NT-3194

WNET/THIRTEEN Title Card
11th Hour, Pistol Packing, Show 194, 26:32, 5/10/89

Funding for the program by announcer and overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.

The Eleventh Hour graphic with overlay, a gold police shield printed with the words : "crime and punishment"

Host Robert Lipsyte welcomes viewers and introduces himself, posters of handguns are seen behind him. He talks about the topic of tonight's program, the third chapter in the show's series on Crime and Punishment about guns, the people who pack them, and why.

INSERT INTERVIEW:

Robert Lipsyte: Mr. Buckley, why do you carry a gun?

William F. Buckley:
Well, I don't carry a gun, I have a gun. I carry it only on the infrequent occasions, when I have reason to suppose that it might prove necessary it happened. There was one such very recently, but I probably haven't had it in my pocket while walking through the streets of New York, once in 25 years, but I do have it in my house. And when I ran for mayor, which is the time when I made the application to have it, on presenting certain rather lucid letters, wishing me less than a long life. I was given not only a gun, but detectives during the last six weeks of the campaign.

Robert Lipsyte:
There's somebody out there who threatens you.

William F. Buckley:
Well, you never know. What always haunts people really is the what happened to Al Lowenstein. There was no reason suppose this particular guy had turned that the final angular corner that separates,people who want to be privately cranky from those who become homicidal, but it happened to him. And the same kind of guy who tried to kill Reagan, there's some of those people around and you may as well anticipate at least the possibility that they'll show up. And that makes sense in such moments to be able to defend yourself.

Robert Lipsyte:
Well, implicit in your having a gun is that society is not protecting you properly.

William F. Buckley:
Well, obviously it's not protecting me properly or there wouldn't be the murder rate. Will more people were killed in Washington during the first three months of this year than were killed in the West Bank since the Intifada began 18 months ago.

Robert Lipsyte :
How do you feel about Other people walking around the city carrying a gun?

William F. Buckley:
Well, I'm against carrying a gun when you're walking around the city, except when there is a prima facie case and to necessity. Brinks Guards have them for their professional

Robert Lipsyte :
Well they're just protecting money,

William F. Buckley:
No, they're protecting lives. Well, presumably, in the course of ,people who want to kill Brinks Guards don't want to kill Brinks guards, they want to kill the people who are keeping the money. So in order to defend the money, you got to defend yourself. My my, my own feeling is that anyone who doesn't have a criminal record aught on satisfactory representation of his own character, to be permitted to have a gun only in his house. I think it should be a major offense to take away from the house, something like that, as you know, it's been tried in Massachusetts, with with so far as I know pretty good results.

Robert Lipsyte:
Do you have a gun available in your house that you could get to quickly?

William F. Buckley:
Oh, yes, I do. That's what I'm talking about.

Robert Lipsyte thanks William F. Buckley and cuts to break.

Host Robert Lipsyte returns. He announces some statistics on guns - 66,000 legal guns and more than a million illegal guns in New York, and introduces next segment.

A bullseye target - bullets making holes, shots from gun can be heard.

Wide shot, Two People at a shooting range standing in their individual booths, aiming their guns at large targets

Pan brownstones on residential New York City street.

same young woman walking down steps to subway, man leaning on railing reading newspaper

Hand drawn pencil fashion sketches, fabric swatches being layed out over sketch.

Same young woman (shot from behind and close up) at shooting range wearing headset, loading gun she points gun at target hanging in distance. She narrates that police can't offer the type of protection women in the City need.

Close up shot gun with pointer and close in on young woman's determined and serious face.

Interior of cab, steering wheel

POV moving vehicle driving down city streets through neighborhoods, passing parked cars, car with open trunk

Tucking handgun into pants pocket sitting behind the wheel of car

POV moving vehicle driving through sketchy neighborhood

INSERT INTERVIEW:

Robert Lipsyte:
Joining me now is a private investigator who would like to disarm some of those good guys. Bob DiMartini is a former lieutenant with the new york city street crime unit. Bob, their fear the cabbies fear that woman's fear? Do you think it's justified?

Bob DiMartini :
Well, I believe that their fear is justified to a point. If the New York City Police Department was as effective as it should be, or could be, in my opinion, I think their fear is invalid. At this point in time. I don't agree with the police department's way of doing things. That's predominantly why I retired.

Robert Lipsyte:
But you do understand these people wanting to have guns?

Bob DiMartini:
Yes, I do.

Robert Lipsyte:
How do you feel about that woman in that cab driver walking around on the street with a gun?

