VICE (2013) s01e03 Episode Script
Guns & Ammo
Bad guy's coming.
This week on "Vice," we send Thomas to Albuquerque to check out the new face of school security.
Look at those teachers that lost their lives.
What if they had a weapon? They could have protected more of those little kids.
Oh! And also We're in the old battlefields of Iraq to see what the ongoing cost of war is, when the shooting finally stops.
Clearly children are suffering, people are sick, and if the weapons we used really did cause this health crisis, we need to know this.
_ _ The world is changing.
Now, no one knows where it's going, but we'll be there uncovering the news That's World War III.
culture and politics and expose the absurdity of the modern condition.
That little child has a huge gun.
This scene isn't really kosher by American standards.
I was interviewing suicide bombers, and they were kids.
This is the world through our eyes.
We win or we die! This is the world of "Vice.
" Hi.
I'm Shane Smith, and we're here in the "Vice" offices in Brooklyn, New York, and for our first story this week we go to New Mexico.
After the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the never-ending battle over gun control in this country reached a fever pitch.
Both sides believe they're absolutely right, and no one is willing to see the middle ground.
Since one of the fiercest debates is over whether arming our teachers will make schools safer, we sent Thomas to a place where they do exactly that.
_ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Live fire round, eyes and ears! Everybody ready? Who would think that I would have a gun? I'm dressed up, pearls on, minding my business, and you come to get me.
"Oh, here, take my purse, please! Take everything that's in it!" Whoop.
Mm-hmm, and then they're dead meat.
OK? Lillie Allen is the principal of New Life Baptist Academy, a church school in Albuquerque with 250 students, 20 teachers, and at least 5 loaded handguns divvied up between them.
I know there are many, many parents that they're so against anything that's violent.
But come into the real world, there's violence here.
OK, who's doing pledges today? Come on, Eric.
I pledge allegiance Look at those teachers that lost their lives.
What if they had a weapon? They could've protected themselves, and more of those little kids.
After Newtown, they realize now it can happen anywhere.
But how are we going to prevent it? So that's why we're training our kids.
So every student at New Life, from kindergarteners all the way up to seniors, do active shooter training.
It's basically like a drop and cover drill, just instead of preparing for like, you know, a storm or a nuclear war, they're getting ready for an armed maniac coming into their doors.
OK, guys, remember, when you're under the pew, you cannot stick your head out to be nosy, because that's called nosy rosy.
If you do, the bad guy will get you, and we don't want him to, correct? So I'm more concerned about my younger ones on that.
Bad guy's coming.
_ _ _ Little people, I need for you to stop talking when you're underneath the pew.
That will let the bad guy know where you are if you continue talking, understood? Yes.
Okie-dokie.
You guys are getting ready to die if you're not paying any attention, do we understand? Remember it's always discipline, always discipline, yes? Let's give ourselves a hand, please.
How long has this school been here actually? This school has been here for I mean, the church has been around since the eighties.
Yes, the church has been here since the eighties.
Um, was it always a plan to start a school with it? It was my husband's plan.
Careful getting out, babe.
OK.
With this being a private school, I have a lot more flexibility and leeway than, let's say, a public school.
But as a pastor and the school superintendent, I've been carrying a gun since I left the state police in 1977, so I'm always armed.
That's my job.
Lillie met her husband in the sixties while he was still a New Mexico State police officer.
After the death of their daughter, he found Jesus, became a preacher, and started New Life Baptist.
Despite leaving the force, Pastor Allen never quit being a cop and still runs his church and school with a very cop-ly mindset--and sidearm.
Is that an actual Bible case? So you're going to get a laugh out of this.
The Church bought that for me.
Oh, really? That's a .
45 Smith and Wesson, I love it.
So then if I need it, what the pistol-packing pastor does is he charges his weapon, jam the magazine.
Notice I didn't treat it gently.
So you close it, make sure it's tight.
Now it's ready to fire.
It's hot.
Since Newtown and the other shootings that have happened, a lot of it seems to kind of confirm what you guys were doing before.
Is there anything that you guys learned that kind of surprised you? thought I was nuts-- and this isn't to be bragging--and now everybody's saying, "Well, that guy was a visionary.
" No, you can see evil coming.
I'm not carrying guns, doing security and all, just to be a tough guy.
The reason why we're armed is you see what's happening out there.
I'm not paranoid.
I'm ready.
