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An exploration into the underlying fears that make gun control an emotional issue in the U.S.
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00:01Major funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
00:06by this station and other public television stations nationwide,
00:10and by the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies,
00:12for over 100 years providing worldwide business and personal insurance
00:16through independent agents and brokers.
00:22This is America, gun country,
00:25where there is a tide of violence and a fundamental split.
00:30Do we take up the gun or take it away?
00:35Millions of Americans have guns.
00:3811,000 Americans this year will be killed by guns.
00:42Tonight, on Frontline, the fears, the hatreds,
00:47the passions surrounding gunfight USA.
00:55From the network of public television stations,
01:04a presentation of KCTS Seattle,
01:06WNET New York,
01:08WPBT Miami,
01:10WTVS Detroit,
01:12and WGBH Boston.
01:14This is Frontline,
01:17with Jessica Savage.
01:20A quarter of a million Americans this year will be victims of guns like this.
01:27Either killed, wounded, mugged, or raped at gunpoint.
01:31There are roughly 45 million handguns in America.
01:35Each year, two and a half million more are made.
01:38Average cost?
01:39From $40, that's the price John Hinckley paid,
01:42to $500.
01:43Where do you stand on the gun control debate?
01:46If you are for guns,
01:48then ask yourself how you might feel if it were your child killed in a senseless shootout.
01:54If you are against guns,
01:56then try asking yourself how you'd feel if your loved ones were threatened by a gun-carrying attacker
02:01while you stood helplessly by, unarmed.
02:04The dilemma, the choice.
02:06It cuts across social and economic boundaries and neighborhoods,
02:10like the ones where these people live.
02:13They belong to community crime watch groups in Boston.
02:16Some have guns, and some do not.
02:19All will watch our documentary now,
02:21along with producer-reporter Steve Weissman.
02:24Then we'll be back for a discussion.
02:26Watch with us.
02:28Watch with an open mind, but watch with care.
02:31Whether this is a symbol of the protector or the predator,
02:35the gun is a weapon.
02:36The result's graphic.
02:38And now, gunfight USA.
02:41We started on Main Street in Buffalo, New York,
02:56at a downtown liquor store caged on all sides with wrought iron bars.
03:01The owner has been held up 23 times.
03:05One of the times when two gays walked in here,
03:09one was dressed as a woman with a red wig on,
03:13and the other was just the male.
03:16And when they walked in, got halfway in the store,
03:19one pulled a knife, the other one had a pistol in his hand.
03:24They said this is a stick-up, but surprise is my greatest asset in here.
03:34So, reaching back, I pulled my pistol,
03:38and when they seen that I had a weapon,
03:41they both turned and started to leave.
03:44As they left, I shot one in the back,
03:47and as they went right through the plate glass window of the door,
03:53they shattered that,
03:55and as the second one left, I got him in a butt.
03:58Bud Sobis depends on his gun to defend his life,
04:01especially since holdup number 17.
04:04Bud Two men had entered the place,
04:06and one of them had come up behind me,
04:08and he had my hand with the gun,
04:11and I had his hand with the gun,
04:13and we fought all the way back into the back of the store
04:17where we fell on the cases.
04:19That's when I heard three shots fired,
04:23and I didn't realize that I'd been hit the three times.
04:27I got hit in a hand here, and a bullet came out here.
04:32I got hit in the side, and a bullet came out my back,
04:36and I got hit here in the belly,
04:39and the bullet went down,
04:41and I still got it in my hip bone.
04:44I stayed in the hospital for a period of four months.
04:49Now, since I've been hit,
04:51I am not going to shoot to wound anymore.
04:56I'm going to shoot to kill,
04:58because it's my life now.
05:01I opened the door, and the police officer, plainclothesman,
05:06he says, are you Mrs. Buddy?
05:07I says, yes.
05:08He says, do you have a son, Steven Buddy?
05:10Yes.
05:11It seems that he was coming down the street,
05:15and this car was bumping the back of his car.
05:18My son got out of the car.
05:21He was arguing with the driver of the car.
05:24One word led to another,
05:26and the passenger of the car shot my son four times.
05:33The next time that I saw my son was that Monday at the funeral home.
05:48Ever since her son's death, Carolyn Buddy has found her answer in the fight for handgun control.
05:54But the pain never goes away.
05:56I see a headstone now, and I wonder why someone so young should be buried there.
06:03And I wish that somebody could answer that question for me.
06:06I wish somebody could answer the question for my daughters.
06:10Why are their brothers there?
06:20Self-defense or handgun control, that's the dilemma.
06:24Here in the quiet woods of New Hampshire, these Americans, many of them gun victims,
06:29have made their choice.
06:31Their teacher is Massad Ayub.
06:33What we're teaching is a principle called lethal threat management.
06:36Gunfighting is not the answer. It's only a narrow component.
06:40There are times when you may have to draw the deadly weapon and fire.
06:43We find in the studies, and my observations confirm that,
06:46that in 14 incidents where the private citizen has to draw a gun vis-Ã -vis a criminal,
06:51in 13 of those cases, he won't have to fire the gun.
06:55Many people would say that you and your lethal force institute
06:57are simply catering to the fear and paranoia in this society today.
07:03Fear, yes. Paranoia, no.
07:05It's only paranoia when you're only fantasizing that there's something to be afraid of.
07:09We get people in here who have been victims of criminal violence.
07:12They have a reasonable fear of it happening to them again.
