End Family Fire: Gun Safety

0:00-0:02

We open with an American children’s cartoon on a very grainy, old-seeming TV. Despite this being a recent ad, it seems like the old TV is used to tell us these people aren’t particularly wealthy. The cartoon features a man riding an old-timey train. A child is watching TV, most likely a boy.

0:02-0:05

We pan up from the back of the room to see the boy is asleep in front of the TV, wearing pajamas. He is surrounded by toys and coloring books, and is laying alone. It’s visibly morning from the light and his pajamas, but he’s already fallen asleep, indicating maybe he fell asleep in front of the TV the night before. It’s likely his parents do not regularly check up on him, possibly they are too busy. The house behind him is slightly cluttered, most of it done by the kid. We see his father enter who begins tickling him, waking him up. From the lack of attention he receives, you assume this boys father lives alone, maybe divorced. He is older, white, wearing a gray and blue outfit, and seems to be in his 50s. His son laughs, and he walks into the other room. We get the impression that he loves his son, but maybe he isn’t around to watch him enough.

0:05-0:10

We see the son get up, and get a closer look at his face. He looks about 4-5 years old, and his shirt matches his dads shade of blue. After his father walks into the other room, we seem him lying on his back, almost frozen. He seems like after being quickly awoken, he is thinking or remembering something. He has a serious look on his face, and he turns to look where his father is headed. 

0:10-0:14

The father enters the kitchen, and we focus on the kitchen. Like his son, his father also seems to have a habit of leaving things out. We see an apple core, some stacked bowls, and a knife sitting on the counter. The knife shows us how the fathers carelessness could potentially be dangerous, leaving out cutlery in his child’s grasp. He rolls up his sleeves, as if he’s about to begin cleaning up. His entrance and his messy house imply that he was out the night before, maybe drinking or seeing someone. Just as he enters, he turns around with a quizzical look on his face. He continues walking and rolling up his sleeves, but his attention seems to be in the other room with his son.

0:15-0:17

The kid, now standing up, seems to be telling or asking his father something. We get the impression that he was telling his father something as he was walking off, but his father continued on thinking little of it. The boy now has a serious look on his face, clashing with his fathers careless attitude. This presents the kid to be the responsible one, and the father to be more like a deadbeat. Whatever he is saying seems to carry a lot of weight, and is likely the message behind the PSA.

0:17-0:21

The background quickly cuts to black, and text fades in. It describes the dangers of having children around guns, citing 8 kids a day are harmed or killed by family fire. His father is framed to represent gun-owning parents as a little thoughtless. It is similar to him leaving the knife on the counter.

0:21-0:25

Family fire is defined as a shooting that involves a gun being improperly stored. This definition almost frames the failure to hide guns as if the parents are giving kids guns to play with. We finally understand the meaning of the bit before, thinking back to the kid who was on his own in a house to himself. They use the scenario from before to give ourselves a situation to attach to, seeing how it could go wrong. 

0:25-0:37

The video concludes with a link to the website EndFamilyFire.org, featuring the promise to “make your homer safer.” We see their logo next to the website, as well as the ad councils logo in the bottom left. This last bit remains for much longer than the first two, perhaps to leave room for parting words or allowing people the time to write down the website.