So in addition to the kind of regular active shooter training which everybody at the school has to go through, there's a program the pastor started where he hand-selects a group of upperclassmen which he calls the Pastor's Warriors, and they get, like, basically a tactical cop's training and they do this once a week in P.
E.
class in lieu of like, you know, climbing ropes or playing dodge ball.
Remember, now, these are not toys.
We're not playing, we're actually practicing, yes? Yes, sir.
OK, so let me have 3 lines facing this way please.
Quickly.
Is a student who doesn't do the training allowed to be here as a student? The students have to go through training.
That'd be like a student saying they don't want to do a fire drill.
You have to do fire drills or you burn.
I'm not saying that they have to agree with our gun policy or like guns, but their lack of response would jeopardize the safety of all of my other students.
Many, many times, people that are at the facility are gonna deal with the active shooter before the police get there.
If we have to fight, we have to know what to do.
See, there's a bunch of stuff I can do here.
I have him here, boom, right in the forehead.
Right on top of his foot, broken.
Hah! Huh! Huh! Huh! Good.
An active shooter will keep killing people until they're out of ammunition, but we're not gonna sit there and let them just murder us.
See this finger? Bend it, twist it, bite it, whatever.
Keep it off this trigger.
Do not quit.
Might seem a little bit extreme for a teenager to be doing that, but at the same time, like, what good did laps or pushups ever do me? You can eye-gouge him.
You can bite his ear.
Does it make you nervous doing this kind of stuff? Do you feel like you think a little bit more about gun violence? At first I was nervous because I didn't want be one, but then since I learned, it makes you feel safer, like, knowing what to do if you're in a situation like that.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Imagine a whole classroom that could have attacked this boy, and many would not have been killed, because if you have a group of kids that are going to attack, you can't kill them all at one time.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! OK, good.
Look, this is America, and this is a private school, and people can do whatever they're gonna do in a private school.
But what I see the pastor doing is creating a false sense of security.
Randi Weingarten heads the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers' union in America.
They're training kids to actually be vigilantes.
Bam! Jabbing his eye out.
At the end of the day, you cannot substitute for the years of training that armed police officers get.
They just can't substitute for that.
There you go.
Let's give you guys a hand.
Come on, let's go.
Hold up, hold up, hold up.
New Life on 3.
New Life! There you go.
While the efficacy of the pastor's Warriors training may be questionable, the kids' swarm and yank strategy is more of a fail-safe.
The school's first line of defense is its armed security and the equally armed faculty.
So these are the teachers.
Yes.
This is the faculty wall.
Which of these fine people is armed? There's about four of them on there that's armed.
But if I tell you, then everyone's going to know who they are.
And we don't want anyone to know.
Do they have a background that involves firearms? They have quite a bit of training, and a number of them come from they're maybe policemen wives or they've been in law enforcement themselves.
Parents can play guesswork, and we don't mind, because they'll never know which teacher has it.
OK.
But I will always carry my gun with me.
And that's for the protection of their child.
Because they're worth it.
We're at a shooting range outside Albuquerque.
The pastor and his security team have taken us up here to do a few training drills.
We're all going to go through the ropes and put some rounds in some paper bad guys.
Fire! Lillie and the pastor asked their teachers to undergo upwards of 6 months of training before they can carry a gun at school.
Are you ready to fire? Yes.
Pull the trigger straight back to the rear.
This is well past the 18 hours required for a concealed carry permit under New Mexico law, but it's still just basic range training and gun familiarization, all carried out in a safe, controlled environment.
Make your weapon safe and holster! Which, it goes without saying, is a very far cry from the lawless, panic-charged environment of an active school shooting.
Do a reload! Did you have to shoot 'em? Yes.
Did you shoot to kill 'em? No, always to stop the action.
Two to the body, one to the head.
If he keeps coming at you, one to the groin.
Discussing the issue of arming teachers, in many respects it's like a Rubik's cube.
Every time you turn it, you come up with different dilemmas.
William Bratton chiefed the police forces for New York, Boston, and Los Angeles during each of their worst crime years and is widely credited for making them the livable cities they are today.
Studies have conclusively shown that in moments of high drama that the accuracy rate of even a skilled shooter declines dramatically.
On average, less than 1/3 of police-fired rounds hit the intended target, and they are ostensibly the best trained in America at the moment.