07:15All of you have made a very serious decision,
07:17a decision that many of your friends and neighbors and peers
07:20don't fully understand the rationale for.
07:22Ayub calls his school the Lethal Force Institute, and there are similar courses all across the country.
07:29Most of the students are middle-class professionals.
07:31A commercial artist, a college teacher, the business manager of a state hospital.
07:38They each pay $300 for two weekends, in which Ayub lectures them on the psychological traumas
07:45and legal hassles they will face if they ever do shoot to kill.
07:49It's a misconception. People think, I've got a gun in my drawer and now I'm safe.
07:54It's not like that, Steve. It's not a magic talisman that wards off evil.
07:57It's nothing more nor less than a special purpose piece of safety equipment
08:02that works within actually only a very narrow band at the highest level of the threat spectrum of self-defense.
08:08It requires considerable training, I think, to use safely in the anti-personnel context
08:13as opposed to going target shooting or going skeet shooting.
08:17There is no moral decision to make about shooting a clay pigeon.
08:27Okay, what happened here, Doug?
08:29You're all killed, an unarmed man attempting to surrender to you, and you're shot by the backup.
08:35In this exercise, the student comes home and finds an intruder. What should he do?
08:40Ayub preaches caution, hide and wait for the police.
08:44Here the students see the kind of trouble they could get into if they chase after the intruder themselves.
08:50To measure the stress of the chase, we hooked up one of the students to an electrocardiograph,
08:55which will show the strain placed on his heart, even in this simulated situation.
09:04Okay, here's the scenario. These two adjoining motel rooms that you're familiar with the insides of
09:09represent your apartment. You've returned home, found the door ajar,
09:12you can't tell whether the alarm system has gone off or not.
09:15You've decided to disregard the advice that we give in the institute,
09:18and you're going to be a real man and do a house clearing with your own weapon.
09:22The student, Ted Hunt, is already feeling the psychological stress.
09:26At rest, his normal heart rate is below 80.
09:30Don't lead with your gun, Amanda. I'm not sure I could have ripped it out of your hands.
09:50Behind the bed! Get up!
10:10Okay, that noise just gave away your position, but go ahead.
10:27Once you've given away your position, you've either got to move decisively or move back.
10:31politics, government, and the other point,
10:41a accident.
10:43You're not sure if you were in this Швainawczyn.
10:44It's a clear-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to.
10:46If you're in this scenario, you've even been a chance for us,
10:48you've only been a chance for that.
10:49I would've been a chance for you.
10:51Yeah, I will.
10:54I've done a chance.
10:59That's fine.
11:00Ted, the exercise is over. The intruder shot you first.
11:04Ayub's lesson was deadly clear.
11:06Don't go looking for trouble, even with a gun in your hand.
11:10And never shoot unless directly attacked.
11:14People think that, you know, okay, the police have been cut back,
11:17and I don't have police, and I'll get the gun and be my own surrogate policeman.
11:21And it doesn't do that any more than the fire extinguisher makes you a surrogate fireman.
11:26Each one is there in a situation where the proper authorities
11:29can't be there yet in a life-threatening situation.
11:32It allows you to clear a lane of safety for you and your loved ones.
11:34It allows you to control the situation sufficiently at the extreme moment there
11:39to get to a telephone, call the proper authorities,
11:42and let them, in this case the police department, come in to deal with it.
11:45Mr. Ayub, the advocates of stricter gun controls argue that a gun bought for self-defense
11:50is more likely, far more likely, to be used to injure a member of your family.
11:55I hear that a lot.
11:56I hear the argument from people who don't really understand the dynamics of domestic violence.
12:03Because they don't own guns, they think it's, again, an evil talisman
12:07that is going to change your personality like a magic potion
12:11during the good Dr. Jack Lennon, the evil Mr. Hyde.
12:14In fact, we're seeing domestic violence, wife abuse and spouse abuse,
12:17tends to be a dynamic that escalates over a long period of time.
12:22My answer to that, if people say, should a man who beats his wife have a gun?
12:25And I say, no, look, a man who beats his wife should not have a wife.
12:29Carol Kiefer was a happy wife until one night in September 1980.
12:35My daughter, 29, mother of one child, had been married for 13 months to her second husband.
12:42And they had a little altercation, so to speak, where he pushed her down and she kicked him.
12:50And so he went into the bedroom.
12:51In the meantime, she sat down on a love seat with a cigarette, with her feet up on a table.
12:58And just relaxed.
13:00When she saw him coming, she didn't believe that he came back a killer, which he was.
13:08For the rest of my life, I won't have her love, her comfort.
13:13My granddaughter will be without a mother because two guns were kept in a bedroom drawer,
13:19ready and waiting for him or anyone to use.
13:22Since her daughter's murder, Pauline Spalton has joined with other victims of gun violence in Chicago
13:28to dramatize the fight for handgun control.
13:33They're more concerned about the rights of people to carry a handgun
13:37than about the rights of the innocent destroyed by them.
13:40They could care less about my son or your daughter or Pauline's daughter.
13:45They're more concerned about people's rights to carry a handgun.
13:50Working with the victims is a Chicago housewife named Kathy Zartman.
13:56Though not a victim herself, Kathy is the driving force behind the city's tough new gun law.
14:02The police department here in Chicago is quick to say
14:07that gun in your home is far more likely to lose your life,
14:13to make you be killed in an assault situation, than if it were not there.
