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