- [Interviewer] Bethany.
Can you try to recite the second amendment from memory here?
- Oh gosh, I know it's the right to bear arms.
- I bet if I start it off, you could finish it.
- [Bethany] Okay.
- A well regulated militia being necessary
for the security of a free state.
The right.
- Eugh, I don't!
(classical music)
- Hi, my name is Britt, and I use she/her/goddess pronouns.
- I'm Carmen, I'm a musician.
- My name is Dan and I really do love guns.
- [Interviewer] Britt, today you are going to be guessing,
from a line of strangers, who owns a gun.
- Awesome.
- [Interviewer] Do you own a gun?
- I do not, yet.
- [Interviewer] Would you ever own a gun?
- Yes.
- I don't like guns.
Don't really understand the logic behind owning a gun.
- You know I've got three safes behind me
and that kind of speaks for itself.
- [Interviewer] Are they all filled with guns?
(laughs)
- Yeah,
and there it expands more than this, honestly.
- [Interviewer] How do you think you're going to do at this?
- I think I'm going to get them.
- [Interviewer] All right, well, let's see how you do.
First up is Bethany.
- Hi Dan, my name is Bethany.
It's very nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, Bethany.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
- I'm a dancer.
I actually now own a dance studio.
- Okay.
- Tell me a little bit about your political leanings.
- I do lean more on the conservative ends,
but I could see myself almost being in the middle, honestly.
- Mhm.
- She is a business owner, I'm a business owner.
A lot of businesses have money flow coming and going.
And that money flow is their livelihood.
If a 300 pound guy wants to corner you into a room,
there's not much you're going to do about it.
There's a disparity of force there.
- Dan, are you a fearful man?
- No, I'm not fearful at all.
I'm actually a very confident man.
I'm certainly not overly confident.
I'm actually very humble guy.
- [Interviewer] All right, Dan,
make a guess here with Bethany.
- Yes.
- I think you don't own a gun.
I guess I have an impression in my mind
that women are less likely to own guns.
- I think you own a gun,
but I think that maybe you feel weird about it.
- I do own a gun, but I don't feel weird about it.
- [Britt] Okay.
- I actually just live with my mom.
She's older and so I kind of feel like
I just need to take care of her, honestly.
- And I'm glad you're being proactive about keeping you
and your mama safe out there.
- Oh yeah, I love her with all my heart.
- [Interviewer] Bethany, can you try
to recite the second amendment from memory here?
- Oh gosh.
I know it's the right to bear arms.
I'm sure if he told me, I could probably say that,
say what's going next,
but I literally like-
- Well let's try that.
A well regulated militia
being necessary for the security of a free state.
The right,
- Eugh, I don't!
- The right of the people to.
- Why do I not know this?
- [Interviewer] Let's move on here to Amy.
- Okay.
First impressions.
What you see from here to here?
What do you think?
- You're not a white man.
So just right off the bat, that's a no for me.
- What do you do for a living?
- I'm an educator.
I'm currently in grad school right now
to get my degree in school counseling
so I can become a elementary school counselor.
- Oh cool.
- My part time job is substitute teaching
and gun violence in schools
is just really terrifying to me personally.
- We need to arm teachers.
How do you feel about that?
- I disagree with that.
- I'm going to say Amy's not a gun owner.
- You're not a gun owner.
- That is correct.
I am not a gun owner.
- Why don't you own a gun?
- I have lost a colleague to a mass school shooting
a couple of years ago up here in a high school.
- I'm sorry.
- I think from there on,
I just believe that gun control
has really impacted me as an educator.
- It is all school personnel's job to protect children,
whether they have a gun or not.
But the one who has the guns,
the only one in that building
that could do something about it.
- I don't feel comfortable
if my colleagues have guns in their classroom.
And I work in an elementary school.
- I'll tell you what won't make you feel comfortable
when you're in the classroom
and you're hearing gunshots and your kids are out at lunch.
If you have somebody who's willing to take the training.
- I don't know, I-
- Which is very intense by the way,
far greater than an education class in college,
I can guarantee you that.
- The last semester of my senior year,
we had to be waved in every day,
you know with the wand.
And we'd expect them to be able to focus
when there are people walking around them
with guns were actively threatening their person.
- Yeah, they dehumanizes students.
School should be a place where kids learn
and educators go and do their jobs.
- I appreciate you sharing your heart.
It was a lot of fun talking to you
and I guessed correctly and I'm happy about that.
- Hi Britt, my name's Amir.
- Hi, Amir.
Can you just tell me the difference
between a handgun and a shotgun?
- So a handgun is fairly smaller.
You can conceal it.
- Okay, yeah, he knows too much.
You currently own a gun.
- Amir, do you feel that there is a gun problem
in the US?
- I do, yes, actually.
With the right laws and precautions,
we can eliminate that.
- Could you tell me what law above and beyond
the 10,000 gun laws out there already
would prevent gun violence?
- Definitely a mental health check
for individuals looking to get the concealed carry
as well as intense background checks.
- You feel that I should go see a physician each
and every time I acquire a firearm?
