I hate guns. And the reason I hate guns — is because MacGyver hates guns.
All right, so it’s a little more complicated than that, but even so,
watching a show like MacGyver, where the hero is emphatically and unapologetically anti-gun,
was a not insignificant influence on my opinion
of guns, specifically the bit where I hate them and think we should get rid of them.
It was also a not insignificant influence on my decision to carry one of these.
Okay, it was the only influence on my decision to carry one of these. Also,
I didn’t get this until I was in my 20s . . . MacGyver had been out of production for almost
ten years . . . But there were reruns! He was a role model.
When I was a kid, MacGyver was appointment television.
The series originally ran on ABC from 1985 to 1992, and I rarely missed an episode. Now,
my fellow MacGyver nerds out there will know that Mac’s antipathy to guns was not
an original part of his character. While he was never shown packing heat, there is
this shot in the series pilot of him firing someone else’s machine gun at some bad guys.
However, it wasn’t long before the producers of the show decided
that MacGyver would be a hero who didn’t use guns — not just because he doesn’t need
them — although, ya know, he doesn’t — but because he doesn’t like them,
he makes a conscious choice not to use them. By midway through the first season, in fact,
in the classic episode “Flame’s End,” where we also meet Amy, the first in an eventually
endless series of ex-girlfriends and lost loves, Mac’s anti-gun attitude is firmly in place:
he saves the day, averting a nuclear meltdown by repurposing a revolver as a wrench, and declares
afterwards that it was “the first time I’ve ever been happy to have my hands on a gun!”
Now, it would have been fine if MacGyver’s feelings about guns had remained
unexplored. I would have just assumed that he was anti-gun because he’s a sensible fucking person.
MacGyver’s an American, he lives in the country with the highest level of gun violence by far
among developed nations, does it really demand further explanation?
But, MacGyver is a character on a TV show, and characters on TV shows,
especially characters on cheesy 1980s action-adventure TV shows, don’t get
to have a prominent, personality-defining trait unless there’s a story behind it. So,
in the show’s fourth season, in an episode titled “Blood Brothers,”
the producers finally got around to telling us the sad tale of MacGyver’s anti-gun origin story.
MacGyver has returned to Mission City, the small Minnesota town where he grew up. He’s here to
reconnect with some old friends so they can dig up a time capsule they all buried together as kids.
Throughout the episode MacGyver is also haunted by ominous flashbacks of the time
when he and his friends pooled their money to buy bullets so they could go shootin’.
One of those old friends is Chuck, who owns a gun store. MacGyver arrives just in time to
catch him making a sale. A customer, accompanied by his young son, is about to purchase a handgun
when Chuck informs him of the mandatory waiting period. The customer is like, “But I want a gun
right now!” And Chuck says, “I can sell you a rifle! No reason why you can’t walk outta here
with one of those today!” And the customer is like, “Yes, gimme one, I don’t care what kind
it is, I just need to buy a gun now, right now, I’ll take it — sold! Put it on my tab!”
I think he’s the most realistic character I’ve ever seen on television.
Anyway, the customer and his son and fellow future post-divorce murder/suicide participant
leave with the eventual evidence, and MacGyver says hi to Chuck.
MacGyver’s like, “Nice to see that you went and did something good and meaningful with your life.”
And Chuck’s like, “Thanks, man!” And MacGyver says, “I was being sarcastic. You’re a merchant
of death and you disgust me. Anyway, you’re coming with me, right? To do that thing?”
Chuck’s not too excited about doing the thing, but he says, “MacGyver, if you and Neil are gonna do
it, I guess I will, too.” Then, MacGyver goes and visits his friend Neil, who is a cop. Neil doesn’t
really want to do the thing, either. He’d rather hang out in the evidence room and fondle this gun
while speaking sadly of their mutual friend Jesse, who doesn’t seem to be around nowadays — hmm.
But Neil’s like “Okay, sure, if you and Chuck are in, then I’ll do the thing.”
But, MacGyver and his childhood chums digging up a time capsule they buried twenty-five years
ago isn’t much of an episode. Good thing Mac’s cozy little hometown has recently
become base of operations for a gang of violent big city drug dealers, eh?
Neil’s son Sean is a big ol’ crackhead and he owes money to Spider, the aspiring local kingpin.
