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Launching my first ad today, “Lawman.”
SHARE today to help spread the word – Russell Coleman for Attorney General pic.twitter.com/oTlIsM0rAQ
— Russell Coleman (@RCforAG) October 6, 2023
In Malcolm Gladwell’s latest season of “Revisionist History,” a podcast, he focuses on Americans’ fascination with firearms and our pop culture obsession with iconic TV lawman Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke,” a symbol of morality, law and order. The good guy with a gun. Gladwell points out how each show, for the 20 years it aired from 1955 to 1975, most always began “with a shot of Dillon squaring off against a bad guy on the main street in Dodge. He outdraws him, shoots the bad guy dead. Then, after the credits, we see Dillon walking through a cemetery where all the many dead are buried and in voiceover delivering a little homily about the enormous weight on his shoulders.”
This is the image [Russell] Coleman seemingly longs to evoke in his ad, a modern Matt Dillon, here to save the day. …
To our lawmakers and those campaigning for our votes: We know the difference between a TV character like Matt Dillon and real life. Your gun videos, your gun photos, your Second Amendment posturing, your pandering to the gun lobby, your pretense that you’re tough on crime because you can shoot a gun on the range, are insulting to everyone you represent, and most insulting to every victim of gun violence and their loved ones.
This ain’t “Gunsmoke,” and you are not a fictional TV lawman. You have real power. We need you to talk some sense. We need you to find your spine, draft some bipartisan bills, whip the votes, educate your followers, and lead us out of this violent, gun-obsessed mess.
Your sin is indifference. We need you to bother to care.
— Teri Carter in This Ain’t ‘Gunsmoke.’ The Victims of Gun Violence, Their Families and Friends Are Real
