While West and Cohen’s documentary never discusses Highland Park, Uvalde, or any of the other 3,800 mass shootings, it is undoubtedly about them. Their anger is palpable, yet the documentary wisely chooses not to dedicate much of its runtime to the January 8 shooting, instead opting to focus on Giffords’ recovery, her family, and activism against gun violence.

Older Americans have the highest gun ownership rates in the United States, with firearms in 40 percent of households headed by someone age 50 to 64 or age 65 and older, according to the Pew Research Center. And a disproportionate number of older Americans apply to carry concealed weapons, according to a 2012 study in the American Journal of Public Health. The reasons for such trends vary: older Americans tend to have more disposable income with which to buy guns; they’ve had a longer time to amass an arsenal; and many invest in arms as a way to counter the physical vulnerabilities that can come with aging. 

The FBI and police groups have followed this tact. The no name campaign is horrific recognition of what studies show and that’s that mass killers know exactly what they’re doing, and bank heavily on turning their killing spree into warped and perverse mass theater and spectacle. They know this is the kind of gory sensationalism that much of the media feeds on, and they’ll get the sick and sordid attention they crave. In less than a week after the Oregon college mass killing, there were shootings at Northern Arizona University, and Texas Southern University.

The law showed favoritism to Smart Guns and personalized technology by only allowing the sale of Smart Guns in the state of New Jersey three years after the first Smart Gun went on U.S. shelves online and in stores. The law, supported by New Jersey Senator Loretta Weinberg, and passed in 2002 was called the Childproof Handgun Law. As a revolt the NRA and gun extremists proceeded to throw the biggest tantrum against gun manufacturing progress since the assault rifle ban. 

In less than 24 hours after two Las Vegas police officers and a bystander were gunned down by two Neo-Nazis, anti-government spewing white supremacists, Stormfront's website blew up. There were nearly 200,000 threads and more than 2 million posts. This dwarfed the number of posts from all other topics on the site combined during that period. Stormfront is the nation's premier, self-promoted, online meeting place where hundreds of neo-Nazi, anti-government, white supremacist groups and tens of thousands of individuals spew hate with aplomb. 

The recent shooting in Santa Barbara is a red flag in a sea of red flags: gun violence is America’s version of the African tragedy. Since 2006, there has been one mass killing nearly every two weeks in the United States, with 75 percent being committed by the use of a firearm. Firearm sales have set records every single year since President Obama has been in office; there have been four times as many firearms purchased as babies have been born in the U.S.

Chief Craig's phrasing describes what has been plaguing black communities for decades—"urban terrorism," an almost poetic term that only partly captures the violence, tragedy and fear that grips Detroit. As the world steels itself against threats of global terrorism, the shooting in Detroit is emblematic of the concern and fear that those in the inner city experience daily. “It don’t make sense for people to be losing their lives daily,” Charzell Shields, the daughter of Joezell Williams, told the Free Press.

Alexis attributed his mental-health issues to his assignment in cleaning up contaminated debris at the 9-11 Ground Zero site, but the Navy claims no such record of this work. A report in British paper Daily Mail notes Alexis was seen exiting a subway near the World Trade Center just as the twin towers were collapsing. The sight, it says, quoting Alexis' father-in-law, left him "traumatized." Indeed, the career of Alexis runs parallel to the 9-11 era, when thousands of servicemen were assigned to secret combat missions that do not appear on their military records.

Turns out the NRA’s logic is BS.  The facts are that from 1994, when the Brady Gun Safety Act went into effect, through 2010, background checks stopped 2,079,000 applications for firearms transfer through licensed firearm dealers.  In 2010 alone, about 73,000 applications were denied by the FBI and about 80,000 by state and local agencies.  47 percent of the FBI denials were because of felony convictions or because the applicant was a fugitive from justice; 31 percent of the state and local denials were to convicted or indicted felons.

For several of director Czubek’s subjects, vulnerability is their overriding concern.  This is never more present than in Sarah McKinley’s case.  A very young, slender mother—recently widowed by a cancer-ridden husband—she presides alone over a desolate 2,000 acre spread in Blanchard, Oklahoma, wide-eyed over the immensity of her loneliness. With one hand around her weapon and another around the baby, she eyes the rubble from a recent break-in.  She stood her ground and shot the intruder dead.  Now she must live with the psychic consequences of her actions.