North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 03/02/1998

The It's Monday March 2nd. Tonight building on a reputation in North Carolina now. Good evening everyone I'm reading. Thanks for joining us as we kick off a new week here at North Carolina now. Tonight we'll hear from the director of a statewide organization working to reduce gun violence through education and enforcement of gun control laws. The group is called North Carolinians against gun violence and its founder will be our interview guest this evening. But up first tonight our special

series called Made in North Carolina continues. A wide variety of products come to mind when you think of things that are made or produced here in the Tar Heel State. As we continue our series we take a look tonight at certainly one of the largest broad ICs made in North Carolina. So the point the Alliance claims with. No doubt homebuyers are some of the toughest consumers around. They know what they want how much they want to spend and they usually have their heart set on a few extras. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. These are the kinds of things Oakwood homes builders of manufactured housing and make it their business to know everyone out there has the American dream of homeownership. And here at Oakwood were extremely proud to be able to provide that dream and make that dream a reality to people that if they were dependent upon sight built homes they just could not could not afford it. So we think that we're providing a very

great benefit for the people of North Carolina as well as all the other markets that we serve building the American dream. Each day in North Carolina Oklahoma's completes approximately forty three homes in their five North Carolina plants. They will soon have close to 30 plants nationwide and on the third largest manufactured home builder in the U.S.. Like most successful manufacturers new technology plays a role in keeping costs down and quality up. In the past it's always been you the designers would design the home the engineers would engineer the home and you would actually build a prototype in the plant. But with the computer aided design system you can actually see three dimensionally what the home is going to look like. You can tell exactly what it's going to cost you to build that home before you ever put it into the production process so it's going to enable us to be much more efficient in the production area knowing that we have a refined product going

in here at oak woods Rockwell plant. General manager Phillip half cock explains how homes are built in a day. We work in teams. Together out there we've got a couple incentive plans to promote set also whereby schoolie player playful for efficiency and quality when they don't balance there is they know there's a lot more you know you've got to have a balance you can't have one without the other. Progress is measured in the number of floors completed. This plant is now making 12 floors a day meaning six multisection homes are produced each home starts with a steel beam reinforced floor the insulation piping and even the wheels are added before it's flipped over. It doesn't leave this next station until the carpet and vinyl have been laid. Then it's ready for interior walls throughout the plant. Time saving ideas have come from the people who know best and want to employ you got there by empower if you got there by empowered to you know they're

more than going to change their process at the start and we want to make sure that them the employee has a problem with a decision making process. If you have ever. You built your own home or even have home improvements done. You know it's rarely a hassle free process. But imagine what it would be like if all the materials needed were on hand at exactly the right time. If all the people needed were on site at exactly the right time and if there were no bad weather delays. That's the kind of efficiency that makes it possible for Oakwood to meet their production goals. Careful coordination of this giant assembly line is crucial and timing is everything. The outside walls and roof are completed at other substations. It all comes together easier than you might think. Thanks to a sophisticated scaffolding system. At this last stop inside the plant appliances lighting fixtures and window treatments are added and a cleanup crew works to make sure the home is

ready for careful going over because it won't go to a sales center unless a final inspection is made. Rattlers mower The place has an excess of liability. By the way what we found a really good group of checking and double checking is part of a zero defect philosophy. We are not dealing with a product here that a consumer is going to come in by today and come back a month from now to buy again or come back a year from now and buy again when we basically have one shot at this consumer. This consumer buys somewhere else then it's years before he may be in the market again. So we want to make sure that we satisfy that consumer when he is in the market to buy a home. Tomorrow we continue our Maiden North Carolina serious with a visit to the Thomas Built bus company the highpoint manufacturer has been in the transportation business since

