States United to Prevent Gun Violence and Grey New York have made celebrated gun-control PSAs together for years. Now, they back with another powerful video, following up 2015's famous "Gun Store" experiment with another sobering real-world prank.
This time, they invited self-professed action movie lovers to a screening of a film Gun Crazy, which was billed as the latest big-budget blockbuster. But when they got into the theater, with hidden cameras rolling, they were sickened to see real footage of gun violence, including unintentional shootings, suicides, incidents of domestic violence and homicides.
Check out the spot below.
Warning: The video contains graphic footage of real gun violence.
It's a pretty sadistic way of illustrating the gap between American culture's glorification of guns and the actual consequences of real gun violence. But then, SUPGV believes it's important to shock audiences back to reality, if necessary, who have been desensitized by fictional depictions of gun death.
"In 2015 alone, there were almost as many mass shootings as there were calendar days," Julia Wyman, executive director of States United to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement. "Our goal with #GunCrazy is to showcase the need for society as a whole to re-sensitize themselves to the gruesome consequences of gun violence. We encourage people to watch and share this educational PSA featuring first-hand reactions to real footage. Help us continue to bring widespread awareness to this issue and reignite the dialogue about our national crisis."
The message, revealed on screen at the end of the video, is this: "We need to change the way we look at guns. We would be crazy not to."