Original subtitles

[instrumental music playing]

♪

[Jesse] This story is about America.

It's about who we are, where we've come from,

what we stand for.

It's about freedom.

And this story is my story.

Growing up as an American,

I always knew that America was unique because it was free.

But today, I'm watching the freedoms that we have slip away.

So I set out on a journey across the world

to learn more about the fight against freedom,

and to uncover the agenda behind it.

This is my journey.

For me, this story began as a way to explore an issue that I was passionate about.

Coming from California and living near the capital,

the topic of gun control was a regular political issue

that people like me were dealing with.

I was raised around guns and growing up, my dad was an avid hunter

but until the recent push for more gun control,

I never really understood how important a right

the Second Amendment guaranteed.

And in America over the past few years,

there has been a fairly steady battle against that right.

That idea was really the springboard for this journey.

I had questions.

What would happen to our country if our guns were taken away?

What was the point of it all?

Where is America headed?

But my first question- How did this all start?

[operator] Newtown 911, what's the location and emergency?

[woman 1] Sandy Hook school, I think there's somebody shooting in here.

In Sandy Hook school.

[operator] Okay, what makes you think that?

[woman 1] Because somebody's got his gun.

I saw a glimpse of somebody running down the hallway.

[operator] Newtown 911, what's the address?

[woman 2] It's 10 Dickinson Drive in Sandy Hook. Newtown, Connecticut.

[operator] What's going on at 10 Dickinson Drive?

[woman 2] It sounds like there are gunshots in the hallway.

[operator] Keep everybody calm, get everybody down,

get everybody away from the windows, okay?

[operator] Newtown 911, what's the location of the emergency?

[caller] Sandy Hook Elementary School

I believe they're shooting at the front... at the front glass.

Something is going on.

Right here in Newtown, Connecticut, the site today of a mass shooting...

What would drive a young man to do such a thing?

He was armed to the teeth with legally purchased guns

and went from obscurity to infamy.

[Jesse] On December 14, 2012,

Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut,

and went on a killing spree.

That day he shot and killed 20 elementary school children and six teachers,

accomplishing the second deadliest school shooting in American history.

After that, there was a firestorm of debate over gun control laws

all across America.

President Obama gave impassioned speeches

and legislatives became fired up

to try and fix the issue of gun violence and mass shootings

by pushing for more restrictive gun control laws,

spanning everything from tighter background checks

to assault weapons bans.

And along with the discussion, the rhetoric flew.

I'm not remotely against people having the right to bear arms,

I'm seriously against the right to have military style assault weapons

to blow kids' brains to pieces in school.

Our journey is not complete until all our children,

from the streets of Detroit

to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown,

know that they are cared for.

[Jesse] One of the first stops in my journey was with Tim Donnelly,

a former California State Assemblyman from the mountains of southern California.

[Jesse] From a political perspective,

how did this assault on the Second Amendment begin?

It started with a tragedy.

We saw the tragedy at Sandy Hook in Connecticut,

and as soon as that happened,

the liberals got out Saul Alinsky's play book,

and didn't want to let a tragedy go to waste.

So instead of reacting in a calm, responsible manner,

and making sure that we protect the kids,

they went right after the right of people to protect themselves.

Here's the thing,

there's not a single law that was proposed across the entire United States

that would have prevented that tragedy.

In fact, that kid tried to buy the weapon at a gun store

that wouldn't take the background check,

and therefore he was denied the right to legally purchase a firearm.

Criminals don't abide by laws, period. That's why they're criminals.

They're outside of the law.

And this idea that we're gonna deprive even teachers,

why shouldn't the teacher have a right to defend her life and the life of her children?

Why do we wanna deny her the right to defend her life

and how's that gonna make anybody else safer?

[Jesse] I wanted to get a feel for the reality of how firearms impact crime.

So I figured the best place to do that was in my own county,

and I met with my sheriff, John D'Agostini.

When I took office, there were roughly 720 licensed concealed weapons carriers

in the county.

I've been in office almost three years now,

we have over 2,000.

Our gun crime rate hasn't gone up,

we don't have blood running in the streets,

it's not the Old West,

that's not the case.

We have more law-abiding citizens that are responsible,

people that are responsibly exercising their Second Amendment right

to carry a concealed weapon.

And I'm comfortable that if evil came into my county,

and intended to do harm,

we wouldn't have a mass incident,

we'd have a bad guy neutralized.

The old saying now is kind of a buzzword in the last year is,

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Good guys with guns don't get into trouble.

Bad guys with guns will always get into trouble.

You are never going to keep, no matter what the laws are,

keep guns out of the hands of bad guys.

It's not going to happen.

How about we just make sure that law-abiding citizens

are able to exercise their Second Amendment rights

to fort those bad guys that do have firearms.

[Jesse] The rhetoric from the media surrounding the gun control debate

had really interested me.

I traveled to New York City to speak with former governor, Mike Huckabee.

First of all, liberals would love to get rid of guns

because liberals, if they don't understand something,

they want to eliminate it so they don't have to have an honest assessment of it.

So because of that arrogance,

they don't want anyone else to own a gun,

and they don't want anyone else to understand,

and they're not interested in the facts, thank you,

because their minds have already been made up.

I get so tired of liberals when they say, "If we can just save even one life--"

If there is a step we can take that will save just one child,

just one parent,

just another town from experiencing the same grief

that some of the moms and dads who are here have endured,

then we should be doing it.

That sounds so stupid if you stop to think about it

'cause we could save a lot of lives getting out of cars, airplanes, trains, boats.

