Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 1: Every week on Mother Knows Death, we will be doing
Speaker 1: an external exam and we will be interviewing various experts.
Speaker 1: Last week, Maria and I discussed the mass shooting that
Speaker 1: was in Maine that killed eighteen people and injured thirteen people,
Speaker 1: as well as days later there was another potential mass
Speaker 1: shooting that did not happen because they found the mass
Speaker 1: shooter had he killed himself, but he was found with
Speaker 1: multiple ammunition rifles, handguns, IEDs et Cetera, an amusement park
Speaker 1: in Colorado. So unfortunately, mass shootings have become a frequent
Speaker 1: topic that comes up all the time in my I
Speaker 1: feel to anyway, And today we're going to be with
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel and he's a leading expert in the
Speaker 1: forefront of movement of advocating for gun reform as a
Speaker 1: matter of public health. And this coming January thirtieth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, he's coming out with a new book that's
Speaker 1: available for pre order right now, so make sure you
Speaker 1: get that. I'm actually going to talk to him about
Speaker 1: him sending me an advanced copy hopefully, and it's called
Speaker 1: What we've become living and dying in a country of arms.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. It's so nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad to be here having this conversation.
Speaker 1: This It's just really an honor to have you. You're
Speaker 1: so accomplished, so that we're just going to go through
Speaker 1: some things and get to know you a little bit
Speaker 1: better in your thoughts on this, because I know that
Speaker 1: this is a huge fear of mind just being an American.
Speaker 1: So there's been multiple explanations about gun violence in as
Speaker 1: far as it could be from mental health issues, it
Speaker 1: could be from playing video games, it could be from
Speaker 1: the gun laws, and then the guns themselves social media.
Speaker 1: But these things are also present in other countries as well.
Speaker 1: Most other countries have access to social media, firearms, etc.
Speaker 1: So what is it about gun violence and mass shootings
Speaker 1: that is specific to the United States. I'm asking you
Speaker 1: because we have a lot of people that listen from
Speaker 1: other countries that might not be as familiar.
Speaker 3: Well, first let me just say I'll say two things
Speaker 3: in answer. I think it's a great starting question.
Speaker 2: The first is just to.
Speaker 3: Recognize how often the charts the United States is in
Speaker 3: terms of gun ownership and also in terms of shootings.
Speaker 3: So we are just completely on an island by ourselves.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: We have a Second Amendment obviously in this in this country,
Speaker 3: in our constitution that tells people, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: right to bear arms. But what that Second Amendment means
Speaker 3: has been a topic of great debate. And so before
Speaker 3: like the nineteen eighties, individual people couldn't own guns. That
Speaker 3: the idea was basically guns are for the police or
Speaker 3: military or safety officers, etc. And there was a shift
Speaker 3: that started in the nineteen eighties where we reinterpreted the
Speaker 3: Second Amendment to mean it was a push by the
Speaker 3: NRA and conservative politicians and you know, all the people
Speaker 3: we kind of know now, but it was totally out
Speaker 3: of the blue in the eighties. People thought that was nuts,
Speaker 3: but basically a push to say that a militia a
Speaker 3: person has the same rights as a militia. And it
Speaker 3: led to a push where we increasingly allowed private citizens
Speaker 3: to own guns. And I mean we could always kind
Speaker 3: of own guns for hunting and stuff, but to carry them.
Speaker 3: And so what we've seen in this country really since
Speaker 3: the eighties is just an absolute gold rush for gun
Speaker 3: companies of sales to private people, and we've gone from
Speaker 3: relatively normal gun ownership rates, you know, people who hunted
Speaker 3: or had their musket from their grandfather or something.
Speaker 2: Now we have more than one gun per person in
Speaker 2: this country.
Speaker 3: We have about three hundred and thirty million people in
Speaker 3: the country, and we have about four hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million civilian owned guns. So there's no other country that
Speaker 3: has as many guns as we do. And with guns
Speaker 3: come shootings, and so we also are way off the
Speaker 3: charts in terms of civilian shootings, anything from homicide to
Speaker 3: suicide to mass shootings, partner violence, accidental shootings. We have
Speaker 3: probably now over fifty thousand gun deaths a year in
Speaker 3: the in our country, and so it's important for people
Speaker 3: who are not in the United it States just to
Speaker 3: recognize really how abnormal that is. I mean, there are
Speaker 3: places that there are militaries and war and things like that,
Speaker 3: but we're talking about like people owning guns, carrying guns,
Speaker 3: shooting each other in daily life. So point number one
Speaker 3: is that, and then point number two is just an intro.
Speaker 3: Is It's really important also to note the mass shootings
Speaker 3: are terrifying, and mass shootings are becoming much more common.
Speaker 3: We used to have less than one mass shooting a
Speaker 3: day in twenty eighteen, and now we have almost two
Speaker 3: mass shootings a day in this country. But by far,
Speaker 3: the most gun death in this country is gun suicide.
Speaker 2: It's not even close.
Speaker 3: And so like a couple of years ago, I had
Speaker 3: a book come out forty five thousand gun deaths in
Speaker 3: this country, twenty eight or twenty nine were gun suicide.
Speaker 3: So it's also really important to note that most gun
Speaker 3: death is gun suicide, which for me, is much more
Speaker 3: preventable than mass shootings in some ways. I think those
Speaker 3: are two jumping off statistical points that we might talk about.
Speaker 3: And I'm happy to say more about what you asked
Speaker 3: about mental illness and video games and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: but I just think to be on the ground of
Speaker 3: like just how weird the United States is a good
Speaker 3: jumping off point.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I definitely wanted to talk I want to
Speaker 1: talk about all that other stuff too, but we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. We'll get to that a little bit later.
Speaker 1: But you were just saying how mass shootings are just
Speaker 1: so scary, which I agree. They're one of my biggest fears,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, and I feel like it's
Speaker 1: almost getting to the point where it's Groundhog's Day. It's
Speaker 1: like you turn on the news and there's a shooting.