Do you ever worry that, you know, even with all the training, in like a real situation, you know, faced with a threat, like your adrenaline would--could kind of overpower your senses? Like, is that ever a concern? No, because adrenaline is--boy, can make you do things you've never done before, and especially as a mother protecting a child-- now, there's instincts.
Your instincts will guide you-- guide your hand.
You bet instincts will guide your hand when you're going after someone's child.
Kindergarten, line up! From a rational perspective, what New Life is doing is probably severe overkill.
The odds of dying in a school shooting are infinitesimal, just shy of being struck by lighting.
Unfortunately, the debate over guns and school safety isn't governed by rational perspectives, and, thanks to the media's emotional, over-the-top coverage of shootings when they do occur, what's weird about New Life now could easily become the new normal.
I think that what's happened is that the Newtown tragedy has affected everyone.
By and large, we don't have intruders running into schools.
By and large, schools are some of the safest places in America.
Teachers have said they don't want schools to be like that, they don't want to have a situation where all of a sudden teachers are wearing pistols on their hips.
Being quite frank with you, I think it's a waste of time.
I'd much rather my kids be trained on reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Parents that want their kids to be miniature Rambos-- good luck to them, send them to that school.
If a person steps in here now and starts shooting, if one of us don't tackle him, we're all gonna die.
Bang, bang, bang! Hey, let go! I'mma hurt you! I'mma kill you! Let me go! What we try to tell our kids is, "OK, if you're gonna die, you might as well die fighting.
" Violence isn't going away, and I know a number of people will disagree with us, but that's something we're gonna do regardless if we're criticized or not.
We will protect their children.
For our next story, we go to Iraq.
Now, in the run-up to the Iraq war, it became seen as almost un-American to even question why we were going to invade them.
There was an almost feverish pitch to avenge the atrocities of 9/11, so we went to war.
Now, the problem with war is, it's always worse than we think it's going to be.
It's not manly bullet grazes on the shoulder, it's catheters and colostomy bags and never being able to walk again.
And as I found out first-hand when I went there, sometimes the after-effects of war are even worse.
_ Now, this is what most people imagine when they think of the end of the war: burnt- out trucks, burnt-out tanks, the flotsam and the jetsam of battle.
One of the first ways that they found out about the environmental pollution was a lot of people were coming in with radiation poisoning and they couldn't figure out why, and then the doctors realized that they were all scrappers.
They were coming here to take trucks and tanks and helicopters, all the disused scrap that had been blown up during the war, and then they realized that all of this stuff is actually radioactive.
Now of course we all know that war is bad.
But we don't know just how bad until it's over.
Because the weapons systems used in modern warfare have horrific and enduring effects, long after the fighting has stopped.
In Vietnam, for example, the widespread use of the chemical compound known as Agent Orange, which was used by the American military, created a generation of deformed Vietnamese children that suffer to this day because of its toxic legacy.
And an even more recent example of the toxic after-effects of war is developing on the former battlegrounds of Iraq.
The cities that experience the heaviest fighting are now suffering through a tremendous rise in congenital birth defects and rare cancers.
And the city worst hit is Fallujah.
Fallujah was the focal point for some of the fiercest fighting during the occupation.
homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and hundreds of mosques.
It was some of the most intense urban warfare experienced by the Marines since the Vietnam War.
We talked to First Private Ross Caputi, a former U.
S.
Marine who fought in the siege of Fallujah and was so affected by what he experienced there that he started Justice for Fallujah, an advocacy group designed to bring awareness to the after-effects that are ravaging the region.
We had sort of a "shoot first, ask questions later" type policy.
There was a new thermobaric weapon that we tested for the first time in Fallujah.
It's called the SMAW-NE.
You fire it into a house, and the first thing it will do, it'll suck all the oxygen out of the house, and anyone in that house, their lungs will collapse.
After that, there's an extreme heat blast that just fries anyone within the general vicinity of this weapon.
To create this thermobaric blast, it's suspected that uranium might be used.
We tried to talk to the U.
S.
Department of Defense about this issue, but they refused our request for an interview and declined to provide us with a written statement about the use of uranium munitions in Fallujah.
However, in documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, the DOD claims they simply did not record the use of uranium munitions before July 2004.
So without much information from the U.
S.
military, it's been left to independent scientists and researchers to figure out what effects these weapons have had.
