Americans Who Love Guns... and the Americans Who Love Them

Act One. NRA vs NEA.

This American Life contributing editor Sarah Vowell goes home to Montana to try and understand her gunsmith dad a little better. (11 minutes)

Act Two. Fist and Gun.

Geoffry Canada, author of the book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, talks about what it's like to carry a gun. He also talks about what poor neighborhoods in New York were like before the proliferation of handguns among young people. When he grew up in the South Bronx, kids had fistfights, in a very formal arrangement, with formal rules that everyone lived by. He reads from his book and talks with Ira. (10 minutes)

Act Three. Shooter.

Chicago Playwright Bryn Magnus with a quintessential gun story from his childhood in Wisconsin. It contains both the fear of guns and the pleasure of shooting one. (5 minutes)

Act Four. Potato Potahto.

Two people who've nearly died in gun battles describe what it's like, getting shot at. They draw opposite conclusions from their near death experiences. Mike Robbins, a Chicago police officer, becomes an advocate of handgun controls. Suzanna Hupp, a chiropractor, became an important advocate of changing Texas law to allow concealed handguns. (11 minutes)

Act Five. Straw Man.

Chicago writer Tori Marlan with a man who sold guns to criminals for two years, and what he makes of the experience. Most of the illegal guns on the street were actually purchased legally. Most of them were bought by people like our interviewee, who had a clean record, and sold the guns to local drug dealers for $50 to $200. (11 Minutes)