Speaker 1: Now I couldn't even name all of them that even
Speaker 1: happened this year, just because it just happened so frequently.
Speaker 1: And my first initial reaction is is that I get
Speaker 1: really upset, and then I watched the news like crazy,
Speaker 1: or look at it online for the first day, just
Speaker 1: to be like, who was it, what happened, who died?
Speaker 1: You know, all the questions that people have, and then
Speaker 1: it's just like the same stuff keeps happening. It's like
Speaker 1: the lawmakers put out their tweets and say thoughts and prayers,
Speaker 1: and then one side blames the other side, the other
Speaker 1: side blames the other side, and then within forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like nothing happened. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: do you feel like Americans have almost some kind of
Speaker 1: level of like PTSD when it comes to gun violence
Speaker 1: as far as not even just directly being involved with it,
Speaker 1: but just hearing about this stuff every single day on
Speaker 1: the news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I completely agree with that. It's it's called habituation.
Speaker 3: We've habituated this and in the you know, even fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago, or think back to when we had you know,
Speaker 3: this early mass shootings Parkland or you know, the school
Speaker 3: in Colorado, like all those early mass shootings, we would
Speaker 3: talk about it for months, and now a lot of
Speaker 3: research shows that this trend that you're talking about, which
Speaker 3: I talk about. That's kind of the theme of my
Speaker 3: book What We've Become that's coming out in January, is
Speaker 3: I talk about how we've come to. I don't want
Speaker 3: to say normalize it, because it's not normal, but there's
Speaker 3: an arc. I tell the story in the book of
Speaker 3: the Nashville waffle house mass shooting in twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 3: what I show is that there's a really predictable pattern
Speaker 3: where there's shock, trauma, fear that ripples outwards. People who
Speaker 3: are not in the city or immediate affect it also
Speaker 3: feel an emotional response to it, and unfortunately it lasts
Speaker 3: four days. People are shocked, they're horrified, they call for action,
Speaker 3: they feel helpless, and they then the next thing happens
Speaker 3: or something. So our cycle of this stuff, You're exactly right,
Speaker 3: it's not four days for people who were affected personally, right,
Speaker 3: they're living with this for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3: But because they're so many of these stories that just
Speaker 3: feel exactly the same. I mean they literally they just
Speaker 3: feel so similar that in a way, our response is
Speaker 3: there's almost a pattern of it where and you can
Speaker 3: follow it in news stories also, you know, two days
Speaker 3: is the peak, three days is the where it starts
Speaker 3: to go down, And within the fifth day, we've unfortunately
Speaker 3: moved on to the next headline. And so what I
Speaker 3: ask is, what does that do to our psyche as
Speaker 3: a country, as people if we're seeing these horrible things
Speaker 3: and we're in a way moving on in not really
Speaker 3: moving on. But what I say is that's what people
Speaker 3: do in war, and so we are living with a
Speaker 3: kind of PTSD right now.
Speaker 1: It's really crazy because in my lifetime, like I grew
Speaker 1: up in the eighties, and I mean maybe my parents
Speaker 1: kept me sheltered or whatever, I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: didn't hear about any kind of mass shooting until the
Speaker 1: first one that you spoke of, which was Columbine in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine. That was And I know that that
Speaker 1: kind of coincides with like when around when nine to
Speaker 1: eleven happened and the whole like twenty four hour news
Speaker 1: cycle thing started because I don't think that that was
Speaker 1: really happening prior to nine to eleven, that there was
Speaker 1: like channels that just had the news on all day.
Speaker 1: If there were, I don't, I'm not really sure how
Speaker 1: popular it was. But also the Internet as well, like
Speaker 1: kind of came out around that time too. So I
Speaker 1: guess my question for you as far as that is,
Speaker 1: how much of the blame of this, I guess do
Speaker 1: you put on not only just the news media but
Speaker 1: also social media, because these people not only have this
Speaker 1: platform where they're able to like discuss their crazy thoughts
Speaker 1: with each other, and that in itself is a problem,
Speaker 1: but also you have the news that kind of makes
Speaker 1: these people like famous, and has there been any kind
Speaker 1: of like studies on that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean the hard part is, so I can argue
Speaker 3: both sides of this, honestly, because on one hand, you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right, when you grew up in the eighties, this
Speaker 3: wasn't really happening. Our first kind of quote unquote mass
Speaker 3: shooting was in the nineteen forties a guy who had
Speaker 3: come back from from late nineteen forties of World War two, guy,
Speaker 3: which I talk about in the book. But in terms
Speaker 3: of the phenomenon that you're describing. That starts really with Columbine.
Speaker 3: It's the advent of the Internet, but it's also the
Speaker 3: accessibility of guns that civilians couldn't get before. And so
Speaker 3: the fact that it was a lot easier to get
Speaker 3: semi automatic weapons, particularly in the early twenty first century
Speaker 3: when people started to get is very easy to get
Speaker 3: an AR fifteen, whichhip average person couldn't get. And so
Speaker 3: the US isn't like there are there are just as
Speaker 3: the same number of attacks in other countries. But if
Speaker 3: you look at like the news in the UK or
Speaker 3: India or something like that, it's like crazed person attack
Speaker 3: somebody with a hammer or with a knife or with
Speaker 3: a machete. It's it's horrible, but it doesn't have the
Speaker 3: same body count. And so part of what we started
Speaker 3: seeing was number one, access to firearms. Number two, as
Speaker 3: you're suggesting, a very strong copycat phenomenon where people, I mean,
Speaker 3: just because we're so normalized to this stuff, it's hard
Speaker 3: to get in the news. It's you know, it's just
Speaker 3: there's it's like, oh, what are you.
Speaker 2: Going to do?
