A Gun in the House

 Full box scan at bottom

A Gun in the House

United States – 1980

Director – Ivan Nagy

VCII, 1983, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 40 minutes

Unfortunately no matter how many times we’re told, or how often we see it on TV, we don’t seem to realize that good hardworking Americans have been left to their own devices, vulnerable and out in the cold. Our traditions have been effectively disenfranchised and our cultural righteousness stripped away by decades of so-called social “progress.” Unfortunately, it oftentimes requires a very personal encounter with terror for people to realize that in the hands of liberals our nation has effectively been emasculated by degrees.

The Cates family finds themselves in precisely such a vulnerable position. With her airline-pilot husband frequently away for extended periods, Emily is left alone with her daughter in that fragile suburban bubble that is the imperiled “average.” Without a reassuring man in the house, Emily opts instead for his symbolic replacement. Just in time too. Moments after completing her last shooting class, two hoods break in. Just as it looks like she is going to be violated, Emily escapes to the bedroom where she retrieves her cold steel surrogate man and kills one of her attackers. You would be justified in thinking this was the end of Emily’s ordeal, but you would be wrong. This is not that kind of revenge film.

Instead, an overworked, understaffed and totally impotent police force are at a loss to pursue, much less prosecute Emily’s assault. Instead, lacking any evidence to corroborate her claim to have been attacked at all, (clearly she seduced him right) Emily herself is arrested for the murder of her attacker and forced to go through the institutional humiliation usually reserved for a lower class of people. And so, the Cates’ ideal averageness is hung out to dry by a "justice" system so burdened with  ridiculous notions of due process and habeas corpus that it cares more for protecting the rights of the accused than in actually punishing them. It's been a problem since the 60's when longhaireed barefoot hippies and feminazi's have waged an unrelenting war on our national traditions, emasculating the American Dream with social programs and "rights." Thank God for the Second Amendment and frontier justice.

Fresh from her gig as the naïvely optimistic Gloria Stivic on All In the Family, Sally Struthers is the perfect symbol of dewey-eyed liberalism to dangle over the abyss. Combining all the best reactionary ranting of the 70’s into one succinct package, A Gun in the House is a ray of powder-burned redemption beamed into a darkening world. It is a lesson to all of us to be prepared lest we care too much about anyone else. If we go on believing that we’re somehow immune to the growing epidemic of predatory savagery seething just on the other side of the tracks, we’ll find out the hard way exactly how precariously perched our fragile bubble of suburban quietude really is. As Harry Calahan and Paul Kersey knew; one day soon these liberals are going to be begging us for protection. Once they realize they've legislated themselves to the edge of a cliff and their rainbow world of hugs and group therapy can't save 'em, they'll be wishing there was a gun in every house.