- No, but the initial time,
the initial process, I'd say, yes.
- You would?
- Yes.
- That is very anti second amendment.
I'm going to say Amir does not own a gun.
- Sorry to break it to Dan, but I am a gun owner.
Yeah.
- You are?
Okay. - Yeah.
- That's a Glock 43 X.
- Yes.
- Yeah, I have it too.
- Oh cool.
- Good gun.
- Here it is.
- I have a pretty visceral reaction
to seeing a gun, I think.
I'm interested to hear why you have the gun.
- Going to school.
I worked really late nights,
mostly graveyard shifts,
and I've had my vehicle broken into.
I've had individuals in my vehicle, strangely.
I decided I should maybe purchase one just for my safety.
- That makes sense.
- [Interviewer] Britt, I'm wondering
if the recent actions by the police make you
want to own a firearm any more?
- Yes, it does.
That to me is really important.
That I ensure that I am safe from a government
that actively wants to infringe upon my rights
and my own wellbeing.
That's literally the reason for the second amendment.
It's not to protect us from our neighbor.
It's protects us from our government.
- Being a black gun owner
kind of puts me more fear from law enforcement
because that can also make them think
that I could be maybe a threat,
even though I don't ever perceive myself as that.
- Hi Dan, my name is Alicia and I use she/her
and they/them pronouns.
- I'm sorry, what was that?
- I use she/her and they/them pronouns.
What pronouns do you use?
- Mister.
- Mister, okay.
- Right off the bat I would say no.
I have this image in my head of gun owners
being Trump supporters.
Definitely not with septum piercing.
- Well, let me ask, what do you do in your spare time?
- I hang out at like local bars in my area.
I like to go shoot pool.
- I think she's a gun owner.
- Yeah, I'm not a gun owner.
- Why'd you do not have to start by saying "yeah"?
I thought, "yeah, I got it."
And then you said you're not.
- I had to throw you for a loop again.
- Okay, all right.
Why don't you own a gun?
- I think that there's a really big mental health crisis,
especially in the United States.
There needs to be ongoing assessment
when it comes to people's mental health.
And if they're carrying guns.
- I wholeheartedly believe
that we have mental health issues.
I'm not sure it's a crisis,
but that doesn't take away their second amendment rights.
We mistakenly say because they have mental issues
that all of a sudden they're violent.
- I would say that I'm a person who struggles
with my own mental health issues.
I wouldn't consider myself a violent person.
It's nothing wrong with them, really.
It's that they might do something
that isn't true to who they are.
- Well, I want to thank you.
And I really do wish you
the greatest amount of safety in your area.
- Thank you.
- [Interviewer] All right here.
We're going to move on to our last person.
- I'm Katie.
- Nice to meet you.
- Hi.
- Where are you from?
- I've lived all over the country.
I have a military family background.
- That's very cool.
- Did your parents own guns?
- Yeah, my dad owned guns growing up.
- Did you learn how to use them when you were a kid?
- No, we were discouraged from going
anywhere near that part of the house.
- I think Katie doesn't have guns.
- You're certainly a young lady,
which really doesn't matter too much, but a lot of times,
especially females they'll get involved in gun ownership
once they have kids.
- Yeah, I don't have kids yet.
- My guess is just no.
- Yeah, that was right.
The reason I don't have guns
is that my dad did have guns growing up in the house.
He was in Vietnam when he was very young
and he suffered his whole life with PTSD from that.
And when I was 10 years old,
my dad actually used that gun to kill himself.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
- That's why I think we might
need a little more restriction around.
- Don't make me come back,
I thought we were wrapping this part up.
- Well, I guess from, from my perspective,
at the end of my dad's life,
he was very suicidal
and expressed that feeling to his pastor
and to his counselor and to his wife, my mother,
and none of those people
could take the gun out of his house.
If a healthcare professional
might have been able to take his gun away from him,
I don't necessarily hold out hope
that he wouldn't have killed himself some other way,
but it might not have been as easy, you know?
- Okay.
- [Interviewer] Raise your hand
if Carmen was right about you.
- I will say I came in a little more confident
that I would be more successful.
I think I barely slid through, but it was,
it's a wonderful panel.
I think everybody is really great.
- [Interviewer] Dan, I'm curious if anything
that anyone said has changed your perspective at all?
- No, no, not at all.
Not even a little bit.
- My image of a gun owner beforehand was pretty narrow.
In my mind that tells me that there,
I probably know a lot more gun owners than I think I do.
- [Interviewer] Why is the conversation around guns
so fraught in this country?
- I think that there's a fear
of the wrong people having firearms
and the wrong people is completely subjective.
Me being like a black woman,
if I am found with a gun on me,
who the fuck knows what's going to happen?
I mean, at the end of the day,
if we're really looking for a reform,
if a bunch of POC are out there running around open carrying
in open carry states,
there will be gun control in five minutes.
That's all it took in California.
It just took the Black Panthers walking around
with their rifles for five minutes.
And then suddenly it's no longer an open carry state.
Not to say that one group has them,
but there's one specific group that is able to have them
and brandish their firearms without being put in a body bag.