1916. Well still ahead efforts to stop gun violence but first Michel Louis is here with a summary of today's stay wired news. Good evening Mitch. Thanks Maria. Good evening everyone. Topping our news 300 crew members and 18 fighter jets from Seymour Johnson Air Force base are being deployed to Saudi Arabia Base officials say the deployment has been planned for several months and will continue through Wednesday assigned our F-15 fighter jets from the 330 5th fighter squadron the planes and crew will be assigned to Prince Sultan Air Base and will help monitor and enforce Iraqi compliance with United Nations Security Council sanctions. Fort Bragg is one of more than a dozen Army bases around the country training Mexican soldiers for any elite counter narcotics unit. The army training program has been ongoing for about a year and a half. Training more than 1000 Mexican officers a year. The Mexican soldiers are sent to Fort Bragg for Special Forces field training. And about 90 officers are getting highly specialized CIA intelligence training. U.S. Army

officials say the soldiers have become the leading force in Mexico's fight against international drug trafficking. Transportation Secretary Norris Tolson has come out with a major reorganization plan for the Department of Transportation under the Tolson plan announced today. Highway administrator Larry good will be replaced by Lynn Sanderson a 27 year veteran of the Deity. Effective immediately good moves to NC State University's Institute for transportation research and education. In addition Tolson sans the entire road planning process is being overhauled to triple the amount of time allowed for citizen input on a project and the secretary says guidelines are now in place so that no longer will only one person make decisions on how money is spent in the agency. The state Democratic Party is making an effort to reach out to the Latino community in North Carolina. State party chair Barbara Allen will name a committee this week charged with courting the Hispanic vote. Hispanics make up the fastest growing community in the state numbering 250000 or 2 percent of the overall population. While Democrats have

been the most active in recruiting the Latino vote some Republican legislators are also looking at ways to do a better job of selling the party's message to Hispanic voters. Charlotte has become the latest North Carolina city that's trying to help Latino's navigate the state's legal system. The Queen City has formed a task force to find ways to help Hispanics understand things like the police and the court system. The move comes as the Hispanic population is growing across the state and an increasing number of Spanish speaking residents are becoming victims of crime. Advocates say Hispanics are more vulnerable to crime and less apt to report it to police because of the language barrier distrust and lack of knowledge about the legal system. Officials in Durham have already formed a similar taskforce. North Carolina public college officials are starting to crack down on students who stay in dorm rooms after dropping out of classes. Most of the state's public colleges require at least a 12 hour class load in order to live in dormitory rooms. Recently NC State University NC Central and you NC Chapel Hill officials had to ask students to

leave dorms because they lacked the required classes or in some cases because they weren't even registered. And now for a look at tomorrow's weather most of the state will see highs in the 50s. The mountains will have temperatures in the mid to upper 30s. Expect clouds to dominate North Carolina's skies. There's a chance of snow in the mountains and a slight chance of rain in the northeast. In business news BlueCross BlueShield has been fined $300000 by the State Department of Insurance. The fine is part of a subtle but with the state where the insurance provider admitted fault and hindering examination of its managed care business. During the examination period Blue Cross failed to provide correct information was not able to find key documents and delayed handing over other files. Company officials say the violations stem from administrative problems with its computer system and record keeping and most have been corrected. North Carolina has spent 10 years and 111 million dollars trying to build a radioactive waste landfill in Wake County. But the state still has no dump nor a guarantee that one will ever be built.

Tomorrow a legislative committee will meet to discuss the project's future state taxpayers have already plucked 31 million dollars into the project. And lawmakers are questioning where the money went. Work has been suspended on the landfill because of a squabble between Governor Jim Hunt and a coalition of states called the southeast waste compact commission. That group has already invested nearly 80 million dollars into the landfill project. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today. Our guest tonight was recently honored by the international organization Peace slinks for her

work to prevent gun violence. She is the founder and the executive director of North Carolinians against gun violence education fund. It's a welcome pleasure to welcome to the program. Lisa Price Miss Rice welcome to the program. It's nice to be here. A little lengthy tile there cut me up a little bit but there's a reason why that the name of your organization is so long it's actually two organizations that were brought together. Right. This is a very recent development. We used to have a lobbying organization and Education Fund. And we have folded the lobbying and membership organization into the education fund. And our primary purpose is education. And we also work to. Enforce existing gun laws and work for the enactment of needed new gun laws. OK well let's back up a little bit then why did you originally start this organization to begin with. In early 1993 there was some very moderate gun control legislation introduced in the General Assembly by Mickey Michel a local

