about family values? What about God every once in a while? Loving, caring stuff, and not the Disney stuff. Why don’t we do shows that have God and show families sitting around the table together? We’ve got to do something about the real stuff here. The problem is not the gun — it’s the person pulling the trigger.”

Children and teens are impressionable. So if Hollywood really wants to stop gun violence, perhaps it would be in the industry’s best interest to stop glorifying violence in films. Seems pretty basic.

However, the industry’s top priority always has been and will be their bank accounts — so the chance of this group’s doing something actually impactful to reduce gun violence is, alas, slim.

Tom Joyce is a freelance writer from the South Shore of Massachusetts. He covers sports, pop culture, and politics and has contributed to The Federalist, Newsday, ESPN, and other outlets.