Do lots of people have desk guns? The only time I’ve ever seen a pistol was when I was a Cub Scout, and they brought us to a gun range to lecture us about the danger of guns. I’ve never handled one or touched one even.
I learned how to shoot a shotgun in high school, but only at Clay pigeons. I haven’t touched another gun in the almost 30 years since. And this is coming from someone who has lived in Brooklyn, Florida, and Minnesota. All places with lots of guns (or so I’ve been told).
I have worked at a couple of places where there was always a loaded handgun by the cash register. Just in case. Never saw them used, but they were there. Appalachian region.
But the “desk gun” has been a trope in fiction for at least 40 years, which I think is what the original poster is confusing with reality. It’s ironic given their talk of “media literacy.”
What they seem to mean is that Hollywood movies and U.S. TV series use guns in different ways, and it became clear to them when they saw Sherlock.
I’m actually not sure if they consciously know the difference, because a significant number of people take media as a representative shorthand for reality and it’s not.
I remember that scene, and as an American, I understood the context immediately. But, then again, I watch a lot UK media, so maybe I’m a bit biased in that direction.
I’m pretty sure I remember the scene too, actually! That’s probably why I’m so adamant that the original poster is confused or bending the truth for dramatic purposes.
I think most people from the U.S. would understand the context like I did… because Watson reacts to the gun being in the desk.
If I’m remembering it correctly, Watson pauses or something when he sees a gun in the drawer. At the time I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of show it was going to be, or what the context of the gun might be. But him pausing gave me information! It’s a TV show made when they provided information visually instead of also saying it out loud.
Even if someone wasn’t thinking about the laws or culture of the country the media was made, the context needed to understand is provided right in the episode.
But it’s more fun for OP to spin that up into “People from the U.S. are so used to guns…”
Not only does it come at a time where both US and UK media made a big deal about guns being made illegal in the UK, but the scene is also surrounded by a bunch of flashbacks of John Watson, being in the war and him experiencing a bunch of PSD flashbacks about a bunch of war trauma, so it’s not exactly a mystery as to what’s going on in the scene.
The show came out in, I think, 2006, so this is all contextualized around the war in Iraq, in which the UK military played a big assist to the United States military in that theater. This article has some serious myopia in talking about this subject.
Hmm, from my personal experience, I wouldn’t say “lots of people,” but there are a few who have something similar. A cop (skewed statistic, but here’s my anecdote) I knew had a gun in almost every room. I think I hid my chuckle pretty well when he talked about his “bathroom gun.”
Do lots of people have desk guns? The only time I’ve ever seen a pistol was when I was a Cub Scout, and they brought us to a gun range to lecture us about the danger of guns. I’ve never handled one or touched one even.
I learned how to shoot a shotgun in high school, but only at Clay pigeons. I haven’t touched another gun in the almost 30 years since. And this is coming from someone who has lived in Brooklyn, Florida, and Minnesota. All places with lots of guns (or so I’ve been told).
I have worked at a couple of places where there was always a loaded handgun by the cash register. Just in case. Never saw them used, but they were there. Appalachian region.
Nope!
But the “desk gun” has been a trope in fiction for at least 40 years, which I think is what the original poster is confusing with reality. It’s ironic given their talk of “media literacy.”
What they seem to mean is that Hollywood movies and U.S. TV series use guns in different ways, and it became clear to them when they saw Sherlock.
I’m actually not sure if they consciously know the difference, because a significant number of people take media as a representative shorthand for reality and it’s not.
I remember that scene, and as an American, I understood the context immediately. But, then again, I watch a lot UK media, so maybe I’m a bit biased in that direction.
I’m pretty sure I remember the scene too, actually! That’s probably why I’m so adamant that the original poster is confused or bending the truth for dramatic purposes.
I think most people from the U.S. would understand the context like I did… because Watson reacts to the gun being in the desk.
If I’m remembering it correctly, Watson pauses or something when he sees a gun in the drawer. At the time I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of show it was going to be, or what the context of the gun might be. But him pausing gave me information! It’s a TV show made when they provided information visually instead of also saying it out loud.
Even if someone wasn’t thinking about the laws or culture of the country the media was made, the context needed to understand is provided right in the episode.
But it’s more fun for OP to spin that up into “People from the U.S. are so used to guns…”
Not only does it come at a time where both US and UK media made a big deal about guns being made illegal in the UK, but the scene is also surrounded by a bunch of flashbacks of John Watson, being in the war and him experiencing a bunch of PSD flashbacks about a bunch of war trauma, so it’s not exactly a mystery as to what’s going on in the scene.
The show came out in, I think, 2006, so this is all contextualized around the war in Iraq, in which the UK military played a big assist to the United States military in that theater. This article has some serious myopia in talking about this subject.
Hmm, from my personal experience, I wouldn’t say “lots of people,” but there are a few who have something similar. A cop (skewed statistic, but here’s my anecdote) I knew had a gun in almost every room. I think I hid my chuckle pretty well when he talked about his “bathroom gun.”
Have you not seen Dead Poets Society?
It’s one of my favorite movies, and influenced my decision to go to boarding school. But it’s a movie. I was talking about real life.
We didn’t have any guns in the house growing up, but I know plenty of people who did and so a desk gun is fairly common across the US.
I know my parents had a gun in the house, because they told me. But they had it locked up in a safe. I actually never saw it.