When you drop these bombs in an environment, what happens is that once that explosion occurs, fine particles that contain metals get spread all over the environment.
It will enter the soil, it will enter the water, it gets taken up by plants, people who are in an area that's being bombed, it gets right into their system, and then slowly it exposes them from inside.
These damages can be much more severe in a child or in a fetus because they don't have the detoxifying mechanisms that an adult body normally has.
As early as 2005, there were reports of birth defects in various cities of Iraq.
There was a 50% increase in the families that we studied, in Fallujah.
That's a huge, enormous jump.
My best guess is that the source would have to be from military.
There is no other source that I can attribute metal contamination to, in these levels.
So we traveled to Iraq to visit Fallujah General Hospital and meet the doctors who are dealing with these toxic effects every day.
Fallujah General is the largest and most important hospital in the city and has been struggling to keep pace with the rise in cancers and rare birth defects amongst the local population.
There's two outspoken doctors here who are talking about the birth defects and the health problems that have been caused by the war that happened here, so we're going to go in and talk to them and see what they have to tell us.
Maybe you could explain what you see here day to day in the hospital.
_ _ _ _ _ _ If you have a problem of that magnitude, you have a whole generation that's being affected, after the war is over.
How do you solve it? _ _ _ According to a 2010 study conducted at Fallujah General, one in every 20 babies born in the hospital had some sort of birth defect.
Now, that's 12 times more than the rate in neighboring Kuwait.
Most of the children here are being treated for a variety of rare conditions, ranging from underdeveloped brains to congenital heart defects.
So they have PSD? _ Each one of these forms of congenital heart defects has its own problems for treatment.
But the common thread is that they're either deadly or untreatable in Iraq.
The baby.
You can't save the baby.
And this baby's dying.
_ Yeah.
And they have a lot of cases of these.
_ _ And behind every door there seemed to be yet another heartbreaking story.
And so what does this baby have? _ _ _ Right.
_ And can the baby survive surgery? Can you do it here? _ _ And after seeing the suffering of all of these children, our first question was, "Is America really responsible for this?" So we talked to an award- winning journalist who's been covering the region for the last 30 years.
One of the major problems with dealing with a story of this kind, a report, an investigation, is that you can never ultimately prove piece of munitions, American munitions, that caused birth defects, an explosion of cancers in the case of depleted uranium in other parts of Iraq.
Because, you know, when a corpse is opened, you don't find a little label saying, you know, "This chemical came from the United States.
" But you can prove that there is an x% possibility, perhaps into munitions used by, for example, the Americans.
When you talk to the families that are affected by this epidemic, they've actually evolved from, "Who is to blame?" and are now asking, "How do we fix this?" _ _ So Moustafa has brain atrophy, and is it thought that it's caused because of the fighting, because of the war? _ _ _ _ _ Hello.
Hello.
How are you? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ While the Department of Defense refused to comment on the situation, we were able to contact a senior Congressman who has been publicly vocal on this subject and was willing to talk to us.
I am very suspicious that depleted uranium is creating a health hazard for not only American soldiers who were exposed to it, but also to the Iraqi people.
And my view is that people don't want to look because if you find something, then you have to do something about it.
In 2005, the Congressman introduced the Depleted Uranium Study Amendment, a law designed to force the government to investigate.
I got the amendment passed.
It required that there be a report in a year.
The report came out, and it's two pages, and it says "We couldn't find anything.
" I mean, that's that.
I was frustrated by their conclusions.
They didn't seriously go out and gather data before they wrote the report.
I don't think they've done an adequate job.
If you're looking for something, you've got to look where it is.
The military is not very interested, because they don't want to lose the weapon quality of depleted uranium and to find out that it's bad for people is not something they want to discover.
I take a different view.
I think of, as the United States, when we affect something in the world, we have a responsibility for what we've done.
I was a physician in the Vietnam War, and I watched the military resist, resist, resist looking into Agent Orange, and so this is like déjà vu all over again.
I've seen this before, where the military doesn't want to admit that there is a problem.
The long-term effects of war are the things that people never want to talk about.
That's the really tough part.
And this problem is even tougher if "A," we continue to refuse a comprehensive study of these health problems, and "B," deny responsibility if indeed it's proven that we did cause them.
There's clearly a problem in Fallujah.
Clearly children are suffering, people are sick.
I mean, we owe it to these people to figure out what is afflicting them.
