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Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to woke F Daily with

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Speaker 1: Me your Girl, Danielle Moody recording from the home bunker, Folks,

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Speaker 1: I am super excited that today's episode we've been promoting

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Speaker 1: for the last month, and I'm excited that it is

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Speaker 1: finally here. Earlier this week, I had the great pleasure

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Speaker 1: and honor of interviewing our friend, our in house doctor,

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Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel at the launch of his book tour

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Speaker 1: in New York at green Light Bookstore in Brooklyn, and

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Speaker 1: it was amazing. First of all, I want to shout

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Speaker 1: out the hardcore, wonderful WOKF fans that came out to

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Speaker 1: support myself and to support Jonathan and his book. It

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Speaker 1: was so great to like meet real people in person.

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Speaker 1: I said to a couple of people that I oftentimes

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Speaker 1: feel like I'm just like recording into an abyss right

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Speaker 1: like I work from home, I record with guests, you know,

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Speaker 1: via remote And so to know that the show is

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Speaker 1: impacting people, that it is helping people through dark times,

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Speaker 1: that folks not only listen to WOKF but apparently do

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Speaker 1: an overdose of me and listen to all three pods

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Speaker 1: is just like I can't express to you all how

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Speaker 1: much that means to me. And to be able to

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Speaker 1: put you know, comment section names to faces was really

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Speaker 1: beautiful and really truly truly meaning, and so I just

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Speaker 1: wanted to thank those folks that came from near and

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Speaker 1: far places like Yonkers. Shout out also to Holly who

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Speaker 1: asked me, who got permission from Jonathan for me to

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Speaker 1: be able to sign Jonathan's book next to Jonathan's signature,

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Speaker 1: which was really a treat for me as well. So

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Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that. And so this episode

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Speaker 1: that you're going to be listening to today was recorded

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Speaker 1: at green Light Bookstore with a live audience, which was

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Speaker 1: just again such an amazing treat. I also encourage folks,

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Speaker 1: if you are what is the term bibliophile like I am,

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Speaker 1: and you are drowning in books, to make sure that

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Speaker 1: you support independent bookstores and booksellers if in when you can,

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Speaker 1: because they're really important, right and they get gobbled up

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Speaker 1: by the Amazon's, you know, and the big corporations. So

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Speaker 1: this conversation you will hear is on our friend, doctor

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Metzel's new book, What We've Become, and it is

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Speaker 1: out now. So I tell folks to go and pick

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Speaker 1: it up, gift it to folks, share it with folks,

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Speaker 1: start a book club, do all of those things to

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Speaker 1: help us support Jonathan. And you will also hear our

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Speaker 1: conversation as well as questions that were posed from the audience.

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Speaker 1: So I hope that you guys enjoy this special episode

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Speaker 1: of WOKF. Like Jonathan said, we've been in conversation for

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Speaker 1: the last four years, right, which is hard to believe

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Speaker 1: that you can speak to somebody every week and have

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Speaker 1: not seen them in person in four years. But one

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Speaker 1: of the things that I have appreciated about Jonathan and

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Speaker 1: the conversations that we've been able to have on wok

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Speaker 1: F is how honesty is about the fact that look,

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Speaker 1: and this is going to shock everyone. I don't think

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Speaker 1: we're getting it right. So maybe we should pivot and

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Speaker 1: not double and triple down, which is what our politicians

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Speaker 1: are doing right now. Maybe he's saying we're looking at

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Speaker 1: public health and I was one of those people who

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Speaker 1: said this is a public health crisis. I'm not a doctor,

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Speaker 1: but I could see it. I'm like, you're looking. When

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Speaker 1: you look and you say that the number one thing

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Speaker 1: that is killing kids is not cancer, it is not

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Speaker 1: you know, blood disease, it's not diving, it's not heart attacks,

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Speaker 1: it's guns, right, And so when you think about that,

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Speaker 1: you would say that any normal quote unquote civilized society

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Speaker 1: wouldn't want their kids turned into Swiss cheese on a

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Speaker 1: regular basis and that be a normal part of their lives.

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Speaker 1: So we said, well, we need to pull out the

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Speaker 1: heart strengths. And that's what I think that the public

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Speaker 1: health epidemic started out as. But the question that I

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Speaker 1: have for you to start than is why don't you

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Speaker 1: think that the pulling at the heartstrings narrative that democrats

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Speaker 1: have been trying to do and doctors have been trying

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Speaker 1: to do has taken hold in the way that we

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Speaker 1: thought that it would.

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Speaker 2: I think it's important to recognize what those areas are,

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Speaker 2: which I think the issue is we kind of forget.