People die all kinds of ways everyday in America,

and it's easier for them to have every person get rid of his or her guns

and it would be for them to take the time

to think about the fact that guns are not the real problem.

It's people who have an intent to kill, who are the real problem.

[Jesse] David Keene is the Editorial Editor of theWashington Times

and formally served as the president of The National Rifle Association.

And he brings a unique perspective to the table,

that of both a gun expert and an expert in media and rhetoric.

The media, by and large

does not enter coverage of firearms related stories

as an unbiased journalistic... you know, storyteller or reporter.

Let me give you an example.

In the course of the gun debate of the year or so ago,

I was invited to attend and be the guest

at what's known as theChristian Science Monitor Breakfast in Washington.

That used to be called theSperling Breakfast.

One of the questions that arose

was the question of the so-called "gun show loophole,"

that some of these folks like to talk about.

And I finally, after answering the question, said,

"How many people at this table have ever attended a gun show?"

-Nobody. -Hmm.

And so I said, "It happens that a very large gun show next week

will be taking place in sub-urban Virginia,

and we're sending around a sign-up sheet right now.

Anybody who would like to attend this gun show

can go with me as my guest."

TheChristian Science Monitor called me a few days later,

and how many people do you think signed up?

None.

Because they prefer to write something based on their own prejudices

than actually find out what it was like

before they wrote their stories.

[Jesse] Gun control advocates have built an entire case based off of rhetoric and emotion

rather than reason.

They had turned guns into criminals,

and gun owners, the backbone of American gun culture, into extremists.

Jessie Duff and Julie Golob are both world champion pistol shooters

whose lives are centered around that gun culture

and are proof of who gun owners really are.

Something that I think gets pumped out from the media

is this idea that, essentially any person that loves guns and owns guns

is probably in some way, a yahoo, a redneck, or just kind of a loser.

-Yeah. -Um...

Being with all of these people, what do you think of that view?

I think the media portrays us completely wrong,

which, you know, they do that for their advantage.

In the shooting industry, you have every walk of life you can imagine.

You have someone such as myself, a mid-twenties female, who loves to shoot.

I do girly things as well.

I make sure of my makeup, and I have diamond earrings on when I go shoot.

-That's not typical. -Yeah.

Then you have your older generation that grew up with firearms

and love to compete, and just go out and do what they can,

you have the younger generation coming in,

you have any type of person you can imagine

just enjoying firearms.

And for us to be stereotyped in such a way

is... is not fair to us.

For me in particular, guns have always been a part of my family,

but I've always been tied in closely to the roots of

the concept of being able to not only have guns for fun and hunting and shooting,

but also from the primary aspect of that's what makes us Americans.

If they would take a moment to look into our world,

they would realize that...

people that enjoy the firearms and traditions, and everything that go with it,

nine times out of ten, we're just good... good-hearted, red-blooded Americans

that love our traditions and what these firearms mean.

-It's just a way of life for us. -Yeah.

[Jesse] What I was learning through all of this was that in almost every way

whether it came down to guns themselves or gun owners in America,

gun control advocates didn't even understand the issue.

And as I studied it more, that became abundantly clear.

This is a ghost gun.

What's a barrel shroud and why should we regulate it?

-I actually don't know what a barrel shroud is-- -Oh, okay.

-It's in your legislation. -It's a shoulder thing that goes up.

No.

This right here has the ability with a .30-caliber clip

to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second.

Thirty magazine clip in half a second.

For most purposes, having these... these...

these magazine, um, clips

that have... that have more than 15 rounds in them

there's really no purpose for those except for shooting targets or shooting people.

Pistols are different. You'll have to pull the trigger each time.

An assault weapon, you basically hold and it goes [imitates gun sound]

[Jesse] Yeah, they don't get it.

And these are the people who are claiming to be the experts in the issue.

[Donnelly] Ultimately, the founders were afraid of the government.

They were afraid of investing too much power,

central control in one body.

And that's what we have.

The more and more you deprive the people of the right to defend their lives,

the more they depend on the government.

Pretty soon, the government becomes so powerful that the only people who have guns

are the military and the police.

It doesn't matter where your politics are.

This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue,

it's not a right or left issue,

this is an American issue. This is about freedom.

This is about fundamentally, whether you're gonna live free

or you're gonna let the government control you and rule over you

rather than rule at your consent,

which is what the promise was of the founding documents.

In the Declaration of Independence,

it says that the power is derived from the Creator.

It is given to the people, and the people lend it to the government.

[captivating music playing]

♪

[Jesse] So this entire issue really came back down

to the time when the Constitution was written,

in the context to that the founders had when they were drafting it.

Not too far from my hometown lives Mike Winther,

the head of the Institute for Principle Studies

and a long-time student of the Constitution.

[Winther] Let's start with the concept of the Constitution.

When you're framing a government, there's two ways you can frame it legally.

You can frame a government with a document that lists all the "Do not do's,"

so the government can't do this, can't do this, can't do this.

If that is the only way you frame your government,

that "Do not do" list would have to be pretty long.

It would be an infinite list.

Our Constitution was not framed as a "Do not do" list.

Our Constitution was framed with the opposite view of a "Can do" list.

And so what our Constitution is, is the "Can do" list.

"Here's the list of enumerated powers that the federal government can have."

So the US Constitution and the government that it created

is a creation of the states,

and the states were taking their sovereign power

and granting certain powers and authorities to this federal government.

So take away the Bill of Rights because that came along later.

Without first ten amendments,

the Bill of Rights, the Constitution

grants the federal government no power to infringe on freedom of speech.

It grants the government no power to infringe on freedom of religion.

It grants the government no power to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

So without the Second Amendment,

our gun rights should be still secure under the Constitution.

