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GUN FIGHT
9 p.m. Wednesday, April 13
HBO

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In early 2007, a college student at Virginia Tech University named Seung Hui Cho purchased two automatic pistols: a Glock 19 and a Walther P22. Even though Cho had a documented police and medical record of mental problems, menacing behavior and stalking by then, he bought the pistols legally, ordering them through the Internet and having them shipped to licensed gun dealers after going through all the required federal background checks and showing his ID. On April 16, 2007, Cho got up, got dressed, mailed a package containing a rambling video manifesto to NBC News, and then killed two young men in his dorm. He put the guns and over 20 fully-loaded ammunition magazines in a backpack, and then he went to Norris Hall, where he’d taken classes. Before he was done — killed by his own hand after firing over 170 shots in classrooms crowded with his fellow students — 30 people were dead, and another 25 lay wounded. Cho’s rampage, which has since come to be known as The Virginia Tech Massacre, is at the center of a new documentary by award-winning filmmaker Barbara Koppel called “Gun Fight,” which debuts this month on HBO. Knowing that the anti-gun side of things isn’t the whole story by a long shot, the doc uses the Virginia Tech shootings as a springboard to talk about the whole issue of guns in America, speaking with Second Amendment advocates, visiting hospital emergency rooms where the victims of gun violence are sent when the shooting stops, and chatting with the loved ones of those left behind after the bullets fly. Definitely one to check out, no matter which side of the debate you’re on.

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