14:18It is also far more likely to be used in an interpersonal argument or a neighborhood dispute.
14:28Or it is far more likely to be stolen and then become a crime gun than it is to protect you.
14:37We put that to Professor James Wright,
14:39who headed a three-year government-sponsored study on guns and violence.
14:43Like most academics, Wright started on the anti-gun side.
14:47Does he still believe that a gun in the home is more likely to kill a family member than to stop a crime?
14:54A fairly meaningless comparison, I would say.
14:56We don't know how many crimes are deterred by the victim simply brandishing a firearm
15:04or firing a shot that never hits the mark or even crimes deterred because the homeowner fired a shot,
15:12wounded the guy, but he got away.
15:13If he shoots him dead, he shows up in the statistic.
15:16If he shoots him bad enough, wounds him badly enough that he requires some attention,
15:21he too shows up in the statistic.
15:23The number of crimes that are never even committed
15:25because the perpetrator knows in advance that the victim is armed.
15:31These things don't show up.
15:32We can't really say in so many words just how many crimes are deterred by the private ownership of firearms.
15:38But what about the argument that when a gun is in the home,
15:41the husband or wife, in a moment of intense anger,
15:44is likely to pick it up and shoot their mate?
15:46I would say in general, family homicide is something that we need to know a lot more about.
15:50There are not a lot of studies,
15:52but the ones that are available suggest that the typical family homicide,
15:57that mythical crime of passion,
15:59is not a sort of isolated outbreak of violence occurring among normally placid and loving individuals,
16:07but rather the culminating event and a long history of interpersonal violence between the parties.
16:14The common pattern, the more common pattern, is for wives to shoot their husbands.
16:19Proportionately, men kill their women by other means.
16:21More brutal means, more degrading means.
16:24To deny that woman the right to own the firearm
16:28is in some sense to guarantee in perpetuity to her husband the right to beat her at will.
16:34I don't think we want to do that necessarily.
16:36Michael Korda was John Lennon's friend and publisher,
16:46and he seems just the sort of limousine liberal
16:49who might send the occasional check to the campaign for handgun control.
16:54But he doesn't.
16:55He sends his checks to the National Rifle Association.
16:58I think people who have small children at home are unwise to keep loaded guns.
17:03I think people whose marriage is on the rocks, or may be on the rocks,
17:08are tremendously unwise to keep a loaded gun in the bedroom drawer.
17:12I think that under a great many circumstances you take upon yourself a heavy responsibility
17:20when you keep a gun at home in fear of somebody breaking in
17:24because you may shoot the wrong person and it may turn out to be your teenage son coming home late at night.
17:28All of this is absolutely true.
17:30And yet, and yet, the truth of the matter is that if somebody really is breaking into your apartment,
17:39it's going to be very difficult for the police to get there in time to help you if they get there at all.
17:44The chances are these days that the person who's breaking into your apartment would just as soon kill you as not.
17:50And in the final analysis, you're probably better off with something to defend yourself with.
17:55Maybe not a handgun because very few people use one well, but something.
17:58A shotgun is a remarkably persuasive weapon.
18:12Miami, Florida, the murder capital of America,
18:16a city where dead bodies are found lying about like driftwood on the beach.
18:20But Miami is not unique.
18:23Every year, over 10,000 Americans are shot and killed in handgun murders,
18:27and millions more live in constant fear of gun crime.
18:31Doctor, two men were running along the wooded area,
18:34and when they come up on the body of the victim,
18:36who was badly decomposed,
18:40upon arrival, we found a .25 caliber automatic Beretta.
18:44America is a nation at war with itself,
18:47and the primary weapon of that war is a deadly concealable handgun.
18:51Every year, a quarter of a million people are raped, robbed, threatened, killed
18:58by handgun fire in this country.
19:01I know.
19:02My son was one of its murder victims.
19:06Nick Shields, his son, was killed in April 1974.
19:1023 at the time, Nick was visiting San Francisco
19:13when a man he never knew stepped up behind him with a .32 caliber Beretta
19:17and shot him dead.
19:20A former corporate executive,
19:22Pete Shields has devoted himself ever since
19:25to fighting for a new national handgun law.
19:28To those for and against,
19:30Pete Shields is Mr. Handgun Control.
19:33The handgun is the primary weapon of crime and violence.
19:38Why?
19:40Because it has the perfect combination of ingredients for criminal misuse.
19:46It is highly concealable,
19:49it is highly lethal,
19:51and it can kill and threaten from a distance.
19:54To talk about banning handguns,
19:57handguns are the choice of street criminals.
20:00Handguns are also probably the best choice of an elderly person
20:04or a woman who would be much more comfortable,
20:07would want to conceal a firearm for her own protection.
20:11Joe Tartaro is a power behind the scenes in the NRA,
20:14and he speaks for millions of American sportsmen,
20:17owners of shotguns and rifles,
20:19who now fight for handguns as well.
20:21For Tartaro, tough new gun laws
20:24would be like prohibition in the 1920s.
20:29Oh, why?
20:30I think you're going to get a massive disobedience.
20:32There is going to be the kind of disobedience
20:35that you had during the Prohibition era.
20:37And I think you're going to have a law
20:38that will not be enforceable.
20:40So it will permit people to go ahead flaunting the law,
20:44which is unfortunately a bad byproduct of the whole thing,
20:49because I think when people lose respect for one law,
20:52they tend to lose respect for other laws.
