Publicity

It was a fateful, dreadful confluence of the sort of freedoms that are fiercely protected by many Americans. A congresswoman takes open political debate to an informal suburban setting outside a Safeway supermarket. A man carrying automatic guns – readily and easily available in the state – walks up to Gabby Giffords’ Congress on the Corner and opens fire.

When the gun smoke cleared and accused gunman Jared Loughner had been wrestled to the ground and disarmed, six people were dead and many more injured, including Ms Giffords – whose remarkable against-the-odds survival would dominate news coverage for weeks.

A largely unreported aspect of the shooting was that one of the dead – Chief Judge of Arizona’s District Court – had years earlier upheld a legal challenge to federal laws requiring more thorough, mandatory background checks on people buying guns.

A local Arizona sheriff named Richard Mack took that challenge all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Appearing before another Tea Party gathering and participating in Foreign Correspondent’s examination of a state thrust into the global spotlight, Richard Mack remains a fierce advocate for liberal gun laws and a critic of an interfering Federal Government.

“The one thing we know about gun control it has never provided security, safety, freedom or peace, ever, so why do our leaders try to pretend it might have something magical in America. I think the 50 states would be much better off without Washington DC. The federal government was created by the states not the other way around.” RICHARD MACK, former Sheriff.

At gun shows convened in Arizona’s big cities in the weeks following the shooting, at pistol-packing gymkhanas outside Tombstone, scene of the legendary Gunfight at the OK Corral, and down on the border where armed militia provide voluntary backup to official patrol for 'illegals' crossing into the US from Mexico, Arizonans agree wholeheartedly.

From a porch looking south toward the border with Mexico, loner Eugene Kambouris scopes the horizon with binoculars and cusses about a lily-livered, politically correct Washington.

“I gotta gun in every room. Am I a bigot? Yeah, sure. I think everybody is to a degree. Am I a racist? Oh maybe. OK. Am I mad and fed up about the illegal problem? Damn right.” EUGENE KAMBOURIS

At the OK Café in Tombstone Carmen Mercer takes orders for burgers and coffee and when she locks up for the night heads out with her Minuteman Civil Defence Corps volunteers and gives orders as she and her civilian posse patrol a border yielding ‘tens of thousands’ a month from Mexico. “There are militias out there that are saying now, we will not back up. If we come across a drug cartel, we will shoot back. That sort of mood wasn’t there six seven eight years ago but it certainly has changed.” CARMEN MERCER, Minuteman leader

North America Correspondent Michael Brissenden heads deep into the heart of Arizona where many folks believe passionately that guns mean freedom and where plenty are prepared to defend their state from the intrusions of their federal government and what some call an 'invasion' from the south.

Arizona sunsets

Music

00:00

Eugene sits smoking

EUGENE KAMBOURIS: I keep my back door locked here now. Never had to do that.

00:19

Eugene’s house

Used to leave the door open, you know to get the air flowing through, whatever.

00:25

Eugene looks through binoculars

Not any more. I’ve got a gun in every room - all except for the bathroom. I don’t have one in the potty. I carry a gun whenever I leave this house.

00:28

Eugene’s at home

Music

00:38

BRISSENDEN: Eugene Kambouris lives alone in a little house in what looks like the middle of nowhere, but the way he sees it he’s living on a dangerous freeway where the traffic is people and drugs, and so he’s heavily armed.

00:44

Eugene looks through binoculars

EUGENE KAMBOURIS: If they want in, they’re going to get in.

01:01

Eugene

I don’t care how many bars you’ve got, how many locks you’ve got. If they want in, they’re coming in. You know? But no, I’ve got a gun in every room.

01:04

Eugene into truck

BRISSENDEN: This curmudgeonly old timer calls it as he sees it, and living on the edge a long way from Washington and spitting distance from Mexico, he sees his nation going as they say, to hell in a hand basket - soft on illegal immigrants, drug traffickers and violent criminals.

