Why the US Is Known As the Mass Shooting Nation | Field Notes

[Music] reporters for Vice news traveled the world [Music] putting a human face to the world's most important stories [Music] but now we introduce you to them this position is now under direct fire this is field notes a show that sits down with our reporters to find out the stories behind their stories and how they got so close to the action this is another example of Lebanese people taking matters into their own hands in this episode we hear from the team that investigated the culture of no compromise gun ownership industry money and political dysfunction that has made it so difficult to create meaningful change in the U.S [Music] shooter ready stand by why did you decide to leave the Firearms industry it got to a point in the Farms industry where you had to accept the responsible behaviors you had to celebrate them and you had to Market them to stay in and I looked around and I thought what the hell have we created here the Second Amendment of the Constitution was not written so I can go deer hunting second amendment was written to protect the entire Constitution from a tyrannical government like we have right now will you stop talking about standing you're the guys that talk about Sandy books I don't want to talk about it I don't want to talk about City if you do you understand the pain that these families have gone through what's your outlook on whether or not this can change can change I think a lot of people my age are to the point where we just kind of accepted that this is what life in America is thank you guys for joining me I'm really interested to hear a lot more about this documentary about guns and mass shootings I understand you guys went across the country it's sort of marked for the 10-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings but there's also so much more so I wonder if you could just start with talking to me about the scope like where did you go and you know how did you decide the angle into the story I'll start with you Liz we were asked by one of the executive producers of our show Nikki to do something that would be different than what everybody else was going to be covering around the 10 years since Sandy Hook so we started this conversation back in like April of last year and the idea was to look at why this country has so many mass shootings the mass shooting is defined as four more people shot not including the shooter there are hundreds of them every year across this country so we decided to go across the country to speak with different stakeholders we were just sort of reminiscing on where we had gone we went all the way to Montana we were down in Texas we were in Connecticut for one of the trials also where Sandy Hook is so this really did take us all over the country to get the scope of why the United States is the only country in the world that has this problem yeah I think it was a case of also finding the people who as I said are affected by this but also have something to gain or lose from this as well so you know we spent some time in DC as well where we're all based to try and understand you know who the sort of Puppet Masters behind all of this who's you know getting the most money out of it and who's kind of pulling the strings as well and that kind of led to one of our very really key interviews with the head of the nssf key lobbyists there um who they're not being grouped that has a huge Sway and kind of unknown sway uh within the gun lobbying space we often talk about the NRA but actually the nssf is sort of the key Puppet Master behind everything right now in terms of the legislation they're lobbying uh to ensure that gun reform is next to Impossible and this history is very long obviously right not only legislatively but the Supreme Court like the Heller Decision that sort of codified the Second Amendment as a right to have a gun and then the AR-15 has a gun itself is something that figures very heavily obviously because it's used in so many of the tragic mass shootings that we see so I guess like how did you find that these lobbying firms or lobbying interests shape the way that gun policy is enacted because I think something that's so like uh as as a citizen is a person who sees it happen over and over again as you see victims and you see their families and you understand like how devastating this is and you saw that by talking to so many of the people who have been affected by gun violence but I guess like put put the put the pieces together for me as to how lobbying of this kind affects the next mass shooting so to speak we were curious to figure out how lobbying and The Business of gun ownership informs and impacts the culture because we saw those two things as being like the answers to the question why does the U.S have so many mass shootings you have the business and you have the culture like which came first chicken in the egg situation and what we found was that the business side the lobbyists the NRA and now the nssf had done a really remarkable job creating the perfect customer and that perfect customer was somebody who was heavily invested in a like anti-government culture so anti-establishment culture anti-government culture like one gun isn't enough you have to have as many guns as you can in order to defend yourself from government overreach and as we began to explore that relationship between the money and the culture it was interesting because we saw how the culture had actually moved further right than even the business could keep up with and it was described To Us by one of our subjects as being this like brush fire