20:54Chicago, Illinois,
20:57a city still haunted by the gangland massacres
21:00of that earlier Prohibition,
21:03and the home of a young man named Johnny Lira.
21:06As we drive through this area,
21:08it brings back, you know,
21:09classic memories of the Battle of Burr's Schoolyard.
21:12It was a battle of one time,
21:14we had a gang fight after a ball game.
21:16We had nine members on the ball club,
21:18and the other team had showed up with 200 members,
21:21packing down what may be of arms of equaling to 30,
21:25for anywhere from pistols to rifles.
21:27And after the game was over,
21:29they were going to just do us in and blow us all away.
21:33And a big war broke out,
21:34and there was a lot of shooting going on.
21:36By the end of the shooting was over,
21:38there may lie nine injuries and two deaths.
21:44Johnny Lira is a former World Lightweight title contender.
21:48And a local hero for his work with disadvantaged kids.
21:52When I was younger, growing up, I was the epitome of bad.
21:55I mean, there wasn't a crime I didn't commit.
21:57That was just the neighborhood I was coming up to,
22:00and the lifestyles that the kids in our neighborhood
22:02were going through at that time.
22:04You know, I had guns.
22:05There were kids in our gang that were 13, 14 that had guns.
22:09You know, anywhere from 13 years old to 25 years old,
22:12everyone had guns.
22:13And that was what you wanted to be,
22:14a gun pack and hoodlum.
22:18No longer the gun packing hoodlum,
22:24Johnny still knows the hard reality of the streets.
22:27There's 13-year-old kids with guns.
22:30There's a law saying a 13-year-old kid shouldn't have a gun.
22:33Is that stopping them from getting a gun?
22:35So when they make the law harder,
22:36or if they banned the guns, period,
22:38and said there are going to be no more guns
22:40in the United States of America,
22:42we're going to destroy them all,
22:43there's still going to be people with guns.
22:45And you know who's going to have the guns?
22:46The majority of them are criminals.
22:48And your honest citizen who wants to protect himself
22:50or to go shooting,
22:52he's not going to have the gun,
22:53and he's going to be the one getting it stuck up his...
22:55We, I hope, are not Pollyanna
22:59and are not naive enough to believe
23:02that passing a law is going to mean
23:04that everything is going to be all right.
23:06You know, I think that the incidents
23:08that attract all of the media attention
23:11and the publicity,
23:11such as the assassination attempts,
23:14the John Lennon death,
23:15the attempt on the president,
23:18our opponents very accurately say
23:21that would have happened
23:23under stringent gun control laws.
23:25They say, look at Italy's gun control laws
23:27and somebody shot at the Pope.
23:29Yes, we concede that it is very probable
23:32that the determined assassin
23:34and perhaps even the determined armed robber
23:37will find a way to acquire a weapon.
23:40But we maintain that the majority of crime
23:44in this country is committed by the amateur
23:46and the young amateur
23:48and quite unsophisticated amateur.
23:51Norfolk Prison in Massachusetts,
23:54where state law demands
23:55a mandatory one-year prison sentence
23:57for anyone caught carrying an unlicensed firearm.
24:01So how have gun laws affected
24:03the unsophisticated amateurs here?
24:06We went inside to find out.
24:10Well, I got gun fever from a very young age.
24:25I always liked cowboys and Indians.
24:27The movies stirred me up.
24:28And my uncles started training me on BB guns,
24:31pellet rifles, and things like that.
24:32And as I started getting older,
24:34when I went into the service,
24:35and I finally got the hands-on training on the weapon,
24:38then I can say I got the gun fever
24:40because I wanted to use it always.
24:41I wanted to have almost every single kind of weapon
24:43there was in the world.
24:44I always like to experiment,
24:49take them down, break them down,
24:51try to do other things,
24:53take shotguns on them in half
24:55and make them as small as possible
24:56that way I can conceal the shotgun
24:58without nobody knowing I'm carrying it.
25:01Now, you know, just to always look at it
25:06and clean it and feel it, you know,
25:08and just holding it in your hand
25:10and just playing with it,
25:14just like a toy, just like a toy.
25:16But what about the new Massachusetts gun law?
25:19How did that affect armed robber Charles Hawkins?
25:21If I was confronted with someone
25:23attempting to grab me
25:24or arrest me for possession of a weapon,
25:28I think myself or an individual,
25:32without really thinking,
25:33might use that weapon upon an officer or whatever.
25:38Increasing any type of penalty
25:40for the possession of a weapon
25:41is not going to act as a deterrent.
25:44It's going to create more violence and more crime.
25:47If I was confronted by a peace officer,
25:51a law enforcement officer,
25:52and I had a weapon,
25:53my first thought would be,
25:55well, stop him.
25:57Don't let him arrest me, you know, by all means.
26:01So that might encompass firing that weapon,
26:03creating some act of violence.
26:06So how easy is it to get a gun in Massachusetts?
26:09If you know someone and they know you,
26:12then the accessibility of the firearms is limitless.
26:15You can get it anywhere you want.
26:17No matter what kind of gun control laws you have,
26:19there are always going to be guns available.
26:22You just drive the market underground.
26:24It might cost,
26:26today, it might cost me $100 to get a .38,
26:29and they make stiffer gun control laws,
26:32and then tomorrow it might cost me $150.
26:35But if I want it, I'm going to get it.
26:37So if guns are outlawed,
26:39will outlaws still have guns?
26:42After the Massachusetts law was passed,
26:44street crime with guns went up.
