'Johnny Dronehunter' wants to sell Americans shotgun silencers by shooting down ... drones

Over the top advert leaves subtlety at the door in favour of all-American muscle cars, sunglasses and shotguns

How do you protect your privacy in an age where multinational corporations are using increasingly subtle and insidious tactics to part you from your data permissions? If you’re Johnny Dronehunter then you do it with a shotgun. A silenced shotgun (because we’re not barbarians now are we?).

This, at least, is the pitch from Utah-based company SilencerCo who are marketing their line of Salvo 12 shotgun suppressors with a laughably/delightfully (delete as appropriate) advert featuring the titular Mr Dronehunter.

“In the not-too-distant future, privacy is a thing of the past,” reads the marketing copy. “Undeniable rights degrade like the paper they were written upon, and Big Brother has a constant eye on you and your family.

“It will take a determined man and an unequalled weapon to make a stand. And explosions. Yeah, lots of explosions.” Watch below:

Well talk is cheap, and SilencerCo certainly deliver on the (actually quite small) explosions, managing to tap into that part of the American psyche that is presumably looking forward to the day when the sky is filled with drones - if only because it means that a quiet drive to the shops will be turned into a mobile shooting gallery.

The makers of the video told tech site Motherboard that they wanted to “energize the ongoing discourse about privacy in a creative way” and that they “created Johnny Dronehunter […] to represent the Americans who feel they don’t have an appropriate voice in this privacy debate”.

These are laudable aims of course, but we’re not sure if this level of nuanced discussion really comes across in a video where the main character is wearing a sleeveless leather jacket with an eagle carrying an American flag on the back. Then again, if this doesn't get you excited about privacy worries, then what will?