Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with
Speaker 1: Me your Girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: The longer that I am in the world of politics,
Speaker 1: the longer I realize that everything is about shifting perspective
Speaker 1: and the understanding that everything changes. Octavier Butler wrote imparable
Speaker 1: of the sewer. Everything that you changes changes you, Everything
Speaker 1: that you touch changes you. The only constant that we
Speaker 1: have is change. And yet those that are in power,
Speaker 1: those that have been elected as our representatives, or those
Speaker 1: unelected bodies like the Supreme Court, refuse to recognize the
Speaker 1: present and reconcile that with policies from the past. We
Speaker 1: just saw this week that the state of Arizona passed
Speaker 1: legislation from the eighteen hundreds to ban abortion. They're referring
Speaker 1: to a law that was in existence before women had
Speaker 1: the right to vote and before Arizona was even a
Speaker 1: state when Lincoln was president. How do you look at
Speaker 1: laws from the eighteen hundreds and think that they will
Speaker 1: work in the twenty first century. What I realize more
Speaker 1: and more is that those that are in power are
Speaker 1: so stuck and stagnant without imagination and the ability to
Speaker 1: reconcile with the reality of our current present times. What
Speaker 1: do I mean by that? I mean that you're looking
Speaker 1: at gun legislation, for instance, through the lens of a
Speaker 1: time and space in this country when AR fifteen's machine guns, bazookas,
Speaker 1: magazine clips didn't exist, where we didn't have police departments,
Speaker 1: where people lived miles in miles apart from one another.
Speaker 1: When those gun laws were created, America didn't have a
Speaker 1: population of three hundred and thirty million people. We didn't
Speaker 1: live inside of a country at that time when there
Speaker 1: were more guns than there are people. So how does
Speaker 1: it make sense then that we continue to use the
Speaker 1: same lens from centuries ago on today? We use the
Speaker 1: racist lens right of the twentieth century and prior to
Speaker 1: dictate our future because we refuse to recognize that America
Speaker 1: is not a white Christian nation. It was founded by
Speaker 1: puritan zelots and founded I use that in quotation marks.
Speaker 1: It was ransacked, pillaged by right wing zelots that didn't
Speaker 1: want to pay taxes because they wanted the freedom to oppress.
Speaker 1: That's the true story about the founding of America, right,
Speaker 1: And so I just realized that when you don't have
Speaker 1: the ability to change the systems in world around you.
Speaker 1: The best thing that you can do is begin to
Speaker 1: change yourself, to begin to open up the aperture to
Speaker 1: see things in a different way through the lens of today,
Speaker 1: and elect people who do the same. Because this stance
Speaker 1: of make America great again lacks the imagination, the innovation,
Speaker 1: and commitment that is actually going to continue to make
Speaker 1: America one of the major powers in the world. We
Speaker 1: are at a critical tipping point in so many ways,
Speaker 1: and if we don't begin to shift our perspective and
Speaker 1: ask real questions about what does freedom look like, what
Speaker 1: does it taste like, what does it smell like? When
Speaker 1: we talk about gun reform, what do we mean, what
Speaker 1: kind of society, what type of country, what type of
Speaker 1: world do we want to live in? Let's get specific.
Speaker 1: So in my conversation today with our dear friend after
Speaker 1: Jonathan Metzel, we get into the ways in which his
Speaker 1: book What We've Become is about recognizing that the path
Speaker 1: that gun reform activists have been on is not the
Speaker 1: right one, and it is okay to stop, reflect and
Speaker 1: pivot because staying the course when the course ain't right
Speaker 1: is just fucking dumb. And at this point dangerous. So
Speaker 1: the question is how do we shift perspective in order
Speaker 1: to create the reality that we all want. That conversation
Speaker 1: is coming up next with our friend, doctor Jonathan in Metzel. Folks,
Speaker 1: you know that whenever I have the opportunity to sit
Speaker 1: down with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel,
Speaker 1: I am always pleased because each week we get into
Speaker 1: conversations about, you know, everything that is happening, what we
Speaker 1: are feeling, and trying to bring you some clarity in
Speaker 1: the crazy, in the chaos. So, Jonathan, how are you today?
