David Codrea Exclusive: Everything about the Fake PSA was designed to manipulate and mislead

“Ad of the Day: Here’s What Happens When You Open a Gun Store in the Middle of NYC,” Adweek contributor Tim Nudd reported to industry shakers, movers, opinion-molders and manipulators. The influential trade publication reaches everybody who’s anybody in the advertising world, and they look to it for client/agency news, technology and trends. As gun owners have been increasingly seeing, those include “AstroTurf” attacks on the right to keep and bear arms embedded in slick, professionally-crafted propaganda campaigns masked as “public service announcements.”

“States United to Prevent Gun Violence and its agency, Grey New York, have teamed up for some truly hard-hitting PSAs,” Nudd advised. “Now, they’ve moved on to … a social experiment set in the real world. They … opened a real-looking gun store … and invited first-time gun buyers to check it out, with hidden cameras rolling.

“[T]hey put disturbing tags on each weapon, indicating which models were used in particular mass shootings, unintentional shootings, homicides and suicides.” Nudd elaborated. “[T]he fresh-faced buyers end up looking rather pallid by the end, and aren’t quite as excited to head home with a firearm.

“[I]t does, at least, suggest—indeed, demonstrate—that minds can be changed on the matter,” Nudd insisted. “And it’s chilling in the video to see the actual guns that were used in notorious crimes, and must have been that much more so in person.”

The guy swallowed it hook, line and sinker, didn’t he? Even after being told the setup was a fake, this media “professional,” who immerses himself for a living in the stuff that dreams are made of, accepted without question that the rest of the illusion must be real—because, after all, it was a public service announcement. Besides, who’s ever known an advertising agency to stretch the truth?

In a way, it shows how ignorant even seemingly tuned-in and intelligent people can be about the gun issue when they view traditional American culture as alien. So assuming his naiveté isn’t an act, it never occurred to Nudd—or to the millions of others who have watched the spot since it was first released last March and who only know what “journalists” publicizing the PSA as “news” parrot for them—to ask some basic questions? Because like everything else SUPGV (a.k.a. Ceasefire USA) does, it’s basically smoke and mirrors.

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