No Shots In The Park: Antigun Propaganda Bites Jurassic Park By now, you've probably gone to see the most spectacular science fiction film of the last ten years, Jurassic Park. What, you may ask, is a movie review doing in this magazine? This isn't a movie review at all; it's an examination of the ways in which antigun propaganda was subtly added to the movie, contrary to Michael Crichton's book of the same name. This twisting of the book is, unfortunately, typical of the manner in which much of Hollywood continually attempts to propagandize Americans against gun ownership. In the book, the game warden, Muldoon, given responsibility for this collection of carnivorous dinosaurs requests "shoulder-mounted LAW-missle launchers," but his request is initially turned down: "Management was horrified, insisting that there be no guns anywhere on the island." Instead, Tasers and other non-lethal weapons are to be used to control the dinosaurs. Finally, a compromise is reached whereby, "two specially built laser-guided missle launchers were kept in a locked room in the basement. Only Muldoon had keys to the room."[1] As the disaster that comprises the major plot of the book Jurassic Park comes to a climax, Muldoon finds himself short of weaponry to deal with critters that are eyeing him and the other humans as breakfast, but still finds the missle launchers an effective part of the solution.[2] The absence of adequate defensive weaponry in the book is a fundamental, though minor part of the storyline. However, let us not read a pro-gun message into the book Jurassic Park. At one point, the mathematician Dr. Malcolm compares the power of science and technology to weapons, and suggests that the discipline of learning a martial art acts as a restraint on the use of it: "A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special."[3] Yet while the book overall conveys no strongly hostile messages about guns, and certainly shows the missle launchers as a part of how the heroes save themselves from becoming Dino Chow, the movie dramatically alters the story to present a veiled antigun message. The movie opens with a dinosaur being moved into an exhibit area; contrary to the book, the workers who surround the cage are armed with AR-15 pattern weapons. (I won't even consider the silliness of using .223 -- a marginal cartridge for deer -- to stop a rampaging dinosaur.) When the game warden Muldoon finally breaks open the weapons cabinet near the climax of the movie, instead of being stuck with the consequences of "Management was horrified," we see a long line of folding stock 12 gauge shotguns loaded with slug rounds. Unlike the book, where Muldoon successfully uses rocket launchers to remove himself from a velociraptor's menu, in the movie, Muldoon, an experienced East African dangerous game hunter, never gets off a shot at any of the dinosaurs -- even when facing one at point blank range that is about to eat him. The remaining heroes fire three shots at a distance of ten feet or less at a stationary dinosaur -- and every shot misses! The shotgun is left on the ground, jammed, a symbol of the futility of self-defense with firearms. In the book, Muldoon and the attorney Gennaro must cross a velociraptor-infested area to turn on the electric generators. Without hesitation, Muldoon offers, and Gennaro accepts a rocket launcher to avoid being disemboweled and eaten alive.[4] Yet in the movie, Gennaro has already become a late-night snack for a tyrannosaurus rex, and Muldoon and Ellie Sattler do the heroic charge towards the power generator. In spite of a plethora of weapons, and the very real prospect of an agonizing, gruesome death, Sattler, who is portrayed as a liberated 90s woman, neither asks for, nor is offered a weapon with which to defend herself. Under the circumstances, I would expect even the most fervent antigunner to ask for a weapon. If the movie Jurassic Park had appeared out of the blue, or if the same subtle anti-gun messages had appeared in the book, I might be less concerned. But it would appear that the climax of the book was altered significantly in order to promote a perception of hand-carried arms as futile forms of self-defense. At the risk of falling into a form of film criticism that finds deeper messages than were intended, there are some interesting analogies that might be drawn from the movie. The book envisions the possible use of hand-carried arms against tyrannosaurus rex (Latin for "king of the tyrannical lizards"); the analogy to the concerns that motivated the Second Amendment as a counterweight to a tyrannical president who might seek to become king should be obvious. By comparison, the movie denies the utility of hand-carried arms against even small, vicious, pack-hunting dinosaurs that killed just for the pleasure of it; as I read the book, and watched the movie, I found myself wondering if velociraptors were the street gangs of the Mesozoic Era. Jurassic Park is a splendid piece of special effects, though too violent for small children and sensitive adults. But most of all, Jurassic Park is an example of how filmmakers inject antigun messages into films. The question that everyone should be asking is why filmmakers can't stop their antigun propagandizing, even when it requires absurd and unlikely changes to the story. Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a telecommunications manufacturer in Northern California. His first book, By The Dim And Flaring Lamps: The Civil War Diary of Samuel McIlvaine, was published in 1990. _____________________________ Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, (New York, Ballantine ks: 1993), 147. Crichton, 303-4. Crichton, 307. Crichton, 303. -----