Before Robert Spitzer grew up to be an expert on American gun policy, he watched a lot

of westerns.

He was raised on cowboy movies and cowboy TV shows and gunslinging and all the rest.

We'd all be much better off if there wasn't a single gun left in this valley.

A gun is as good or bad as a man using it.

He was raised on stories of an America built by rugged men with six shooters on their hips.

A terror-stricken town left him to face four killers.

Even though that image was mostly made up.

Gary Cooper was a great actor and high-known, great, great movie, but you know, was that

typical of the West?

Well, no.

Robert has written five books about gun policy in the US and he says that in the actual

Wild West, gun laws were strict.

They didn't want people walking around their new town with a gun strap to their hip.

So if you came to town, you'd have to check your gun at the town hall or the sheriff's office or the clerk's office for someplace.

So all of those western movies and television shows were both getting in gun fights and that's largely fiction.

You know, I'm still drawn into those old stories, but that was not typical at all.

Unfortunately, mass shootings have become all too typical.

Recent tragedies like the Covenant School Shooting in Tennessee, two separate shootings in Louisville, Kentucky,

and the shooting at a birthday party in Deidville, Alabama have prompted fresh calls for gun reform,

though it's unclear how much will come of them.

But America's gun policy history seems to be more important to many courts than the present.

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