************************UPDATE 03/12/13*******************************
For proof of the idiocy of this whole Tom Selleck affair witness 7 year old Bill Mumy demonstrate EXCELLENT trigger discipline in a 1961 Mattel TOY COMMERCIAL CLICK LINK HERE
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Red Flag warning! Blue Bloods Gun Safety Amateur Hour!
David Codrea highlights an incident on the set of Tom Selleck’s television show “Blue Bloods” wherein Mr Selleck chastises a bit player for “waving a real gun around with his finger on the trigger”.
In news reports NRA Director Tom Selleck is cast heroically for his response to the extra’s faux pas.
Unfortunately, I cannot join the huzzah chorus in this instance.
Aside from the well established notion it is bad juju to publicly humiliate “the little people” the larger point should not be ignored as well: if you have joined a ship of fools about to wreck in the shoals it may make you feeeeel better to yell at the cabin boy but it sure will not keep the ship from capsizing!
As one message board commentator observed– it was the worst kind of Hollywood celebrity prima donna temper tantrum–all sound and fury with no productive outcome.
Yes, hardly a poster boy for on-screen displays of gun safety, hero Selleck has pretty big feet of clay. At the end of the day he is just one more Hollyweird drama queen who does not know squat about which he rants.
Exhibit A:
(Magnum PI –finger on the trigger TWICE in EVERY opening credit!)
Finger on the trigger when he slaps in the magazine! Good thing the slide was not locked back!
Finger on the trigger when he runs through the jungle!
Exhibit B:
(So Tom, is your finger on the trigger because your front sight is on the target?)
If the situation on his show has gotten to the point an extra in costume is “waving a gun around” many, many highly paid staffers failed in their appointed duties before the extra even auditioned for the role.
While Mr. Selleck was correct to react with alacrity, his fury more properly is, and ought to be, directed toward both the prop master and producer of his show.
This is a clear-cut case of Pot. Kettle. Black.