01:12

Eugene drives

EUGENE KAMBOURIS: You put a bunch of law abiding citizens out there with sniper rifles and knock about six or seven of them down and let them hang on that fence, they ain’t going to be coming across no more. But see you can’t do that because we’re so civilised and that’s what’s happened to us - we’ve become so politically correct.

01:35

Eugene out of truck

BRISSENDEN: He doesn’t move like he use to. He suffers a host of health problems and yet what he lacks in physical intimidation, he makes up for with resolve and ammunition on his own patrol for the enemy.

01:56

Eugene. Super:
Eugene Kambouris

EUGENE KAMBOURIS: Am I a bigot? Yeah (blows raspberry) sure. I think everybody is to a degree. Am I a racist? Yeah, maybe. Okay, am I mad and fed up about the illegal problem? Damn right.

02:13

Eugene at table reading

Music

02:26

BRISSENDEN: Eugene Kambouris has a small arsenal, but his guns aren’t registered. In Arizona they don’t need to be.

02:32

EUGENE KAMBOURIS: Am I for stricter gun control? No. I’ve been a gunman all my life. My dad was in law enforcement, my daughter’s in law enforcement now. But by the same token, I have a concealed carry permit. Okay I’ve been trained. I’m not a bad guy.

02:40

NEWS REPORT ON MASS SHOOTING IN ARIZONA

02:54

Still. Newspaper cover. Jared Loughner

BRISSENDEN: Those who knew him thought he was strange, even scary, but a bad guy capable of mass killing? Accused murderer Jared Loughner was just another Arizonan gun owner until a bloody shooting that shocked the state, the nation and the world.

03:15

Arizona. General views

BRISSENDEN: Suddenly a low profile state was centre stage in an incendiary drama about individual freedom, guns and the future of the country.

GABRIEL CHIN:: Arizona sees itself as a western state, as a conservative state, a rural state, a libertarian state.

03:37

Gabriel Chin. Super:
Law Professor
Arizona University

GABRIEL CHIN:  People should be allowed to have guns. People should be encouraged to have guns. That’s the kind of state we are.

03:53

Shots around Eugene’s home

It has to do with the idea of ending a message to people who are against guns, sending a message to Washington DC, it’s the principle of the thing.

04:04

Eugene

EUGENE KAMBOURIS: This guy that shot the people in Tucson, the existing gun laws allowed him to get that weapon, okay? There’s not a law in the book that’s going figure out that guy was crazy or schizo or whatever it’s turned out that he’s known… not normal. There’s no way to tell that anybody who goes in there and buys a weapon is not going to out and shoot somebody.

04:16

Arizona. General views/ Gun show views

Music

04:38

BRISSENDEN: Just weeks after the shooting and as congresswoman’s Gifford’s fragile recovery continued, touch and go, at a city hospital, one of Tucson’s most popular events opened regardless.

04:55

Music

05:06

BRISSENDEN: It’s called “The Crossroads of the West Gun Show” and it’s pulling record crowds.

05:17

Man at gun show with gun

MAN AT GUN SHOW: It’s an AR 15. It came out right in the latter part of the Vietnam war and they shoot a high-powered shell and it’s got good trajectory and all that stuff, and yes, there’s a lot of these guns in this country.

05:25

Gun  show

BRISSENDEN: To outsiders it might seem extraordinary that a mass gun slaying a few kilometres away hasn’t given pause, but the gun show goes on.

05:44

Music

05:52

BOB TEMPLETON: In the southwest here in Arizona,

06:00

Bob Templeton. Super:
Bob Templeton
Crossroads of the West Gun Show

people are very what we call pro gun, very much in favour of the individual right to own and use firearms as long as it’s done lawfully.

06:02

Templeton with attendees of gun show

BRISSENDEN: For gun show boss Bob Templeton there was never any question that this event, and another in Phoenix, were going ahead.

06:11

Bob Templeton

BOB TEMPLETON: We have 180 million gun owners in the United States of America. We have one guy that goes off the rails and commits a horrible act of violence like he did, should a 180 million gun owners who use guns lawfully in their regular activities be penalised for a mentally ill person who clearly had an agenda, and perpetrated one of the most heinous crimes we’ve ever seen.