Speaker 1: This week?
Speaker 2: I'm hanging in there. I got a few bookstops left.
Speaker 2: I'm on my way to Seattle tomorrow morning. I leave
Speaker 2: at five in the morning to give a talk tomorrow
Speaker 2: night at town Hall Books in Seattle, which is going
Speaker 2: to be really cool. A really cool journalist is interviewing
Speaker 2: me in Seattle on Wednesday night, which will be I
Speaker 2: think the night people may be here. I can't remember
Speaker 2: when they hear this, but but that, And then I'm
Speaker 2: going to Louisville on Monday to talk about race and
Speaker 2: race and health in America, which I think will be cool.
Speaker 2: Then just a couple more stops it's been. It's been
Speaker 2: an amazing, amazing experience. Great to talk to people across
Speaker 2: the country. I've you know, it's been. It's been interesting
Speaker 2: to be on a book tour at this time of
Speaker 2: the world. So we'll see, but I think, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I need a little bit of a vacation.
Speaker 1: Also, what are some of the highlights been for you
Speaker 1: as you wind down?
Speaker 3: I say a couple of things.
Speaker 2: I mean, the highlight for sure was a green Light
Speaker 2: bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, where you and I had
Speaker 2: incredible conversation that was amazing. And a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: ago I was in La we did this event, a
Speaker 2: huge event at the Getty with a bunch of people
Speaker 2: I was a part of and so I got to
Speaker 2: meet like Carrie Washington and Michelle Norris and Camo Bell
Speaker 2: and all these people. So it's kind of interesting, like
Speaker 2: you pick your topic where that topic takes you in
Speaker 2: a particular way. So the cool part has been just
Speaker 2: every conversation has been really urgent. But you know, what
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about a lot is something that you
Speaker 2: said that I think, I think really stuck with me,
Speaker 2: which is when we were in the back room at
Speaker 2: green Light Books, and you said, because I said, this
Speaker 2: was a hard book to write, and it's a hard
Speaker 2: book to it's a hard book to message.
Speaker 3: I still feel that way.
Speaker 2: I did the Pete Dominico or whatever podcast yesterday and
Speaker 2: he's like, tell me the book in a sentence, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, let's talk for an hour, because it's hard
Speaker 2: to have a talking point about a book that's about
Speaker 2: guns and race and a critique of liberalism and kind
Speaker 2: of how we got here and stuff. So that part
Speaker 2: has been really it continues to be hard. And I
Speaker 2: remember we were in the back room, remember at that bookstore,
Speaker 2: and you said, this is a book that people are
Speaker 2: going to understand ten years from now. And it still
Speaker 2: kind of feels that way, Like I'm still it's so interesting.
Speaker 2: The book's been out now for a couple of months
Speaker 2: and I'm still like either defending the thesis or like
Speaker 2: that just weird things have happened with the with the
Speaker 2: message itself, that predictable stuff, was a lot of pushback
Speaker 2: from liberal gun control, like my colleagues in the liberal
Speaker 2: world who didn't want to understand. What I still hold
Speaker 2: is the argument, which is we have to understand how
Speaker 2: we got here to understand like why we're in a
Speaker 2: particular predicament. But like here, here's my question for you.
Speaker 2: This is a kind of a long winded question. Like
Speaker 2: here's an example of one kind of reception, which is,
Speaker 2: there's a gun blog that this guy kind of defines.
Speaker 2: You know, here's what the books, here's all the gun books,
Speaker 2: and here's what they're about. And he had like point
Speaker 2: by point on my book, and I was, you know,
Speaker 2: any publicity is good publicity. I was glad he read it.
Speaker 2: It was thoughtful that somebody was out there talking about it.