Speaker 3: That's worse than the horrible thing we just had two
Speaker 3: days ago. And so there's a copycat phenomenon. So it's
Speaker 3: all these things kind.
Speaker 2: Of together.
Speaker 3: That really, I think, really have created this thing that
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm curious about your sense. I mean,
Speaker 3: for me, it just feels out of control, right because
Speaker 3: it's like access to guys, a political gridlock, and it
Speaker 3: just I don't know, just the repetition of this is honestly,
Speaker 3: the word is just exhausting.
Speaker 2: It's exhausting right to have to live like this.
Speaker 1: I think this is this like this. Similarly, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you as actually nothing to do with guns.
Speaker 1: But we have this highway in near Philadelphia that only
Speaker 1: has two lanes going in and out of it, right,
Speaker 1: and it was created I don't even know when it
Speaker 1: was created years ago when my when my parents were little.
Speaker 1: But they basically say they can't they can't make the
Speaker 1: highway any bigger because of the way the mountain. The
Speaker 1: mountain is, it goes around in just different different ways
Speaker 1: that they can't make the way any bigger. So they
Speaker 1: just kind of instead of really trying to fix the problem,
Speaker 1: they've just ignored it. Since you know, the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and now and now here we are with double the
Speaker 1: population and the problems still there because I think they
Speaker 1: just feel so overwhelmed by it they don't know how
Speaker 1: to fix it, so they just kind of like hope
Speaker 1: it'll go away or something. Yeah, I feel the same
Speaker 1: way about the gun thing, Like, especially when you're talking
Speaker 1: about in the eighties when they really could have like
Speaker 1: nipped that and got it under control. But even when
Speaker 1: they did recognize it was a problem, it was definitely
Speaker 1: in the nineties, right, and then why are we letting
Speaker 1: decades go on and on and not doing anything at
Speaker 1: all to kind of like reel it in a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And yeah, totally it's exhausting.
Speaker 3: No, it does feel like that mountain that you can't move.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's interesting, like we're having this conversation
Speaker 3: on a Monday. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court's going to hear
Speaker 3: a case about whether someone accused of domestic abuse has
Speaker 3: has a Second Amendment right to guns.
Speaker 2: So it's it's just it's just almost pathetic.
Speaker 3: Really honestly where we are right now and what could
Speaker 3: have been done. I mean, it's interesting to know, like
Speaker 3: right now, you know, it's it's hard right now to
Speaker 3: think about what can be done because it's really a
Speaker 3: numbers game. Right now, there are millions and millions and
Speaker 3: millions of gun owners who never fire their guns, and
Speaker 3: so how are you going to Like the gun owner
Speaker 3: who I interview a lot, would say, how are you
Speaker 3: going to restrict my access to my AR fifteen which
Speaker 3: I use for sports shooting or I really like owning.
Speaker 3: And it's true, we have like tens of millions of
Speaker 3: AR fifteens in ownership right now. And one person commits
Speaker 3: a mass shooting, and they'll say, well, does that mean
Speaker 3: we should restrict AR fifteens to everyone because of that
Speaker 3: one person, and that the answer easily would have been
Speaker 3: yes twenty years ago. But now there are so many
Speaker 3: AAR fifteens in circulation that even if you restricted AAR fifteens,
Speaker 3: there's there's just way too many of them out there
Speaker 3: that you know that that it's just going to be
Speaker 3: hard to get them all back, honestly. And then this
Speaker 3: you mentioned mentioned almost before, or for people who don't know,
Speaker 3: I'm a psychiatrist and a sociologist, and so a lot
Speaker 3: of my work looks at mental illness and gun violence,
Speaker 3: and what I argue is that it's again a numbers
Speaker 3: game because the dramatic majority of people with mental illness
Speaker 3: don't hurt anybody else. In fact, people with diagnosed mental
Speaker 3: illness are much more likely to be the victims of
Speaker 3: violence than the perpetrators of violence. And so how do
Speaker 3: you pick that one person who's going to do this
Speaker 3: horrible thing out of the hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 3: who are diagnosed with mental illness. It's just, you know,
Speaker 3: I think you're exactly right to say when this thing
Speaker 3: first started, we could have nipped it in the bud,
Speaker 3: the way we do with any other consumer product that
Speaker 3: kills people. But now I think part of the hopelessness
Speaker 3: isn't just that it keeps happening, which it does. It's
Speaker 3: also that it just feels like, what can we do
Speaker 3: at this point? With so many guns and so many shootings,
Speaker 3: It just feels like it, you know, That's what I
Speaker 3: argue in the book, These mass shootings become constitution of
Speaker 3: who we are, Like it's this is just what we
Speaker 3: have to put up with to be Americans right now,
Speaker 3: which is kind of depressing, but I think might as
Speaker 3: well be honest about it.
Speaker 2: As a starting point.
Speaker 1: It is and and you know, I I grew up
Speaker 1: in a family with guns. My grandfather hunted, taught my
Speaker 1: brother and it was never a it was never used
Speaker 1: in any kind of a negative way. They they locked
Speaker 1: them up responsibly, legally purchased everything else. So I'm always
Speaker 1: I'm always torn, and of course I'm torn to take
Speaker 1: away guns because of what you said that you're not
Speaker 1: take you can't get rid of them. And I actually
Speaker 1: would feel more comfortable to have have guns knowing that
Speaker 1: other ones are out there, because I know that that
Speaker 1: we would just have it for safety purposes, you know,
Speaker 1: not to go do anything. And another point that you
Speaker 1: made is is how draining it is to live like this,
Speaker 1: And honestly, like it's really affected me so much much
Speaker 1: so that I had my middle daughter. I had her
Speaker 1: in school in preschool, and it was in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and on the day after Valentine's Day in twenty and eighteen,
Speaker 1: which so happens to be the day after the Parkland shooting,
Speaker 1: the school had a function that was like, oh, let
Speaker 1: the kid's family come to school like grandparents, sisters, brothers, whatever.