You can use the layout, 30 or 40 quotations from founders

all saying that rights come from God.

And without that idea of rights coming from God, there's no liberty,

because if government gives you your rights,

then government can take them away.

[Jesse] So I was hearing that constitutionally, all authority that the government has

is granted by the people.

And therefore, the governing authorities are subject to the people's control.

But it seems many lawmakers either ignore or refuse to understand that idea.

I spoke with South Carolina Attorney General, Alan Wilson,

also the head of US Attorney Generals Association, about this fact,

and asked why the anti-gun leftists disregarded the truth.

[Wilson] You know, what's interesting about the Second Amendment,

if you look at the second part,

"the right of the people to bear arms,

to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

What's interesting about that is, the way it's written is, it's that...

the amendment presupposes that the right doesn't come from government.

It says that that's a right that shall not be infringed.

It's telling the government "You can't infringe on the right."

The right pre-exists the government.

The right to possess firearms does not come from the government.

It's an inherent right that we have,

and the amendment is a restriction on government.

Why are there so many people in power today

that just... it's almost like they refuse to try and even understand it that way?

Because if they educated themselves on the issue,

then it would contradict their beliefs and views,

and people don't want to challenge their beliefs and views,

they want to validate them.

And a lot of folks who are radical on an extreme

on trying to curtail the Second Amendment...

it's not about making things better, it's about making you feel better.

[Jesse] In the course of the gun debate after Newtown,

none of these ideas have ever really even been discussed,

but they're unique, and they're important to debate.

Is the truth just being passed over?

I think President Obama was sort of the drum major for ignorance when it came to guns.

He clearly wanted to demonize the guns,

whether it was after Sandy Hook or the theater shooting in Colorado,

all of which were horrible, but all of which happened in gun-free zones.

And you think about if gun-free zones were the answer,

if taking guns and making them inaccessible to law-abiding citizens,

if that were the answer,

how come the worst mass-murder crimes we've had

have happened in gun-free zones?

It's because people who were gonna use a gun to commit a felony

and gonna kill somebody

pay no attention to the fact that it's a gun-free zone.

The fact is, if people don't have a gun,

they'll use a stick, they'll use a knife,

they'll use a bomb, they'll use a rope,

they'll use whatever they may have at hand.

You know, it's the, again, irrational approach

that so many people have toward guns

that they don't apply to any other type of instrument of death.

[Jesse] So I'd heard a lot of things about guns by this point,

that they were big, bad killing machines

with a capability of doing extreme amounts of damage,

and because of that, they should be essentially banned,

kept out of the hands of people because killing was their only real purpose.

But that isn't true.

The National Safety Council once released a study that said

that guns were used 80% more often to protect lives than they were used in crimes.

And other studies show that they were used

almost 2.5 million times per year in self-defense.

I traveled to the suburbs of Washington DC to meet with West Taylor.

West spent 42 years as a law enforcement officer in DC.

And I spoke with him because he had a different story to tell

than the one that I had been hearing.

It was about 10:15 in the evening,

and we had retired, gone to bed, and I was watching television,

my wife was asleep,

and I heard a couple of loud, banging noises downstairs.

So, of course, I was...

I'd never heard that kind of noise before, all the time we'd been here,

so I went to investigate.

So I walked to the door, put the weapon behind me

so as not to frighten anyone,

and I opened the door.

As I get to here, I could see the hooded masked subjects.

One to the left lunges at me,

the one to my right raises an aluminum baseball bat to strike me.

I fell back into the hallway, produced the weapon,

-and started to fire. -Okay.

At this point, they turned to run.

Okay.

So--

And how many rounds did you fire at--

Approximately six rounds from the Walther PPK.

-Okay. -It's a small caliber weapon, so...

They turned to run, they ran down the driveway,

I couldn't see where the one that had lunged at me initially had gone to.

The one that had the baseball bat ran down the driveway,

jumped the bushes,

fell into the yard, and that's where he stayed.

-Those are the bloodstains. -Those are the--

Those are the bloodstains from the subject that expired.

-Really? -Yeah.

[Jesse] Wow.

So you can see how close they actually came. They actually had,

if you consider their arms, they had actually entered the home,

and then they turned to run, so he fell into the yard.

There's still one of these subjects that's out here and I have no idea where they're at.

So I come down the stairs, I could see this perpetrator laying in the yard,

and I stop about right here because he's there.

Okay.

And I'm standing just about like this,

and I'm trying to look around, and all of a sudden I hear a car start.

I look over my right shoulder, the car is right there, just ahead of the mailbox,

and the backup lights are on and it's backing in my direction.

So I put the Glock in this... I'm trying to run out of the way and fire.

And at that point in time, they put it in drive,

and fled up the street.

-Okay. -Yeah.

I've been in law enforcement for 42 years.

And you still work in law enforcement?

And I still work in law enforcement.

But this is the first time in my life I felt actually unsafe in my own home.

What are the gun laws in Maryland like?

-Are they pretty strict? -Well, very restrictive.

They've had a 10-round magazine capacity for a long time.

So fortunately, I had two weapons,

which obviously I needed.

Ten rounds would certainly not have been enough in this particular situation.

So, if that had been in place at that point and you had complied with it,

you probably wouldn't be here.

I would not.

[Jesse] So the research that I had turned up

just wasn't working with the rhetoric that I was hearing.

The way that the issue was being portrayed, "guns were bad,

and making it more difficult to own them would prevent violence."

But West's story among countless others seemed to contradict that theory.

So I looked more heavily into the numbers and this was what I came up with.

