Speaker 1: Eddie Dragon in New Mexico owns a radio station even
Speaker 1: though it was attacked by terrorists. His tower was attacked,
Speaker 1: and yet he pursues, He continues because he is a capitalist.
Speaker 1: Eddie Dragon, are you in Idaho, Iowa? Where are you today?
Speaker 2: I'm in New Mexico. And never say quit. You never
Speaker 2: quit capitalists, never quit. I love the hour. What an
Speaker 2: education on strip clubs though I had no idea, Walter
Speaker 2: fascinating business persistence. And then you have that wonderful man
Speaker 2: who has staying with his wife after all that time,
Speaker 2: his second wife and I got a full education on
Speaker 2: car sterios. Who knew they should get it could get
Speaker 2: so profitable.
Speaker 1: Well to prevent them, to create the sleeve that enabled
Speaker 1: you to just take it out when you left the car.
Speaker 1: That was a very important device in the late nineties
Speaker 1: because those car radios were being stolen like crazy, and
Speaker 1: because they could come out, and so he had. What
Speaker 1: he did was he ran a business that enabled you
Speaker 1: to manage that and not have your car radio stolen.
Speaker 1: It was a big problem. It was a big problem. Now,
Speaker 1: Eddie Dragon, New Mexico, what do you have to report?
Speaker 1: Bring us up to date on conspiracies? Mysteries everything.
Speaker 2: You're an expert on Well England. On August nineteenth, ninety,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, Walter is literally at the forefront of
Speaker 2: the biggest gun control of all of Europe. And it
Speaker 2: happened on this day back in nineteen eighty seven. You're
Speaker 2: in Hungerford. There's actually a song about this by the
Speaker 2: great band called Radiohead. It's called Sulk, and it's a
Speaker 2: fascinating story because this is the beginning of massive gun
Speaker 2: control in the UK. So you're back in Hungerford, which
Speaker 2: is a quiet market town in Berkshire, about seventy min
Speaker 2: else west of London, and it's the kind of place,
Speaker 2: Walter where the biggest emergency might be a fire or wreck,
Speaker 2: or you know, some fight the pub or something. But
Speaker 2: it's a town of small shops, country lanes, familiar faces
Speaker 2: and people who believed they were removed from the kind
Speaker 2: of violence scene in big cities or here in America.
Speaker 2: Then the gun fire started and by the time the
Speaker 2: day was over, sixteen innocent people are dead, another fifteen
Speaker 2: are wounded, and the killer is dead too, or is
Speaker 2: he by his own hand? His name was Michael Robert Ryan,
Speaker 2: twenty seven years of age, quiet, isolated, fascinated by firearms,
Speaker 2: and according to the law at the time, entitled to
Speaker 2: own them, though not today because Ryan possessed certificates for
Speaker 2: shotguns and firearms, and in the months before the attack
Speaker 2: he legally bought three shotguns and five firearms, and on
Speaker 2: the day he launched his rampage he had a bat.
Speaker 2: I had a nine milimeters pistol, a Chinese type fifty
Speaker 2: six semi automatic rifle no longer legal than England, and
Speaker 2: an Underwood thirty caliber carbine. No stolen weapons, no black
Speaker 2: market cachet is just a you know, no exposure to
Speaker 2: criminal gang pipelines. This guy was a legal weapons owner
Speaker 2: in the hands the man that authorities had you know,
Speaker 2: completely illegally allowed to own them. Now. The killing began
Speaker 2: outside the town, then it moved into Hungerford itself. Ryan
Speaker 2: shot people right in the open on streets near homes.
Speaker 2: He returned to his family house and then murdered his
Speaker 2: own mother, Dorothy. He killed an unarmed police officer, D. C.
Speaker 2: Roger Barrenton was responding to all the chaos, and he
Speaker 2: fired at least one hundred and nineteen rounds during that rampage.
Speaker 2: Eighty four from that Chinese type fifty six rifle, thirty
Speaker 2: four from the Barretta pistol, and one from the carbine.
Speaker 2: So for the people of Hungerford, this was not a
Speaker 2: distant breaking news story. This is nineteen eighty seven, right,
Speaker 2: This wasn't playing on television like the way it would,
Speaker 2: you know, just six years and seven years later to
Speaker 2: in the case of Oj, it was immediate. The danger
Speaker 2: was outside their very doors. Sirens racing to the town
Speaker 2: were you know, whirling, and you know, everything just kind
Speaker 2: of complete until chaos and reticidents had to like hide
Speaker 2: in their homes while the police tried to understand whether
Speaker 2: they faced one shooter or ten shooters or something worse.
Speaker 2: Because this man Ryan eventually entered the local school called
Speaker 2: John o'gaunt. Police surrounded the building, the attempted to negotiate
Speaker 2: with him, but the crisis ended without an arrest, the
Speaker 2: satisfying arrest, without a trial, the satisfying trial without a
Speaker 2: complete explanation, in fact, no explanations, because Ryan died by
Speaker 2: suicide inside the school, and that missing explanation is where
Speaker 2: the whole mystery begins. Because when the killer dies, as
Speaker 2: in any case, and the case dies with him. It
Speaker 2: doesn't die in any court rooms where it should happen.
Speaker 2: There was no confession. This man has no manifesto, no
Speaker 2: final statement laying out political causes, a grudge list, you know, motives. Nothing.