26:47In New York City, with an even tougher gun law,
26:50the police estimate as many as 2 million illegal handguns.
26:54And in Washington, D.C.,
26:56the police chief, Morris Turner,
26:58has called the city's stringent anti-gun law a failure.
27:01But here, at the University of Chicago Law School,
27:04the former dean, Norval Morris,
27:06still supports the most sweeping gun controls.
27:10Why bother, we asked him,
27:11with token laws that cannot be enforced?
27:14All law has degrees of enforceability in it.
27:16No law is totally enforceable.
27:19It would be extremely difficult.
27:23Even with the sort of restrictive licensing legislation I would wish in states and localities backed up by federal law to move rapidly to a substantial disarmament of people in America.
27:37No, it would be slow.
27:38Like other law, it is partially enforced.
27:40Like other law, it is a pressure in a direction that one wishes to go.
27:44There are so many guns in this country that to start rounding them up or registering them in any effective way means giving up almost all of the constitutional freedoms we enjoy, right?
27:57You're going to have to agree to search without knocks, search without warrant, search of automobiles without cause, search of the person without cause, all sorts of things which would not stand up in court in any event.
28:08Could it be enforced without going to police state measures?
28:12Oh, yes, just as much as any other restrictive licensing process, just as much as much else that we tried to do.
28:19This community, after all, is also deeply attached to a belief that the law can change human behavior, and they turn all moral issues into constitutional issues.
28:30So this is a culture that deeply believes in the efficacy of law against a good deal of evidence.
28:36Who are we disarming?
28:38One, we would be disarming a lot of people who use their firearms as part and parcel of the routine leisure time activities, presumably hunters and skeet shooters and so on, people who possess firearms, particularly handguns, particularly for the purposes of self-defense.
29:00If one assumes, I think reasonably, that the criminal weapons will be the last touched by any kind of policy that we might enact, then that means we could probably confiscate something on the order of 99% of all the firearms that exist and still not touch the violent crime problem.
29:15The range is no longer safe, you may step forward to your rifle position.
29:19Back in Buffalo, the local scouts are learning to shoot, as have generations of Americans before them.
29:25Is this a tradition we should cherish, or is it a violent echo of our frontier past?
29:31It is true that there's more at issue here than just what we do about guns.
29:44To people within the gun culture, the gun, capital G, symbolizes all that's right in American society.
29:53It symbolizes the virtues of manliness, of independence, willingness to die for one's belief.
30:01It's the virtual embodiment of traditional American values.
30:05For others, on the other side, it too is a symbol, a symbol of all that's wrong in the culture.
30:11It symbolizes aggressiveness, violence, sexual frustration, male dominance.
30:18It's bloodlust incarnate.
30:21And in part, the dispute over what to do about guns is a derivative dispute.
30:26And the more basic issue is what is the society like?
30:30What should it be like?
30:31You know, what kind of nation are we?
30:35It's incumbent on every male to be in a position to defend his family, particularly in a frontier society.
31:03There is no law. There is no government to protect you.
31:07And so if a man couldn't protect his own family, then his family wasn't likely to survive.
31:12Kip Carter is a cotton merchant and one-time professor of classical Chinese literature.
31:16But here, he's recreating the nation's past as a 19th century mountain man
31:21at the spring rendezvous of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association.
31:34Yahoo!
31:35You know, I've grown up around guns and shooting, like most Americans, I guess.
31:41And it's something that I just feel comfortable with.
31:44It's not threatening to me. A gun is just a tool, like an axe or a shovel.
31:50And I hunt, and I target, shoot, and I participate in activities like these, this rendezvous.
31:57And it's just, it's a part of my life.
32:00You could have to take a look at the blue light space.
32:03You got $600?
32:05No, I ain't got $600 at all.
32:07Yeah.
32:08Three and a half bottom dollars.
32:10None of these antique arms is presently threatened by gun control.
32:14But Kip Carter and his friends feel themselves very much under attack.
32:21All right!
32:24You've seen what we're doing here.
32:26And, you know, we're honest, law-abiding citizens from every walk of life,
32:30using guns in a recreational manner, you know, enjoying ourselves.
32:35And, you know, there's 1% of the firearms in this country that have ever caused a problem.
32:42And so, from that point of view, you know, we worry that basically what we're doing is misunderstood by the general population.
32:55The thing that really excites me is the gun.
32:58What you have is a combination of history, artistry, romance. It's just got everything.
33:04Larry Wilson collects guns, stagecoaches, and cars,
33:08and is the official historian of the Colt Firearms Company.
33:12The gun, you can say, symbolizes America more than any other artifact.
33:17And the Founding Fathers were all interested in guns.
33:19Thomas Jefferson, for example, had at least a couple of dozen firearms, including pistols.
33:25George Washington had over 50 guns. It was a very common interest.
33:30And they were expected to be marksmen and sportsmen.
33:34And this is a tradition that's come down to modern times.
33:38Yeah, I'd have to say that we are definitely a persecuted minority.
33:42If I'm introduced to someone, I'll normally say that I'm a professional historian.
33:47If they go further, I say, well, I study engraving and I write books.
33:51And if they go even further, I just have to start telling them that I'm a gun enthusiast, gun collector.
33:57Sometimes I end up in a debate situation and I try to be as graceful as possible.
34:03But some people really get very rude and very unfriendly.
34:08I think some gun owners do feel persecuted.