06:18

Gun show

There are those politicians who have already attempted to capitalise on this tragedy.

06:50

Jared Loughner still/Press conference after shooting

Music

06:59

Bloomberg addresses press conference. Super:
Michael Bloomberg
New York City Mayor

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, New York City Mayor: Thirty-four. That is the average number of Americans murdered with guns every single day.

07:09

BRISSENDEN: And it wouldn’t be long before anti gun politicians would focus on the gun shows as well.

07:16

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: After the tragic massacre in Tucson we decided to investigate the issue in Arizona.

07:21

Under cover investigator at gun show

INVESTIGATOR: (at gun show) I’m looking for something like this – you know, 9mm, with stopping power… and uh, you know, something that’s concealable.

07:27

Video of investigation.

BRISSENDEN: Foreign Correspondent was barred from filming inside the Tucson gun show. Anti gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was undeterred, despatching a clandestine camera crew to sting the Phoenix event.

07:36

Bloomberg addresses press conference

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: The first video illustrates just how easy it is for anyone with a driver’s licence to walk into a gun show and buy the weapons used in the Tucson shooting. No questions asked. Let’s take a look.

07:49

Hidden camera footage of investigator buying gun

INVESTIGATOR: So no background check?

SELLER AT GUN SHOW: No.

INVESTIGATOR: That’s good because I probably couldn’t pass one, you know what I mean?

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: If you have a criminal record, a history of drug abuse or even if your name appears

08:02

Bloomberg addresses press conference

on a terrorist watch list, you can still walk into a gun show and buy a 9 mm in the time it would take to buy a hamburger and fries at McDonalds.

08:12

Hidden camera footage of investigator buying gun

CHARLES HELLER: It’s irrational to talk about disarming the victims. You don’t disarm the victims, you arm the victims.

08:25

Charles Heller. Super:
Charles Heller
Radio host

A couple of years ago someone in Las Vegas drove a car through a crowd of people. There was no call to lessen the size of gas tanks so that he could mow down less people and it’s no different with firearms, it really is absolutely no different. It’s also it’s irrational to punish the innocent for the acts of the guilty. I don’t misbehave with my firearms. I don’t know or associate with anyone that does, and so it’s irrational to talk about limiting firearms by people who have no intent to commit bad behaviour with them.

BRISSENDEN: Charles Heller hosts a radio show

08:32

CU Arizona Citizens Defense League patch on Heller’s shirt

called “America Armed and Free” and like so many enthusiasts here, he believes the power of the gun goes well beyond what’s in the chamber.

09:03

Heller

CHARLES HELLER: Firearms are also a tool of freedom and a symbol thereof. I mean, after all, you know free men and free women own guns and subjects do not.

09:14

Arizona landscapes

BRISSENDEN: Arizona is not just a border state with a frontier mentality. It’s increasingly a political and cultural frontier as well. A place where the constitutional mantra of personal freedom and liberty enshrined in the 1700s collides with the social and political realities that are dividing America in the 21st century. And that makes Arizona fertile ground for the Tea Party.

09:22

Music

09:53

Tea Party gathering

BRISSENDEN:  Arizona and the grass roots conservative movement were a match up waiting to happen. The Tea Party espouses ideas and themes that had been resonating here for many years.

10:10

FORMER SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: And one thing we know about gun control, it has

10:23

Former Sheriff Mack addressing crowd

never provided security, safety, freedom or peace – ever! So why do our leaders try to pretend that it might have something magical in America.

10:26

BRISSENDEN: At this gathering in Tucson, a former district sheriff Richard Mack has the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand.

10:39

FORMER SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: The greatest threat to our God given constitutional American liberty is our own federal government. I wish to the dear Lord that it wasn’t true. I wish we didn’t have to have a Tea Party movement. They created the Tea Party movement, not us.

10:46

BRISSENDEN: Richard Mack’s a bona fide hero here, not simply because he casts Washington as the enemy, but because he took on the federal government and won in a case that helped enshrine Arizona’s liberal gun laws.