Bob DiMartini:
Well, first of all, take the cab driver, for instance, if he had a gun, as he said he had no partition in his cab. If he has a gun in his waistband, or in his pocket where he put it while he's driving. I'm sitting behind him. I'm intent on robbing him. I put a gun to the back of his head. What's he going to do with the gun? If he goes for it, I showed him. If he tries to pull it out, he's got to turn all the way around over that seat to get to me. Okay, there's no possible way that that guns going to help him against an armed robber, a partician in the cab makes a lot of sense with a cup for the money and he's protected.

Robert Lipsyte:
What about her walking around with a gun?

Bob DiMartini:
Okay. What happens with that is I can understand her wanting to be safe. Carrying a canister of mace or a canister of hairspray which you can spray in someone's eyes. There are a million ways for self defense that can be learned karate, jujitsu, whatever. She's going to have a gun. She goes into a bar guy gets fresh with her. his intent is only to get fresh. He she mistakes it as he follows her or even in the park, for example, that's a better example. She's a nice looking girl, the guy walks up to say hi, gee, we should go out whatever. She gets nervous, pulls out a gun & shoot him. I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen. But there's that possibility. We again put weapons in people's hands. And what happens is the argument and the bar with two guys both have guns, all of a sudden we're back to the days of the 1800s with the Wild West shoot out.

Robert Lipsyte :
Well, I mean, what about celebrities who are carrying guns? William F. Buckley, for example?

Bob DiMartini :
Well, I'm in the business right now. I'm a private investigator, and I do body guard work. I have my own company. And what happens is people who become celebrities and they want protection, we are trained. My people are all retired police officers. They're trained in weapons, they all are armed. Okay, what happens is very simple, you can hire that type of protection. Mr. Buckley wants to carry a gun. I don't know what his training was. I don't know if he's qualified to carry that type of weapon. We're again putting weapons in un trained hands.

Robert Lipsyte:
Bob, let me let me say this. If there's a kind of commercial involvement too, you would prefer that people, celebrities, not carry guns that they would hire you or your people to protect them. But I suspect that that the cab driver and that woman probably can't afford your rates and it certainly doesn't make sense to have him sitting next to you in the cab, and she's pretty much on her own. And implicit in that fear is that they are not being protected by the New York City Police Department. And that's implicit in in Buckley's fear. And these other celebrities. Now you carry a gun. Can I see your gun.

Bob DiMartini: Sure.

Robert Lipsyte: Now, part of this is you are a trained professional, and you had to reach around and get it. if I had a gun if I threatened you would take you it would take this position. Do you feel good carrying that gun walking around the street for your own protection?

Bob DiMartini:
Well, to give you an example of my carrying of a gun. When I'm not working, and I'm where I live or I'm going with my family or whatever, I really rarely carry a gun. I carry a gun when I'm working professionally, as I did when I was a police officer. I don't totally feel the necessity of having a gun with me 24 hours a day. I'm not a small individual. I'm over 200 pounds. I still think I'm in pretty good shape for my age and I think I can handle most situations that come along. What happens is we get people who fear, carry guns, once they reach a situation, they, as the incident where, I forget his exact name, but he killed the youths on the train because they, Bernhard Goetz, were they intent on robbing him? Or were they begging for money? It's still up in the air. Did he have the right to use deadly physical force at that time or not? That's still up in the air. Okay. He was a man in fear, he pulled out that gun and used it and stood over one of those kids from the newspaper articles or whatever, and said, here's one more for you. This doesn't become protection anymore. And when we give people who fear all these guns, we're going to have incidents where people are getting shot, not because they did something wrong, but because the person who had the gun fears they're going to do something wrong.

z'in on DiMartini as he pulls his gun out of his pocket at Lipsyte's request

INTERVIEW INSERT CONTINUES:

Robert Lipsyte:
Now also in terms of we've read so often about suicides and accidents. I mean, do you have children?

Bob DiMartini:Yes, I do.

Robert Lipsyte:
Are you concerned about having a gun in your home or guns in your home?

Bob DiMartini:
Well, I'm, how could I say to fanatic as far as safeguarding my weapons, I went out and bought a safe. And for the simple reason that I put my guns in a safe

Robert Lipsyte:
Well, obviously, you're much more careful than then most people are. But the fact that the the need exists for your kind of services, leads me to believe that there is something basically wrong in the kind of protection we're getting in the City. And maybe it's only perception, but that people are afraid people are going to get themselves guns out of fear.

