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<\/a><\/p>\nThis is a still from the US version of the trailer. Now look at a matching still from the international version. (It’s lower resolution than the first still, but you’ll see my point momentarily.)<\/p>\n
Notice any difference?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a really stupid edit. Winstone still has his hands in the air. You know that guns are being pointed at them. But someone decided it would be inappropriate for American preview audiences to see the guns. What\u2019s worse is that it really makes the shot look goofy now that you know what they\u2019re doing. Because they take out the weapons using CGI, Ray Winstone\u2019s pants are strangely gelatinous in the areas where the guns have been removed. (There\u2019s a Freudian sentence if there ever was one.) It\u2019s not only a silly edit, it\u2019s a clumsy one besides.<\/p>\n I honestly don\u2019t understand it.<\/p>\n Presumably, we\u2019re supposed to think that the sight of guns pointed at real people will be somehow too alarming or offensive for young children. Yet it\u2019s not as if the trailer is violence free. We see crashing cars and soldiers being hurled from moving trucks and things blowing up and people being kicked through glass. There\u2019s also the use of the word \u201cdamn,\u201d which my 11-year old daughter noticed instantly even when I didn\u2019t. Why is all that acceptable, but guns being aimed \u2013 but not fired – are beyond the pale?<\/p>\n Yesterday\u2019s brutal massacre at Northern Illinois University is once again getting the usual suspects talking about more stringent gun laws, and it just makes my blood boil. Don\u2019t people realize that the people willing to obey gun laws are not the ones who walk on to a college campus and start blowing people away? Universities, by and large, are designated as \u201cGun Free Zones.\u201d Which means that wackos know exactly where they can start shooting and not have to worry about anyone shooting back.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that I don\u2019t own a gun. I have never owned a gun. I don\u2019t want to own a gun. (I keep losing my keys; imagine what happens when I would inevitably lose my firearm.) I have never gone hunting, and the last time I held a loaded weapon in my hands that fired something stronger than BBs, I was at Boy Scout camp. My position on this issue has nothing to do with my own personal experience or passions. Instead, it\u2019s focused on one concrete, cold, hard fact:<\/p>\n Restricting gun rights results in the death of more innocent victims from gun violence.<\/p>\n This seems counterintuitive. After all, who wouldn\u2019t want to rid the world of gun violence? If, legislatively, we can prevent another Northern Illinois University or Virginia Tech or even Trolley Square here in Salt Lake, shouldn\u2019t we do it? Of course.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not what restricting Second Amendment rights does. In reality, it does just the opposite.<\/p>\n In Scotland, where I served my mission, even the police officers don\u2019t carry guns. And in November, 1997, the British Parliament outlawed handguns altogether. , which put a huge dent on the arms industry as the manufacturing and production of guns, and their accessories, viz. upper parts for AR-15’s<\/a> had to be desisted.No British citizen now has the right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n Gun violence in Great Britain has skyrocketed.<\/p>\n In 2001, CBS news declared England \u201cone of the most violent urban societies in the Western world\u201d because of the dramatic increase in gun violence, up 60% from three years previous when the ban was put in place. The rate continues to rise, despite the fact that guns have been illegal for over a decade.<\/p>\n Examples here in the United States tell a similar story. When I lived in Los Angeles near the University of Southern California, I could hear gunfire outside my window almost nightly. This is despite stringent gun control laws in that city. I have also lived in Washington DC, which has a horrific problem with gun violence, despite the fact that gun ownership in DC is all but illegal. These so-called \u201cwell intentioned\u201d anti-gun ordinances do nothing but keep guns out of the hands of those who exercise their rights responsibly. They encourage the black market sale of weapons to those with no regard for the law.<\/p>\n And that means more people will die at the end of a gun.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think my children need to be protected from the very sight of a gun in an Indiana Jones movie. They don\u2019t need to be afraid of a piece of metal. They need to be afraid of the kind of people who would use that metal for evil, while at the same time understanding that it\u2019s the people who use the metal, not the metal itself, that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n The new Star Trek movie isn\u2019t going to be released until 2009. That blows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hmmmm.Yesterdaywas the launch of the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer, which was cause for celebration in the Cornell household. It\u2019s something of a mixed bag as a trailer \u2013 the montage of Indy\u2019s previous adventures doesn\u2019t really work, and there are absolutely no plot specifics provided. But it captured ... 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