Speaker 2: But the point was, like on page ten, he uses
Speaker 2: the wrong term for a gun for a bullet, which
Speaker 2: is we don't say clips, we say you know, loads
Speaker 2: or something like that. And then on page twenty he
Speaker 2: said AR fifteen and he means XM fifteen, like really
Speaker 2: paying attention to the terminology of you know, his specialty,
Speaker 2: which is guns. And so I understand people read for
Speaker 2: like kind of their own expertise. They want to make
Speaker 2: sure you got their thing right. But there was nothing
Speaker 2: in the entire critique about the fact that the book
Speaker 2: is actually about, Like race was not mentioned once in
Speaker 2: the entire critique, And so I understand, like you write
Speaker 2: a book, you want to get it right. But it's
Speaker 2: weird when you have a book out there. Everybody sees
Speaker 2: like their one little part and they want to make
Speaker 2: sure you get their thing. But you kind of want
Speaker 2: to say, like, hey, how about the bigger argument. How
Speaker 2: about the bigger argument of the entire book, which is
Speaker 2: not about that. So part of the question is, you know,
Speaker 2: that's what you do when you write a book, but
Speaker 2: it's interesting that everybody sees their one little part and
Speaker 2: not the bigger part, and that maybe that's a problem
Speaker 2: of me as the author.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, no, Jonathan, But isn't that the world, Like,
Speaker 1: isn't that the struggle that we find ourselves in, which
Speaker 1: is that everyone is concentrated on their one piece instead
Speaker 1: of the entire pitch. So take it and look at
Speaker 1: it this way. Right, So we're having conversations and you know,
Speaker 1: we talk about democracy, we talk about health, we talk
Speaker 1: about guns, we talk about all of these different pieces,
Speaker 1: and I mean we as in like the greater we
Speaker 1: of progressis and democrats and we say, what is going
Speaker 1: to be the thing that draws people into this election?
Speaker 1: And so the abortion rights people are going to say
Speaker 1: it's abortion. The healthcare people are going to say it's
Speaker 1: the attack on Medicaid and medicare the you know, the
Speaker 1: gun folks are going to say it's guns. Like so
Speaker 1: it's like, while everyone has their specialty, their focus, their
Speaker 1: area of concern, right, what is the bigger picture? And
Speaker 1: I think, to me your book, the bigger picture is
Speaker 1: because we have refused and continue to refuse to have real, critical, thoughtful,
Speaker 1: engaging and hard excruciating conversations on race. And by we,
Speaker 1: I actually am talking specifically about white Americans refuse to
Speaker 1: have a conversation where they don't center themselves as the victims,
Speaker 1: like we don't get anywhere, right, and so like if
Speaker 1: everything everything in America has to do boils back down
Speaker 1: to race and racism, and because we refuse to address
Speaker 1: that very thing, we make up all these other stories
Speaker 1: and narratives. When if you were to just tackle and
Speaker 1: it not like a just like it's so easy, but
Speaker 1: if you were to have honest conversations and critique about
Speaker 1: race and racism and how it shows up in any
Speaker 1: given moment policy, whether it's sports and what happened with
Speaker 1: the NC Double A and the women's game, and how
Speaker 1: the white team is being Iowa's being framed in the
Speaker 1: press versus the black led team of South Carolina, and
Speaker 1: all of these things. We would be in a better place,
Speaker 1: but it's because we choose to ignore it, right and
Speaker 1: make it be about anything else, because we've told ourselves
Speaker 1: that conversations about and racism are too complicated.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you, let's use this example that
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, because I mean, this is kind of
Speaker 2: what I wanted to talk about. I guess I'm centering
Speaker 2: my books act as the conversation. But it was interesting
Speaker 2: to see what happened, right, I mean again, I'm glad,
Speaker 2: you know, you write a book. It's out there in
Speaker 2: the world. People can interpret it however they want. But
Speaker 2: what was interesting after this thing? So this guy posts
Speaker 2: he uses the wrong terminology on page twenty or something
Speaker 2: like that, and his audience is a bunch of people
Speaker 2: who really care about guns, Like that's really his audience.
Speaker 2: So it's great, I'm happy to talk to those people.
Speaker 2: But what happened then is none of those guys read
Speaker 2: the book. They were all like, yeah, this is another
Speaker 2: liberal guy who doesn't use our terminology and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And then I'm getting bombarded with like
Speaker 2: all these gun owners who just saw their one piece,
Speaker 2: which is one guy realized on page twenty I used
Speaker 2: the wrong term for bullets, and in their world like
Speaker 2: then that became the metaphor, so they only so the
Speaker 2: guy who read the book only saw his little piece,
Speaker 2: which I think you're right, everybody's reading for their one piece.