11:07

Brissenden and Mack walk

(walking down the street) How long were you the sheriff here?

FORMER SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: Eight years. Grew up here, walked these streets hundreds of times.

BRISSENDEN: In 1994 Sheriff Mack led a legal challenge against the Clinton Administration’s plans to force sheriffs to conduct background checks on anyone wanting to purchase a gun. He won.

11:25

Richard Mack. Super:
Richard Mack
Former Sheriff

RICHARD MACK: If you look at my lawsuit it says that the states cannot be compelled or forced to participate in any federal regulatory programmes. That’s right out of the lawsuit. The federal government is not our boss, my lawsuit says it, I knew it before the lawsuit said it. I think the fifty states would be much better off without Washington DC. The federal government was created by the states, not the other way around and at this point the federal government has become part of the problem.

11:44

Music

12:15

Arizona landscapes

BRISSENDEN: The explosion of Mexico’s drug cartels has accelerated the traffic of people and drugs across the border. At times, Arizona can feel like a state under siege. Raids on workplaces and arrests of illegal immigrants are an everyday occurrence. And then there’s a new and very controversial law known as SB 1070. It makes failure to carry immigration documents a crime and gives police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

12:17

Richard Mack

FORMER SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: They are either committing crime or using government entitlements that have to increase and increase and increase, which is now another burden on the taxpayer who can’t afford to keep up with what we’re already paying for. We can’t afford to continue fourteen trillion dollar debt and to have 100,000 more people coming to our country every month who get on the welfare rolls.

12:51

Arizona-Mexico border

BRISSENDEN: And so Arizona’s border with Mexico has become a polarising divide, a deep political line in the sand. This stretch of the border, officially the Tucson sector is more than 400 km long. At times the traffic is staggering. In one day in May last year, authorities captured close to 700 making the dash to America. It’s not unusual for the sector’s 3000 border patrol agents to arrest more than 20,000 a month.

13:26

Tombstone

Music

14:08

BRISSENDEN:  But for some in this state, that official patrol isn’t nearly enough.

14:22

Doug Evans

DOUG EVANS: They say they’re handling it, but if they did we would not have 20 million illegals.

14:30

Tombstone

BRISSENDEN: Arizona’s home to one of American history’s great legends, where grievances were settled by individuals in a blaze of gunfire, the gunfight at the OK Corral. And for these cowboys living the legend just outside Tombstone, the enemy is just over the rise. It’s those illegal immigrants surging across the border.

14:38

Music

15:03

Doug Evans

DOUG EVANS: Well you know what they don’t understand about illegals is they’re illegal. You know it’s an illegal activity and I feel empathy for those people but we still need to get control of it.

15:08

In the Constitution of the United States it says --- I believe it’s Section 4, Section 8 Article 4 --- it says the states of the United States shall be protected against invasion, by the federal government, and I feel that 20 million illegals is an invasion.

Tombstone

BRISSENDEN: Doug Evans likes nothing better than putting on his spurs and his hat and reliving the days when life out here depended on a good horse and a fast draw. For a few here, this is fun. For others it’s a serious drill. Since Barack Obama became President, the number of civilian militia has exploded. One respected watchdog says at least 100 new militia groups have formed in the last two years.

15:52

Doug visits Carmen at café

16:27

Tombstone is a centre of vigilante activism and cowboy Doug is a member of one of the biggest groups of them all, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corp.

16:33

CARMEN MERCER: I’m an immigrant as you know.

16:42

Carmen

I mean I was born and raised in Germany and I went through the whole process, you know, I did the fingerprinting and the very thorough health check. I mean those are the things that are not happening any more.

16:44

Carmen serves burgers

BRISSENDEN: Carmen Mercer makes coffee and burgers at Tombstone’s OK Café and when she’s not taking orders, she’s giving them. She’s one of the co-founders of the Minuteman Group.

16:55

CARMEN MERCER: We love this country and we want to make sure that everything is done correctly.

17:07

Carmen

We have got laws on the books but they’re not being enforced.