Looking at the statistics, I found that the United States of America

is number one on the list of civilian firearms ownership,

with 88.8 firearms per hundred citizens.

Out of the approximately 650 million civilian-owned firearms worldwide,

US citizens alone own almost 270 million of these.

However, in spite of the high rate of gun ownership,

the US is still only 28th in the world in gun murders per 100,000 people.

Between the years of 1992 and 2011,

a time when US gun regulation became much less restrictive,

the violent crime rate in the United States

fell from 757.7 per 100,000 people

to 386.34 per 100,000 people.

And at the same time, the murder rate fell from 9.3 per 100,000 to 4.7.

Again, all of these drops were in conjunction with

the lessening of gun restrictions

and the increase of ownership.

Now let's look at the other side.

The city of Chicago, Illinois has the strictest gun laws in the entire nation,

and yet the murder rate there is one of the highest,

giving Chicago the unenviable titles of deadliest global city

and murder capital of the world.

Well, what if Chicago simply has this issue

because of the fact that it's a large city,

possibly filled with gangs and serial killers?

Well, in conjunction with Chicago, we can also look at Australia.

In 1996, carrying a couple of semi- automatic rifles,

Martin Bryant entered the town of Port Arthur, Australia,

and proceeded to kill 35 and wound 21.

He was caught by police the next day

but public opinion had already been swayed in favor of gun control,

and the government placed an almost draconian gun ban on the people of Australia.

However, it had the opposite effect that they were seeking.

Within a short time, the rate of gun murders had increased by almost 19%

and armed robberies were up about 69%.

So, obviously gun control is ineffective.

Well, the simple fact remains that gun control worldwide does not achieve the basic ends

that politicians say that they desire.

Peace, safety, and the reduction of gun-related violence.

However, these numbers aren't difficult to find.

So politicians must be ignoring them.

Why are they pushing so strongly for gun control

when their fix for the problem of gun violence is an ineffective system?

There is no such thing as gun control. There's only people control.

There is only government control.

And we've seen, played out in history,

when the government wants to control,

it owns the arms.

And when you take away the right of people to bear arms...

you saw it with the confiscation of weapons under Hitler in Germany,

you saw it under Stalin,

and what happens is that the government controls your right to free speech.

There is no right to protest,

there is no right to lawfully assemble.

If you don't have the right to keep and bear arms,

then the government, who controls the police force and the military,

they will control, whether or not you are able to actually exercise that right.

I think we have to understand gun control is really not about gun control.

It's about people control.

That's what it's really about.

It's when politicians decide that they wanna control other people.

They wanna control their behavior, they wanna limit their freedom,

they want to dictate to their lives,

they wanna keep them within the boundaries of what they, the politicians believe

would be the appropriate behavior.

And whether that's, you can believe things but you can't believe too much.

And if your belief conflicts with

what some government official thinks you should believe,

government wins.

Or if gun ownership conflicts with what some politician thinks,

the politician wins over your right to protect yourself and your family.

This is not how our founders saw America.

We have witnessed epidemics of tyranny throughout history,

and we are watching one start to take place here in the United States,

two hundred and forty years after the revolution.

We are seeing the very foundations of our freedom

are being eroded and ultimately they're at threat.

[Jesse] I had never thought about freedom as being at threat before,

but it's an interesting concept.

Somehow to those in power,

the ability to be held accountable by their people concerns them.

So my next big question needed an answer.

If, like I had seen, gun control isn't constitutional,

and it doesn't even work, then what's the purpose for it?

This question was really the defining question for my entire journey.

What is the deeper agenda behind gun control?

So what I was figuring out was that

the power that is granted to the government comes from the people,

and also that power is given to the people

to hold the government accountable to the Constitution.

So, on a deeper level, the power that the government would hold

if they'd gone away with disarming us

would make them a power unto themselves, completely unaccountable to anyone.

Our power as the people guarantees our freedom

by giving us the capability to keep the authority in check

and under the umbrella of the Constitution.

If we lose that, we'll lose everything.

I scheduled meetings in Washington DC with Congressman Joe Wilson,

Senator Rand Paul, and Congressman Thomas Massie,

all outspoken advocates against gun control, to look into this issue.

[Wilson] I see this as a means to control the public.

I believe people are portraying it and they made them believe

that they're promoting a safer environment, but they're not. We know that.

The same people who wanna take your gun also wanna take your Big Gulp.

Now your Big Gulp, we don't have an actual Bill of Rights,

you know, we don't have an amendment protecting your Big Gulp,

but it's part of the same sort of philosophy.

If the government does not respect its people,

it will continually and gradually,

but inevitably encroach on all of the rights of those people.

Fortunately, owning a gun in self defense was elevated to a much greater level

than a lot of things that we think the government shouldn't be doing.

Here, we were very fortunate that the founding fathers thought self defense

and owning a weapon was something important enough to be in the Bill of Rights.

As people persist for gun control laws,

to me it's an enhancement of power of politicians over the public.

If they don't get the Second Amendment,

then they just don't get the Constitution, in my opinion.

[Jesse] How did this issue play out from a legal perspective?

Does the government have the right to legislate the Second Amendment?

I think the best way to look at popular sovereignty, the sovereignty of the people,

is that the people have these unalienable rights,

and as a result of that, the only thing that the government can possibly be

are agents of the people, or servants of the people,

therefore they have to operate as agents do,

on behalf of the people and subject to the people's control.

And so, the whole idea is to check... you have to create power

in order to protect our rights and liberty,

and then you have to check the power you have created.

So the problem of constitutionalism is two-fold.

One is, how do we create an effective government

that will actually protect our liberties and rights,

but at the same time, won't violate them?