Speaker 1: And I went to the school and the door was
Speaker 1: just wide open, like anybody could have walked in, and
Speaker 1: it just it sent me down this rabbit hole of
Speaker 1: like this is going to happen at this school, my
Speaker 1: kid's gonna get shot, blah blah blah. And I decided
Speaker 1: to take my kid out of school, and I homeschooled
Speaker 1: my kids for like two or three years before I
Speaker 1: was like, what the hell am I doing? I need
Speaker 1: to put my kids in school. But it's it's like
Speaker 1: such a big fear of mine. So do you have
Speaker 1: any advice to people that like it? Like, it's never personal,
Speaker 1: happened to me, but it affects me so much that
Speaker 1: it like actually made making me make huge decisions in
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 3: As far as I mean, this is to me the
Speaker 3: definition of terrorism, honestly, that terrorism makes us feel unsafe
Speaker 3: in places that should be avenues of daily life. Right,
Speaker 3: And that's easy if we think about someone somewhere else
Speaker 3: in the world or a suicide bomber or something. But
Speaker 3: think about what you're saying, right, afraid to send your
Speaker 3: own kids to school. I mean, what's the role of society.
Speaker 3: It's to keep people safe. That's that's why we join
Speaker 3: together in civilizations, is to keep people safe. And you know,
Speaker 3: for some people, including people I interview for my book,
Speaker 3: they say well, I feel safe, I'm if I'm carrying
Speaker 3: my air fifteen all the time, or they want to
Speaker 3: be armed all the time. And so for some people,
Speaker 3: their notion of safety is just for me, it's it's
Speaker 3: really again exhausting, because to be on guard all the
Speaker 3: time that somebody's gonna potentially shoot you in the grocery
Speaker 3: store or when you're out bowling like in Maine earlier,
Speaker 3: or you know, sending your kids like it's just I
Speaker 3: don't know. At a certain point, that kind of hypervigilance
Speaker 3: really has a real psychological effect on people. It really does,
Speaker 3: and certainly it has a massive effect on people who
Speaker 3: are caught in this. But just the trauma of being
Speaker 3: a fear all the time and of mistrusting other people,
Speaker 3: it's to me. To me, it's I mean, we'll see
Speaker 3: what how this goes. But in the book, I argue
Speaker 3: that everything that happened in the pandemic, where everybody split
Speaker 3: apart in a million different pieces, it was predicated on
Speaker 3: the divisions we'd already set up in the gun debate,
Speaker 3: where people's idea. I mean, I don't ever interview people
Speaker 3: who say, like I don't want to be safe, I
Speaker 3: want to be unsafe. But people's idea of what it
Speaker 3: means to be safe is so different really in regard
Speaker 3: to their relationship to guns, and so it's a know,
Speaker 3: how do how do we put that back together? I
Speaker 3: know that was your question for me, but I'm just
Speaker 3: mirroring that.
Speaker 2: That's a really hard press.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting point that you bring up, because my
Speaker 1: next question was going to be about like this, like
Speaker 1: safety in school in general, and I just told you
Speaker 1: that my biggest fear is that is my is something
Speaker 1: like that happening at my kids' school. But me personally,
Speaker 1: I would almost feel better if there was like a
Speaker 1: cop there that had a gun. I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people are against that,
Speaker 1: but I do have this sense of just because I
Speaker 1: grew up around it and know people that are like
Speaker 1: responsible with it, that would protect you kind of. And
Speaker 1: I mean, like the president has people protecting him with guns.
Speaker 1: Banks have people protecting the bank with guns. So and
Speaker 1: that's money that's not your child. You know that you're
Speaker 1: not your child, So I I kind of it might
Speaker 1: sound silly for me to say.
Speaker 3: That sounds like at all, No, it sounds really deep
Speaker 3: and honest, right, I mean, I totally agree. Again, you
Speaker 3: shouldn't have to live in a society where you send
Speaker 3: your kids to school and worry if they're going to
Speaker 3: come home. And and I agree with you that that's
Speaker 3: kind of where we're at. Like it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: naive to say, oh, let's just buy up back all
Speaker 3: the guns. You know, that's not the world we live in.
Speaker 3: And so that is going to be in the back
Speaker 3: of people's mind stuff like this happens, and that's going
Speaker 3: to be in the in the back of their minds.
Speaker 3: And so, I mean, I it's not like I'm some
Speaker 3: gun grabbing liberal who whatever.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, I have a lot.
Speaker 3: Of complex opinion opinions about this having started for a
Speaker 3: long time. But my dad was in the Air Force.
Speaker 3: I was born on an Air Force base. Like I've
Speaker 3: been around different forms of weapons different times in my life.
Speaker 2: But but it's just it's just.
Speaker 3: I guess the two questions are, number one, what does
Speaker 3: that do to us if every time we send our
Speaker 3: kids out in the world, we're worried this is going
Speaker 3: to happen to them? And then number two is if
Speaker 3: we protect schools really well, there's just going to be
Speaker 3: some other target. I mean, look at what happened in
Speaker 3: Maine where people were playing cornhole, Like I mean, you
Speaker 3: just can't protect every single thing. I mean, that sounds
Speaker 3: like a military zone. And so in a way, for me,
Speaker 3: it's got to involve some kind of coming together. What
Speaker 3: I argue in the book, and this is where I
Speaker 3: think the book's going to be controversial. I argue that
Speaker 3: we're too far gone to mandate behavior. I think the
Speaker 3: pandemic for me, taught me that in a way, like
Speaker 3: I can tell you what I think a good health
Speaker 3: policy is. I think it's important to wear a mask
Speaker 3: and get a vaccine. And I have plenty of friends
Speaker 3: and colleagues who feel completely different, and I can't make
Speaker 3: a policy that makes them wear a mask. And we're
Speaker 3: almost at that point with guns where I think there
Speaker 3: should be background checks. I think there should be, you know,
Speaker 3: I honestly think there should be an assault weapons ban.
