A gun control group briefed the team behind the ABC show Designated Survivor in the lead up to its premiere season and urged its supporters to thank the network for last week’s episode, which focused on guns and gun control, according to this story from freebeacon.com.
The story says the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reportedly gave a presentation to the people behind the show, starring Kiefer Sutherland as the de facto U.S. president Tom Kirkland, after most of the federal government is killed in a terrorist attack.
“Our president Dan Gross presented to members of their team a while back before the season began about representing gun violence on screen and spent time educating them on the issue,” Brendan Kelly, a Brady Campaign spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon. “It was part of that larger effort I alluded to in [a recent email to Brady supporters] to work with content producers and creators to highlight the issue of gun violence in America and the sensible solutions at our disposal.”
The episode in question “One Hundred Days,” focuses on Kirkland laying out the agenda for his struggling administration. His wife voices support for gun control and it creates a media firestorm.
The story says Kirkland is confronted at a town hall by a woman whose daughter was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend. Kirkland calls gun control “one of the most divisive, hot-button topics in our nation.”
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“I believe that the American people have every right to buy and own guns by virtue of the Second Amendment,” the fictional president says. “I would also like to take a moment to quash the myth that somehow gun control is equal to the Federal Government coming into your home and taking your weapons away. Nobody is advocating for that. We need to be doing everything we can to stop guns from falling into the hands of prior felons, people dealing with serious mental-health issues, people on terrorist watch lists. I mean, come on. We need to be using common sense. It’s as simple as that.”
The story says the Brady campaign is happy with the series’ portrayal of gun control.
“For us, it’s about changing social norms and rethinking the way we talk about guns,” Kelly said in the story.
“Please join us in thanking ABC for raising awareness and changing misconceptions about this critical issue of gun violence prevention,” Dan Gross wrote in an email to supporters.
The Brady group reportedly has also consulted on scripts for episodes of The Good Wife and Grey’s Anatomy as well as the recently released anti-gun Hollywood film Miss Sloane, about a Washington D.C. lobbyist, which tanked at the box office and with critics.
Sutherland’s most recent, popular role was that of a gun-wielding, bad-guy-killing, terrorist-torturing, super agent Jack Bauer on the long running Fox series 24, which was recently revived with new characters and actors. Sutherland’s character seems to have no problem with guns on that show.