According to Guns & Ammo magazine, the ad above, for gun-seller Daniel Defense, was submitted to the NFL for consideration to run during the Super Bowl. It was shot down:
The NFL's Advertising Policy addresses several Prohibited Advertising Categories, including guidelines for ads featuring alcohol, video games, movies, prescription drugs, and, of course, firearms. The firearms portion of the NFL's Prohibited Advertising Categories states: "5. Firearms, ammunition or other weapons are prohibited; however, stores that sell firearms and ammunitions (e.g., outdoor stores and camping stores) will be permitted, provided they sell other products and the ads do not mention firearms, ammunition or other weapons." According to these guidelines, Daniel Defense's Super Bowl commercial does not violate NFL policy for two reasons:
Daniel Defense has a brick-and-mortar store, where they sell products other than firearms such as apparel.
The commercial itself does not mention firearms, ammunition or weaponry. While Daniel Defense's commercial does not mention firearms, it does include a logo of their DDM4 rifle at the very end. When the NFL denied the ad, Daniel Defense immediately offered to replace the DDM4 logo with an American flag and/or the words "Shall not be infringed." The NFL replied with another non-negotiable denial.
And so an industry that is built on guys slamming into each other and inflicting damage—and that runs ads for all sorts of violent action movies, video games, and whatnot—pulls the plug on a gun ad that doesn't mention guns.
I support the NFL being allowed to choose to run whatever they want (or not) during their games, assuming that such decision-making is part of its contracts with the network airing the game. I also support the right of Daniel Defense to create an ad that they almost certainly knew would be banned, thus generating an enormous amount of publicity (the point of advertising) while also saving huge amounts of money (last year, 30 seconds reportedly cost $4 million). And I certainly support the move toward liberalized gun-ownership laws, which is both constitutional and has correlated with declines in gun-violence rates.
Hat tip: Brad Thor's Twitter feed, Hot Air.
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