From: [w--g--s] at [lonestar.jpl.utsa.edu] (William W. Hughes) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns Subject: Armed and Law Abiding (fwd) Date: 15 Mar 1995 01:11:37 -0600 Forwarded by request. Please contact Ms. Freifeld directly with offers of assistance. The poster is not involved in this production at this time. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 14 Mar 95 21:45:32 EST From: Riva Freifeld/NYC <[70642 426] at [compuserve.com]> To: [w--g--s] at [lonestar.jpl.utsa.edu] Subject: Armed and Law Abiding ARMED AND LAW-ABIDING A 90 minute documentary for Public Television and foreign broadcast 1994 Riva Freifeld Riva Productions 170 West End Ave., #21G New York, NY 10023 (212) 874-7535 fax (212) 874-3970 GUNS. There is probably today no issue which so divides the American public. Half of us think we should be allowed to own and carry guns. Half of us think this uniquely American right should be abolished immediately. Guns are what make us different from the British, the Canadians, the Japanese, the French, and people from these countries can't understand why so many of us insist on having them. Guns are associated in the popular imagination, in films and television with crime, death, and evil, but they are also a force for good in the eyes of many people who own them for hunting purposes and self-defense. For some of us, guns were part of our childhood education, for the rest of us, part of our childhood fears. But never before were guns so much in the news as they are today, dividing our society with an intensity that permeates no other issue except perhaps abortion. ************************** RIVA FREIFELD, an award-winning Canadian filmmaker living in New York City, is producing a 90 minute documentary special for PBS on the untold story of guns in America today. Ms. Freifeld began research on this film shortly after a young relative was accidentally shot by a neighbor who had found his father's loaded gun. She began to film herself as she studied the attitudes of people connected to the incident. As a person completely unfamiliar with guns, she took up target shooting, in order to gain insights into the gun culture, its proponents, and its enemies. What she learned forms the basis of the film -- and it's not what has been depicted in the mainstream media. There are approximately 200,000,000 guns in the United States. About 13,000 Americans are murdered every year with a gun. These statistics and others, together with comparisons with other countries, are used to create the perception that only bad things happen with guns, only bad people have guns, and bad things are happening here in America because we have so many guns. But as the mainstream media showers us with image after image of gun violence and death, statistic after statistic about the dangers of gun owning, another story is not being told. A story which does not lend itself to dramatic headlines and fast moving imagery, because it is not about death, it is about being responsible for your own life. There is a stigma attached to gun ownership, fostered by negative coverage in the media. This applies not only to hunters and han