And if the weapons we used really did cause this health crisis, we need to know this so that this never happens again.
This week on "Vice," we send Thomas to Albuquerque to check out the new face of school security.
Look at those teachers that lost their lives.
What if they had a weapon? They could have protected more of those little kids.
Oh! And also We're in the old battlefields of Iraq to see what the ongoing cost of war is, when the shooting finally stops.
Clearly children are suffering, people are sick, and if the weapons we used really did cause this health crisis, we need to know this.
_ _ The world is changing.
Now, no one knows where it's going, but we'll be there uncovering the news That's World War III.
culture and politics and expose the absurdity of the modern condition.
That little child has a huge gun.
This scene isn't really kosher by American standards.
I was interviewing suicide bombers, and they were kids.
This is the world through our eyes.
We win or we die! This is the world of "Vice.
" Hi.
I'm Shane Smith, and we're here in the "Vice" offices in Brooklyn, New York, and for our first story this week we go to New Mexico.
After the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the never-ending battle over gun control in this country reached a fever pitch.
Both sides believe they're absolutely right, and no one is willing to see the middle ground.
Since one of the fiercest debates is over whether arming our teachers will make schools safer, we sent Thomas to a place where they do exactly that.
_ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Live fire round, eyes and ears! Everybody ready? Who would think that I would have a gun? I'm dressed up, pearls on, minding my business, and you come to get me.
"Oh, here, take my purse, please! Take everything that's in it!" Whoop.
Mm-hmm, and then they're dead meat.
OK? Lillie Allen is the principal of New Life Baptist Academy, a church school in Albuquerque with 250 students, 20 teachers, and at least 5 loaded handguns divvied up between them.
I know there are many, many parents that they're so against anything that's violent.
But come into the real world, there's violence here.
OK, who's doing pledges today? Come on, Eric.
I pledge allegiance Look at those teachers that lost their lives.
What if they had a weapon? They could've protected themselves, and more of those little kids.
After Newtown, they realize now it can happen anywhere.
But how are we going to prevent it? So that's why we're training our kids.
So every student at New Life, from kindergarteners all the way up to seniors, do active shooter training.
It's basically like a drop and cover drill, just instead of preparing for like, you know, a storm or a nuclear war, they're getting ready for an armed maniac coming into their doors.
OK, guys, remember, when you're under the pew, you cannot stick your head out to be nosy, because that's called nosy rosy.
If you do, the bad guy will get you, and we don't want him to, correct? So I'm more concerned about my younger ones on that.
Bad guy's coming.
_ _ _ Little people, I need for you to stop talking when you're underneath the pew.
That will let the bad guy know where you are if you continue talking, understood? Yes.
Okie-dokie.
You guys are getting ready to die if you're not paying any attention, do we understand? Remember it's always discipline, always discipline, yes? Let's give ourselves a hand, please.
How long has this school been here actually? This school has been here for I mean, the church has been around since the eighties.
Yes, the church has been here since the eighties.
Um, was it always a plan to start a school with it? It was my husband's plan.
Careful getting out, babe.
OK.
With this being a private school, I have a lot more flexibility and leeway than, let's say, a public school.
But as a pastor and the school superintendent, I've been carrying a gun since I left the state police in 1977, so I'm always armed.
That's my job.
Lillie met her husband in the sixties while he was still a New Mexico State police officer.
After the death of their daughter, he found Jesus, became a preacher, and started New Life Baptist.
Despite leaving the force, Pastor Allen never quit being a cop and still runs his church and school with a very cop-ly mindset--and sidearm.
Is that an actual Bible case? So you're going to get a laugh out of this.
The Church bought that for me.
Oh, really? That's a .
45 Smith and Wesson, I love it.
So then if I need it, what the pistol-packing pastor does is he charges his weapon, jam the magazine.
Notice I didn't treat it gently.
So you close it, make sure it's tight.
Now it's ready to fire.
It's hot.
Since Newtown and the other shootings that have happened, a lot of it seems to kind of confirm what you guys were doing before.
Is there anything that you guys learned that kind of surprised you? thought I was nuts-- and this isn't to be bragging--and now everybody's saying, "Well, that guy was a visionary.
" No, you can see evil coming.
I'm not carrying guns, doing security and all, just to be a tough guy.
The reason why we're armed is you see what's happening out there.
I'm not paranoid.
I'm ready.