[Jesse] So everyone had essentially given me the same answer.

Gun control, at its most basic level was a way to gain control over the people.

But I wanted something more concrete,

a way to essentially prove in my own mind

that this was going on in America.

As I did more research, I learned about OperationFast and Furious,

which was a big piece of evidence that proved what I was being told,

that the government was out for control.

Aside from being the news editor at townhallmagazine.com

and aFox News correspondent,

Katie Pavlich has spent the past two years studying OperationFast and Furious.

So essentially, Operation Fast and Furious

was a program implemented by the Department of Justice

from September, 2009 to December, 2010.

ATF, which is really the Department of Justice,

was sanctioning the sale of 2,500 plus AK-47s,

.50 caliber rifles, other types of firearms,

to known straw purchasers who were working for Mexican cartels.

They then watched these firearms go from Arizona gun dealerships

to these straw purchasers, and into Mexico, and did nothing about it.

On December 15, 2010,

Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed,

and the firearms left at his murder scene were connected to this program.

And whistle-blowers came forward

and said, "Look, my agency has been watching people working for cartels

buying thousands of weapons, trafficking them to Mexico.

These guns are being used for crimes in Mexico, hundreds of crimes,

hundreds of people dead,

and now here we are, with a US law enforcement agent

who has been murdered as a result of our program."

Now the really important thing here is,

why did the government do this?

The government and the Department of Justice and ATF would argue,

"Well, we wanted to see if these guns would trickle up to the top of the cartel,"

and take out, what they call "the big fish."

So, the problem is, out of 2,500 plus weapons,

only two of those weapons had GPS recording devices on them,

which doesn't really sound like a very serious tracking program

when you're talking about high caliber weaponry going into the hands of

some off the most violent criminals in North America.

Meanwhile, as soon as those guns ended up in Mexico,

you have ATF officials at the highest level,

including a US attorney from Arizona,

saying, "These dealerships are responsible, we have to do something about them,

we need more gun control,"

and it was the government sanctioning those sales all along.

So they had a reason to say,

"Look at all the murder and mayhem and catastrophe in Mexico

as a result of American gun laws, we need more regulation."

Was President Obama involved in this? Did he know about any of this?

Well, this is the big question.

President Obama denies any involvement.

His attorney general changed his testimony about

when he found out about this multiple times.

The key here to understanding whether the President knew or not

is in June of 2012,

Attorney General Eric Holder was holding contempt of Congress.

Before he was holding contempt of Congress,

he was asked to turn over a bunch of documentation that he refused to turn over.

So, we've been trying to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious where people died,

and we can't get the information to get to the bottom of that,

so I don't need lectures from you about contempt.

Fifteen minutes before the Oversight Committee voted to hold him in contempt,

President Obama asserted executive privilege over the very documents,

the Fast and Furious he claimed he had no idea about.

So if President Obama knows nothing about this operation,

then why is it all of a sudden,

that he needs to assert executive privilege?

What do you think that all of this says about the administration,

that they're, in the United States, with law-abiding citizens,

they're pushing so heavily for super strict gun regulation

but then they're completely willing to traffic guns to people that are know criminals?

It's hypocritical at best.

You know, I think it's essential for the American people to understand

that they turned law-abiding citizens,

law-abiding business owners who own gun dealerships,

who do everything they can to obey the law,

they turned them into criminals for a political purpose.

That is a fact.

Despite all the statistics and the evidence to show

that gun ownership by law-abiding citizens reduces crime,

Barack Obama and his administration are hell-bent

on continuing their anti-gun agenda,

and it's not because they want to keep people safer,

'cause if it was, they'd pay attention to those statistics.

It's because they're interested in government control.

[Jesse] There it was.

Fast and Furious was dead on confirmation of what I had been finding out.

Gun control in America was for the purpose of having direct control over the people.

Where do you see America in another 20, 30 years?

Where are we headed?

That's a deep question.

I think that question rests in what we do right now.

I think that question rests on... how we address the crisis

that we are facing.

It is a crisis that goes to the very heart and soul of who we are as a people.

If we address that head on, this would be the greatest, freest...

most prosperous country in the world.

If we don't...

then it would be a place that people talk about...

"The America that was once free."

The place that...

our forefathers fought and sacrificed their lives for, shed their blood for...

for those three colors, red, white, and blue,

that banner would just be irrelevant.

[instrumental music playing]

♪

♪

[Jesse] "The America that was once free."

It's a concept that most of us never even think of.

Freedom is such a part of our way of life,

that we begin to take it for granted.

But what I was learning on my journey was that that is not enough.

I had found out what would happen to America if we allowed our leaders to disarm us.

And I had seen that we had slipped, that we had lost our footing,

and are headed on a path to tyranny unless we stand up right now to do something

and defend our right to bear arms.

The name Hank Parker is synonymous with modern outdoorsmanship.

A hunter, TV host, and world champion fisherman.

I traveled to South Carolina to speak with him.

So, you as an American,

doing what you do, fishing, hunting, all of those things,

how important is the Second Amendment to you?

Besides my profession,

besides... my outdoors passion,

and all the guns that I have for that purpose,

above all that, I am an American,

and I take that very serious.

And to me, the Second Amendment is the only check and balance system we have as a people.

And to take that away,

you're gonna be Venezuela, you're gonna be Cuba,

you're going to be a third-world country that have no voice.

People don't really understand that,

and so many people think that the government can take care of them,

that the government's the good guys.

There is a lot behind on where we're headed with socialism

and there is a big push to get rid of our guns,

and I don't think it's an innocent push.