this kind of uncontrollable brush fire where now you have business interests and politicians who are like scrambling to keep up with how extreme the culture has become and that was really one of the reasons we saw this issue of mass shootings as being so hard to control yeah and did you find sort of like a connection between the culture and then the inability to get policy sort of passed yeah and I think to your question of like how did it become normalized from these military engagements into kind of everyday Society like you had the sun setting of the assault weapons ban war in the Middle East and then also the rise of like political extremism and Barack Obama becoming president so it was really shocking to see how much assault weapons sales spite when Obama became president and it was this period of intense paranoia so even though like not all gun owners in America were fighting overseas a lot of people who were experiencing like political paranoia or be drawn to like the more extreme ends of political culture where it became like interested in gun ownership that became like more and more people over time and is kind of Representative of this like right-wing consumer base that politicians are chasing after and that's preventing those same politicians from passing legislation that could help curtail gun sales and that kind of all comes together in the character of Alex Jones in some way does it yeah yeah I was going to say I mean Madeline is explaining this well and leading perfectly up to why we went to the Alex Jones trial Sandy Hook families sued him and won in this trial in Connecticut last fall and Alex Jones for years on his Infowars conspiracy television radio shows would say that Sandy Hook was a false flag that the U.S government was somehow involved in it in order to take away people's guns called the parents crisis actors which is a horrific thing to say to someone who lost their child in a mass shooting so we went to that trial as kind of a lens into how a whole uh I guess group of people in this country have become politically paranoid and therefore have taken that and wanted to purchase more guns I think Alex Jones encouraged that with some people and that trial was a pretty good culmination of those things and it was wild to be there in person honestly and to sort of see him defending what he had spewed for so long this judge is is ordering me to say that I'm guilty and to say that I'm a liar they've misrepresented what I've said and done and they have continued to use my name to fundraise for their gun control organizations Alex do you understand I say to them that I didn't murder your children you're the guys that talk about Sandy book I don't want to talk about it I don't want to talk about Samuel you do you live off of us understand the pain that these families have gone through and then there's a Nexus between misinformation and disinformation in the case of Alex Jones towards saying hey these terrible events didn't happen right so they're trying to take your guns which is a very political statement and it kind of you know rallies an extremist base sometimes to say something like that and I'm thinking about you know pieces that the DC Bureau has done such as uh people harassing and calling into election workers and so we talk about guns and we talk about the politics behind them but there's so many different strands that it touches and what you guys cover so I guess my question on the extremism side is like it is a kind of political violence if you really kind of think about it because it's so politicized as an issue that every time we see one of these you know a mass shooting that happens for any number of different reasons for instance you know recently uh for the Lunar New Year there was a mass shooting in California now that wasn't an AR-15 but it was a band um you know extended clip so there's it's like every time one of these tragedies happens it's it reflects upon the politics of our time as well so that's a broad question I know but like I guess sort of putting those those those pieces together in your reporting is what I'm interested in talking about yeah I mean there's definitely like a normalization of political violence I think across the board and we've been covering that for years now but I think it's also a disconcerting political story to tell because like to actually be in the capital like Liz and I were at the end of that piece and talking to Senators who have the ability to do something about it and they're so disinterested in even addressing the question is like unbelievable I remember after Uvalde we went to the Capitol and there was like a protest above ground with all these parents who had just lost their kids and then we went to the basement to track down some senators and ask them about it and it was like it was a vacation day for them it was totally dead like we were trying to ask them questions there was like so little energy around this event that had like almost like mobilized the entire country at that moment like right after you've all day we were like it felt like there was such a collective grief and just the experience of being like not like 500 feet away from these grouping parents in the basement of the Senate where these people like didn't really seem to care at all was so bizarre and so spooky and like we were there for the end of our documentary trying to ask about another mass shooting that had just happened in Virginia and like how much money these senators were getting from the gun lobby and like they hadn't really even seen that prepared to answer questions about it even though we were