So in addition to the kind of regular active shooter training which everybody at the school has to go through, there's a program the pastor started where he hand-selects a group of upperclassmen which he calls the Pastor's Warriors, and they get, like, basically a tactical cop's training and they do this once a week in P.
E.
class in lieu of like, you know, climbing ropes or playing dodge ball.
Remember, now, these are not toys.
We're not playing, we're actually practicing, yes? Yes, sir.
OK, so let me have 3 lines facing this way please.
Quickly.
Is a student who doesn't do the training allowed to be here as a student? The students have to go through training.
That'd be like a student saying they don't want to do a fire drill.
You have to do fire drills or you burn.
I'm not saying that they have to agree with our gun policy or like guns, but their lack of response would jeopardize the safety of all of my other students.
Many, many times, people that are at the facility are gonna deal with the active shooter before the police get there.
If we have to fight, we have to know what to do.
See, there's a bunch of stuff I can do here.
I have him here, boom, right in the forehead.
Right on top of his foot, broken.
Hah! Huh! Huh! Huh! Good.
An active shooter will keep killing people until they're out of ammunition, but we're not gonna sit there and let them just murder us.
See this finger? Bend it, twist it, bite it, whatever.
Keep it off this trigger.
Do not quit.
Might seem a little bit extreme for a teenager to be doing that, but at the same time, like, what good did laps or pushups ever do me? You can eye-gouge him.
You can bite his ear.
Does it make you nervous doing this kind of stuff? Do you feel like you think a little bit more about gun violence? At first I was nervous because I didn't want be one, but then since I learned, it makes you feel safer, like, knowing what to do if you're in a situation like that.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Imagine a whole classroom that could have attacked this boy, and many would not have been killed, because if you have a group of kids that are going to attack, you can't kill them all at one time.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! OK, good.
Look, this is America, and this is a private school, and people can do whatever they're gonna do in a private school.
But what I see the pastor doing is creating a false sense of security.
Randi Weingarten heads the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers' union in America.
They're training kids to actually be vigilantes.
Bam! Jabbing his eye out.
At the end of the day, you cannot substitute for the years of training that armed police officers get.
They just can't substitute for that.
There you go.
Let's give you guys a hand.
Come on, let's go.
Hold up, hold up, hold up.
New Life on 3.
New Life! There you go.
While the efficacy of the pastor's Warriors training may be questionable, the kids' swarm and yank strategy is more of a fail-safe.
The school's first line of defense is its armed security and the equally armed faculty.
So these are the teachers.
Yes.
This is the faculty wall.
Which of these fine people is armed? There's about four of them on there that's armed.
But if I tell you, then everyone's going to know who they are.
And we don't want anyone to know.
Do they have a background that involves firearms? They have quite a bit of training, and a number of them come from they're maybe policemen wives or they've been in law enforcement themselves.
Parents can play guesswork, and we don't mind, because they'll never know which teacher has it.
OK.
But I will always carry my gun with me.
And that's for the protection of their child.
Because they're worth it.
We're at a shooting range outside Albuquerque.
The pastor and his security team have taken us up here to do a few training drills.
We're all going to go through the ropes and put some rounds in some paper bad guys.
Fire! Lillie and the pastor asked their teachers to undergo upwards of 6 months of training before they can carry a gun at school.
Are you ready to fire? Yes.
Pull the trigger straight back to the rear.
This is well past the 18 hours required for a concealed carry permit under New Mexico law, but it's still just basic range training and gun familiarization, all carried out in a safe, controlled environment.
Make your weapon safe and holster! Which, it goes without saying, is a very far cry from the lawless, panic-charged environment of an active school shooting.
Do a reload! Did you have to shoot 'em? Yes.
Did you shoot to kill 'em? No, always to stop the action.
Two to the body, one to the head.
If he keeps coming at you, one to the groin.
Discussing the issue of arming teachers, in many respects it's like a Rubik's cube.
Every time you turn it, you come up with different dilemmas.
William Bratton chiefed the police forces for New York, Boston, and Los Angeles during each of their worst crime years and is widely credited for making them the livable cities they are today.
Studies have conclusively shown that in moments of high drama that the accuracy rate of even a skilled shooter declines dramatically.
On average, less than 1/3 of police-fired rounds hit the intended target, and they are ostensibly the best trained in America at the moment.
