16511: Riding Shotgun—Or With Assorted Firearms.

 

Carry Responsibly? Apparently, friends don’t let friends drive unarmed.

14305: Delayed WTF 43—Missing Target.

MultiCultClassics is often occupied with real work. As a result, a handful of events occur without the expected blog commentary. This limited series—Delayed WTF—seeks to make belated amends for the absence of malice.

Campaign reported on a concept by The Escape Pod for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, featuring a bike-sharing station turned into a rifle rack, presumably intended to highlight the ease of obtaining firearms. Campaign wrote, “The 18ft-long structure features signage to highlight the disparity between Illinois and neighbouring Indiana state gun laws.” Not sure what Campaign meant to imply with that statement. According to The Chicago Tribune, Indiana gun laws are much less stringent than Chicago gun laws, thanks in part to Vice President Mike Pence, the former Indiana governor. Plus, it’s more than a little naïve to combat gun violence with a publicity stunt. But advertising agencies are forever eager to shoot for awards by any means necessary—including patronizing promotions.

Why Chicago hopes this installation will spark discussion around gun crime

By Gurjit Degun

A row of 10 replica rifles have been installed in a bike-sharing station in Chicago to show how easy it is obtain a weapon.

The 18ft-long structure features signage to highlight the disparity between Illinois and neighbouring Indiana state gun laws.

It also has an iPad for donations to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The organisation is asking people to share the campaign on social media with the hashtag #GunShare.

Nicholas Berg of Ojo Customs built the installation. US brand experience agency The Escape Pod worked with the Brady Center on the activation, which is running from 10 to 16 May.

11606: Shooting Shit.

Stop gun violence by promoting sticker graffiti. Brilliant.

11454: Starbucks Calls Ceasefire.

Advertising Age reported that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz published an open letter to customers that featured the following key message:

For these reasons, today we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas -- even in states where “open carry” is permitted -- unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.

Um, Starbucks prohibits customers from smoking in their stores. Consuming alcohol is generally banned too. You probably are even forbidden from bringing beloved pets onto the premises. But Schultz is only “respectfully requesting” that patrons not pack heat?

Would you like a shot of espresso? No, thanks, I’ve got a shotgun.

11405: Gun Culture Is Clueless.

The advertising for gun culture is ridiculous, with its mindless machismo and celebrity endorsements. Check out this campaign inviting idiots to vote for their favorite We Are Weatherby ad—and enter for a chance to win a Weatherby® Mark V® rifle. It’s the Marlboro Man packing heat.

11328: NRA Nut Named Noir.

From The Los Angeles Times…

NRA’s black commentator becomes Web sensation

Colion Noir may not fit the NRA stereotype, but he does click with fellow members and is ‘certainly causing some controversies.’

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Colion Noir belongs to the NRA and owns several guns, including a sleek Glock 17 handgun and a customized AR-15 rifle. But as Noir frequently points out, he does not fit the stereotype of NRA members, or what he calls OFWG: “Old, fat white guys.”

At 29, he’s not old. Nor is he fat — he’s slender and stylishly dressed with sneakers made by Prada. He’s also not white.

In the world of gun owners, Noir, an African American, has become an Internet sensation and his popularity is growing. At this year’s National Rifle Assn. convention here, he was surrounded by fans when he arrived to film a Sportsman Channel segment on the NRA News stage.

“You are certainly causing some controversies,” said Cam Edwards, host of the radio talk show “NRA News Cam & Co.”

Noir has attracted followers with funny, edgy pro-gun videos — titles include “Gun Control & Bathrooms” and “You Know You’re a Gun Control Hypocrite if …” He has emerged as a dynamic and unexpected NRA persona.

Gun control advocates dismiss him as an NRA pawn, and some blacks accuse him of being an Uncle Tom. But to many at the convention, Noir demonstrated a historic diversity among gun owners that defies stereotypes.

After Noir left the talk-show stage, fans approached to shake hands and pose for photographs. Most were white. A handful of them, like Quentin Smith, were black.

“Congratulations,” said Smith, 44, a gun owner from Cypress, Texas. “There’s a few of us out there.”

The NRA does not release membership demographics, but according to a Pew Research Center survey, many gun owners in America are white — 31% of whites polled this year said they owned guns, compared with 15% of blacks and 11% of Latinos.

“This is one tie that binds all of us together,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, describing the group as “the oldest civil rights organization in America.”

Arulanandam noted that the NRA also recently signed on a woman and a young veteran as commentators who speak to other growing demographics within the ranks of gun owners. He said the NRA did not choose Noir because of his race.

“When he speaks, he’s able to relate to a variety of people. That’s why he has a broad following,” Arulanandam said.