there like the day after a mass shooting because it was just so normal that this kind of violence would be happening like what they really wanted to talk about was like McCarthy becoming the speaker or like who are they going to vote for there was a real disconnect I think between like the reality of the suffering and the kind of like political machinations below ground one thing I was also struck by is sort of the graphics that you guys use to communicate just how many mass shootings there were and how you focus in on individual mass shootings as a result but that formed a backbone that really you think about like the just tapestry of number of mass shootings there are every line passing by now is a massacre a mass shooting means four or more people shot or killed not including the shooter over the past decade there had been more than 4 000 of them 600 this year alone the tragedies are so frequent they blend together the deadly shooting at an elementary school and it is turning out to be worse than anyone could have imagined while each one is a national news story there's a routine to how it plays out [Music] shock and horror giving way to thoughts and prayers tonight everyone in this Arena and every citizen across the land sends our prayers to the victims and their families we all do we hear from morning family members and friends about their loved ones whose lives were cut short he's just a wonderful person to give anything for those kids anything even her life and if the death toll is high enough or the victim's young enough the president might visit the scene I am sick and tired of it why are we willing to live with this Carnage why don't we keep letting this happen our edits was amazing um she was incredible and we as you all said uh are you okay while looking through particularly the news reports of these mass shootings they are so cyclical and so horrific just to watch you know children like leaving buildings particularly Schools running out you know being that traumatized hearing from victims families I think without sort of hitting the viewer over the head with this we did want to kind of remind the viewer that easy to forget and it's easy to confuse mass shootings like no that was actually in 2017 and no that one was at this school not that school and I think that kind of reminds the viewer that this is chronic persistent and isn't going away anytime soon and so I think that was like one of the tools we wanted to use Graphics to do in this piece of these and how did you like contend with the overwhelming element of it I found that filming this was was quite dark and I have been covering gun policy issues for a number of years this was my first time actually going to the scene of a mass shooting that was what Madeleine and I deployed to in St Louis and being on the ground there for that and speaking with some of these young students I think I was very worried that I would be really emotional on camera I kept it together for the interviews but it was so emotional hearing from them the parents in Uvalde Brett and Javier are amazing people and they opened their homes to us which is like so generous of them to allow cameras into a very Sacred Space where they have many memories of their their children that they lost yeah it takes a toll and I am not uh the parent of of a child that's been shot I'm not the the spouse or the sister or brother so you think about the collective grief I think that this nation experiences with mass shootings think about these families in Monterey Park in California that are beginning their journey of grief after losing people and it is a very heavy weight to bear for this nation you know one of the parents you talk to in Uvalde said something that stuck with me which is like these lawmakers aren't going to do anything about it because it's not their kids that are getting shot the sons of children screaming have been removed was the caption that played right before they released the hallway video their screams weren't just removed from that video their voices have been silenced completely the flag upside down it's our country is in distress right now and we have to do something yeah what are the changes that you want to see I want laws that are common sense that can prevent these things and I fear that most of this country and all of the government and everything it's not going to change their minds because it wasn't their kids and so there's something like very like hard about this trauma and very animating about this trauma when people actually do see it and I think you know part of what what's compelling about this film is how you guys used the body cam footage from the Uvalde shooting talk to me about using that because it is really like traumatic to watch or it is like It's upsetting to watch but I think I thought you guys used it in a very discreet and interesting way how did you contend with that it was interesting you mentioned that because there was a moment that it was in the piece and I had been watching it a bunch of times and I was like should we just cut this body cam footage like I and I think it was more like my personal reaction to having to like watch it a bunch of times but as straight was mentioning it's kind of the process of like remembering how severe and horrific that event was and I think like even Uvalde had kind of become a headline in my head but seeing the body cam footage really brought it to light like I think a big conversation in this film was how much violence we wanted to show versus like what the like the editorial like payoff would be like there's definitely a line where we didn't want