Photographer Defends 'A Christmas Story' Inspired Baby Photo

I’m not much of a Christmas person. My wife is, but I’m not. There are reasons for this, but they’re not relevant.

But the one Christmas movie that’s on my must-see list every year is “A Christmas Story.” The tale of Ralphie and his quest to get himself a Red Ryder BB gun under the tree has always been my absolute favorite Christmas movie, which is probably why my wife shared this post from Facebook with me.

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It was easily the most adorable thing I’ve seen all year, so of course, people had to make a thing of it.

“Only 49 days until Christmas!! Ralphie loved his pink bunny suit I had made for him!” the Shelbyville photographer wrote in a post that has since gone viral with over 2,000 likes and nearly 600 comments. “Disclaimer – the BB gun is made of wood to ensure that he did NOT shoot his eye out during the creation of this photo.”

Despite Haehl’s disclaimer, some social media commenters found the picture to be less than funny.

“Will now unfollow you. Who the hell would take a picture of a baby and a gun just for money. Such a waste since you are so talented. Think hard about your lack of principles,” one critic wrote in a since-deleted comment.

“Also unfollowing and unliking you. Extremely distasteful…. Guns are never ‘cute’, not even as a prop or movie reference. Disgusting. The gun culture in this country is a disgrace,” another agreed. This comment has also been deleted.

Meanwhile, Haehl said she never intended for the photos to be offensive or encourage gun violence in any way.

Because it doesn’t.

Only a complete moron would look at that and see it glorifying firearms.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Someone unfamiliar with the second greatest Christmas movie of all time (right behind Die Hard) might not get the photograph, but who in the hell would think this is somehow even close to anything other than a cute photo? They can’t.

What I want to know is how many of these self-righteous jackwagons watch movies and television shows with guns in them. After all, those are real guns, and they’re being shown in the context of people shooting other people. They do far more to “glorify” guns than this photo ever could.

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The truth is that some people want to purge guns from our collective consciousness.

Honestly, this attack on this photographer and her photograph are just another example of something I’ve been talking about for some time, and that’s the stigmatization of gun owners.

Haehl, who may or may not own a gun, is being attacked because she didn’t bow down to the belief that guns should be out of sight and out of mind at a minimum. She’s being attacked because she recognized a prop as being a key part of a beloved holiday movie and included it, rather than bowing to some people’s politics and pretending guns aren’t a thing that exists.

They’re stigmatizing her because she wasn’t a devotee to the cult.

Frankly, it was enough to make me follow the page.

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