[Onkel Neal]

Hollywood Heavyweights Take a Stand Against Guns on Film After Bill Maher Criticism

On Friday, Bill Maher attacked the hypocrisy of an industry that stands up for gun control laws while putting out movie after movie about men who pick up guns to enact revenge.

“They hate it when gun people say, ‘It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun,’ but they endlessly produce movies with that exact plot,” the comedian said on his show, firing off an endless list of films with the word “vengeance” in the title.

“When liberals scream, ‘Do something!’ after a mass shooting, why aren’t we also dealing with the fact that the average American kid sees 200,000 acts of violence on screens before the age of 18? And that according to the FBI, one of the warning signs of a potential school shooter is ‘a fascination with violence-filled entertainment,’” he added.

Nearly 200 writers, actors, and directors have signed a petition calling for Hollywood to “harness their power as culture makers” and reconsider how they portray gun use in film.

The petition, first reported by the newsletter The Ankler, urges the industry to limit scenes involving children and guns and to explicitly show characters locking their guns and putting them out of the reach of children.

It also asks creators to have “at least one conversation” during pre-production about narrative alternatives to firearm use. It doesn’t call for an outright ban on guns on screen.

So far, it's been signed by big names like Shonda Rhimes, Adam McKay, Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer, Mark Ruffalo, and Jimmy Kimmel. Other signatories include Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and horror filmmaker Eli Roth, ironically known for his gruesome death scenes.