Commentary

'Not Liberal' Publication Downtrend Slams 'Liberal' Saatchi & Saatchi For Gun Safety PSA

by Richard Whitman , Columnist, April 27, 2017

It's common practice for ad agencies to take up causes and lend their creative superpowers towards giving a voice to those causes. It's not so often, you see a right leaning publication take down those superpowers in a point by point take down of said agency's so-called left leaning PSA.

In this case, the left leaning agency is Saatchi & Saatchi and the right leaning publication is Downtrend. Saatchi created a video PSA entitled Take Down Gun Violence which, accompanied by the usual pensively dramatic musical score, offers up a step-by-step, How-to-CPR-like video which provides the steps a person caught up in a shooting should take in order to survive.

Those steps, of course, are not, according to Downtrend,the best steps to take when actually confronted with a shooter. Tearing the video down right from the start, Downtrend calls bullshit on the claim that there is more that one mass shooting per day in the united States. Then , when the video gets tactical and informs the viewer the best way to survive a shooting is to, well, run away, Downtrend slaps that advice upside the head writing, "This advice ignores the fact that mass shooters often pick gun-free zones that are target-rich environments and confined spaces so people can’t get away. If you try to run away in place with no exits, you will draw attention to yourself at the worst possible time."

The video suggest you help a person who cannot help themselves in a shooting situation whereas Downtrend is all, "They are pretty much telling people to grab a human shield to absorb the bullets in a mass shooting. That may be a winning strategy, but it is a very f*cked up thing to say or do."

Haha, Points to Downtrend.

Then, when the PSA suggest victims of a shooting incident attempt to locate objects to throw at the shooter Down trend fires back, "In other words, when a maniac with a gun opens fire, throw a bag of Gummi Bears at him. This totally busts the NRA position that only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. According to these liberal lunatics you can take out a gunman by throwing a small object at him. I can only assume that the makers of this PSA want people to die for giving this piece of advice."

Hey, there's two sides to every story, right?

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