RIP Gun TV, Home to the Most Paranoid Informercials in America

The first handgun I ever shot was a Desert Eagle. It was handed to me by a guy named Buck who lived out in the emptiness of eastern Nevada, where he spent his time taming wild horses, making exploding shotgun shells, and shooting at RC Cola cans from his living room window. The kickback from the Eagle made my arm feel like it was going to snap, but I swore that when I got back to Florida I would buy a firearm for myself. I felt that I had been let in on some sort of secret and was hooked.

I snapped back to reality quickly upon my return. Owning a gun didn't seem that fun in civilization, where I couldn't shoot out of a window without killing someone. My current desire to shoot a gun is basically nil. But I get it: Guns are awesome, at least in one sense of that word, and the US loves them. According to the latest data, 36 percent of Americans own firearms or live with someone who does. And one gun isn't enough for lots of people—about 3 percent of people in the United States own half the nation's guns.

Last year the nation's gun folks got their own cable network, aptly named Gun TV. Boasting the tagline "Home Shopping: Fully Loaded," the channel was home to an unending series of infomercials in which men with small faces and giant belt buckles are constantly fondling artillery. That artillery, the men would tell you, can be yours if you call the number on screen, plunk down a 20 percent downpayment, and tell the sales rep the name of a store where you can pick up your purchase.

It was an odd variation of the usual selling-products-through-a-screen formula, but it was also a vision of America, the same America I glimpsed when I was firing a weapon in the high desert—a place where guns aren't just tools for killing, but symbols of power and even freedom. Gun TV is off the air as of last week (its founders insist it's a temporary hiatus), but that vision of America is still alive and kicking, and I feel like I learned something about my country just by watching the channel.

Someone once told me that they understood Trump's popularity when they caught themselves eating a kale salad in bed on the Fourth of July. I had a similar epiphany when I turned on Gun TV while eating a meal assembled from Whole Foods produce and saw someone playing a game called "fruit salad," a.k.a. blowing up avocados with a Magnum Research Desert Eagle. I felt like a cultural anthropologist who was suddenly privy to a world I shouldn't have access to. It wasn't long, though, until a host named Billy Birdzell attempted to relate to people like me.

As he decimated the produce, Birdzell, who sort of but not really looks likeChanning Tatum, spun a tale about an upbringing in New York that didn't exactly breed an appreciation for guns.

"I didn't know anyone who knew anyone who owned guns," he explained. "But there was something about guns that intrigued me."

Birdzell's indoctrination into gun culture apparently came when he joined the armed forces, where he was "given a funny uniform." After two tours in Iraq, he traded that outfit in for an ill-fitting blazer and polo combo that looked like it came from the sale aisle at Kohl's, and got a gig that he considers a dream come true since it allows him to exercise his constitutional rights on live TV. While shilling for the $1,530 weapon (Gun TV price: $1,299), Birdzell explained that the people he grew up looked down on hunters, which is something that his co-host, Bree Warner, related to. She also grew up where there were no guns, but learned to love how they made her feel like "an action hero in her own life."

Gun TV was full of sales pitches like that, testimonials that almost sound like conversion stories. On another occasion when I was watching Gun TV, a large man in a cowboy hat selling a Savage Arms A-17 rifle explained to the audience that there's nothing like going to the gun store and seeing the smiling faces of like-minded individuals. This wasn't a counter to all those "guns are bad because they kill people in large numbers" arguments I've internalized, but a notion that runs parallel to them. Like any hobby, being really into guns makes you feel connected with people who share that passion. Guns can be an identity, even a community in a world that's maybe short on supportive communities right now.

Other sales pitches deployed during an hour dedicated to ammo were less convincing. A female host suggested turning empty bullet cases into jewelry for wives and girlfriends. Someone said it made more sense to shoot a ton of bullets rather than just a few. In the middle of one infomercial, I was forced to confront the sheer enormity of bullets through a half-hour of close-ups. Previously I thought of bullets as being little specks, but the borderline pornographic images of hollow-points revealed they were actually as long as my middle finger, except unlike my middle finger they are designed to go very fast into someone's body, then explode.

In case viewers were wondering why you'd want to own bullets meant to go shred body armor and play "fruit salad" with someone's organs, the hosts explained that they are actually a responsible decision, because they allow you to take out a target while firing a minimal amount of shots. This would reduce the amount of violence because—actually, sorry, I didn't follow this bit.

Not surprisingly, given that a lot of Gun TV's products were being sold to people who would absolutely, 100 percent be down to get into a shootout if called upon, there was a wee bit of paranoia. Nowhere was that more evident than in the commercials breaking up the longer infomercials. In constant rotation are ads for a law firm that specializes in winning settlements for mesothelioma victims and another one for a dashcam that features a testimonial from someone who had a border patrol agent crash into their car. In the Gun TV universe, something bad and completely random is always about to happen to you. I can't tell if the ads are designed to prime the viewer with fear so they're desperate for a solution by the time a host comes back on TV with a Taurus 85 and appeals specifically to fathers who should buy the gun for their daughters, or if that was a happy accident.

"The point of guns is not to operate a machine," a host said during one of the few bits of GunTV that stood out to me. "The point of shooting guns is who we become in the process."

During the process of watching this interminable infomercial for America, I came around to a better understanding of why I liked the idea of guns at one point. Owning one was considered socially unacceptable by the majority of my friends and family. They were forbidden, dangerous, wrapped up in mystery or romance. Even though Gun TV failed, the mixture of power and danger that gives firearms their appeal isn't going anyway.

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