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Speaker 2: So the very short answer is, we have won the

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Speaker 2: war of popular opinion. We have won the moral war,

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Speaker 2: we have won the health for we haven't won the

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Speaker 2: power war. And the power war is ultimately what's going

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Speaker 2: to dictate a lot of this stuff. And so the

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Speaker 2: short answer is, oh the heck, I'll give you the

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Speaker 2: long answer. The long answer is that there was a

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Speaker 2: playbook that was in place in the nineteen nineties when

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Speaker 2: all of this happened, and the playbook was what does

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Speaker 2: public health do. Public health is really good at getting

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Speaker 2: health data on the injuries and deaths caused by commercial products.

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Speaker 2: It's good at making policies that can circumvent those negative

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Speaker 2: health negative health effects. And then it's good at kind

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Speaker 2: of bringing corporations and you know, industries to their knees

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Speaker 2: by liability lawsuits. Now, if that sounds familiar, that worked

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Speaker 2: for cigarettes, that worked for asbestos, that worked for cars

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Speaker 2: and seat belts. So that was the playbook we tried,

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Speaker 2: and in the nineties it made absolute sense. We're going

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Speaker 2: to do this thing. We're going to do this same

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Speaker 2: thing for guns, because guns, you know, consumer product killing people,

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Speaker 2: industry right for you know, those kind of attacks. But

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Speaker 2: the problem was guns are totally different cultural and social

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Speaker 2: and political symbols. Number one, they are imbued with the

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Speaker 2: history of race and privilege in this country. They are

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Speaker 2: also imbued with regionalism. Right, Southern guns means something different

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Speaker 2: from northern guns. So part number one is we thought

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Speaker 2: a particular playbook was going to work, and that's kind

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Speaker 2: of what I show in the nineties, we thought, oh,

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Speaker 2: we're just going to cigarette these guys into mission. Now.

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Speaker 2: The problem with that is gun makers are protected from liability,

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Speaker 2: and they're also tied into a particular history of power

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Speaker 2: and privilege that people aren't going to give up. And

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Speaker 2: so while everybody all over the country has an ant

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Speaker 2: that got lung cancer from smoking, or doesn't like to

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Speaker 2: go into a to a restaurant and he smells second

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Speaker 2: at simok, or know somebody who got into a car wreck,

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Speaker 2: that wasn't true for guns, right, guns that you had

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Speaker 2: conservative gun owners in the South, and the people who

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Speaker 2: were making the policies were people like liberals, very often

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Speaker 2: liberals from blue states, because only blue state universities could

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Speaker 2: afford because gun research wasn't very profitable, so only the

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Speaker 2: Harvard UCLA, Johns Hopkins other places. So it was a

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Speaker 2: lot of liberals making policy that was then going to

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Speaker 2: be imposed on Southern, conservative white people. And so that's

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Speaker 2: different cigarettes, where everybody has the same relationship to it.

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Speaker 2: And so what I show in the book is that

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Speaker 2: was a structural imbalance that just made it way too

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Speaker 2: easy for the NA to be like, these liberals are

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Speaker 2: coming in and they say what we're doing is common sense.

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Speaker 2: They're telling you you have no common sense, and they're

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Speaker 2: just like, in a way, we made it too easy

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Speaker 2: for them by using this very paternal model that was

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Speaker 2: also incredibly aligned with red state blue state politics.

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Speaker 1: I was going to say, because as you're explaining it,

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Speaker 1: it sounds where it sounds about where we are in

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Speaker 1: terms of going after university professors, going after these educated

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Speaker 1: groups of people, and then looking down on us in

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Speaker 1: the South and telling us what we should do with

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Speaker 1: our guns, even though they're telling us what we should

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Speaker 1: do with our bodies.

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Speaker 2: And they're telling us what to do with our guns.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it came full circle right the Bruin case.

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Speaker 1: And so when you see when you're making the case

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Speaker 1: now in this book, and you're also making the case

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Speaker 1: in Time, which if you all did not read the

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Speaker 1: Time article, it's up at Time dot com today, the

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Speaker 1: article that Jonathan wrote. When you're making the case and saying, look,

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying that public health is wrong. I'm saying

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Speaker 1: that our opposition is actually going after power. Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: with the help of Mitch McConnell during the Trump administration,

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Speaker 1: elected more federal judges than any other first term president

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Speaker 1: at that time, and that was purposeful. It was purposeful

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Speaker 1: for Roe, and it's purposeful for guns and all of

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Speaker 1: the other things that they want to do. When you're

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Speaker 1: telling people to make the shift between public health, the

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Speaker 1: moral we're good and power, what are you seeing as

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Speaker 1: the pushback to that shift?

