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♪ homemade weapons the inmates have made from bed springs or melted down plastic. i mean, they're truly ingenious. but they're deadly, as well. >> at california's san quentin state prison, we saw how sophisticated some inmate weaponry can be. this homemade pistol is known as a zip gun. >> this portion is filled with ground up matchheads. the two holes here, inmates insert a wick. the inmate takes a plunger, pokes shrapnel in the open end, pieces of metal, ground up zippers. when the target walks by the cell, be it an officer or an inmate, the inmate lights this, it goes down, strikes the mat...

Without warning, he was shot in the back. mario survived. but he couldn't describe his attacker. three weeks later there was a similar incident a few blocks away. 34-year-old factory worker herman montenedro was walking home after a serious night of drinking when somebody shot him in the back. he, too, survived, but he didn't see the gunman either. police recovered the .9 mm bullet. >> there were no grooves on the bullets. and we're probably dealing with a zip gun type of homemade rep. >> two months later, a short distance away in queens, 78-year-old joe proce was about to open the door to his...

Neighborhood, being already bit by the gang bug, we just exported the gang life out there. >> randall's gang activity led to his incarceration at the youth facility and soon after, prison. there he joined a militant gang called the black guerrilla family. >> ended up in 15 years solitary confinement. tried to get back into the main line, but it was kind of hard. after facing walls for 15 years and handcuffs everywhere i went, i didn't adjust too well. i still became more assaultive, more combative, more violent. >> after 25 years of incarceration, randall had plenty of violent episodes to shar...

They use this strap for getting underneath the bed, because we've found shanks there and had to fish them out. >> success rate, that's hard to say. sometimes it goes in spurts. we might find a lot of shanks one month and the next six months might not find any. >> this is numerous contraband we've found throughout the years here at the penitentiary. this is a zip gun. stick a .410 shell in there. we have a screw in there. a shank made out of a pen barrel and a nail. these are nonlethal but they put your eye out. this is made out of a plastic cup and a comb. a turkey leg bone. certain cell house...

The ones you don't really see. when a guy carries something like this, he really means business. he wants to hide it. very sharp, very pointed. this is what we'd call a .22 zip gun. shoots a .22 round. put your bullet in there. screw it down until it's tight. made in one of the shops. if a guy didn't know this, if this wasn't together, he had this piece laying on one bench and this piece laying over here, you really wouldn't know what it was. >> the c.e.r.t. team constantly trains to respond to any incident within the prison, including escape attempts. >> what we're doing here today, we're rep...