Do you ever worry that, you know, even with all the training, in like a real situation, you know, faced with a threat, like your adrenaline would--could kind of overpower your senses? Like, is that ever a concern? No, because adrenaline is--boy, can make you do things you've never done before, and especially as a mother protecting a child-- now, there's instincts.
Your instincts will guide you-- guide your hand.
You bet instincts will guide your hand when you're going after someone's child.
Kindergarten, line up! From a rational perspective, what New Life is doing is probably severe overkill.
The odds of dying in a school shooting are infinitesimal, just shy of being struck by lighting.
Unfortunately, the debate over guns and school safety isn't governed by rational perspectives, and, thanks to the media's emotional, over-the-top coverage of shootings when they do occur, what's weird about New Life now could easily become the new normal.
I think that what's happened is that the Newtown tragedy has affected everyone.
By and large, we don't have intruders running into schools.
By and large, schools are some of the safest places in America.
Teachers have said they don't want schools to be like that, they don't want to have a situation where all of a sudden teachers are wearing pistols on their hips.
Being quite frank with you, I think it's a waste of time.
I'd much rather my kids be trained on reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Parents that want their kids to be miniature Rambos-- good luck to them, send them to that school.
If a person steps in here now and starts shooting, if one of us don't tackle him, we're all gonna die.
Bang, bang, bang! Hey, let go! I'mma hurt you! I'mma kill you! Let me go! What we try to tell our kids is, "OK, if you're gonna die, you might as well die fighting.
" Violence isn't going away, and I know a number of people will disagree with us, but that's something we're gonna do regardless if we're criticized or not.
We will protect their children.
For our next story, we go to Iraq.
Now, in the run-up to the Iraq war, it became seen as almost un-American to even question why we were going to invade them.
There was an almost feverish pitch to avenge the atrocities of 9/11, so we went to war.
Now, the problem with war is, it's always worse than we think it's going to be.
It's not manly bullet grazes on the shoulder, it's catheters and colostomy bags and never being able to walk again.
And as I found out first-hand when I went there, sometimes the after-effects of war are even worse.
_ Now, this is what most people imagine when they think of the end of the war: burnt- out trucks, burnt-out tanks, the flotsam and the jetsam of battle.
One of the first ways that they found out about the environmental pollution was a lot of people were coming in with radiation poisoning and they couldn't figure out why, and then the doctors realized that they were all scrappers.
They were coming here to take trucks and tanks and helicopters, all the disused scrap that had been blown up during the war, and then they realized that all of this stuff is actually radioactive.
Now of course we all know that war is bad.
But we don't know just how bad until it's over.
Because the weapons systems used in modern warfare have horrific and enduring effects, long after the fighting has stopped.
In Vietnam, for example, the widespread use of the chemical compound known as Agent Orange, which was used by the American military, created a generation of deformed Vietnamese children that suffer to this day because of its toxic legacy.
And an even more recent example of the toxic after-effects of war is developing on the former battlegrounds of Iraq.
The cities that experience the heaviest fighting are now suffering through a tremendous rise in congenital birth defects and rare cancers.
And the city worst hit is Fallujah.
Fallujah was the focal point for some of the fiercest fighting during the occupation.
homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and hundreds of mosques.
It was some of the most intense urban warfare experienced by the Marines since the Vietnam War.
We talked to First Private Ross Caputi, a former U.
S.
Marine who fought in the siege of Fallujah and was so affected by what he experienced there that he started Justice for Fallujah, an advocacy group designed to bring awareness to the after-effects that are ravaging the region.
We had sort of a "shoot first, ask questions later" type policy.
There was a new thermobaric weapon that we tested for the first time in Fallujah.
It's called the SMAW-NE.
You fire it into a house, and the first thing it will do, it'll suck all the oxygen out of the house, and anyone in that house, their lungs will collapse.
After that, there's an extreme heat blast that just fries anyone within the general vicinity of this weapon.
To create this thermobaric blast, it's suspected that uranium might be used.
We tried to talk to the U.
S.
Department of Defense about this issue, but they refused our request for an interview and declined to provide us with a written statement about the use of uranium munitions in Fallujah.
However, in documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, the DOD claims they simply did not record the use of uranium munitions before July 2004.
So without much information from the U.
S.
military, it's been left to independent scientists and researchers to figure out what effects these weapons have had.
When you drop these bombs in an environment, what happens is that once that explosion occurs, fine particles that contain metals get spread all over the environment.
