Tuesday, October 25, 2011

"Kombat Wombats"

A friend alerts me to the following video advertisement from a well known and heretofore respectable ammunition manufacturer. The company in question is apparently doing their best to discourage the sort of "responsible gun ownership" the pro-gun crowd is adamant about.




There are several problems here.

First, the ad encourages poor weapons handling. Running, jumping, and then rolling over a car bonnet with a charged handgun (the ad suggests no safety mech is used) is a very good way to injure or kill yourself or others. A handgun's small size and short barrel demand very careful control because it is easy to misdirect. Moving your hand a few centimetres translates into a much wider arc a very short distance away, endangering anyone within that arc. Add a light trigger and the thing could very easily involuntarily discharge in all that leaping about. You'd think an ammunition company would get this.

Second, it suggests shooting at unarmed human targets is an acceptable thing to do. Zombies or not, normalising people as targets has absolutely no place in responsible civilian firearms use and ownership.

Third, this Zombie ammo is explicitly 'targeted' at Walter Mitty fantasists, or as my firearms retailing friend calls them, Kombat Wombats. These are the civilian gun nuts who pretty themselves up like a JTF-2 assaulter and accessorize with "cool" looking tactical shotguns and whatever other Parkerized steel and black-furnitured firearms are presently legal in Canada.

I'm sure more than a few would agree that these are not the people you want to possess firearms. Might even be the sorts you want to have to register their firearms. Selling lethal ammunition dressed up as a novelty gimmick certainly doesn't help the gun lobby or the Conservative case in any country.

 Addendum
Rev.Paperboy adds: Speaking of zombies

8 comments:

Scanner said...

There is a section of the American population that are armed to the teeth - guns in every room as one recent blog post put it. I am fascinated by this. I do not understand the apparent fear but I guess living in Toronto is not the same as living in Phoenix or Rochester. Why, in today's thoroughly policed society one needs to carry a concealed firearm capable of killing a grizzly bear is beyond my understanding. I spent some teen years in the militia, was taught how to use certain military firearms and am anything but opposed to gun ownership, but when I saw this ad a couple of weeks ago, I was floored. What is the message these wackadoodles are trying to deliver? And btw they are not the only company in the arms business to use the zombie theme - there is a company selling zombie targets - one of which features a zombie pizza delivery guy showing the pizza in the box he's carrying.
It appears as though the long gun registry is going to be dissolved this session of parliament and I am of mixed thought on that but we seem for the most part to have a different take on weapon ownership in Canada. I hope it's not just the time delay of fashion.

Edstock said...

Jeez, try a sense of humor. Brock Yates used to call those who kvetch in such fashion as "sanctimonious pecksniffs".

First, to buy any ammo in Canada, you have to have a Possession or Acquisition card. If you don't have one, you may be unaware of how intrusive the process of acquisition is. This process tends to eliminate a lot of the trailer-park moronic element that in the US, own a lot of guns. The point is, Canada is relatively safe from any zombie-ammo-crazed gun-play.

Second, just how big has the Zombie cultural phenomenon been? Huge. And it's all firearm-intensive. These are showing shooting unarmed humans, so the cultural hook has been well set. Thing is, very, very few see zombies as unarmed, because they don't have to be to be aggressively successful, all they have to do is avoid one between the eyes.

So, shooting unarmed zombies is not the same as shooting unarmed human beings.

So, Hornady, a specialist manufacturer, comes in late on the zombie phenomenon, to advertise a spoof product? Remember, they are a specialist manufacturer, originally of bullets and brass for the re-loading enthusiast. It was not specified where the ad was broadcast, but judging by the trailer legalese, it was seen on US gun-TV programs, and not on prime-time majors.

So, after years of media zombie-blasting, Hornady finally runs this boring, badly-edited piece? Meh. Let's bitch about Bashar, instead, or Stevie.

The good news is that the American consumer is so brain-armored that me-too ads like this are like shooting a rhino with marshmallows.

liberal supporter said...

They claim registration leads to confiscation. They are correct. Until the people registry is abolished, including the census, the government can use it to search everyone and take away their guns.

And even most criminals register in the people registry.

Steve said...

I got to thinking about guns and the Apocalypse, and was surprised how easy it is for a citzen in good standing to kit up with some serious firepower.

Edstock said...

"how easy it is for a citzen in good standing to kit up with some serious firepower."

In Canada, depends where you live and who you know. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Also, when you are unarmed, even a .22 single-shot is "serious firepower". Don't believe me? There's a couple of dozen groundhogs taken at 75-100 yards with my Savage .22 single-shot which I got when I was 10, who found out all about hollow-point ammo. :)

Larix said...

"These are the civilian gun nuts who pretty themselves up like a JTF-2 assaulter and accessorize with "cool" looking tactical shotguns and whatever other Parkerized steel and black-furnitured firearms are presently legal in Canada."

I dont really see your problem with 'cool' tatical shotguns. I generally bring my Mossberg 'Persuder' to work for bear/animal protection. Everybody feel safer with a firearm on the worksite.

Boris said...

Larix,
A friend of mine uses one for bear protection in remote areas/far North too. If you read the other part of the bit you quoted, I'm not talking about people who require something rugged, simple, and single purposed ;)

Edstock said...

"These are the civilian gun nuts who pretty themselves up like a JTF-2 assaulter and accessorize with "cool" looking tactical shotguns and whatever other Parkerized steel and black-furnitured firearms are presently legal in Canada."

Sure, you get "posers", just like you get with any activity, but unless you own firearms, or hang out with people who do, you probably don't know about the

International Practical Shooting Confederation Of Canada

http://www.ipsc-canada.org/

Now, not all of 'em are testosterone-crazed mullets. I knew a wonderful grandmother, Edith Iwama, who at age 70+ was competing in IPSC, with her 12 ga Benelli (military - Parkerized) and her 10mm Glock.