The customers should have known it was a front the moment they walked through the door. That big American flag is far too traditional for a trendy new gun shop on the Lower East Side.

I like this clip as a microcosm of the gun-control movement in that it’s concerned chiefly with moral self-congratulation. You think anyone coming into the shop hadn’t heard of Sandy Hook or kids accidentally shooting family members with their parents’ guns before the schmuck behind the counter told them? This is a shaming exercise, pure and simple. And just to ensure that the appropriate amount of shame was expressed, if not actually felt, the producers exposed the ruse to the customers afterward and then stuck a camera in their faces to ask them if they’d reconsidered their purchase. Go figure that people who live in a very liberal, very anti-gun city, faced with the prospect of appearing in a viral vid that shows them trying to buy the SAME TYPE OF GUN ADAM LANZA USED, BRO, chose to express contrition when confronted.

And of course, as tends to happen when liberals use props to make their point on gun control (right, David Gregory?), they may end up tangled in the same thicket of regulations they’ve planted. From Guns.com:

The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association is calling upon state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate the producer of the video for potential violations of state and local laws.

“First off, the firearms and accessories hanging in the background do not appear to comply with either New York City law or the so-called SAFE Act,” said NYSRPA President Thomas King in a statement.

“Second, it felony violation of the Sullivan Act for a person to posses a handgun anywhere in New York without a license. The video clearly shows individual ‘customers’ handling various handguns and doing so in an unsafe manner,” King said.

Exit question: None of these people thought they were going to walk out of the shop with a gun, did they? This is New York. Given how onerous the approval process is, they’re lucky they didn’t get arrested for walking past the storefront window.