Speaker 2: And then the people who then sought on social media,
Speaker 2: they didn't even read the book. They were then riffing
Speaker 2: off of this guy's critique, which reinforced their own critiques
Speaker 2: of liberals not wanting to go there. So one guy,
Speaker 2: I feel misread the book, and then ten thousand other
Speaker 2: people went off of his misreading to then categorize me
Speaker 2: and rift back on me. And so again that's how
Speaker 2: our algorithms work. Now, the question I have is should
Speaker 2: the gun guy have been reading for racism? In other words,
Speaker 2: was his blindness not saying racism or was it me
Speaker 2: as the author who didn't use.
Speaker 3: The right term?
Speaker 1: I see, I see, I see it.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, is it fair to say that he
Speaker 2: should have been reading for racism?
Speaker 3: Is it? I mean? The algorithms is yeah.
Speaker 1: I liken it to art right When an artist has
Speaker 1: a canvas and they paint from their perspective. Right, they're
Speaker 1: expressing themselves in what they see and feel and are
Speaker 1: expressing in that moment. How everyone else interprets that piece
Speaker 1: is going to be, it's gonna be subject to their
Speaker 1: own knowledge and perspective and their emotions in that moment.
Speaker 1: And so while you want people to read it for race,
Speaker 1: you wrote it in that way. But if I choose
Speaker 1: quote unquote not to see race, then like, that's not
Speaker 1: the area that I'm going to dig into, right because
Speaker 1: these people, I believe, will make up an excuse about
Speaker 1: anything as to why that man that shot up all
Speaker 1: of those black people in a waffle house, like why
Speaker 1: like oh, well, you know, and just pull out some
Speaker 1: obscure shit as to why this wasn't about race, as
Speaker 1: to why it was just a madman. Oh he was
Speaker 1: just crazy. Oh it was just this, Oh it was
Speaker 1: just that. Because they're not they're not willing and or
Speaker 1: equipped to do the heavy lifting around race and racism,
Speaker 1: so it is so much easier to excuse it, to
Speaker 1: make it be something else.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I wrote a book about guns, So
Speaker 2: I do think it's a cumbent on me to get
Speaker 2: the terminology right. Like I do think that's a fair critique.
Speaker 2: It's just more that when you're just reading for your
Speaker 2: one thing, you don't see the bigger things. And conversely,
Speaker 2: now here's my provocation for our conversation. Conversely, like my
Speaker 2: publisher told me, I should name this book Killing for Whiteness,
Speaker 2: like I should make it much more overtly about race,
Speaker 2: like the title of the book. And I'm like, first
Speaker 2: of all, I don't want to be the guy who
Speaker 2: wrote dying of Whiteness and then killing like I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's like I'll never get you know, I'll never that's like,
Speaker 2: you know, so I didn't want to be that guy.
Speaker 2: But I also, as you know from the book, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of things that are really complicated about
Speaker 2: race happening in the book. It wasn't just a story.
Speaker 2: In other words, after the waffle house shooting happened, the
Speaker 2: story was hijacked by Sean King and other people I
Speaker 2: write about this in the book to say this is
Speaker 2: just overt racism. Shooter was racist. And what I argue
Speaker 2: in the book is there's a much more nuanced story
Speaker 2: about race and guns happening that's kind of why I
Speaker 2: want people to read the book, because the story isn't
Speaker 2: just the shooter was racist. It's actually a much bigger
Speaker 2: story about what kind of bodies code as protectors and
Speaker 2: what kind of bodies code as criminals, About how somebody
Speaker 2: who codes as a protector, even if they're telling people
Speaker 2: they're going to be a mess shooter, the system rewards
Speaker 2: that particular body. So it's a much bigger story. So
Speaker 2: I didn't want it to be like some simplistic thing.
Speaker 2: I expressly didn't mention race in the title because I
Speaker 2: wanted people to like under see how the story unfolded.
Speaker 2: And let me just say the point is, if I
Speaker 2: would have said, like, this is about gun racism, I
Speaker 2: would have sold a zillion more copies, because there are
Speaker 2: just like racism is its own way of reading also,
Speaker 2: and so it's also sometimes I feel like harder to
Speaker 2: complicate that story. And this isn't me complaining as an author.