34:11They feel that they have had their side of the issue very poorly treated by the media at large,
34:17television notably, also some of the major opinion journals.
34:23We're all aware that there are a lot of newspapers in the United States,
34:26but you have a handful of them which exercise an inordinate amount of influence on legislators and scholars and so on.
34:33The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Foundation, things like that.
34:37Most of those papers have generally assumed, as I indicated earlier,
34:43that the debate was held and that somehow there's something wrong with gun ownership.
34:48The American Revolution, sparked by the English attempt to disarm the colonists at Lexington and Concord.
35:03The colonists defend their historic right to arms, a right they later guarantee in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
35:10A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
35:20the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
35:29What do the words mean?
35:31To find out what the Founding Fathers intended, we went to Harvard University,
35:36hardly a bastion of the gun culture,
35:38and put the question to one of the few historians who has studied colonial gun law, Dr. Joyce Malcolm.
35:44Well, there was definitely an individual right for people to have firearms in their homes and to carry them with them,
35:50and it was quite beside any rights that they had to be a part of the militia.
35:55The colonists at that time were very aware of their rights as Englishmen,
35:59and that was one of the things that they were fighting for.
36:02And Englishmen, at the time of the American Revolution,
36:05had a right to have arms in their homes to defend themselves and their family and their property,
36:10and a right and an obligation to defend their neighbors as well, since there were no policemen at that time.
36:16Dr. Malcolm, whatever the Founding Fathers might have had in mind,
36:19they certainly could have been thinking of the kind of violence that we see here in Boston or in Miami.
36:26Well, they had their own violence.
36:28The 17th and 18th centuries in England and America were very violent times,
36:32and not just in the countryside but in the cities.
36:35There were thieves and pickpockets and robbers of all sorts,
36:39and homeowners had to protect themselves,
36:42and quite often you took a brace of pistols to bed with you,
36:45and in fact some people actually put a blunderbuss in the window
36:49to make it very clear to any would-be robber that they intended to defend their property.
36:54Even if I accepted that that was the origin, I think it is abundantly clear that no federal court now
37:00is going to hold that there's a right to bear arms simpliciter.
37:05I mean, it is in the context of the militia, and that's how it's going to be interpreted.
37:11I mean, I carry a little bumper sticker favoring the right to arm bears,
37:15which I think has about equal sense.
37:18So, if the historians are correct that there was an individual right,
37:23the courts would then be changing the interpretation from that intended by the writers?
37:29Indeed, yes. Yes, that's what constitutional interpretation is.
37:32And it's no good complaining about that.
37:36So, it's meant to be a document that's adapted to current needs.
37:41But who is to decide those current needs?
37:51No one upholds the original interpretation of the Second Amendment more than these Americans,
37:57who are reliving the romance of the Civil War in the hills of Northern Virginia.
38:02Here, even the Lord Almighty supports the right to arms.
38:09Eternal God, who art from everlasting to everlasting,
38:13we thank thee for a nation welded by the fires of adversity,
38:17a strong nation of strong individuals,
38:21a nation dedicated to individual rights.
38:25O Lord, help us to ever protect those individual rights.
38:50It was the Civil War and the post-war Reconstruction
38:53that led directly to the whittling away of Second Amendment rights.
38:57Following the war, many blacks took up arms to defend their new won freedoms,
39:02often with the help of Northern whites.
39:05But gangs of heavily armed Southerners terrorized the former slaves,
39:09burned their homes and schools, and took away their guns.
39:13Did not the former slaves as American citizens have a right to keep and bear arms?
39:19In 1876, the Supreme Court ruled that they did not.
39:23According to that decision, the Second Amendment no longer guaranteed an individual right to arms.
39:29The blacks were left disarmed and defenseless right into the 20th century.
39:34In May 1967, on the steps of the California State Capitol at Sacramento,
39:56another group of blacks tried to assert the right to arms.
40:00The Black Panther Party publicly carried guns to protest against a proposed gun control law.
40:07They put trumped up charges of conspiracy and felonies on everyone who went in to exercise a constitutional right and said they had no right to bear arms in a public place.
40:31The California Penal Code section 120-1227 and also the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the citizen a right to bear arms on public property.
40:43But I would think that some of the bills that have been suggested, such as not carrying a loaded weapon on a city street or in town, this might certainly be a good one.
40:54There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today civilians should be carrying a loaded weapon.
41:01Now, of course, you know, I do think there is a significant ingredient of racism in the whole issue of handgun control in this country.
41:13Nobody speaks of it much. Nobody brings it up.
41:18But there are those in society who, if you really ask them, would say, well, I want my gun because I'm going to protect myself from the minorities who are going to come out of the ghetto and get me.
41:29And there are the minorities who would say, well, I'm not going to let the elite surround me and they be the only ones that are armed in this country.
41:40The most interesting thing to me was during the 60s that gun control laws were largely used against blacks.
41:50The blacks were arming themselves against the violence that was being perpetrated against them by whites.
41:57The liberal point of view, which was that the blacks should not have had guns in the first place, was in fact a reactionary point of view.
42:07The blacks had as much right to protect their homes and their lives as white people do.
42:16There's always a big debate about that.
42:19And it really turned on those who were out in the field who felt that they had no choice except to be ready for any attacks by KKK or other people on them.
42:30And I don't see any need now to have that kind of debate because I don't think that we're going to be attacked in large numbers by people with weapons.