I think it's very calculated

and I think that we are really looking toward a socialistic shift.

[Jesse] The prevalence of the gun culture in America

is discounted by the anti-gun Left

because it does nothing to prop up their ideology.

In fact, it harms it.

Columbia, South Carolina is the home base of Palmetto Armory,

a retail firearms and ammunition company.

Jamin McCallum is the owner and is also an expert on guns.

I spoke to him about the legacy of guns in American history.

I got this for my eighth Christmas.

You can tell it's well worn.

This book, to me, it just gave me an absolute passion

'cause it talked about the guns and the specs,

and I was always math-oriented, so I started seeing the different calibers,

and the ranges, and how far they would shoot,

and just got passionate about it.

I went from loving it in the books and getting to shoot a little bit

to doing it full-time for a living.

In basic training I was at 45 Bravo, which is small arms.

So I got back from my deployment,

and, you know, I love the county, which is where my degree was in

but I also still hooked on.

But I still went on with an accounting degree and everything,

and turned around and made a gun company.

You know, it all started... in my opinion, it started with this book right here.

And not just... it's not the pages, it's the story, the history.

In my opinion, you can tell huge amounts of history through the firearms.

I think in our collection, this is one of the most interesting pieces.

It was dropped over Germany. It's called the Liberator.

It was made by General Motors. They made over a million of them in the World War II effort.

It would take one round and you would load it one at a time,

and the idea was that you would go up to a German soldier who was an occupier,

and you had unarmed civilian population,

they would get their hands on a weapon

and they would go from a sitting duck to being able to fight the occupiers.

And the instructions were to load one round at a time,

come off, and then to shoot the German soldier and then take his gun.

It's an excellent example of how, you know, civilian use of firearms

ca be used to stop a tyrannical government.

All over Europe, totally unarmed civilians.

I mean, think about the Jewish population, totally unarmed.

But the Americans went with the intent to arm those civilians,

so they could fight their occupiers.

[assault weapon firing]

[Jesse] One of the biggest influences in my life in the area of American history

is Dr. Joe Morecraft,

a pastor, teacher, and historian who lives outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

His study of the founding era of the United States is unparalleled,

and to truly grasp the concept of tyranny and tyrannical government in our history,

I can think of no one better than Dr. Morecraft.

The founding fathers, they hadn't spent many years during the revolution

fighting against a tyrannical government.

How did they define what tyranny was?

That is a very important question

because it's misunderstood today.

The greatest influence on the colonies prior to 1776

was John Knox and the Scottish Reformation.

And John Knox had a unique view of politics

that shaped the minds of most Americans at that time.

He believed in a covenantal view of politics.

And Knox believed that there were four covenants, or four vows

that lay at the basis of a free and just republic.

The first is a vow that the civil magistrate makes to God,

that he will govern the people in terms of God's supremacy and God's sovereignty.

The second is a vow that the civil magistrate makes to the people,

that the civil magistrate will protect the people according to the standards of God's law.

The third is a vow that the people would take to the civil magistrate,

and herein hangs the tale,

as long as the civil magistrate was faithful to his covenants with God.

And in the fourth covenant,

was the covenant that people made with God that they'd be His faithful people.

So if you read the Declaration of Independence,

in the light of John Knox's theory of politics,

you'll see that Knox's influence and fingerprints

all over the Declaration of Independence.

Why did America cast off its relationship with Great Britain?

Two reasons.

The despotism of the king who had broken his covenants with the colonies,

and the tyrannical attempt on the part of parliament to govern the colonies

when actually, and legally, and historically,

parliament had absolutely no authority over the colonies.

So tyranny, in the light of the American colonists

was when the civil magistrate broke his covenants with God,

and sought to rule in terms of his own name,

rather than to rule in terms of the name of God.

James Madison said that once a man is elected office,

don't give him more power than you want him to use, or he'll use it,

because power, like drugs, is addictive.

I mean, you go to Washington, and it has a sense of power.

You can see why people can get seduced by it.

When as a matter of fact, that power in Washington is an illusion of power.

[Jesse] In my mind, what Dr. Morecraft had described

was exactly what America has become.

All of what I had learned, read, and been told by now

on my journey was puzzling and maddening.

To have leaders in office that were anxious for draconian tyrannical power,

and were willing to put morals aside in order to gain full control

was a slap in the face of the American legacy that he had spoken about.

But what he had said about the influence of others on the founders

had been interesting to me.

He had said that our system of government

was based on something that had come before that,

principles of freedom that were based in history.

As I studied it more, I learned that another one of the influences on the founders

had been the city of Geneva in Switzerland.

Along with that,

today Switzerland is one of the freest nations in the world,

in terms of gun ownership.

A fact which has resulted in one of lowest violent crime rates in the world,

more than 50% less than the United States per capita.

I traveled over to Switzerland in the middle of May,

the week before the yearly Schutzenfest,

a government and military sponsored week of shooting competitions

that take place across the country.

[captivating music playing]

♪

My guide during the festivals was Marcel Benz,

the head of the Swiss Shooting Federation,

the Swiss equivalent of the National Rifle Association.

He took me to a festival high in the Alps, in a military base,

outside of the small town of Glarus.

Well, this is the part where they start, you know, where they have to give the ammunition

and all the, I would say, paperwork to do first,

and then they can enter.

[Jesse] All right. [man speaking foreign language]

Number eight.

Now, is there a gun that I'd be able use? 'Cause I obviously didn't bring one.

[Jesse] It was fascinating to witness the difference between the gun culture here

and the gun culture in America.

Here. guns are a part of their lives,

a piece of their national heritage,

and in this hut, young people and old were gathered to shoot

and honor that heritage in their history.