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Speaker 2: Imagine this, right, people really care about their guns in

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Speaker 2: the South where I live part of the time when

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Speaker 2: I'm not playing South over with these guys.

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Speaker 1: And.

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Speaker 2: So imagine that there's this discrepancy already, and one side

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Speaker 2: is telling you and this is not everybody. I mean,

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Speaker 2: gun owners are complicated, right, The biggest, the fastest growing

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Speaker 2: group of gun owners are black women. Actually, like it's

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Speaker 2: not like, it's not like this, but this was the core.

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Speaker 2: This was the playbook, and there's more to the story.

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Speaker 2: But imagine one political side is saying, I'll just summarize

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Speaker 2: the Democrats message, we want we want communal safety, and

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Speaker 2: how we're going to get that is we're going to

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Speaker 2: have a federal government database and you have to enter

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Speaker 2: your name into that federal government database every time you

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Speaker 2: purchase a gun. And if somebody is looking like they're

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Speaker 2: a little cuckoo, we are going to then empower the

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Speaker 2: police to come to a welfare check on your family,

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Speaker 2: and if the person has seemed to be odd, then

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Speaker 2: you take them in front of a judge. So that's

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Speaker 2: what we're saying when we say we want background checks

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Speaker 2: and red flag laws, and we also say that is

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Speaker 2: common sense. To me, again, it's common sense. I personally

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Speaker 2: do not like guns at all. I really don't like guns,

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Speaker 2: So I think that's great for me, and I believe

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Speaker 2: in blah blah blah. But the other side, imagine you're

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Speaker 2: like somebody in the South. The other side is saying

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Speaker 2: your guns are your power, and I'm going to let

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Speaker 2: you keep your guns, and I'm going to let you

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Speaker 2: keep your power. In fact, there shouldn't be any regulations

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Speaker 2: on you whatsoever. So one side is the Biden platform,

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Speaker 2: the other side is the Trump platform. Which one do

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Speaker 2: you think people are going to gravitate toward more? And

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Speaker 2: so part of the reason is this is what I'm saying,

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Speaker 2: is not a surprise. Right, We've been seeing this play

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Speaker 2: out for a long time, except that there's a mass

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Speaker 2: shooting and we rush in and say it's common sense,

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Speaker 2: it's common sense, and we don't understand why half the

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Speaker 2: country doesn't agree with us. And this is what I'm

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Speaker 2: trying to explain, which is the half the country doesn't

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Speaker 2: agree with us because what they hear is government regulation

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Speaker 2: and you're going to put regulations on my power. And

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Speaker 2: the other thing they hear is the bad guys have guns,

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Speaker 2: so why shouldn't we. And that's another important part of

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Speaker 2: the narrative because if you think about the things that

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Speaker 2: gun I'm just going to say a gun gun control

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Speaker 2: for shorthand, even though I don't really like that term,

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Speaker 2: but gun control is background checks at point of sale purchase,

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Speaker 2: when you buy a gun, that's when you background check,

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Speaker 2: assault weapons ban, if you have to be registered, safety lucks.

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Speaker 2: These are all things for legal gun owners, like registered gunowners.

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Speaker 2: But what they say is that doesn't do anything for

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Speaker 2: crime because the criminals have guns, so we want guns

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Speaker 2: or something like that. So there's all these these reasons

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Speaker 2: why I guess the point I'm trying to make is

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Speaker 2: public health is not common sense. In where I live

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Speaker 2: and people you know, when I'm here, it seems total

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Speaker 2: common sense. But part of what you can hear what

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Speaker 2: I'm saying is we have these moments of rupture, and

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Speaker 2: sometimes the moments of rupture are after mass shootings, when

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Speaker 2: it's like, oh my god, how come they cannot see that.

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Speaker 2: Another time, for example, is in the pandemic. Right, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: the pandemic, public health comes in, But the gun debate

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Speaker 2: had already That's another thing I should in the book.

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Speaker 2: The gun debate had already set the stage for the pandemic,

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Speaker 2: mistrust of government, regulation, public health, all those kinds of things.

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Speaker 2: So the pandemic is a huge player in the book.

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Speaker 2: And again this is not to say that I don't

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Speaker 2: believe in gun laws. I do. But what I argue

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Speaker 2: in the book is we had a strategy for health,

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Speaker 2: but we needed in this debate, we needed a strategy

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Speaker 2: for power. Right. We should have had our own federalist society,

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Speaker 2: We should have had our list of own judges. We

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Speaker 2: actually should have thought beyond health regulations to think about

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Speaker 2: communal structural incentives, what I talk about in the book.