42:39One of your friends told me that you yourself had been in a situation here in Washington where you had to use a gun to defend yourself.
42:46I don't recall.
42:47During the time you were in Pride.
42:48Using a gun. I had a gun.
42:51Because I was around people with guns.
42:53And, you know, you evolve through that period.
42:56But when I was with Pride, carrying a gun was like carrying packed cigarettes.
43:00And I wasn't quite that crazy that I was going to think that I was invincible and not be ready.
43:08But that era is over.
43:10But is that era over?
43:15Here in Newark, New Jersey, Willie Wright has been a community activist since those long hot summers of the 1960s.
43:22And, like many black militants, he thinks that Mayor Barry is dead wrong.
43:27How you doing, Will?
43:28Hey, Brother Lee.
43:29What's going on?
43:31I would say that the black politicians, where it relates to gun control laws,
43:36have not come out speaking in behalf of the black community.
43:40When you take a look around, for instance, for people to have to live under these conditions,
43:45if that doesn't serve notice upon the people in this country that to live in this kind of despair
43:51is obviously one that will cause an individual to turn to any type of resort
43:56in order to get the hell out of this garbage that they live in.
43:59The Newark riots of 1967, when police and National Guardsmen were officially condemned for indiscriminate violence,
44:10the militants protested.
44:12I would make sure that the majority of the black brothers and sisters have a piece of firepower
44:19stored somewhere in their closets, their homes, to protect themselves against the most brutal atrocities
44:26to be seen anywhere outside of the battlefields of Vietnam
44:31from what we saw in the city of Newark in the past couple of weeks.
44:37Fifteen years later, we return to the scene of the Newark rebellion,
44:41and in the very shadow of the towering slums that spawned that earlier violence,
44:46we spoke to Willie Wright, who now runs a model community housing project.
44:51The old militant still believes that black people need guns.
44:55If some joker breaks into my house and I have no protection, where does it leave me?
45:00I'm at the end of the world and they can't do anything about protecting them.
45:04So the whole thing about gun control law is just primarily based toward the control of blacks, in my opinion.
45:12Now, Marion Barry has said that while he understood the need for guns in the 60s and himself had one,
45:19that that era is over, that black people are no longer under the threat that they're going to be attacked by armed whites.
45:27Brigantine New Jersey, the Ku Klux Klan down there, they have rifle practices and other things down there with stuff like this.
45:34Certainly they're getting ready to destroy somebody.
45:37So the people here in your housing project, they would be in favor of having the right to arms?
45:42Certainly they should be entitled to that right. And they are entitled to that right.
45:47And certainly it is their belief that they have a right to own a gun.
45:50Do that many of them actually own guns?
45:52I can't say how many own guns, but I would think that they would be a damn fool if they didn't.
45:56Handgun control or the right to bear arms? The question goes to the very heart of what America is about.
46:09The American love for the handgun is associated with much else that's desirable in the culture here,
46:15the sort of sturdy independence, the affection for anonymity, mobility, suspicion of government,
46:22prefer to rely on oneself and one's family or close friend units.
46:28That sort of energy and independence that's really quite characteristic of much of the strength of the society,
46:33I think has its dark side. This belief that the handgun is an effective weapon to carry out those independences in relation to crime.
46:45Of course it isn't.
46:52This country has freedoms which are unknown in any other country.
46:57Now, does that lead us to unfortunate consequences? Of course it does, okay?
47:02It's hard to put people in prison in this country.
47:04We've got to live with crazy people who have guns.
47:06We've got to live with crazy people who drive cars.
47:08We've got to live with criminals who are out on the streets on parole committing crimes when they ought to be up during 20 or 30 years.
47:13All of this is true, but if it's the price we pay for a certain conception of human freedom and individualism,
47:20then it seems to me that price may be well worth paying.
47:23So what kind of nation are we?
47:26Are we?
47:28A nation where tradition teaches us to be prepared.
47:38A nation where racial fear still provokes Americans of all colors to pick up the gun.
47:43A nation where the police cannot protect the individual, but where, in many cities and states, the individual is no longer free to protect him or herself.
47:58But for or against gun control, can Americans truly believe that any gun law will hold back the terrible tide of violence that is ripping America apart?
48:28That final question, do we believe any gun law can stop the tide of violence ripping America apart?
48:37And if that is not the answer, and what is?
48:40I pose that question now to those of you here and those of you watching.
48:45People here in our studios are members of neighborhood groups.
48:48These people are residents of an area called Bay Village in the center of Boston.
48:53They live in historic brick row houses.
48:55They're facing an increasing crime rate, gunpoint muggings, burglaries.
49:00They've spent $15,000 of their own money on anti-crime protection.
49:04And these people.
49:06They're from Boston's Jamaica Plain area.
49:08Some families have lived here for generations, and they'd like to stay on.
49:12But it is getting tougher.
49:14Armed robberies, arson, drugs, older residents afraid to go out, arming themselves with police dogs and even guns.
49:22My first question to everybody here.
49:25How many of you own guns?
49:27And how many of you here would be for stricter gun control laws?
49:34Len Phillips, you're head of the Bay Village Crime Watch Group, and I noticed that you raised your hand on one question but not the other.
49:45You have a gun.
49:46You feel that's your only option?
49:48I do now.
49:49Yes, I feel very safe in the streets when I have my gun with me, and I can protect my wife, myself, my home.
49:55I used to be in favor of gun control, and I went around to the other side because I just don't think it's possible.
