Television Reviews : ‘I Am a Gun’ Hits With Bloody Impact

You’ll see a lot of dead people with real bullet holes in them in “I Am a Gun” (tonight at 9 on KHJ-TV Channel 9).

You’ll see the grainy, black-and-white footage of a holdup in a minimarket, taped by the store’s surveillance cameras, and you’ll hear the pop-pop-pop of the handgun and the off-camera moans of a dying clerk.

The holdup’s stark surreality is as horrifying as the bloody post-massacre videotape of the Alexander household, where four members of Ram football star Kermit Alexander’s family were methodically executed by three L.A. gang members. Mug shots of the killers are juxtaposed with snapshots of the two Alexander children who were shot in their beds.

Folded into these tabloid tales and gory sights in “I Am a Gun” are the often-heard arguments about what to do or what not to do about the fact that guns snuff out 22,000 American lives each year (including suicides, which account for half). Among others, the arguments are advanced by gun-control advocates, a National Rifle Assn. spokeswoman, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, Gloria Allred, and a professor who thinks criminals will be only marginally inconvenienced by stricter gun laws.

Although the treatment is reasonably balanced, the few facts and thin analysis aren’t particularly enlightening or helpful to anyone even mildly acquainted with the issue.

Such intellectual flaws don’t really matter, however, because they are completely blown away by graphic images of the bloodied victims. Producer-writer-director Rob Sharkey’s aim is not for our heads but for our guts, and his aim is true. He uses slow-motion hokeyness occasionally, and his dramatic gimmick of introducing the actual handguns that were used to kill innocent clerks or dangerous criminals gets pretty stale after a while.

But even those who find “I Am a Gun’s” bloody imagery excessively exploitative, sensationalized and irresponsible will have trouble denying its impact. The hour ultimately amounts to a powerful, albeit mostly emotional, argument for stricter control of guns. But it also makes a disturbing statement about some of the alleged humans who get their hands on them.