It will enter the soil, it will enter the water, it gets taken up by plants, people who are in an area that's being bombed, it gets right into their system, and then slowly it exposes them from inside.
These damages can be much more severe in a child or in a fetus because they don't have the detoxifying mechanisms that an adult body normally has.
As early as 2005, there were reports of birth defects in various cities of Iraq.
There was a 50% increase in the families that we studied, in Fallujah.
That's a huge, enormous jump.
My best guess is that the source would have to be from military.
There is no other source that I can attribute metal contamination to, in these levels.
So we traveled to Iraq to visit Fallujah General Hospital and meet the doctors who are dealing with these toxic effects every day.
Fallujah General is the largest and most important hospital in the city and has been struggling to keep pace with the rise in cancers and rare birth defects amongst the local population.
There's two outspoken doctors here who are talking about the birth defects and the health problems that have been caused by the war that happened here, so we're going to go in and talk to them and see what they have to tell us.
Maybe you could explain what you see here day to day in the hospital.
_ _ _ _ _ _ If you have a problem of that magnitude, you have a whole generation that's being affected, after the war is over.
How do you solve it? _ _ _ According to a 2010 study conducted at Fallujah General, one in every 20 babies born in the hospital had some sort of birth defect.
Now, that's 12 times more than the rate in neighboring Kuwait.
Most of the children here are being treated for a variety of rare conditions, ranging from underdeveloped brains to congenital heart defects.
So they have PSD? _ Each one of these forms of congenital heart defects has its own problems for treatment.
But the common thread is that they're either deadly or untreatable in Iraq.
The baby.
You can't save the baby.
And this baby's dying.
_ Yeah.
And they have a lot of cases of these.
_ _ And behind every door there seemed to be yet another heartbreaking story.
And so what does this baby have? _ _ _ Right.
_ And can the baby survive surgery? Can you do it here? _ _ And after seeing the suffering of all of these children, our first question was, "Is America really responsible for this?" So we talked to an award- winning journalist who's been covering the region for the last 30 years.
One of the major problems with dealing with a story of this kind, a report, an investigation, is that you can never ultimately prove piece of munitions, American munitions, that caused birth defects, an explosion of cancers in the case of depleted uranium in other parts of Iraq.
Because, you know, when a corpse is opened, you don't find a little label saying, you know, "This chemical came from the United States.
" But you can prove that there is an x% possibility, perhaps into munitions used by, for example, the Americans.
When you talk to the families that are affected by this epidemic, they've actually evolved from, "Who is to blame?" and are now asking, "How do we fix this?" _ _ So Moustafa has brain atrophy, and is it thought that it's caused because of the fighting, because of the war? _ _ _ _ _ Hello.
Hello.
How are you? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ While the Department of Defense refused to comment on the situation, we were able to contact a senior Congressman who has been publicly vocal on this subject and was willing to talk to us.
I am very suspicious that depleted uranium is creating a health hazard for not only American soldiers who were exposed to it, but also to the Iraqi people.
And my view is that people don't want to look because if you find something, then you have to do something about it.
In 2005, the Congressman introduced the Depleted Uranium Study Amendment, a law designed to force the government to investigate.
I got the amendment passed.
It required that there be a report in a year.
The report came out, and it's two pages, and it says "We couldn't find anything.
" I mean, that's that.
I was frustrated by their conclusions.
They didn't seriously go out and gather data before they wrote the report.
I don't think they've done an adequate job.
If you're looking for something, you've got to look where it is.
The military is not very interested, because they don't want to lose the weapon quality of depleted uranium and to find out that it's bad for people is not something they want to discover.
I take a different view.
I think of, as the United States, when we affect something in the world, we have a responsibility for what we've done.
I was a physician in the Vietnam War, and I watched the military resist, resist, resist looking into Agent Orange, and so this is like déjà vu all over again.
I've seen this before, where the military doesn't want to admit that there is a problem.
The long-term effects of war are the things that people never want to talk about.
That's the really tough part.
And this problem is even tougher if "A," we continue to refuse a comprehensive study of these health problems, and "B," deny responsibility if indeed it's proven that we did cause them.
There's clearly a problem in Fallujah.
Clearly children are suffering, people are sick.
I mean, we owe it to these people to figure out what is afflicting them.
And if the weapons we used really did cause this health crisis, we need to know this so that this never happens again.