Speaker 3: But I also know my policy is not going to
Speaker 3: work on a lot of my friends here who are
Speaker 3: ardent gun I mean, I'm in Tennessee. I know you
Speaker 3: know a lot of people who care a lot about guns,
Speaker 3: and so I think we really need to focus in
Speaker 3: addition to finding the right policies, I argue that we
Speaker 3: need to really go back to basics and think about
Speaker 3: what it makes for us, what makes us feel safe
Speaker 3: in a community. How can we make communities safe really
Speaker 3: build build communities that where people don't fear each other.
Speaker 3: Which sounds kind of naive, but I just I've become
Speaker 3: almost a structuralist doing this work. I started off being like,
Speaker 3: a we need policies that control things, and I actually
Speaker 3: don't feel that way anymore. I feel like, what makes
Speaker 3: you feel safe? What makes the school feel safe? Well,
Speaker 3: I mean that's the question. What makes the school feel safe?
Speaker 3: Maybe it's having an arm guard, but it's also you know,
Speaker 3: the neighborhood, the lighting, the parks, the fact that you
Speaker 3: know your neighbors. Like, we need to kind of reinvest
Speaker 3: in our communities in a way. So that's kind of
Speaker 3: where I'm coming down on these issues right now. But
Speaker 3: it's it's an I mean, I'm a doctor, but I'm
Speaker 3: kind of feeling like the policies of controlling other people's
Speaker 3: behaviors that might have worked in the cigarettes or seatbelts,
Speaker 3: but we're not there now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that this is a good point
Speaker 1: you're bringing up because I think, like my whole feeling
Speaker 1: is like, if you're going to do the two worst
Speaker 1: things ever, which is like commit the worst crime ever
Speaker 1: murder and both legally and morally, like you're not going
Speaker 1: to follow any gun laws. You're just not You're not
Speaker 1: gonna You're not going to care. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of gun laws in place, but like Maine is
Speaker 1: a perfect example. I mean, this is just one that
Speaker 1: happened this week or not last week, whatever. Of like,
Speaker 1: these laws, they don't don't help all the time. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of gray area and they're not followed, and
Speaker 1: so just making more laws necessarily isn't going to make
Speaker 1: things better.
Speaker 3: Well, the one caveat though, I will say again is
Speaker 3: mass shootings are what gets our attention, but we could
Speaker 3: dramatically cut gun death in this country. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not against all laws.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 3: Like partner violence, for example, like the Supreme Court case tomorrow,
Speaker 3: I sure hope they come down and say that someone
Speaker 3: with a restraining order does not have a right to
Speaker 3: gun because we know really clearly from data that if
Speaker 3: someone has been abusive to their partner in the past,
Speaker 3: they're going to do it again in the future. I
Speaker 3: don't think that person should have a gun. I don't
Speaker 3: think people should be able to drink and carry weapons
Speaker 3: the same way that we don't let people drink and drive.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a ton of I mean, I have
Speaker 3: a whole list of things I talk about in the book,
Speaker 3: and I think that, you know, we could really cut
Speaker 3: dramatically guns, suicide, partner violence, certain kinds of homicide, accidental shootings.
Speaker 3: So it's not like we're just going to keep going forever.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do think there are things we can do.
Speaker 3: The hard part about this, though, is that mass shootings
Speaker 3: for understandable reasons are what are the most terrifying, and
Speaker 3: by far those are the hardest kinds of shootings to
Speaker 3: predict or to prevent. I mean, we heard it in
Speaker 3: Maine that everybody said, I can't believe it happened here,
Speaker 3: But everybody in Maine probably has a gun. So the
Speaker 3: fact that somebody just snapped one day is really it's
Speaker 3: much harder to predict that. But I still think we
Speaker 3: could dramatically cut gun death if we really got serious
Speaker 3: about stopping the other kinds of shootings that are much more,
Speaker 3: much more patterned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a big issue is, which I'm semi
Speaker 1: familiar with, the whole buying a gun situation throughout the country.
Speaker 1: It's just so different from state to state. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's kind of weird how the variation. I live
Speaker 1: in New Jersey.
Speaker 3: I I.
Speaker 1: Think that our laws are pretty good. You have to
Speaker 1: kind of like if you want to you have to
Speaker 1: wait a little while if you want to get something,
Speaker 1: it's not as easy. But in Pennsylvania, which is literally
Speaker 1: ten minutes away from where I'm at right now, you
Speaker 1: could just go. You could just walk in a store
Speaker 1: and buy a gun. Right But I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's been any studies done with states with like stricter
Speaker 1: laws like that versus yep. And it does it show
Speaker 1: that there's a decrease in No.
Speaker 3: The problem is some of the words the safest place
Speaker 3: to be statistically for a mass shooting is to be
Speaker 3: in a state with the kind of laws. New Jersey
Speaker 3: is a great example. New Jersey excellent leadership in this
Speaker 3: area for a couple of reasons. I mean, it's got
Speaker 3: great laws, but it's also the Rutgers as a gun
Speaker 3: safety center, So a lot of research about keeping people safe.
Speaker 3: If you live in a state that has tight gun
Speaker 3: laws relatively, I mean for US standards, and you're surrounded
Speaker 3: by other states that have tight gun laws, your rate
Speaker 3: of mass shooting is a lot lower. So New York
Speaker 3: is surrounded by Connecticut and New Jersey, for example, its
Speaker 3: rates of this kind of stuff are a lot lower
Speaker 3: than Tennessee. Or I wrote my book about the waffle
Speaker 3: House mass shooting, and the mass shooter was in Illinois
Speaker 3: and drove to just drove across state lines, and he
Speaker 3: went from being an illegal gun owner to being a
Speaker 3: legal gun owner literally by driving thirty five minutes across
Speaker 3: state lines. And so until we have like a national policy,
Speaker 3: it's just going to be this patchwork thing. So you're
Speaker 3: definitely safer to be in a state that has tight
Speaker 3: gun laws, especially if you're surrounded by other states.
