Sunday Night: June 23

TV loves a crocodile story and this weekend Sunday Night again meets up with Outback Wrangler Matt Wright, last seen on the show in 2011.

Wright had his own series on Nat Geo

Locked and Loaded
Mike Willesee’s eye-popping investigation into gun crime in America and the community project handing out free shotguns to single mums to protect themselves from armed intruders. Every single day 80 Americans are shot dead, eight of those are children. And in the most powerful country on earth with 310 million weapons already in circulation, Mike meets the pin up boy of the pro-gun lobby – trigger-happy Australian former television star Vadim Dale, who stole the hearts of millions of women a decade ago in the reality show Outback Jack. Today, the father-of-three and elite police officer maintains a small arsenal of weapons in his family’s Kentucky home. He even carries a handgun under his tracksuit for outings to the local park, and in May last year was the hero cop who fired and disarmed a woman who was shooting at a crowd.

Sunday Night also sits down with Jon Bon Jovi, who speaks passionately about the laws of a country he loves so much, and the dangers he faces now that he is labelled ‘an enemy of the NRA’. Then there’s the heartbreaking interview with the mother of six-year-old Dylan Hockley, who was shot dead along with 19 of his fellow students in the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre on December 14 last year. Dylan was a smiling, happy boy who loved chocolate and tickles from his mum. He was learning to read and write and tie his shoe laces. Dylan’s devastated mother Nicole has vowed to fight for stronger gun controls on behalf of her son. It’s an emotional message she’s already taken all the way to Barack Obama.

Autism Conquered
A school on the outskirts of Brisbane is making enormous steps forward in the treatment of autism – transforming many lives in the process. Kids like Max, the son of former footy legend Matt Rogers and his ex-model wife Chloe. Rogers was fearless on the footy field, but in this interview with Sunday Night he can’t hold back his emotions when he describes the moment he realised his son had autism. Three years later and Max is a bright, bubbly and mischievous little boy in mainstream school, and Chloe and Matt are the happiest parents in Australia. We also meet Carly; the remarkable US teenager experts believe holds the key to unlocking the secrets of autism. Carly, who has a severe form of the disease, underwent very similar radical treatment to Max, and now the insight’s she is giving into the workings of the autistic brain has experts on the edge of a breakthrough.

Croc Man
Sunday Night is on the ground and in the air with professional crocodile egg harvester Matt Wright as he does the unthinkable, choppering in to remote croc nests to confront some very angry mums armed only with a big stick. When the great crocodile cull ended in 1971, there were only 3,000 crocs left in Northern Territory. Now, there are over 100,000, leaving Wright to practice a very risky form of population control. To anyone else, approaching a protective mother on a crocodile nest must seem an exercise in madness, but for Matt, it’s just another day in the office. He’s incredibly laidback about his death-defying day job, but he’ll admit to some close calls – including one terrifying egg collection gone wrong that Sunday Night’s cameras were there to capture.While each egg is worth only $20, Matt’s contributing to what’s become a $30 million industry for the Northern Territory.

6:30pm Sunday June 23