Sanctuary

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When ex-Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale was hospitalized last month after alleged threats of self-harm, Fort Lauderdale police confiscated 10 firearms from his home and began a legal process to try to keep those guns away from Pascale for a longer time under Florida's "red flag" law, enacted after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Red flag laws like Florida's give authorities varying abilities to temporarily seize guns from someone deemed to be an immediate threat to themselves or others. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted such laws—but not without fierce opposition from gun rights groups.

One such battleground is Colorado, which became the 17th state to enact a red flag law earlier this year, after voters elected Democratic majorities to both houses of the state legislature. In the aftermath, nearly half of the state's counties have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries" and passed local ordinances or other rules that buck the state law. In Sanctuary, the latest short film in our series of election-year documentaries about gun control,​ director Brett Story follows a handful of Coloradans with sharply differing perspectives on controversial issue as the bill becomes a law, including a state legislator and domestic abuse survivor, a member of a local militia, and a Colorado county sheriff.

That sheriff, Weld County's Steve Reams, became a torch bearer for a "resistance" movement against to the law. "There's just a lot of places in the law where it can be misused or abused in a way that could absolutely negatively impact someone," he tells Story in the film. "The list of what qualifies as a household member is pretty broad. So broad that I've had an inmate in my jail attempt to file a Red Flag petition against me three times in the last, probably six months."

But state representative Daneya Esgar, serving in Pueblo County, Colorado, argues that the red flag law is essential to preventing the escalation of violent domestic abuse. "We've been way too quiet for way too long when it comes to standing up for domestic violence survivors," she says in the film. "And giving them a tool to keep them safe is absolutely something we need to talk about."

As these individuals respond to the culture war erupting over this issue in their state, ​Sanctuary​ offers a timely meditation on the meaning of safety in America today, in a state that is haunted by its own tragic share of mass shootings, from Columbine to Aurora and beyond.

Sanctuary is the newest addition to our library of investigative reporting on the gun violence epidemic. You can also check out our previous short documentary called I Am Not Going to Change 400 Years in Four, directed by Angela Tucker and Kristi Jacobson, and produced by Chicken & Egg Pictures. It’s a profile of Satana Deberry, the progressive district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina. Her election made history. Now she’s grappling with what it means to run a law enforcement system that locks up people who look like her. Watch