Gun Violence Advertisement Analysis

A magazine advertisement by the non-profit organization States United to Prevent Gun Violence effectively broadcasts their message against gun violence, yet also shows a prejudice towards women by portraying them as inherently more vulnerable and weaker than men. The advertisement is of three black silhouettes layered atop each other in this order, from back to front: a man, a woman, and a child. There's a small cross starting from a red X in the middle of the baby's silhouette and expands horizontally and vertically outwards onto the woman's silhouette as 9s then 8s, but ends before it crosses onto the man's silhouette. In the upper left corner there is a blank table with columns marked “number of hits” and “shot value” and rows marked with

A lack of details allows anyone viewing the advertisement to picture themselves in the shoes of one of the silhouettes and imagine or even remind them what it feels like to lose a loved one due to violence of any sort, especially gun-related violence. The depressing mood that setting creates for the audience tugs at their heartstrings, and in the midst of that emotional uneasiness, the anti-gun violence message of the advertisement is conveyed and uses the person's own sympathy to persuade them to help and actively support the organization's cause to end gun-related

This can be seen in the way that the cross of shot values on the baby and woman's silhouettes are only on them; there are no shot values on the man. It's as if if the man was shot, it wouldn't matter as much compared to a woman or child being shot. The idea that women and children need more protection than men has been around for a long time. It's been around long enough that there's the phrase, “Women and children first”, which is often associated to life-threatening situations where women and children lives are to be saved first due to them being more vulnerable. One famous situation where that happened was the sinking of the RMS Titanic, where generally the women and children were the first ones to get on the lifeboats. The advertisement is trying to convey the same meaning that the protection of women and children is more important than the protection of men, by literally assigning a value to the lives of the woman and baby in the image, and giving no value to the