Chicago Playwright Bryn Magnus with a quintessential gun story from his childhood in Wisconsin.  It contains both the fear of guns and the pleasure of shooting one.

Two people who've nearly died in gun battles describe what it's like, getting shot at. They draw opposite conclusions from their near death experiences.

Chicago writer Tori Marlan with a man who sold guns to criminals for two years, and what he makes of the experience. Most of the illegal guns on the street were actually purchased legally.

Sarah Vowell goes home to Montana to try and understand her gunsmith dad a little better.

Geoffrey Canada, author of the book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, talks about what it's like to carry a gun. He also talks about what poor neighborhoods in New York were like before the proliferation of handguns among young people.  When he grew up in the South Bronx, kids had fistfights in a very formal arrangement with formal rules that everyone lived by. He reads from his book and talks with Ira.