Sean’s best friend, Danny, who is Chuck’s son, is also on Spider’s shitlist after smashing the
windshield of Spider’s treasured car. After Spider tries to kill Danny in front of his dad’s store,
Danny and Sean hatch a plan to hide out at a cabin in the mountains. But that plan isn’t
good enough for Danny, and MacGyver catches him trying to steal a gun from his dad’s store.
Danny manages to take the gun and get away from MacGyver by using the tried and true method of
shoving a big ass shelf over on him. Danny and Sean are supposed to meet at
an abandoned hospital and head up to the cabin, but Spider finds Sean first and
gets him to give up Danny’s whereabouts by plying him with sweet, sweet crack.
MacGyver finds a tweaked out but remorseful Sean, who’s like, “Danny’s my best friend,
I didn’t want to tell them anything, but they were gonna cut on me, and plus they had craaaaaack!”
MacGyver’s like, “Settle down, crackhead, just tell me where they went!” Not long after, MacGyver
arrives at the abandoned hospital, where Danny and Spider are playing a deadly game of hide and seek.
While running from Spider, Danny slips and falls down some stairs,
accidentally shooting himself with the gun he stole from his dad’s store. This triggers — heh!
“Triggers” — I didn’t even mean to do that! Anyway, this precipitates another flashback
to MacGyver’s childhood. Up to this point, we’ve seen that young Mac, Neil and Chuck,
along with their friend Jesse, pooled their money to buy some bullets so they could go
play with a shootin’ iron MacGyver borrowed without permission from his dad’s sock drawer.
In this new flashback, Young Neil is about to shoot a bird with the pistol, when Young MacGyver
intervenes and knocks the gun out of Neil’s hand. The gun discharges when it hits the ground,
shooting Jesse in the stomach. Neil and Chuck are like “Screw this!” and immediately abandon
their wounded friend to die. MacGyver stays, and, because even at that tender age he is the
master of improvisation, he disassembles Jesse’s bike and uses it to construct a
cart that he uses to pull Jesse behind his own bike in order to take him to get help.
Young MacGyver makes it out of the vast Minnesota wilderness to the main road and is able to flag
down a motorist, who then calls an ambulance — I’m guessing on his CB radio. Unfortunately,
by the time the ambulance arrives, Jesse is dead — sad, but not entirely unexpected. “Look at this
kid. When are they gonna do something about guns?” asks one of the paramedics — in 1963!
Back in the present, MacGyver hides the wounded Danny, mixes up a surprisingly convincing batch of
fake blood and with it leads Spider’s henchman into a freezer, where MacGyver contains him,
using the ejector rod — I looked it up — of the gun Danny stole to lock the freezer handle
closed from the outside. Then, MacGyver, with an assist from the rapidly bleeding-to-death Danny,
is able to shove Spider through a window, which immediately knocks Spider unconscious
for the rest of the episode, just like would happen in real life.
MacGyver smashes open a door with a dining cart and escapes the hospital with Danny just as Neil
and Chuck arrive on the scene. Danny doesn’t look good, but MacGyver’s need for personal redemption
is stronger than death, and when the paramedics arrive this time, they’re able to save Danny.
That leaves only one last piece of business: MacGyver, Chuck and Neil dig up their old time
capsule, which contains a rubber spider from Neil — I don’t think there’s any intended connection
to Spider the drug dealer; it’s just a poorly written show — an autographed baseball from Chuck,
a non-lethal mouse trap from MacGyver, and from Jesse, a photograph of the four of them together
playing army, brandishing toy guns, because tragic irony.
So, that’s why MacGyver doesn’t like guns: because he swiped his dad’s gun when he was
a kid, which led to his friend being shot and killed. It’s not a bad reason for hating guns.
And, given that MacGyver is a character in a TV show, it’s not a bad idea, at least in theory,
to personalize Mac’s reason for being anti-gun. It gives the show an excuse to sketch out a
bit of his backstory, it gives him something to atone for, it carries loads more story potential
than having MacGyver be against guns simply because he considers it sensible public policy.
Though, the flip-side of making Mac’s anti-gun stance more dramatically interesting is that the
producers risk undermining the related political and moral arguments. If Mac’s opposition to
guns is entirely, or at least primarily, rooted in a painful personal experience,
that doesn’t necessarily mean that we all should share his opposition,
because not all of us have had a similar experience.
A lot of us have — like, a-lot-a-lot of us — because this is America — but not all of us.
