Dear Everyone In TV, Movies, Modeling, Magazines, and Video Games:

If your character is not actually about to shoot something, for fuck’s sake, please do not pose them with their finger on the trigger. This is a heinous safety violation. Many of us who know about guns are TOTALLY UNABLE to enjoy your art or be influenced by your advertising because we are so damn distracted by the catastrophe that is about to happen.

Seriously. Spend a few minutes on a public firing range at 1:00 on a Saturday afternoon, when everybody and their cousin has come out to shoot for the first time ever, and after Little Billy accidentally points a (supposedly unloaded, but who can say for sure) gun at you two or three times, you too will hard-wire your brain to notice when people’s fingers are or are not on the trigger. You may also, as I did, resolve not to go to the range on Saturdays. When a person’s finger is on the trigger, and they are not firing at a safe target, all I can think of is getting their finger off the trigger, or leaving the area before they accidentally shoot me. This is probably not what you media people are intending.

You are also perpetuating bad habits. Why do you think Little Billy puts his finger on the trigger the second he picks up the gun? Because that’s what people on TV do. Har-de-har. It’s all funny until somebody gets shot in the foot.

Here is how you hold a gun, right up until the moment when the sights are on target and you are about to fire:

Where’s that finger? You got it.