Noir was born Collins — “Mr. Colion Noir” is a stage name — son of an executive chef and a registered nurse. He graduated from high school in Houston, went to the University of Houston, where he majored in political science, and earned a law degree from Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

Noir is a practicing attorney. He reads fashion blogs, loves gadgets and drives a sports car and a truck — neither with a gun rack, although he keeps a metal candy dish full of bullets in his living room.

Noir said he grew up hesitant to admit he liked firearms because it wasn’t something people talked about in his middle-class neighborhood. He fired his first gun, a little Taurus .40, about seven years ago at the urging of a friend who took him to a shooting range.

“I remember how exhilarating it was,” Noir said, comparing the experience to skydiving.

Soon afterward, he was going to the range weekly and researching guns. He later joined the NRA and bought about a half dozen guns. Noir, who once worked at A/X Armani Exchange and favors tailored suits, worries that a concealed handgun might “print,” or show through the fabric.

“Secret Service have the worst cut suits — big and bulky,” so their guns won’t show, Noir said.

A few years ago he began posting YouTube videos of himself critiquing guns and accessories. Then he started tackling politics and pop culture, addressing mass shootings, assault weapon bans and gun control campaigns by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the rapper formerly known as Snoop Dogg.

Noir said he recently started preparing a video about “stand your ground” laws after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

“I decided to table it because there’s too much complexity,” Noir said.

Noir sprinkles his videos with gun slang and offbeat humor, sometimes delivered with a smirk, sometimes deadpan. Some videos have been viewed more than 800,000 times.

In one, Noir sits on a plush couch in his loft next to his assault rifle, wearing his black Yankees cap and a modern plaid shirt, tossing off references to Justin Bieber and “Entourage” while mocking the owners of .45 handguns as “the Scientologists of the gun world” because they’ve attributed mythical powers to the .45 bullet — think “Zeus’ thunderbolt or Thor’s hammer.”

The camera cuts again and again to Noir wearing different baseball caps as he plays other characters.

Why carry a .45? The characters explain.

“Because a 9 millimeter only kills your body, but the .45 — that kills your soul,” one says, staring dully at the camera.

“Maybe because I’m too lazy to shoot twice,” another says.

“The only ones I know can survive a .45 is Wolverine and Superman,” says yet another.

Noir reasons there’s not much difference between a .45 and other powerful firearms, like the 9-millimeter handgun: “Are you going to be any more dead when, in one of her drunken stupors, Lindsay Lohan runs over you with her Range Rover Sport versus Kim Kardashian in her full-size Range Rover?”

Noir was launching his online brand last spring when the NRA approached him. Officially, he’s a paid commentator, not a spokesman, though the videos are branded NRA. He and the group declined to say how much he’s paid.

Once a deal had been struck, the NRA released an ad in March promoting his first video praising the gun rights group for championing the right of blacks to bear arms during Jim Crow and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“The same government who at one point hosed us down with water, attacked us with dogs and wouldn’t allow us to eat at their restaurants told us we couldn’t own guns when bumbling fools with sheets on their heads were riding around burning crosses on our lawns and murdering us,” Noir says in the video as “Washington elitism” flashes across the screen.

It was not a misreading of history, according to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”

Winkler said that the armed Black Panthers of the 1960s, despite criticism by then-Republican California Gov. Ronald Reagan and many conservatives, paved the way for the NRA’s current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment: that citizens should be able to carry guns in public, not just for hunting, but for protection, including protection against government tyranny.

Read the full story here.

11271: American Campaign Made In Canada.

Why did Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America choose a Canadian advertising agency to create its campaign? Plus, is it ever a good idea to let children handle assault rifles in any context?

From Ads of the World.

10926: Recoiling In Horrors.

Earlier this month, New American Dimensions President-CEO David Morse published a perspective at The Big Tent titled, “In a Culture of Mass Shootings, the Ad Industry Shares the Blame.” In the piece, Morse wondered about the responsibility our industry faced for promoting firearms in light of the continuing tragedies involving guns. The subsequent comments seemed to scoff at Morse’s opinions—yet perusing the latest issue of RECOIL magazine almost corroborates everything the adman wrote.

The 2nd Amendment remains a popular theme. Wonder if any of these advertisers have read what Thom Hartmann wrote at Truthout.

President Obama has been criticized for remarking about people who “cling to guns and religion,” but this ad apparently has no reservations connecting things.

Celebrity endorsements are utilized too. It’s only a matter of time before Betty White is hawking rifles too.

Morse highlighted the masculinity of gun culture, and RECOIL clearly displays the reality with pin-up style photography and a Girls section on its website.