Speaker 2: I'm just telling you what it's been interesting to see.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering though, like I mean, I guess then, is
Speaker 1: there a sense of regret on your stops? Are more
Speaker 1: people likely than not to get the picture of what
Speaker 1: it is that you're painting, or do you feel like now,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, you should have had a more race focused
Speaker 1: title to lend itself greater sense of clarity.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm happy I left it ambiguous. I guess I'm struggling
Speaker 2: now with I mean for me the book that there
Speaker 2: are two main stories in the book.
Speaker 3: The main story of the.
Speaker 2: Book is about the waffle House mass shooting, the story
Speaker 2: of what happened, the story of how a naked white
Speaker 2: man with an ar fifteen ended up in South Nashville
Speaker 2: killing for young adults of color and injuring for others,
Speaker 2: And how for me that story complicated the narrative about
Speaker 2: race and guns that I understood going into the story,
Speaker 2: which is about the racism of the shooter, and I
Speaker 2: understood race to be a much more disturbing and more
Speaker 2: diffuse story about the race of the system, the race
Speaker 2: of all these things. So half the stories about the
Speaker 2: story of the waffle House mass shooting. The other half
Speaker 2: of the story is about how that recognizing that that
Speaker 2: the story I was telling about whiteness and guns was
Speaker 2: too simplistic made me rethink a bunch of stuff about
Speaker 2: liberal gun control that liberal gun control similarly had a
Speaker 2: bunch of assumptions embedded about what our policies were meant
Speaker 2: to do, who we were trying to regulate, what it
Speaker 2: meant to involve the government, for example, all these other things.
Speaker 2: So I started rethinking policies for example, like background checks
Speaker 2: that ask people to put their name in a government database,
Speaker 2: or red flag laws that invite the cops into your
Speaker 2: home to do a welfare check on your relatives. I
Speaker 2: started rethinking the race implications of who was being policed
Speaker 2: by gun control policies. It turns out a lot of
Speaker 2: these policies were racialized in a very different way. They
Speaker 2: were actually targeting communities of color also because those were
Speaker 2: the people who were showing up on background checks more
Speaker 2: and other things like that. So I was trying to
Speaker 2: tell to interweave these two stories. It's a nightmare. I
Speaker 2: should have written a book about puppies like I started
Speaker 2: out to do. But I will say it's interesting for
Speaker 2: me when I go on tour, which one of those
Speaker 2: two stories people pick up on, And I guess it's
Speaker 2: just been interesting that either people resonate with the story
Speaker 2: of the waffle house shooting or they bring me to
Speaker 2: task for critiquing liberal gun control. But it's I don't
Speaker 2: know the books about both, and I always want to
Speaker 2: say the books about both. So I'm glad I didn't
Speaker 2: say this is a book about gun racism because I
Speaker 2: want people to think about it. But I do agree
Speaker 2: that it takes ten years from now somebody's going to
Speaker 2: pick it up and be like, hey, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: The problem that we are having, I think collectively, is
Speaker 1: that no one wants to shift their perspective, because in
Speaker 1: order to shift perspective and pivot into a new course
Speaker 1: of action, you have to admit that something wasn't working.
Speaker 1: And I think that whether it be progressives who are like, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to continue doing the same thing over and
Speaker 1: over again and eventually we'll wear them down, whereas the
Speaker 1: trump Ist they just don't care. They're just blow up
Speaker 1: whatever system. I think that the reason why we can't
Speaker 1: attack Trumpism for what it is, and the reason why
Speaker 1: we falter on a lot of issues, is because we're
Speaker 1: not interested in making the pivots in action to match
Speaker 1: the time and to match the energy that the opposition
Speaker 1: is giving us. Right like, we keep trying to appeal
Speaker 1: to people's moral center, We keep trying to appeal to well,
Speaker 1: history will remember you. We keep trying to like do
Speaker 1: these things, and what you're offering is a big pause
Speaker 1: to say, actually, you know, we've been doing this for
Speaker 1: some decades now, and you know, while we can continue
Speaker 1: to say we need red flag laws and we need
Speaker 1: these things, we know that that's not actually going to
Speaker 1: change the outcome of a lot of the violence that
Speaker 1: we are seeing. So what they want to do is
Speaker 1: nibble around the edges and say, well, at least if
Speaker 1: we get some win, that's better than no win at all.