Speaker 2: That have tight gun laws.
Speaker 3: And you would just think, in an ideal world, we
Speaker 3: would learn from the places that have fewer mass shootings
Speaker 3: and enact those laws. Like I don't see why that's
Speaker 3: so hard, but apparently it is.
Speaker 1: It's also weird that there's not that you don't have
Speaker 1: to get some kind some kind of training, Like if
Speaker 1: you want to drive a car, you have to take
Speaker 1: a driver's license test just so you can show that
Speaker 1: you could basically operate the vehicle. Not that it prevents
Speaker 1: most people from just sucking at driving or whatever, but like, well,
Speaker 1: at least it's like you check the box, and like
Speaker 1: people have to do a written test and a driving
Speaker 1: test to show that they have some competency, right, Like, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I can give you a full list, I'll just
Speaker 3: give you four examples of what we should be doing
Speaker 3: and what we are doing that are exactly in line
Speaker 3: with that. So training with a firearm to get a
Speaker 3: license or a permit or anything like that, is people
Speaker 3: are less likely to have to shoot a gun if
Speaker 3: they've been trained how to use that gun. And that's
Speaker 3: true in countries where people, for example, have military service
Speaker 3: and then they have guns as civilians. It's true in
Speaker 3: the United States as well. And so what are we doing, Well,
Speaker 3: we're doing.
Speaker 2: Exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3: We are letting people just go into wherever, Walmart or
Speaker 3: whatever and buy an air fifteen, go to a gun show,
Speaker 3: go online. So there's been a dramatic push. Tennessee is
Speaker 3: a great example. There used to be a significant training
Speaker 3: requirement and now there's barely anything, and so you can
Speaker 3: basically just buy a gun with no training. People have
Speaker 3: what's called permitless carry. Now you don't need to permit
Speaker 3: all these things. And so we've done the opposite of that. Alcohol.
Speaker 3: If alcohol is present, and there's an argument, there's about
Speaker 3: a five to seven times greater chance that a gun
Speaker 3: is going to be fired in anger. So you would
Speaker 3: think you wouldn't have guns in bars, but instead, in
Speaker 3: Nashville we're right now you can carry a loaded gun
Speaker 3: into pretty much any bar in town. So but what
Speaker 3: do we're letting guns in bars? If somebody has a
Speaker 3: history of domestic abuse, they're more likely to shoot their partner,
Speaker 3: you would think those people shouldn't have guns. But yet
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court tomorrow is hearing whether domestic abusers can
Speaker 3: have guns. And I can just go down this full
Speaker 3: list of what we should be doing and what we
Speaker 3: are doing, and in pretty much every case, we're doing
Speaker 3: the wrong thing as a country. So this is where
Speaker 3: I think politics, we need to change our politics.
Speaker 1: I think it's the bar thing is interesting because for me,
Speaker 1: it's like, obviously they shouldn't let someone go into a
Speaker 1: bar with a gun. But then if you're like Let's
Speaker 1: say I'm out to dinner with my husband and we
Speaker 1: go to the restaurant. Like the guy that comes in
Speaker 1: the bar that wants to shoot people, is he's not
Speaker 1: reading the sign out front that says don't carry your
Speaker 1: gun in. And then maybe like my husband, who's a
Speaker 1: responsible gun holder that would protect not only us but
Speaker 1: people in the restaurant, then wouldn't have it because he
Speaker 1: was told not to have it, You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And I know that that I know that that's not probable,
Speaker 1: but you do hear sometimes that armed citizens are taken out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people, should I give you the uplifting, supportive counterpoint
Speaker 3: or the real world depressing counterpoints? I mean, okay, the
Speaker 3: uplifting counterpoint is I hope you have a lovely dinner
Speaker 3: with your husband. The depressing counterpoint is twofold number one. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: if somebody and data shows this again defensive gun use,
Speaker 3: just given the speed through which semi automatic bullets fly,
Speaker 3: if somebody's coming in with a plan, it's it's much
Speaker 3: better to have no guns somewhere, because the thought that
Speaker 3: somebody's going to whip out a gun in a in
Speaker 3: a restaurant in the time that it takes for them
Speaker 3: to just understand what is happening while somebody else has had,
Speaker 3: you know, ten years planning this crime or something like that.
Speaker 3: It's just data is not that great. You're much more
Speaker 3: likely to shoot some other you know, boy patrons and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But we've got a history. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you look at like Dodge City, Kansas, and the
Speaker 3: wild West or the ok Corral or all these saloons,
Speaker 3: you always had to check your gun with the sheriff
Speaker 3: before you went even into the saloon and like the
Speaker 3: old frontier days. So it's not like we don't have
Speaker 3: any history of that. In fact, the whole history of
Speaker 3: guns in this country has been let's check, let's check
Speaker 3: them at the door, even if we let people have guns.
Speaker 3: And so I don't know we somehow forgot that along
Speaker 3: the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It is crazy how the law could
Speaker 1: have been misinterpreted or whatever happened that now we've gotten
Speaker 1: to this point and it is you just sit there,
Speaker 1: you hear and I know that you have this thing
Speaker 1: that both sides have to come together to come up
Speaker 1: with a resolution because it's not clearly like it's not working,
Speaker 1: and they're just so extreme on both sides like get
Speaker 1: rid of the guns, or like it's not a problem
Speaker 1: with the guns at all, And you're like, come on,
Speaker 1: if you talk to any person in the world, they'll
Speaker 1: say it something needs to be done, Like nobody's cool
Speaker 1: with what's happening right now.
