In Guns We Trust, home

Discussion guide

Twenty questions. One at a time.

For after the film, in a lounge room, a classroom or a community hall. There are no right answers, and anyone can pass.

Watch the film
“Is your goal here to teach people, or is your goal here to hear people?”
Adam Winkler, in the film

Before you start

  1. Listen to understand.Not to reply.
  2. Say it back.Before you respond, say what you heard.
  3. Speak for yourself.Your own life, not a side.
  4. Assume good faith.And stay curious.

Your story

Start with lives, not positions. Everyone has a story about safety, and most people have never been asked for it.

  1. What’s your earliest memory of a gun? Real, on a screen, or in a story someone told you.
  2. The film is made by two outsiders. When has an outsider helped you see your own world differently?
  3. Where do you feel safe, and where don’t you? What makes the difference?
  4. What in your own life has shaped how safe you feel from day to day?
  5. Before tonight, where did your picture of American gun culture come from? How close was it to what you saw?
  6. When a hard topic comes up with family or friends, do you lean in or step back? Why?
  7. What would you want a visitor to understand about your community before they judged it?

What you saw

The people in the film disagree with each other. Try to describe each of them the way they’d describe themselves.

  1. The film asks whether you can be “in the middle” on guns in America. When have you felt caught in the middle on something divisive?
  2. Who in the film did you find hardest to understand? What would you ask them if you could?
  3. Who did you relate to most, even where you disagreed with them?
  4. People in the film feel very differently about the same object. What does a gun mean to the people you heard from?
  5. Fear comes up again and again. Where do you think fear about safety comes from?
  6. Katherine Schweit, who built the FBI’s active-shooter program, says 60% of firearm deaths in the US are suicides. Did anything in the film complicate something you thought you already knew?
  7. Partway through the trip, Josh and Tommy wonder whether they’re becoming desensitised. What have you grown numb to?

Taking it home

The last questions are about the next conversation, the one after tonight.

  1. Adam Winkler asks whether the goal is to teach people or to hear them. In your own conversations, which do you reach for first?
  2. What would it take for someone who disagrees with you to feel genuinely heard by you?
  3. The film says there’s “enough polarising media” and it didn’t want “to add to the noise.” How could you take a hard topic seriously without adding to the noise?
  4. Which view in the film would you most like to understand better? Who in your life could help you?
  5. What’s one small thing you could do this week to keep a hard conversation open?
  6. What do you want to carry out of the room tonight, and what do you want to leave behind?

Hosting a screening?

Ten people and a pizza is plenty. Watch together, take a short break, then go through the questions one at a time. You won’t get to all twenty, and that’s fine: three good ones make a good night.

The film runs 76 minutes and is free on YouTube, so it plays anywhere with a screen and an internet connection. It includes gunfire and discussion of shootings, suicide and loss: it’s made for adults and older teenagers watching with support.

Tell us how it went, or ask us anything: [email protected]

If the film brings something up. US: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14. Elsewhere: findahelpline.com