Make showing improper gun safety on film illegal.

Unless that’s what the character would really do, if someone is being BA with a gun they have to do so like anyone would be trained to handle a firearm. Make it as illegal as cigarettes in advertising.

It’s subliminal false advertising for a popular misconception of guns. This misconception costs America lives and American films are contributing to it at home and worldwide. We can put a stop to it on our soil. And hopefully others will follow suit.

Guns command respect. They are wooden practice swords. They’re a powerful force scary enough to be handled carefully. The fact that action heroes keep their fingers on the trigger the whole time is a gross exaggeration beyond the needs of fiction. These heroes could instead be like superheroes and be role models or at least promoters of knowledge for everyday life (for antiheroes and the like)—and help protect viewers from their potentially negative influence. Humor does this. Education does this. Not being gun safety idiots does this.

As artists we need to give audiences the right idea about what guns are, and as a general rule, do so in a way that is politically neutral and most definitely not counterfactual.