17:11

Carmen at militia meeting

17:15

BRISSENDEN: At night she’s out with her Minutemen scouring the desert looking for illegals. Out here they call this German immigrant turned fiercely patriotic American, “Scorpion”.

17:25

CARMEN MERCER: There are militias out there that are saying now we will not back up if we come across a drug cartel, we will shoot back. And so that shows you, you know those.... that kind of mood was not there six, seven, eight years ago,  but it certainly has changed.

17:39

Music

17:54

Night shots. Minutemen patrol

BRISSENDEN: The Minuteman vigilantes say they have no time for the extremism of some other groups. They don’t directly engage with any illegal immigrants or drug runners. They’re simply spotters for the border patrol and they report anything they find. But their operations are planned, and they do go out heavily armed. Tonight, they have plenty of firepower with them in case their targets come armed.

18:13

YOUNG MINUTEMAN: Yeah this is a main thoroughfare for the illegals, and we consider our main hotspot, which is like a funnel, ‘cause they’re all shooting for the highway 86 up there where that light is.

18:44

BRISSENDEN: They use heat sensor binoculars to spot any movement.

18:59

CARMEN MERCER: He said he was heading down that way. He may be going to the house. You copy that? This is Scorpion.

19:03

We feel for the people that, I mean if I were living in Mexico I would probably do the same thing that they’re doing, you know? I mean how can you live down there?

19:12

Carmen. Super:
Carmen Mercer
Minutemen Civil Defense Corps

CARMEN MERCER: But I’m a very proud citizen of the United States and I am very.... I think if we have to obey the law, everybody else has to do the same thing.

19:20

Minutemen night patrol. Binocular vision

BRISSENDEN: It’s a slow cold night in the desert where the Minuteman scouts provide the only discernable movement and it doesn’t go unnoticed. The official border patrol thunders in out of darkness concerned Carmen’s crew is a bunch of illegals.

19:41

YOUNG MINUTEMAN: (to Border Patrol) You scared the Australians.

20:06

BRISSENDEN: In the end we’re the only foreigners this posse will see tonight, but they’ll be back at it again soon, filling the holes they see in America’s defences.

20:07

CARMEN MERCER: I think many of our people will stay on the border until it is secured,

20:16

Carmen

but many of our people have also joined the Tea Party groups and many of our people are also happy with the efforts that we have put in for the last eight years because the attention is there. It’s not going to go away any more. The sleeping giant has awakened.

20:21

Mack at Tea Party meeting

BRISSENDEN: And now, even well away from the border in the cities and towns, Tea Party leaders like Sheriff Mack are finding their views are becoming more mainstream than ever.

FORMER SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: A lot of people have called me radical

20:38

Mack addresses meeting

and some of us were joking while I was coming in, if you believe in the Constitution you’re a radical, you know? If you believe in God and read the Bible you’re a radical. And if you believe in the Constitution and read the Bible, man you’re really a radical.

20:52

BRISSENDEN: For these people, Arizona is more than just a state, it’s a state of mind.

GABRIEL CHIN: I think it’s turned out to be something of a cultural bellwether.

21:08

Gabriel Chin

I think the Arizona legislature was the tea party before there was a tea party. I think that you know the ideas that I hear that are coming from the Tea Party movement are things that have been on the books here for a long time. Or have been on the legislative agenda for a long time.

21:17

Memorial to shooting victims

Music

21:35

BRISSENDEN: Six people died in the tragic Tucson shooting, one of them was John Roll, the judge that first supported Richard Mack’s challenge to the Clinton gun laws. In Arizona, freedom has always come backed by the gun. The tragedy of the Tucson shooting isn’t going to change that.

FORMER SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: In America the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. We’ve got to remember that we’re based on

21:45

Mack. Super:
Richard Mack
Former sheriff

RICHARD MACK: God, family and country and the Constitution is an integral part of that and how we protect ourselves is by protecting the Constitution and the God given rights that it was designed to protect.

22:12

Music

22:23

Credits:

Reporter: Michael Brissenden

Camera: Louis Eroglu

Editor: Garth Thomas

Research: Janet Silver

Producer: Mary Ann Jolly

22:28