50:04It's not really guns we're talking about. It's how people use them.
50:08It's your wife with you, Anne. Anne, how do you feel about your husband having a gun in the house? Are you frightened? Or does it make you feel protected?
50:16I'm not frightened at all by the fact that we have a gun in the house that Len might use. I'm frightened only in the fact that if someone should break into our house, that that gun might perhaps be used on us.
50:30Disagreements here. Anybody want to disagree? Yes, ma'am.
50:33Well, I just feel it's a police function to keep our streets safe, and the mayor has made proposals to have more men out walking, and we've been waiting for that for a long time.
50:41So why don't we try other alternatives before we start to make ourselves all carrying weapons?
50:46I think if we rely on the police, we'll never really have any real safety. The same as if we try to rely on ourselves to protect ourselves with guns, what we have to do is rely on each other.
50:55That we need to put the energy that we often waste in arguing about an issue such as gun control, which isn't so crucial, we should put that energy instead into working with neighbors and protecting each other.
51:05Any other alternative solutions?
51:07I believe in education versus violence and gun control and so on and so forth. I used to believe in gun control, but I don't think a law can control that. And I honestly believe that educating our youngsters, teaching them about peace versus violence, is in the long run, I hope, would be the best way. If it's not in this generation, it'll be in the next generation.
51:28Frank, you were next. I believe the owners for having a handgun should go towards the criminal, because individuals like myself, I don't have self-control to not shoot an individual who's trying to rob me.
51:39You have no gun? Right. And I would end up in prison if I used a gun. So they should have stiffer penalties for individuals who use guns in a crime.
51:47Sir? I'm 72. I feel a lot safer with a gun in my home. It's been broken into three times. I'm from Jamaica Plain.
51:53Anybody else?
51:54On the other hand, I don't think that having a gun necessarily makes you safer. I've been a victim of crime, both mugging on the street and in my home. And if I had a gun, I'm not sure I could use it.
52:04I think you have to know yourself. And if you're going to take a gun out, you better be prepared to use it, because if they see the gun, they're going to shoot you.
52:10I was a victim of a crime at gunpoint in my own home two weeks ago. If I had had a gun, I wouldn't have been able to get to it.
52:18If I had had a gun, it would now be out on the street, because they went through everything. It would be another gun out to commit a crime.
52:28Anybody thinking of buying a gun?
52:30Yes, I've given it a lot of thought, well over a year. And I think if you had asked the question a year ago, my answer would have been a firm no. But I live alone. I don't have any children around that can get into the gun. And I think with proper education and background in handling a gun, I just feel more secure with one in the house. I don't think I would be carrying it on the street.
52:50Anybody else?
52:51I don't agree possession of a weapon is a deterrent to crime. First of all, there's no way that the criminals know that if you have a gun or you don't have a gun. This whole argument seems to justify a proliferation of weapons. And all these weapons, they're being misused. But we need our tighter gun control laws, stricter sentences, things along that line. We need action.
53:17You've all watched this documentary. Did this documentary change anybody's mind, seeing how many various attitudes, how many levels, and how many different thoughts there are?
53:26No, the criminals will always have guns. And that's what it boils down to.
53:29Anybody whose mind had changed?
53:31I feel more comfortable about having a gun. I don't have one.
53:34Watching this documentary made you feel more comfortable about it?
53:36A little bit more comfortable about thinking about it.
53:38One other thing, if a criminal has a drop on you, forget about drawing your own gun, because you're gone.
53:43Did this documentary change your mind? Was there anything in there that you didn't know that made you think about that?
53:48Everything was okay. It reinforced my position.
53:51Reinforced your position?
53:52Right. I think it was biased toward owning guns. For some reason, police were never mentioned or just in passing. If you think of just criminals out there with guns and you, then you're going to start thinking about guns. But there are police, there are courts, and that wasn't brought out at all. That was very, very far in the background in this documentary.
54:12Without the relative value of the documentary itself, Steve, what we see here is we see people who have looked at this and see that maybe education, maybe other alternatives.
54:23And that's what you came out and said at the end, maybe other alternatives, maybe something else to answer the growing tide of violence.
54:28Right. Well, I'm just afraid that the whole gun control debate, for or against, has done enormous harm. And that's because there's no single gun problem. There are many different kinds of problems.
54:40There's heroin addiction, which leads to armed violence. There's family violence. There's racial violence. There's accidents in hunting, accidents in the home. There's street crime.
54:51All of these have very different causes, and they have very different cures. And at best, I'm afraid that gun control is irrelevant to most of them.
54:59This is an issue we will continue to debate and re-debate.
55:02I think so. I'm afraid that gun control is just a quick fix.
55:06Steve Weissman, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.
55:10Next week on Frontline, a very special documentary about an extraordinary family.
55:15It's a family of 18 children. Each child here once was unwanted, in trouble. This is their parent. He has legally adopted all of them. He's nourished them. He has proven the power of love. He has proven that one person can make a difference.
55:38The program is called Children of Pride. It is next week on Frontline. I'm Jessica Savage.
55:45I'm Jessica Savage.
56:15Born in this City of Pride. From Tech.
56:16I'm Jessica Savage.
56:17Born with Jovenry in other Clyde reiterates
56:22The program is only one part of theㄹ-10, which is minor in chief grote
56:41For a transcript of this program,
57:03please send $4 to Frontline, Box 322,
57:07Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
57:11Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH Boston,
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57:18Major funding for Frontline was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
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