[blowing horn]

This would never have happened in America.

While I was there, I also had the opportunity to shoot at the festival.

[speaking foreign language]

[captivating music playing]

♪

[indistinct chatter]

[speaking foreign language]

Danke schon.

Thank you very much.

Great job.

[Jesse] It had really struck me to see the contrast between Switzerland and America,

and to see that this piece of their heritage was still extremely important

to who they are as a country.

[Benz] So the Swiss Shooting Federation was created already in 1824.

So we are close to 200 year old.

And our federation was one of the first association created in Switzerland.

Even our state was not yet built

when the Shooting Federation was created.

[Jesse] Something that has been really interesting to me, being over here in Switzerland

is kind of the differences between Switzerland and the United States of America

in terms of the gun culture.

Something like the Schutzenfest, like what we're doing here

wouldn't happen in America because the overall view of guns in America

is that they're either a safety hazard, or they're bad.

Why are there those different cultures and different views?

I would say it's based on our tradition as well

because it came out of the army as well,

and so people are educated in shooting and in handling the weapons.

So they take the responsibility

and they know what they have to do.

So, it's not the security problem,

they take their responsibility,

and I think this is also something which all the public around,

you know, the families, know.

To take care with responsibility and not to do anything else with it.

So, you think it's a thing of culture because of the tradition of Switzerland?

Yes, culture, I would say, and also education responsibility.

People want to contribute to this tradition,

to be part of it, to share it with family.

Everybody is coming to those shooting festivals

because everybody can shoot.

It is a tradition, and even there are festivities around it, you know.

The people are in a tent, there is music playing,

and the people meet friends.

I think this is a part of that tradition.

Last year, we had more than 130,000 people

which were shooting with the rifles, as well as the pistol.

[captivating music playing]

[Jesse] I took a tour of a military bunker,

one that contained historic heavy artillery built in the 1940s,

and learned some of the history of the Swiss people during World War II.

y tour guide, Max, grew up in Switzerland,

and has been in the army since he was 18.

[Max] Switzerland had in that time, about 450,000 men in the army,

plus about around 200,000 men

only armed with a gun.

They weren't really trained soldiers,

but on the other hand, every Swiss man has home, a gun.

Every man who made service can take the gun home.

The German generals, they considered the Swiss loving their country,

very hard fighters, and very not easy to take over.

One of the main reasons Germany didn't attack was the army.

That's my opinion, yeah.

Over there is the Bunker Number One,

with the manned gun hidden behind those walls

behind the trees. You don't really see it.

And here you see the normal bunkers. This is the Number Two,

with the big door, which is not a door,

for some tractors or whatever, it is a door,

in which you have behind, the gun.

It is made in Switzerland.

and tuned by the Waffenfabrik in town.

Do you feel like you are safe in Switzerland?

I feel safe, that's true.

It's good to have an arm at home,

but you need to be educated. You need to know what you're doing with it.

Very important.

[Jesse] Luzi Stamm is a congressman in Berne,

that is an outspoken advocate against liberal gun laws in Switzerland.

This is Switzerland, I believe is a historical thing.

People are used to own their own guns,

and that is taken in as something very positive.

It would be very wrong to say people in Switzerland grew up with guns,

but they grew up with their army.

Everybody at the age of 18, 19, 20, went into the army,

they learned how to handle guns,

so it was not a strange thing,

it was normal to keep it at home.

In America, one of the founding principles was that

all men had the right to keep and bear a firearm

without fear of restriction from the government.

And the reason our founding fathers did that was to

allow the people to defend themselves from potential violence from other citizens,

but then also to defend themselves from a tyrannical government taking over.

In a certain way, I think it's a very positive thing

if a country can accept and permit itself

to have an armed population.

I had a member of the parliament of the old Russian countries

who said it would never be possible,

it would never be possible, it is Soviet Union,

to have an armed population.

And I think that is a good example.

If you have a problematic government,

it will never accept that the population is armed.

Do you look at that as being a good thing?

The people being able to keep themselves free

if the government were to try and encroach upon them?

I still believe that the Swiss society and the Swiss system

has such a positive effect by knowing our people are armed,

that you should not change anything.

It is very difficult to answer why does the United States in a certain way,

have a higher crime rate than Switzerland.

But I do not believe that it depends on owning a gun.

It's other influences which are more dangerous.

Unfortunately, it is not so easy to answer the question

where does violence come from.

If we knew, we could solve it.

But the United States has different problems than Switzerland,

the only thing I can say, a gun at home doesn't form you into a criminal.

I think this would be absurd to say this.

[Jesse] In the lake town of Lucerne, I met with Hermann Suter,

the head of the organization, Pro Tell,

a pro-gun lobby group in Switzerland.

We know very well that only dictatorships

disarm their people because they are afraid of their citizens, you know?

And in Switzerland, we have exactly the contrary.

Every citizen is a soldier, and every soldier is a citizen,

and so he has the right to keep his arm.

And that's the best democratic control against the government.

Many Americans understand the fact that

America was a nation that was built on the idea that men are free,

and they're born free.

Is that an idea that is fairly prevalent in Swiss culture as well?

Yeah, yeah. Of course, of course.

Our most important symbol we have is William Tell,

and you can't imagine William Tell without his weapon.

And that's a symbol for the freedom of Switzerland.

That's the reason for which we have William Tell on our five-franc piece.

-Wow. -Yeah.

[Jesse] Freedom and fighting tyranny goes back centuries,

even before 1776 in Switzerland.

It was in their blood, and it's been passed down through generations

and through something as simple as a coin,

they made sure that they would never forget it.