Speaker 2: Investigators could reconstruct what Ryan did. They could count the rounds,
Speaker 2: they could trace his legally acquired weapons, but they could
Speaker 2: not answer the question that people always ask after an
Speaker 2: apparently senseless mass killing. Why That vacuum created an entire
Speaker 2: ecosystem of speculation in Britain. One theory claim that Ryan
Speaker 2: had help another gunman accomplish you know, perhaps a criminal network,
Speaker 2: and other suggested he was tied to an international arms dealer.
Speaker 2: Still others pointed to supposed secret relationships, claims about his
Speaker 2: private life, the unseen motive, and boiling you know, his
Speaker 2: first victim, who was Susan Godfrey. They thought she was
Speaker 2: the target. There was also a cultural explanation. Ryan was
Speaker 2: acting out some sort of weird fantasy inspired by violent
Speaker 2: movies military imagery. Remember this is nineteen eighty seven. This
Speaker 2: is like the beginning of all these mass shootings, or
Speaker 2: back in the nineteen eighties, a fascination with some sort
Speaker 2: of lone wolf action heroes. But Here is the crucial
Speaker 2: line for the record. None of the theories were established
Speaker 2: as fact. Never nothing, not one investigation identified him as
Speaker 2: a soul attacker. That's it could put end the story.
Speaker 2: No evidence, no credible evidence surfaced of an accomplice, the
Speaker 2: secret organization of political plot or coordinator operation, no manifesto, nothing,
Speaker 2: But that does not make the unanswered questions disappear. In
Speaker 2: all this, Walter, it simply means that unanswered is not
Speaker 2: the same as proven. And in a world that creates
Speaker 2: clean explanations like we have with Charlie kirk right, there's
Speaker 2: so much dissemination, of so much misinformation. All of this
Speaker 2: gifts its very uncomfortable and everything since this inception back
Speaker 2: in eighty seven until today, with these mass shootings, has
Speaker 2: led to the very same type of speculation, and in
Speaker 2: this case massive gun control, and every time you see
Speaker 2: a mass shooting here in the United States, massive more
Speaker 2: gun control that is on the table again. People want
Speaker 2: to believe that there must be some sort of hidden
Speaker 2: cause and all this a conspiracy, a handler, a secret
Speaker 2: like you know, some messages, a manifesto, And sometimes there
Speaker 2: is right, but sometimes the most unsettling answer is that
Speaker 2: the killers you know, wounds, his mental state, what have
Speaker 2: you is just completely inaccessible. And that's the worst mystery
Speaker 2: of all. His victims paid the price for it. Hugerford
Speaker 2: did not produce, you know, any sort of visible consequences
Speaker 2: in this case, but it did have one, and that
Speaker 2: is a complete and total radical shift in British firearms policy.
Speaker 2: And this has become the blueprint there in America and
Speaker 2: everywhere else in Britain is the worst walter or gun control.
Speaker 2: Before the massacre, Britain had gun licensing everywhere Ryan had
Speaker 2: passed through the system. After the killings, the public in
Speaker 2: Parliament demanded the answers. It's always fun to watch them
Speaker 2: go aft at each other. The Firearms Amendment Act eighty
Speaker 2: eight banned most of the automatic pump action rifles, Restrictaturdan's
Speaker 2: shotguns ammunition, required shotgun owners to register their weapons and
Speaker 2: keep them stored, and then came the full surrender. This
Speaker 2: is where it gets even weirder. Just this one gun incident.
Speaker 2: There was no amnesty. The law took effect. It brought
Speaker 2: in nearly forty eight thousand firearms immediately. Lawful owners newly
Speaker 2: prohibited weapons had to hand them over, dispose of them
Speaker 2: legally or face possessing prohibited gun. And then the dark
Speaker 2: legacy just continues. Massacres carried out with guns ahead been
Speaker 2: legally acquired, a killer who left no credible final explanation,
Speaker 2: and then you have all these guns being taken back,
Speaker 2: and this town permanently branded by one afternoon of terror,
Speaker 2: thirty one victims, all sixteen died, and a nation that
Speaker 2: basically just responded by deciding that every category of firearm
Speaker 2: would no longer be left in private hands. So, on
Speaker 2: this day, forty years ago, Walter, remember Hungerford, not for
Speaker 2: his mythology, not for the conspiracy claims that flourished after yourread,
Speaker 2: but for the sixteen people who were actually murdered. In
Speaker 2: the moment Britain actually realized that its gun laws had
Speaker 2: failed to prevent catastrophe. And I've gone through all of
Speaker 2: the massive gun laws of Walter. Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland
Speaker 2: at the very top of the list, very worst. England.
Speaker 2: Private ownership of virtually all cartridge handguns prohibited along with
Speaker 2: automatic weapons, every self loading center fire rifle, fire army
Speaker 2: shotgun ownership requires police certification, lawful purpose, complete and total
Speaker 2: background check and they have to scan the weapon. They
Speaker 2: have to scan the firearm, suitability checks, mental suitability checks.
Speaker 2: By the way, secure storage meaning you can't have it
Speaker 2: exposed anywhere. How are you going to get to it self?
Speaker 2: Defense is generally not accepted as a reason to acquire
Speaker 2: a gun. So for how many people who want to
Speaker 2: go how many people were murdered in this mass murder event,
Speaker 2: sixteen with fifteen additional victims, so thirty one total victims
Speaker 2: but sixteen actually actual fatalities.
Speaker 1: Eddie Dragon, an amazing story. Even the police in England
Speaker 1: don't carry firearms. That's how controlled it is, and there
Speaker 1: it is. It didn't make any difference at all if
Speaker 1: somebody wants to be a psycho. If somebody is a psycho,
Speaker 1: they're going to go ahead and figure out a way
Speaker 1: to do it. Eddie Dragon, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: being on the other side of midnight.