Speaker 3: But I mean that's part of the issue, is that
Speaker 3: I really feel like the average person could figure out
Speaker 3: a solution to this. It's actually not that hard. I
Speaker 3: mean literally every other country in the world, you know,
Speaker 3: I've studied guns in Israel obviously right now very contested
Speaker 3: position part of the world, but I've studied gun laws
Speaker 3: because Israel has before all what's happening now. Everybody is
Speaker 3: trained in a gun in the military, but they have
Speaker 3: very very small rates of like mass shootings and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, because everybody gets training, and to just carry
Speaker 3: a gun to public you have to be above age
Speaker 3: thirty or forty for some people, even places. On My
Speaker 3: point is just even where there are a lot of guns,
Speaker 3: they don't have the problem we do, which is just
Speaker 3: anybody can have a gun, and so it's not that hard.
Speaker 3: We just have to figure out what every other country
Speaker 3: in the world except ours has done. But the problem is,
Speaker 3: even though like I would say probably eighty five percent
Speaker 3: of people agree on background checks and red flag laws
Speaker 3: all these things. But the problem is our political system
Speaker 3: does not let the average person get in the room
Speaker 3: with somebody who doesn't agree with them and just figure
Speaker 3: out a solution. Our political system really rewards these extreme positions.
Speaker 3: And so it's not just a health problem, it's really
Speaker 3: how are we going to change our politics? And I
Speaker 3: think that's underneath a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that could be said about a lot.
Speaker 3: Of different everything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get those.
Speaker 1: Guns, all right? So I sent you are a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: and psychologist or psychiatrists.
Speaker 3: I'm a psychiatrist and a sociologist. Yeah, I direct a
Speaker 3: department at Vanderbilt.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So this is like a question I have
Speaker 1: for the kids. I guess I don't talk. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: I talk to my kids about like everything except this
Speaker 1: because I don't want them to be scared. I kind
Speaker 1: of want your advice on this. Like, they definitely do
Speaker 1: these drills at school, but I asked them. I tried,
Speaker 1: because they're at nine and ten years old, So I say, like, well,
Speaker 1: what are they doing it for? Oh, in case the
Speaker 1: bad person comes to school? They don't specifically mention that,
Speaker 1: and they don't know about the one that happened in Texas.
Speaker 1: I actually like shut the news off for six months
Speaker 1: after that because I just was like, I can't function
Speaker 1: Like it was bad, but so I don't I don't
Speaker 1: say anything to the kids. But then I'm like, am
Speaker 1: I doing them a disservice by not saying it to them?
Speaker 1: Because if it does happen, they would just be completely unprepared.
Speaker 1: Whereas I heard some things that even though I tried
Speaker 1: to avoid coverage of the other school, I heard some
Speaker 1: things about kids pretending to play dead and this and that,
Speaker 1: and and I'm like, should I tell my kids this?
Speaker 1: Like or is that gonna Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's there's got it.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a way, it's such a hard topic,
Speaker 3: right because your kids are going to read you. I mean,
Speaker 3: just because you're not going to talk about where your kids.
Speaker 3: Your kids are pretty smart about reading. You know, Mom's
Speaker 3: not exactly telling us the whole story right here. And
Speaker 3: then because of every all, you're not their only information
Speaker 3: source unfortunately, so they're going to hear about it from
Speaker 3: other people too, And so I do think it's important
Speaker 3: to like talk about it in a supportive way, but
Speaker 3: not like freak kids out as much as possible, if
Speaker 3: that if that's possible. But I do think that, you
Speaker 3: know it, It is part of why my book is
Speaker 3: called What We've Become, because we're like robbing kids of
Speaker 3: their childhood by telling them, oh, go to school, but also,
Speaker 3: you know, get into the you know, hide behind the
Speaker 3: door of this horrible thing happens. But I do think
Speaker 3: that I do think that increasingly, you know, especially if
Speaker 3: they're bringing it up, I think it's important to say, like,
Speaker 3: our goal is to keep you safe and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, but let's talk about it. So I
Speaker 3: do think that some degree of openness, if they start
Speaker 3: the conversation, can can be helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's good. That's good advice. All right. So before
Speaker 1: we wrap things up, I just want to know a
Speaker 1: little bit about you. How how did you become I'm
Speaker 1: really interested for people who might want to go to
Speaker 1: school for this kind of stuff or who were interested
Speaker 1: in this what what originally did you go to school
Speaker 1: for and how did it lead you down this road
Speaker 1: of becoming an expert of mass shootings and gun violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, in terms of my professional history, I
Speaker 3: went to med school first, and I did internship residency
Speaker 3: fellowship in psychiatry and neurology. So I totally trained as
Speaker 3: a psychiatrist first, but I was always interested in kind
Speaker 3: of politics the real world, and so I went back
Speaker 3: to school and don't do this at home, but I
Speaker 3: got a PhD in sociology while I was working in
Speaker 3: psychers for a long time, and I became a professor
Speaker 3: who studies kind of the relationship between really mental illness
Speaker 3: and politics and race. And so I had a book
Speaker 3: come out, gosh, about ten years ago now called The
Speaker 3: Protest Psychosis that looked at the over diagnosis of schizophrenia
Speaker 3: in black men, and I kind of told the cultural
Speaker 3: story of why I thought that happened in the United States,
Speaker 3: which was part psychiatry, part sociology, part reading about mental
Speaker 3: illness and stuff. And after that book came out, just
Speaker 3: every time there was a mass shooting, I'd get ten
Speaker 3: thousand calls from media about was mental illness the cause
Speaker 3: of this mass shooting? And all my research shows that
Speaker 3: that's actually not the case. That even though certain of
Speaker 3: course shooters suffer from symptoms of mental illness, that there
Speaker 3: are all these other stories about race access to guns, politics,
Speaker 3: all these other bigger stories that we don't tell when
Speaker 3: we say mental illness caused a mass shooting. And so
Speaker 3: I just kept getting these calls from media, and I thought, man,
Speaker 3: there must be something here. So I really started to
Speaker 3: devote pretty much all my time now to looking at
Speaker 3: questions of mental illness and mass shooting. And ironically, I've shifted,
Speaker 3: as you can hear in my answers here. I used
Speaker 3: to be like, we need better policies, and now I'm
Speaker 3: a total structuralist, and I've gone to argue that, you know,
Speaker 3: my model now is there's all this research, for example,
Speaker 3: that shows that neighborhoods with better street lights and more
Speaker 3: parks have fewer shootings. And so instead of trying to
Speaker 3: like mandate behavior, like let's fix the street lights and
Speaker 3: build parks and make people feel safer so that somebody
Speaker 3: walking around with a gun seems out of place. And
Speaker 3: so for me, I've gone from somebody who was a
Speaker 3: total policy person to somebody who's like almost like an
Speaker 3: urban structuralist now, where I think we need to like
Speaker 3: rebuild connections with each other in a way.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. And I think that your work is
Speaker 1: just is really important right now, just because this is
Speaker 1: such a hot topic. And like the guy in Maine,
Speaker 1: he had he was here, he probably had some kind
Speaker 1: of schizophrenia or something. He was having psychosis. But but
Speaker 1: like you don't really hear that that often with the shooters,
Speaker 1: because the other the other kid, the younger kid that
Speaker 1: was in Colorado that they found dead, that they said
Speaker 1: he was probably going to commit some kind of mass
Speaker 1: shooting with all the stuff he had. He had not
Speaker 1: even like a parking ticket. He had the cleanest record,
Speaker 1: no history of anything shocking, they said. I think they
Speaker 1: were saying that he played like call of duty at night.