to introduce just so much violence that someone couldn't watch the film but the Uvalde scene was so important to us and those parents were so important to us that we were like we should spend the time and really like use these visuals because we have to set up what the stakes are like we have to remember how bad it was so that by the time we're at the end like talking to the gun lobby like that those images are still with us and I think something that was difficult was that when we were talking to to the gun lobbies or like the lawmakers at the end we were able to like bring those visuals with us like I think there's a part of me that was like I wish I could have just like combined these two people in the room and then like now you guys have to like reckon with or the lobby like needs to reckon with the pain that's been felt but that obviously like is not our job in this situation um but the visuals really tell that story in a way that I think an interview can't on its own and I guess last question because it's about the lobby and I want to come back to that because that was so much of the Crux of your investigation here it's like yes the NRA might be sunsetting in some weird ways but it will go on how does the gun lobby reconcile the clear like difference in the way the United States has mass shootings and other countries don't like what is their story like how do they you know Square the circle on this we try to explore that with with Larry Keane who is the head lobbyist for the at nssf the National Shooting Sports foundation and they are filling the void that the NRA has left because of all of their own internal issues with that organization has there ever been a shooting or a tragedy in the recent past that has given you pause about your your work what you do at the nssf like all Americans people in the fire industry certainly people that work at nssf and who are the criminal misuse of firearms we think these are horrible tragedies but we don't believe that our advocacy work on behalf of our industry is responsible for this tragedies but I mean in Uvalde we saw 19 students who were killed with an AR-15 is is that not a time to to look at how deadly that weapon is that weapon is no more deadly than any other firearm so we see that as just exploiting tragedy for political gain I think he knows a lot of powerful lawmakers and influences policy in a pretty serious way and he said he does not feel like the work that he does is responsible for mass shootings and you know I think that is the main answer you hear from these Pros Second Amendment groups is that having being armed being supportive of the Second Amendment and guns in this country they don't see the connection to mass violence and mass shooting they see those events related to mental health to Josh Hawley talked about masculinity and manhood the judicial system was something that Ted Cruz said to us so I think that there are you know other things that these lobbyists and that these lawmakers who are against major gun safety reform will tell you and I suppose part of the film is letting viewers decide for themselves like how how do these pieces fit together how do they not fit together I I guess I'd also say about like how does the lobby or how do these lawmakers reckon with the epidemic of mass shooting is it like they don't have to like I don't think that they like we can put the question to them but there's no like like source of accountability that's going to force them to reckon with what's happening because if it had happened if it could have it would have happened already like I think that was a big impression I got from both the lobbyists and the Senators was like there's no kind of like there's very little outside forces it's contract that's like gonna move their decision making so there's not like a lot of critical thinking around I think around the way that they can they see guns in relationship to this violence because they already have their talking points they can talk about well it's mostly criminals on the street who are shooting or like laws won't prevent this or whatever you know masculinity but like they're they can just easily like be in and out of an interview with us and then like continue to be really successful in their jobs and that's like I don't know where else that accountability can come from and I think we were says listen to piece and we talk about it as well but if business is good why would you want to hinder an impact business and fundamentally and cynically that is ultimately a bottom line it's a bottom line industry where sales sales are doing well and it's enshrined in the Constitution so well thank you guys for this reporting I know it must not have been easy and it was quite an undertaking given how far you went and how many places but it raised a lot of questions and I think it's a conversation that isn't over I'm Michael lermont editor-in-chief of Vice news too often traditional news outlets shy away from the real stories and experiences of those living through 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Channel: VICE News

Views: 224,591

Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2023, gun control, america, US, guns, gun controls, nra, reporting, journalism, vice news world, vwn, united states, gun violence, mass shootings, latest news, world news, breaking news, second amendment, gun legislation, international news, us news, united states of america, gun violence warning signs reaction, gun violence documentary, gun violence in chicago, gun violence in usa

Id: Py62uYJylRs

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 20 2023