Virginia Tech survivor Colin Goddard in Barbara Kopple's Gun Fight
Harlan County launched Kopple on a career that has encompassed subjects such as Woody Allen, Mike Tyson, The Dixie Chicks and George Steinbrenner, along with other labor films and the occasional foray into film and television dramas, including an Anne Hathaway indie vehicle.
When I mentioned Harlan County to Kopple, she laughed and said, “Yes, there are a lot of guns in that one. That film was made over 30 years ago and I wasn't looking at guns in the same way, but you're absolutely right. Everybody had guns, they open-carried them.
"And people used them. The first day, or second day, after I got to Harlan County, two miners got into a fight with each other. And then the next day, one of the miners—who'd gotten shot—was driving around in his car with a sign on the back of his car saying, '.38s ain't shit,'" she says with a laugh.
But three decades later, guns themselves come under scrutiny in Gun Fight. In an unintentional coincidence, it takes violence in the Appalachians—the Virginia Tech mass shooting—as its starting point. Her film follows several expert witnesses to this country’s gun debate—such as it is. Colin Goddard, who survived the massacre of his French class on April 16, 2007 by a heavily armed and troubled fellow student and became a gun control advocate in its aftermath, is prominently featured in her film.
I tell Kopple that, as someone who keeps a modest farmer's arsenal, I can attest that there are plenty of gun owners who think American laws are scandalously lax. She laughs, “The NRA just hasn't gotten to you—yet.”
While Goddard's credibility is unimpeachable, Kopple's film features powerful witnesses from the front lines of the carnage inflicted by the sea of 300 million guns in this country—a crucial if unknown percentage of which are not in the hands of responsible, emotionally stable, law-abiding adults.
"One of the things I really care about in this film," Kopple says, is to get a lot of different points across. I also really care about people whose lives change from guns in a split second, sort of a snap of your fingers. It happens everywhere, affects every community, people of every race and every class."
We meet Scott Charles, trauma outreach coordinator for Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who takes battle-hardened teenagers on tours of the hospital's trauma unit. Charles, who calls the vicinity the “deadliest neighborhood in one of the deadliest cities in one of the deadliest countries in the civilized world,” later takes pains to point out that the country's suburban classes are largely insulated from the daily toll of gun violence.
“Occasionally you get the Columbines that happen, the Virginia Techs, but they're anomalies,” he says, noting that 10,000 people have been shot in Philadelphia in five years, in a numbingly banal litany of domestic disputes and street corner altercations.
Indeed, viewers may come away from Gun Fight marveling at the disconnect in our culture, wondering if gun violence is another example of the gaping class divide in our culture. Kopple spends a lot of time with gun rights groups, who tend to be composed of middle-age people, mostly white and male, with a paranoid worldview. It’s these people who are so uncompromising, and such effective fundraisers and organizers, that they wield influence so mighty that even Republican politicians are afraid of them, and law enforcement groups, which normally have politicians scurrying to their side, generally are frustrated in their efforts to encourage more stringent gun laws.
"They've made gun control like a poison, so that if you want to get elected or stay in office... no one wants to touch this issue," Kopple says.
Except for a pro forma montage of guns in American movies, Kopple's film avoids the showy pop culture invasion that marked Bowling for Columbine (Marilyn Manson! South Park!). Instead, her film is focused on the points of view of people with a stake in the debate. Gun Fight is bolstered by the courage of physician Garen Wintemute, who views gun violence as a public health problem, and the apostasy of Richard Feldman, a longtime P.R. man for the National Rifle Association, who has since denounced the organization as being primarily devoted to raising money for itself.
Kopple and her editing team were nearly finished with the film—in fact, they'd shown a final cut to HBO—when this country suffered another mass shooting, again perpetrated by a mentally ill person armed to the teeth, which nearly claimed the life of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
"The editor and I got every piece of footage we could. We stayed up one night and put a little piece together," Kopple says.
I asked if the Congress, having seen one of its members shot in the face and nearly killed by a legally armed psycho, would summon the courage to face down the paranoid geeks of the NRA.
“I don't know,” she said.
After tonight's screening at 7:10 in Cinema 3, you'll have the opportunity to discuss these issues further with Kopple, Goddard, Feldman and other guests.