Speaker 1: But like so doa thousands or millions of other people
Speaker 1: that it's not a problem. So it is interesting because
Speaker 1: I mean, all one sense, you say, okay, if you're
Speaker 1: going to go in and shoot like a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids or something wrong with you, right, yeah, But that's
Speaker 1: not the same as as like a mental illness, like
Speaker 1: like a bipolar or schizophrenia.
Speaker 3: And again, people with those illnesses are much there's nothing
Speaker 3: in any psychiatric diagnosis where the symptom is attacking somebody else,
Speaker 3: So they're much more likely to get beat up themselves
Speaker 3: than to attack somebody else. There's nothing predictive about psychiatric diagnosis.
Speaker 2: But I do have this theory.
Speaker 3: I've never tested it, but I do feel like if
Speaker 3: we did policies that impacted the other kinds of shootings
Speaker 3: we've talked about that, I bet we would have fewer
Speaker 3: mass shootings. Other's if we made if we've made it
Speaker 3: much safer for domestic abuse and gun suicide and all
Speaker 3: these other if we just did that, I bet we
Speaker 3: would have less mass shooting as well. So that's really
Speaker 3: not a health decision, that's a political decision. I hope,
Speaker 3: I hope tomorrow the Supreme Court does the right thing.
Speaker 3: But it's sad that that's that's how low the bar
Speaker 3: is that we're debating if somebody who's like beaten their
Speaker 3: spouse should have a weapon.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of where we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's you know, we've been covering the news
Speaker 1: stories every week and it's like I read it all
Speaker 1: the time. It's so scary because you can't even you can't.
Speaker 1: All you do is get this piece of paper that's
Speaker 1: a restraining order. Like that's that's really scary that you
Speaker 1: have to that anybody has to live like that you
Speaker 1: know what, So you have this book coming out in January,
Speaker 1: and are you working? So that's done obviously, you're just
Speaker 1: kind of waiting for that to happen. My book came
Speaker 1: out last year, so it was like.
Speaker 2: Oh great, I saw that. Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: But what are you working when anything else? Or you're
Speaker 1: just kind of like chilling right now till the book
Speaker 1: comes out.
Speaker 2: Well, I have two books.
Speaker 3: So I had a book called Dying of Whiteness that
Speaker 3: came out in twenty nineteen, okay, and that's getting reissued
Speaker 3: in February. So there's a new version of Dying of
Speaker 3: Whiteness that's coming out, and the new book, the new book,
Speaker 3: What We've Become is also is coming.
Speaker 2: Out in January. And then I don't know.
Speaker 3: I want society to figure it out so I can
Speaker 3: write a book about like music or sports or something like.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm as tired as the next first said.
Speaker 3: So I hope we figured this out because I would
Speaker 3: like to write a cheerful look after this.
Speaker 1: I know, right, it gets so depressing after a while.
Speaker 1: It's just like, but I mean, you're you're so pleasant
Speaker 1: to talk to, So thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on to Honor, where could anybody do you have a
Speaker 1: website or social media that people could follow you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm I'm on It's Jonathanmeetzel dot com. J
Speaker 3: O N A t H A n M E t
Speaker 3: z l dot com has all my information there and
Speaker 3: then I'm usually a Twitter person, but for this interview,
Speaker 3: I I've just joined Instagram, so you can probably find
Speaker 3: me there because so so so yeah, but yeah, just
Speaker 3: on my website you can find all the stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, Awesome, we'll put we'll link everything in the
Speaker 1: podcast and everything and on Instagram, so we'll definitely shout
Speaker 1: you out because we want people to check out your stuff. Great,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for comming. Thanks so much, my honor.
Speaker 2: Thank you, great conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mother nos Death as A's
Speaker 1: a reminder my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I
Speaker 1: have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and
Speaker 1: pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have
Speaker 1: not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the
Speaker 1: assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website,
Speaker 1: and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform
Speaker 1: people based on my experience working in pathology so they
Speaker 1: can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being.
Speaker 1: Always remember that science is changing every day and the
Speaker 1: opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
Speaker 1: of those subjects at the time of publication. If you
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Speaker 1: having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit
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