Bob DiMartini:
Well, I have the same perception that you do. If the police department, any police department in any city, does their job properly. I don't believe there is a need for guns. In New York City. You read so much. It's so many times of what's transpiring that people do fear. There's no question about it.

Robert Lipsyte:
if the police department was, in your terms, doing the job necessary to protect us would there be such a need for such an army of private security in the city?

Bob DiMartini :
I don't believe you'd need that either., because

Robert Lipsyte:
Many of them are carrying guns and who are these guys? They're not all they're not all, you know, retired detective sergeants and lieutenants.

Bob DiMartini :
A lot of the a lot of people what happens is a security company gets a blanket license, it's called a license, while they're working. Okay. A lot of these people are trained by that company. What is that training? Okay, is it that good that we now you can see armed security guards all over the city. They're not all retired police officers. They're not all retired professionals from different fields of law enforcement. They're just the guy off the street, who's given a gun, you're now a security officer. It's the same thing as taking a rookie out of a police academy, after four months, giving him a gun. Is he properly trained? I don't know.

Robert Lipsyte:
So we've got an army of private security people who may or may not be properly trained. We've got people illegally carrying guns perhaps in cabs being frightened by somebody who is drunk and obstreperous and turning around. We've got people, women, other fearful people, carrying guns. And and the joke, of course of all this is this, this, this is this picture that that you brought, this is, this is Bob DiMartini, seven years ago is Detective Sergeant with a squad in the Bronx. And this is some of the guns that he took away from bad guys, in less than a month. I mean, that kind of Arsenal out there. You You talked about Dodge City, you talked about the city becoming out of control, people shooting each other. The good guys are going to lose, aren't they? They're outgunned.

Bob DiMartini:
Well, what happens is, there's so many illegal guns out there are now in the hands of criminals. If the good guys all armed themselves, so to speak, we just reverted back to the 1800s. And we better hope that Wyatt Earp comes back. Because you have a traffic dispute. It's going to be a shootout. You have a dispute in a bar or a nightclub. It's going to be a shootout. You have a family dispute, husband and wife,she goes gets her gun, he goes gets his and they shoot it out in the living room. I mean, I've seen all this in my 21 years of police work. I've seen the family dispute the illegal gun comes out and someone gets killed. The bar dispute, the cab dispute. Simple thing a man in a grocery store, okay, legally he can have a shotgun or a rifle if he registers it. He's got an illegal shotgun in his store. kid comes in and steals three candy bars. I got robbed he takes out a shotgun and he shoots the kid over three candy bars. Or two cops respond to the scene 1030 in progress, which means a robbery candy store guy says that kid just robbed me. They run down the block, the kid turns on them first. He may have the candy bars in his hand, which if I remember correctly, there was an incident in Brooklyn

Robert Lipsyte :
for a candy bar you die.

Bob DiMartini: cop kills a kid for a candy bar again,

Robert Lipsyte:
what are we talking? Well, a man who carries a gun would like people not to carry guns. Bob DiMartini, thank you very much for being with us. The questions of Crime and Punishment we've been exploring this week obviously will not be answered from the barrel
of a gun, licensed or otherwise. And few people understood that better than the Chancellor of New York's public schools, Richard Greene, who died this morning of a heart attack. He would have been 53 at the end of this month. In his last major televised interview, just last week, on The Eleventh Hour, Dr. Greene, who approached his responsibilities with far less fanfare than most public officials offered this vision of the embattled city.

Richard Green Chancellor NY Public Schools:
It is truly I don't spend my time on the on the house tops shouting, because I found an examinee, New York over the last 20 years, that hasn't been a productive experience in improving the quality of life for the city. And I think it's a great city with much hope. And I'm very honored to be the Chancellor of the New York schools. Do you know that if we don't educate this generation of students, there won't be a New York City? Do you know that formerly, America was able to look to other parts of the world to help it with its labor force with its citizenship? Those places no longer have the huge numbers of immigrant population our new immigrant population will come from the Caribbean. There'll be a Haitian Creole and Latino in South America, Southeast Asia, Asia. If we don't get a handle on the management and development and valuing of life in America, by this group of students in our schools today that we won't have a future. It is something we should be very serious about. And my commitment to you about not being involved with the hype is a serious is that if we fail with this group, we won't have a future.

Robert Lipsyte:
in deference to Chancellor Greene's memory, Rudolph Giuliani has postponed the official announcement of his mayoral candidacy on the republican liberal and Law and Order tickets. Our week long series on Crime and Punishment continues with Giuliani next time on The Eleventh Hour.

Show credits over the Eleventh Hour and Crime and Punishment police badge.

Reel ends.