Speaker 1: And your perspective is like, what actually, like, we're wasting
Speaker 1: time and energy because we could shift a conversation and
Speaker 1: a narrative that gets us actually what we want instead
Speaker 1: of a little bit of what doesn't even matter.
Speaker 3: Here's a way I think that's brilliant. That's absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2: And the way I would rearticulate that maybe is that
Speaker 2: we live in a world where people's people's implicit and
Speaker 2: explicit biases, no matter what they are, are reinforced all
Speaker 2: the time. In other words, you can select what news
Speaker 2: you want, you can select what feed you want, and
Speaker 2: so people are not often challenged about their own narratives
Speaker 2: that you don't have to be and it's just a
Speaker 2: risk to challenge those narratives, which I knew writing the book.
Speaker 2: I knew the minute I started researching the shooting. I
Speaker 2: was like, oh man, this is going to take me
Speaker 2: someplace that's going to actually challenge what I thought I
Speaker 2: knew and what's the role of that. I mean, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, you can see why there's a good
Speaker 2: reason to not challenge those narratives. Right we live in
Speaker 2: a zero sum, winner take all electoral system. The algorithms
Speaker 2: of social media reinforce a kind of conformity. And if
Speaker 2: you're saying, like gosh, I thought differently about this, that
Speaker 2: just not monetized in our social media world. There's a
Speaker 2: million reasons. I mean, you don't want to judge or
Speaker 2: a politician who gets in office and then says, man,
Speaker 2: I totally changed my mind about like this key issue,
Speaker 2: Like we live in a world where not rethinking those
Speaker 2: So I understand that it's a challenge, but ultimately that
Speaker 2: was what made this book for me honestly rewarding, was
Speaker 2: that I ended up at least trying to say, like,
Speaker 2: let's take a look at what we've got here. And
Speaker 2: also the stakes of not questioning that. Like for guns,
Speaker 2: for example, they're incredible people doing incredible work. I support them,
Speaker 2: I'm one of them, but I would also say, like,
Speaker 2: if you're here in Tennessee, we're getting our butts kicked
Speaker 2: right and left about every gun bill. The Supreme Court
Speaker 2: overturned New York's gun laws. The Supreme Court is about to,
Speaker 2: I think, legalize bump stocks. Like you can't say that
Speaker 2: we're winning right now, and so part of what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to say is you have to understand like kind
Speaker 2: of how we got here, to think about how we
Speaker 2: can maybe tweak our strategy a little bit. And the
Speaker 2: story is incredible, but you know, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: Maybe ten years from now people will be like, hey,
Speaker 2: that guy, that guy who was saying it before.
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd like to say that it will be sooner,
Speaker 1: but I think that you know, this is also like
Speaker 1: a lesson in you know, sociology and human nature and
Speaker 1: how people take on new information and like the timeline
Speaker 1: of that adaptation, right, and so no one wants to
Speaker 1: be and I don't think and again, like I'll just
Speaker 1: say this in closing, like I don't think that you're
Speaker 1: a contrarian in terms of saying like, oh, liberals, like
Speaker 1: you're dumb and you've been doing it wrong all along.
Speaker 1: I think that you're looking at this and saying, what
Speaker 1: do we really want? Yes, And I think that and
Speaker 1: I think that too often we don't stop and say,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, we're fighting for freedom, we're fighting for this,
Speaker 1: that and the other thing. What the fuck does that
Speaker 1: actually look like? What do you actually want? You know,
Speaker 1: when we're saying gun safety, when we're saying these things
Speaker 1: like what what does that feel and look like for us?
Speaker 1: For our kids to shop, to go to school, to live,
Speaker 1: to exist? Yeah, And I think that what you're offering
Speaker 1: is like the head tilt and the perspective to say, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to look at the picture this way.
