‘RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE’ TOUCHES NERVE

The headlines:

Kamikaze terrorists hit Rome and Vienna . . . Trial begins for man accused of molesting children . . . U.S. Air Force jets crash . . . Task force searching for serial killer . . . Seven killed in South Africa riots . . . Smoker goes crazy and almost causes crash . . . Angry confrontation in Jerusalem.

So much for news.

MacGyver escapes a bazooka shell and saves a beautiful photojournalist from a deadly South African crime syndicate . . . A college student is murdered . . . A psychic has premonitions of a violent death . . . A Nazi war criminal holds a town hostage . . . A serial killer strikes again . . . A helicopter pilot is murdered . . . A mad bomber blows up an abortion clinic . . . A famous botanist is murdered . . . Krystle suffers from the effects of her incarceration while Blake weakens from poison.

So much for entertainment.

The media--particularly TV--may be terrifying the boots off of America. No wonder that TV researcher George Gerbner is convinced that TV feeds a “mean world” syndrome.

His long-held premise: The amount of violence across the board on TV has caused a growing fear by Americans that they are ever in peril. Through repeated exposure to violence in TV entertainment and news programs, they are becoming convinced that a “mean world” threatens them, that outside their front doors lurk countless muggers and murderers ready to spring.

For most, the fear is far larger than the danger. Although violence is no stranger to America, most of us can still walk the streets without being attacked by Jack the Ripper or killer bees. Yet, when experiencing the cumulative weight of TV, it’s easy to get the impression that we are all on the edge of something terrible.

That is the skittish environment into which ABC’s “The Right of the People” is injected. Airing Monday at 9 p.m. (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), it’s a “what-if?” movie that addresses public paranoia about violent crime (ironically, ABC owns the most gratuitously violent schedule in prime time) and extends it to a chilling conclusion.

What would happen if the public were armed?

The public in this case is the small town of St. Lawrence, where a district attorney’s wife and 6-year-old daughter are among eight persons killed in an armed robbery. He snaps. Unable to cope with his own grief, the D.A. (Michael Ontkean) becomes convinced that the public’s only hope against armed criminals is to arm themselves.

He gets a proposition on the ballot qualifying persons with no record of crime or mental disorder to carry handguns. Although strenuously opposed by the mayor and police chief, it passes overwhelmingly.

The pro-guns argument? “This is war,” the D.A. declares at a town meeting. “Let’s call it war and prepare for war. . . .” He adds later: “I am tired of hearing speeches from empty-headed flower children about loving your fellow man when my fellow man is armed with a .38.”

This is the Rambo whamo, the ultimate extension of the lone vigilante ethic based on the feeling that traditional institutions have failed society and that the individual’s best hope against ill winds is himself.

So what do you do? You pack a rod.

Ontkean is reasonably convincing, as are Jane Kaczmarek and Billy Dee Williams in supporting roles. And Jeffrey Bloom’s story is a TV rarity in that it shows someone actually grieving for loved ones instead of skipping over death as in a game of hopscotch. Nice.

Although Bloom insists that this is no issue movie, however, it is exactly that, applying a sledgehammer to one of society’s rawest nerves.

Unfortunately, his D.A. lacks credibility as a sort of muddled civil libertarian who believes that poverty is a root cause of crime but that until it’s alleviated, society should arm itself for self-protection. You know, if we can’t give them jobs or feed them, then blow them away.

Although “The Right of the People” depicts the arm-society movement as careening to a point of dangerous daffiness, the story indirectly taps into current politics. The nation’s pro-gun and anti-gun lobbies have been warring for years. The conflict continues to be blue hot in such states as California, where voters have already rejected a gun-control measure and where Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has reversed his former gun-control advocacy in advance of making another run for governor.

With the means of self-defense and self-destruction at their command, meanwhile, the people in “The Right of the People” do not stay inside and shrink from the “mean world” outside their doors. Fallout from the St. Lawrence election is terrifyingly predictable, as amateur gunslingers and contemporary Wyatt Earps are armed for society’s ultimate law-and-order holocaust. In real life, the cameras would be there too.

Film, blood, gore and misery at 11.