representative. And my friends and I thought this was wonderful and we're disappointed when it didn't get anywhere and we realize that the gun lobby was extremely well organized and the people who were for moderate gun control weren't organized at all. And that gave several of us the idea to try and start a statewide anti gun violence organization. Now the original name of your organization had the words gun control in it and you purposely changed your name to take that wording out of the name why. We as you say originally got started as North Carolinians for gun control and for about a year we kept that name but we heard increasingly from members and prospective members that that was too narrow a name. That our mission to work for the prevention of gun violence was larger than just being for gun control and also for some people. Gun control had the connotation of being.

Banning guns and that isn't what we meant we've never been for banning guns and we thought that it was misleading enough to enough people that we ought to be. North Carolinians against gun violence. Thank you that was the broad umbrella for the organization and will move on to the education aspect of it in just a minute but I want to focus in a little bit more on this gun control aspect you're talking about reasonable laws. Where did where does your organization stand in the terms of gun control. We're quite similar to Handgun Control the National Organization Jim and Sarah Brady lead. We are for laws such as the licensing of gun owners and the registration of guns. We were supportive of the Brady law which has a five day waiting period and a background check for buying guns that is handguns. We are not

for banning guns but we want to keep guns out of the wrong hands we don't want children and teenagers to own or use guns to criminals or people who are mentally unbalanced. We want guns to be in the hands of responsible mature people. And a big part of your organization is the education aspect of it. Tell us a little bit about that what you're doing there. We feel that most we know from polls that most people in North Carolina as the rest of the country favor reasonable gun control it's over 70 percent in poll after poll. We want to educate people about the truth of gun violence that most gun violence involves people who know each other not attacks from strangers who are criminals. There's a lot of gun violence in families. Most gun laws work for example the Brady Law

stopped something like a quarter of a million people it's been around since early 1995 stopped a quarter of a million people who shouldn't have guns like felons and mentally unbalanced people stop them from purchasing handguns. We want people to know in this educational role that gun guns are the only unregulated major consumer product. We regulate teddy bears. Toys and we don't regulate guns and we think it's reasonable to do this we regulate cars and when you look at the Bill of Rights a lot of people talk about the Second Amendment and there is dispute about how to interpret that but whether you think gun ownership is an individual or a collective right the Bill of Rights talks about a well-regulated militia well-regulated It's right there in the Constitution. And we think it's common

sensical and reasonable to regulate these products that are so destructive. And you said at the onset of this interview that the gun lobby is a very well organized and I can probably hear some viewers at home that are becoming a little bit upset with what you're talking about here because this is a very controversial issue and there's a lot of emotion involved. Do you find that in your organization that that you are making head roads into what you want to accomplish. I think that we are we have over fifteen hundred members we have three chapters in Chapel Hill Durham in Winston-Salem. We have 23 groups now that are members of our coalition. We are just in the process of hiring a development director who will help us to raise the funds to sustain our organization help it to be more effective. We have received funding from two major North Carolina foundations. We've lobbied in the general assembly and

we've helped to keep some legislation which we thought should not pass from passing this was to weaken our present carried concealed weapon law. We we were not for that originally we lost on that one but our law is is quite a strict law. We like to keep it strict. We've lobbied our representatives in Washington we lobbied for the passage of the assault weapon ban and that narrowly passed. So we feel that we we've done some things like disloyally not nearly as much as we'd like to. We have tried to influence people who make public policy we've written reports to the North Carolina Child Fatality task force and to the governor's commission on juvenile crime and justice urging the passage of reasonable gun laws and the enforcement of present laws.

Miss Price I want to thank you. It sounds like you've been very busy so I want to thank you for your time with us tonight. Thank you for talking with me. Okay. If you would like more information about North Carolinians against gun violence you can call it 9 1 9 4 0 3 7 6 6 5. Well that's our program for tonight we're heading out of here a bit early this evening in order to make way for a festival 98 our annual fund raising drive. We hope that you'll become a part of you and CTV by lending us your financial support. Have a pleasant evening everyone will see you back here tomorrow.

Good night.