[captivating music playing]

Dr. Marcus Serven has been a family friend for quite a few years

and has also dedicated much of his academic life to the study of John Calvin,

a man from Geneva who had significant amount of influence on the founding fathers.

What I had learned with Dr. Serven was that our government in America

was based off of a legacy from the 1200s from the people of England,

through theMagna Carta holding their government accountable for their freedom.

That legacy then came to Geneva, and from Geneva to America.

I want you to see that the motto that stretches across this whole wall,

"Post Tenebras Lux."

And what that means is, "After darkness, light."

And the basic idea here in Geneva was

that they had been in a time of great darkness,

for the past, really, 1,000 years.

So it wasn't just Calvin who coined this particular motto,

it was the whole city that embraced this.

And really adopting this particular motto

that after the times of darkness,

they came into a new light.

And one of those areas of light was the setting up of civil government

that recognized they were under the authority of God.

[Jesse] As we walked through the streets, I was understanding more and more

that our government was not just an arbitrary system

created by our founders in 1776.

Its roots were in history,

other places where people had understood the importance of freedom,

and who'd built governments that upheld those freedoms.

I think, so far, one of the things that has struck me the most

about what I've seen here in Geneva is,

from a purely political perspective,

understanding the fact that the system of government that we have in America

has deeper roots than just our founding fathers.

[Dr. Serven] Yeah, maybe you can think that like this, Jesse,

it's the idea of a fire that begins,

and at first, there's all the wood that's there,

and there's maybe a few sparks

that begin to ignite the tinder.

And it begins to glow and you blow on it,

and eventually it comes up into a tiny little flame,

and then as it's tended, and as it grows, it becomes larger and larger,

and in some ways, that's what happened in terms of the causes of freedom and liberty.

It started off as a tiny little spark,

and in God's providence, that spark then grew into a tiny little flame,

and then it grew over time into a larger fire.

And so, the causes of freedom were in much that same way.

They started out small, and they grew into something much greater.

And we're the heirs and the recipients

of all that happened earlier in our history.

It wasn't like, in the founding of our country,

that these ideas sprang out of nothing.

They sprang out of the fact that in the previous centuries,

there were men and women who suffered

for the cause of bringing forth the ideas of liberty and freedom.

Sounds like what they said, "After darkness, light."

After darkness, light.

[captivating music playing]

[Jesse] When I came to Switzerland, I came looking for something.

I came to find a nation that was armed and was free because of it,

and I did find that.

But I ended up finding something else, something deeper.

I'd found hope.

I had seen a nation where freedom was deeper than simply their right to bear arms.

For them it was a cultural mindset,

something more than words in a political speech or writing on a page.

To them, freedom is an idea,

an idea that defines them.

I discovered hope for America, that we aren't lost,

that if we come back to this ideal,

we can bring America back to its foundations,

come back to who we are, what we're meant to be,

and restore the freedom that has been taken away.

Over the centuries, since the founding of our country,

there has been a moving away more to a socialistic mindset,

that as individuals, we don't have to protect ourselves,

the government will do that for us,

the government will provide our needs,

and protect us when there are difficulties that come up.

And so, as a result, people have forgotten

that these liberties and these freedoms that we hold dear to us

were hard-fought and hard-won.

They cost us blood and suffering.

And so it's very easy to forget what it really took

to bring these liberties into existence,

and we have to ask ourselves "What do we need to do now

to preserve those freedoms?

What do we need to do to win them back?"

[Dr. Morecraft] Most people that are out there today think we live in a free country.

We haven't lived in a free country in generations.

But we have grown used to our chains.

And we think that our chains are made of velvet,

and that if we just give in,

and we agree to this and that,

that everything would be okay and the State would take care of us

because the common faith is nobody does it better than the State.

This old, pessimistic view of the future,

that "everything is going to hell in a handbasket,

there's nothing we can do about it,"

has got to be dispelled or we will not win this battle.

When a person is convinced he's going to lose,

he will not be disappointed.

The constitution will never be reinforced

the way our founding fathers intended for it to do

until most Americans have the same kind of hearts,

and world view, and consensus

that the founding Americans had in the 1770s.

Most of the time, our kind of people would get defeated,

but they're like pioneers,

they'll pioneer the way, they'll cut down some of the trees.

And then those that follow them would win.

[Jesse] By the end of my journey, I had seen a lot.

I had learned what America was meant to be.

We were created as a nation of free people,

and I had realized something more,

that we will lose our battle for our freedom unless we remember the legacy of America,

a legacy that guaranteed that we could always be free,

one that was meant to be cherished.

And I had found the answers to my questions. If our guns were taken away,

we would become a nation ruled by tyrants,

rather than a nation rules by a free people.

I learned that our nation was built on this idea

and that we were headed away from those principles.

[captivating music playing]

Through it all, in spite of what we've become,

I found hope,

hope that free people would continue to live freely.

I traveled across the world

and I had seen what would happen if we don't stand up for freedom.

Another page in history will turn, and our freedoms will be gone.

♪

♪

But I also learned that freedom is about more than just guns,

it's about principle, it's about laws,

it's about the legacy that has been left to us.

♪

We've been given a nation whose very foundation is freedom,

and yet we are losing that freedom

every day that we do nothing to stop the onslaught against it.

So what would we do?

How will we stand up to defend liberty?

How will we fight the battles against the tyrants

that would seek to take our freedom from us?

How will we keep the legacy of America that was guaranteed to us?

Is freedom worth losing?

No.

But the only way that we keep from losing it is by defending it.

Is freedom worth defending?

I think so.

[captivating music playing]

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