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The show has definitely had a liberal bent, as virtually all Hollywood creations do, but it wasn't so much an obvious, in-your-face bent, but more along the lines of the left-wing worldview of the writers affecting the plot, usually badly. For example, most of the regular people I know, their first instinct when facing a situation like this would be to band together, find a relatively secure location to live in, and attend to basic survival needs (food, water, etc.) The MORE GUNS THE BETTER and nobody would go ANYWHERE without a weapon.

However, the writers of this show probably had never done anything in their lives to put them into that mode of thinking - typically, Hollywood left-wingers have never been in the military, never been cops, never really spent any time in brutal third-world conditions. They've been living in sheltered fantasy land their whole lives. So, instead of writing the first two seasons where the characters behave in a believable way (as in they actually make survival a priority), the writers wrote in the same melodramatic As-the-World-Turns fluffy nonsense as they always do and just chucked in a few zombies here and there because they have no idea how a reasonable person would react in a survival situation. A conservative writer with some experience in the real world would have made these characters' behavior far more believable.

For me, the defining liberal stupidity moment in the show was the constant fighting over whether people should have guns or not. And a southern farmer was one of the biggest objectors to the proliferation of guns! In a world literally crawling with flesh-eating zombies, these people are arguing over whether they should have the means to defend themselves or not! Lori has no problem with letting her 10-year-old son run loose over the world, almost getting eaten a couple of times, but God forbid he should carry a gun, because THAT'S where she puts her foot down!

A writer with a conservative world view would have had all of the characters armed to the teeth, would have had them banding together, with any drama merely being the result of jockeying for leadership or different, pragmatic, survival strategies, and the women, such as Lori, would be a LOT MORE compliant and respectful toward the men keeping them alive. That's human nature.

Whether or not everybody should have guns is a valid discussion. In any randomly selected group of modern Americans there’s going to be a solid 1/3 that have never fired a gun, and another 1/4 to 1/3 that learned to shoot over a decade ago and haven’t touched one since. Do you REALLY want to be handing them guns in a situation where you KNOW they’ll want to shoot them? If I were in that situation nobody who hasn’t fired a gun in the last 2 years gets one, we’ll train you up when we have time, the goal will be everybody competent enough to be armed and then armed, but hell no don’t give guns to folks that don’t know how to use them, that’s just begging for friendly fire incidents.

Lori is a product of suburban living. We aren’t used to having to watch kids every single minute or sudden death could pop out. Heck Rick made the same mistake with the girl. And again he had no knowledge of guns, do you really arm a completely untrained 10 year old? Not me.

If a writer had them all armed to the teeth right at the beginning it would have been unrealistic. These are regular people, regular people aren’t armed to the teeth. Not right after the zom-poc. They’ll get there eventually. Which is exactly what’s going on in the show.

The story was originally a series of comic books or graphic novels. I don't know how closely the TV people followed the books, but they didn't have absolute freedom in creating and writing the story.

For example, most of the regular people I know, their first instinct when facing a situation like this would be to band together, find a relatively secure location to live in, and attend to basic survival needs (food, water, etc.) The MORE GUNS THE BETTER and nobody would go ANYWHERE without a weapon.

It sounds like what you're talking about is the world that comes about after we go through a lot of confusion and disagreement and trial and error. A lot of the interest in the show is in the conflicts that people go through before they reach that post-apocalyptic view of the world.

I don't fault the writers for showing the messiness of different world views in conflict. The show would be a lot poorer if everyone was just interested in getting together as many guns as they could (though a lot of the conflict gets stale after a while as well). Some of the more specific details, though, one could take exception to.

However, the writers of this show probably had never done anything in their lives to put them into that mode of thinking - typically, Hollywood left-wingers have never been in the military, never been cops, never really spent any time in brutal third-world conditions.

Most script writers come from sheltered upper-middle class families and have not ever been in the life-or-death situations constantly encountered by slum-dwellers. Their whole attitude is that solution to crime is jobs programs, and anything other than jobs programs fails to address the problem.

For me, the defining liberal stupidity moment in the show was the constant fighting over whether people should have guns or not.

I suspect this is a practical issue. Having people wrangling about ideology introduces a note of tension that makes the program a drama rather than a wall-to-wall zombie roller-coaster ride. Guns are like the Hand of God - they settle issues a little too quickly in ways that reduce rather than increase tension. The overuse of guns in a production doesn't add much value - just think of all the crappy war movies that Chuck Norris starred in.