Debbie Dorsey directs the Baltimore Film Office, and when the shotgun manufacturer Benelli USA asked about shooting a commericial in the city, the answer was quick and easy.

"It's all about economic dividends," Dorsey told me. "We're trying to keep the businesses here. It wasn't so much that it's a gun commericial. It's business. It's employing people and spending money in the city."

That's $850 million to Maryland in the past 10 years. Baltimore get's the bulk of the money, because most of the filming is right here in the city.

Do you ever question the content of the films?

"Never for anyone," she answered.

It's actually not a bad answer. If the city -- in this case Baltimore's Office for the Promotion of the Arts -- excluded filming based on artistic content, I'd be the first to raise questions about censorship. Who is this office to say who gets to film here or not film here, and why? "We can't ask David Simon or Clint Eastwood or anyone who comes into town, 'Why would you do it this way?'" Dorsey said. "We can't judge what they're doing."

Of course, Dorsey worked as a location manager for John Waters on such movies as Serial Mom and Pecker, two films that, well, were respectively about a suburban serial killer who becomes a hero and a boy photographer who finds the seedy underbelly side of Hampden.  

David Simon brought this city a lot of money with his HBO series The Wire, only to face criticism from City Hall about depicting the city as drug-ridden, violent and corrupt. It was disingenuous -- I think our fearless leaders worried that Simon's fiction got a little too close to the core truth.

I do think a commericial is different. Benelli is selling guns in a city riddled with violence. But my biggest issue is not whether Benelli should be allowed to shoot here, it's with Benelli itself. They sell shotguns and rifles to hunters and sportsmen. I fail to see how a chase scene involving speeding motorcycles and gunfire on an urban street will get hunters to buy guns.

Baltimore's Film Office should be commended for making this city an attractive venue for filmmakers. The web site lists more than 80 such ventures, many of them non-violent films, such as HBO's Washintonienne, about three women who live on Capital Hill, which was being filmed in our Bolton Hill at the same time Benelli was shooting it up in West Baltimore on Sunday.

"We really try to show Baltimore as a location," Dorsey said. "It can be any city. It can be Paris. It can be New York. Lots of times it's Washington." She noted that Benelli's commercial, which is to air on ESPN and the Outdoor Channel, won't say Baltimore. They wanted a generic city. "They never say where they are," she said.

Dorsey noted that the new series Washingtonienne might raise some eyebrows with how our neighbors down south are depicted. "Some people in Capital Hill are finding issues with the subject matter," she said. "It's not about guns. It's about sex."

Dorsey noted that Live Free or Die Hard filmed some of its shooting and car chase scenes on U.S. 40, the submerged highway that starts west of downtown but abruptly ends in the city, the result of complaints from homeowners who didn't want the highway slicing through their neighborhood. That makes the road attractive to filmmakers. "We have the highway to nowhere that can be shut down and it looks like a highway," Dorsey said.

In 1996, a downtown Burger King handed out receipts with ads on the back for discounts on guns and ammunition from a local gunshop, prompting protests from the police union and a quick reversal from the chain's headquarters who were smart enough to know that linking Whoppers with Glocks probably wasn't the best marketing move.

I haven't seen Benelli's commericial yet, and a company spokesman wouldn't tell me what product is being advertised in the Baltimore shoot, but I wish they'd have been a little more senstive to the city and found a way to sell their guns more in keeping with their own mission.