For example, I haven’t been directly affected by gun violence — yet — but I still think the
number of gun-related deaths in this country is horrifying, and I still harbor bottomless
contempt for the special interest groups and the gun-fetishizing culture that contribute to
those deaths and represent such formidable obstacles to meaningful reform. Of course,
personal tragedy can cause someone to care about a given issue, but it’s not necessary.
When I think about it, it reminds me of the question I used to get sometimes from religious
folks when they found out I was an atheist: “What happened?” As though my lack of belief in a god
must be traceable to a single formative event — an unanswered prayer, a pastor who turned out to be
an asshole, there must have been something. But, there wasn’t. I wasn’t betrayed by any church,
I’m not reacting to trauma, I’m not “mad at god” — I just don’t believe.
Fortunately, that’s only a minor concern as far as this episode of MacGyver goes. The anti-gun
message isn’t diminished by connecting it to Mac’s personal experience because the show
delivers that message with all the subtlety and restraint of a sledgehammer blow to the face.
See, I could have said something like “shotgun blast to the face” right there, but, anti-gun.
Anyway, just because the message of the episode is bluntly delivered,
that doesn’t mean it’s poorly crafted. Quite the opposite, in fact. I appreciate little details
that reinforce the main point — details like the fact that both shootings — that of Mac’s
friend Jesse in the flashback, and that of Danny in the present — are accidental.
True, Danny is being chased by violent criminals — that’s why he thinks he needs
a gun in the first place. But he isn’t shot by Spider or his goon — Danny is shot by his
own gun. Similarly, in the flashback, Jesse isn’t a murder victim — he dies because
his friends were playing with a gun which they never should have had to begin with.
The story is structured to illustrate something MacGyver tells Danny when he catches him trying
to take the gun from Chuck’s store: “You got a gun, things happen. People die.”
It’s the presence of guns, not how they’re used or how they’re intended to be used,
that the episode identifies as the ultimate problem.
It’s sure enough heavy-handed. And cheesy — when MacGyver witnesses Danny’s accidental shooting,
the shot shifts to slow-motion, and we cut from the sound of the gunshot as Danny
tumbles down the stairs to MacGyver crying the name of his dead childhood friend: Jesseeeeee!
It’s a hoot!
True, the heavy-handedness and the cheesiness probably serve to make the
message less effective for many people. I’m not sure how many viewers, other than me,
grew up to be staunch advocates of strict gun control as a result of watching MacGyver as kids.
But there’s another effect of doing episodes like this: we get to see that
the characters actually have opinions, and care about things larger than themselves.
Characters in TV shows and movies, especially action-oriented ones, almost never express any
thoughts or feelings about anything more concrete than vague concepts like “doing what’s right”
or “protecting the innocent” or “getting revenge on the people who slaughtered my family” — but
because his show had semi-regular ultra-preachy episodes, we know that MacGyver has strongly
held opinions on specific, real world issues: gun control, environmentalism, nuclear disarmament,
racism, and sex positivity — the freedom to enjoy deeply fulfilling romantic and sexual
relationships with as many willing partners as you can find, not including the gorgeous
aspiring actress who is obviously super into you but who you unaccountably regard as a sister.
That last one is merely implied.
The point is, MacGyver is a hero with convictions — specific, concrete convictions about political
issues that were relevant when the show was in production, and, sadly, are still very relevant
today. Yeah, he’s mostly a well-meaning white liberal. Even in his own show, he sometimes
comes across as a bit naive. But at least he cares about things. At least he takes a stand.
And there’s no stronger stand ever taken by MacGyver than his stand against guns. Once it’s
established in the first season, it remains one of his most prominent character traits
for the rest of the show’s seven-year run. “Blood Brothers” gives us some insight into why Mac feels
so strongly about guns, but it’s not actually the most ardently anti-gun episode the show ever made.
That would be “The Gun,” from season six, which deals specifically with the issue of crime guns
being re-sold rather than destroyed when they’re no longer needed as evidence. The episode ends
with a thousand crime guns being melted down. Pete, MacGyver’s friend and boss at the Phoenix
Foundation, remarks, “That’s a thousand guns nobody’s ever gonna be able to use on anybody
else.” And MacGyver nods and replies, “Yeah. A thousand down. Only a hundred million to go.”
That episode needs its own video, but the short version is: I’m with ya, Mac. Melt ‘em all down.
My hero.
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