Speaker 2: And again, like I'm a doctor, I'm for prevention, I'm
Speaker 2: for health. But like, ultimately, what I'm trying to say
Speaker 2: in the book is that a prevention framework in an
Speaker 2: ideal world is the only framework we should put around guns.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't have injury and death. But if you're against
Speaker 2: an adversary whose aim is power, who doesn't really care
Speaker 2: about prevention at all, but they're using guns to control
Speaker 2: the courts and control you and overturn New York gun
Speaker 2: laws and overturn all these other things that aren't linked
Speaker 2: to guns, like pro gun judges are now deciding all
Speaker 2: these First Amendment cases and women's reproductive choice cases and
Speaker 2: all these things. So if you're up against an adversary
Speaker 2: whose aim is power, the health framework is not going
Speaker 2: to be useful. And that's kind of the message for me,
Speaker 2: is that if you look, for example, at the Brewined decision,
Speaker 2: we made all these health arguments and this report was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we don't care. And so in a way, we had
Speaker 2: the right strategy if people were everybody was operating like
Speaker 2: they did with cigarettes and cars, as if saving life
Speaker 2: was the most important thing. But if you're up against
Speaker 2: an adversary whose aim as power, you actually need a
Speaker 2: power strategy, and the health framework doesn't get us there.
Speaker 2: And so that's kind of what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 2: is we we have the wrong strategy for the adversary
Speaker 2: we we're up against.
Speaker 1: That's kind of so then when Pete asked you deliver
Speaker 1: your book thesis in a sentence, it needs to like
Speaker 1: that needs to be what it is that we're up
Speaker 1: against an adversary that is solely about power, and we
Speaker 1: were coming at it from the lens of saving lives
Speaker 1: and health, and that's not it. It needs to come
Speaker 1: from a power place period.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, Hey Pete, if you're listening, it's not like
Speaker 2: I'm struggling with the narrative. And again I'm at the
Speaker 2: end of the book tour. It's more just like seeing
Speaker 2: how I mean, it's always with a book like you
Speaker 2: wish you would have just said that upfront. But also
Speaker 2: it's interesting because it is in the book in about
Speaker 2: thirty places, but people don't see it because they're worried
Speaker 2: about if I use the right word for bullets, like
Speaker 2: people read to reinforce, Like we all this we read.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like that Gary Larson cartoon where the
Speaker 2: dog only hears her name and not the million other
Speaker 2: things the dog owner is saying or something like. We
Speaker 2: all read through our own lens, right, That's how we read.
Speaker 2: And so it's it's interesting to be an author right
Speaker 2: now who's challenging those things an interesting way.
Speaker 1: So yeah, anyway, well, my friend, we will leave it
Speaker 1: there today, but.
Speaker 3: I have one more thing to say.
Speaker 1: What's the one more thing?
Speaker 3: Next week?
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Trump becoming pro choice. I'm so delighted
Speaker 2: that Trump is joining our side. Please, instead of like
Speaker 2: trying to highlight how he's obviously being a manipulative hypocritic,
Speaker 2: we should embrace him to our side. Like start painting
Speaker 2: Trump as a liberal. That would be way. Like let's
Speaker 2: invite Trump to like liberal conferences to support abortion. I
Speaker 2: don't know, we should be like to take flowers on
Speaker 2: his head.
Speaker 1: I hate that man so much. If I never I like,
Speaker 1: I keep saying, like the day that I am done
Speaker 1: with Trump and never have to talk about him ever again,
Speaker 1: and it will just be in the past tense. Well
Speaker 1: I that day, I don't know what I will do.
Speaker 1: It'll be a party.
Speaker 2: No, there is no it's the Rennet baron Trump and
Speaker 2: then Muffy Trump and then.
Speaker 3: No, I don't like.
Speaker 1: This is not the Seven Dwarfs. All right, my friend,
Speaker 1: thank you so very much as always for making time
Speaker 1: for wok F. I appreciate you so much. And folks,
Speaker 1: if you have not yet gone out and purchased or
Speaker 1: ordered what we've become, you need to get it now.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Take care.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on wok F,
Speaker 1: as always power to the people and to all the
Speaker 1: people power. Get woke and stay woke as fuck.