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Speaker 2: So in this one case, the health and you know,

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Speaker 2: maybe fifteen years ago, if we would have had liability

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Speaker 2: for guns, they would have been a different thing. But

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Speaker 2: that wasn't happening. They're protected by Congress. You can't sue

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Speaker 2: a gun manufacturer for the way you if your blunder

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Speaker 2: kills somebody, and so it's just it's a lot. But

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Speaker 2: I think in a way, what I'm trying to explain

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Speaker 2: is people wonder like, how do we get here? And

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Speaker 2: that's part of what I think the story of the

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Speaker 2: shooting shows.

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Speaker 1: I think a part of the reason, the part of

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Speaker 1: the way that we got here too, is also the

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Speaker 1: assumption that people are better than they are. I think

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Speaker 1: that the assumption was if you can explain to people

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Speaker 1: that guns are hurting, that guns are hurting them, guns

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Speaker 1: make your community unsafe. Do you want your kids learning

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Speaker 1: how to army crawl across the floor, or do you

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Speaker 1: want them to be able to concentrate on school and

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Speaker 1: not worry that every single time a bell goes off

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Speaker 1: that that that there is a mass shooter. We wanted

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Speaker 1: to appeal, I think, to people's common sense in that way,

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Speaker 1: but to their heartstrings. And at the end of the day,

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Speaker 1: it was this idea that democrats, which they consistently fail at,

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Speaker 1: which is power, which is saying no, it's the judges

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Speaker 1: that make the policy. It's the judge, because the judges

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Speaker 1: are the ones that are passing and saying, you know,

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Speaker 1: we live in Tennessee. Your gun is your right and

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Speaker 1: that's it. And for a country where you have a

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Speaker 1: man like Trump, a white man that is feeding into

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Speaker 1: this narrative that they're taking everything away from you. They've

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Speaker 1: taken your jobs, they've taken your home right, it's all take, take, take,

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Speaker 1: and now they want to take your gun. This conversation

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Speaker 1: about power is inextricably tied to race. Is there a

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Speaker 1: way for us to part and parcel it, like you

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Speaker 1: offer solutions and ideas, But this is more so The

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Speaker 1: book is about like a conversation switch, a narrative switch.

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Speaker 1: And this is something that Democrats are desperately bad at,

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Speaker 1: which is the narrative switch. But here you're saying, look,

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Speaker 1: the conversation was never about public health. The conversation is

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Speaker 1: about power. Donald Trump appeals to their need to hold

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Speaker 1: on to power. What does Biden say to that? What

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Speaker 1: do Democrats say to that? In nine months?

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Speaker 2: Well, first again, I think in a true psycho psychiatry format,

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Speaker 2: I'll say the most important thing is understanding first how

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Speaker 2: we got here, and so in a way, I just

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Speaker 2: think there's so much confusion about how we got here,

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Speaker 2: so understanding why we're in a particular and it's not

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Speaker 2: like we're in a whole I mean, I want to

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Speaker 2: be clear. Thirty years ago, there was no gun safety movement,

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Speaker 2: there was no data. We built the whole field out

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Speaker 2: of scratch against tremendous headwinds. Gun safety researchers went unfunded

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Speaker 2: for a long period of time. Mothers gave their lives

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Speaker 2: to this issue. So I'm not trying to say everything sucks.

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Speaker 2: What I am trying to say is it's interesting if

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Speaker 2: you talk to a lot of conservatives and liberals about

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Speaker 2: this issue, which I've done for now over a decade,

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Speaker 2: and liberals will say, you know, they will talk in

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Speaker 2: moral terms, which is a moral issue. It is a

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Speaker 2: very moral issue for a lot of people. But even

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Speaker 2: like like I remember it was when I was interfering

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Speaker 2: people for dying of whiteness, and it was like twenty

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Speaker 2: something or other, like before anybody, and there was really

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Speaker 2: sick guys I was interviewing and I'd be like, hey,

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Speaker 2: do you want your own healthcare? And he's like, well, no,

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Speaker 2: I don't want to get signed up because if I

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Speaker 2: sign up for this and this program stays, my side

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Speaker 2: will get addicted to this program and then we're going

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Speaker 2: to lose, and the most important thing for me really

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Speaker 2: isn't my own life. It's that we control the Supreme

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Speaker 2: Court to overturn row and have the Second Amendment be nationalized.

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Speaker 2: Like the people at the very bottom understood that the

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Speaker 2: bigger project was control, and I mean that is like

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Speaker 2: I mean, people in like low income housing communities, white

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Speaker 2: men were telling me this. So top to bottom people,

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Speaker 2: I think understand that what they're doing has real power implications.

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Speaker 2: And that's why it makes sense that I mean, how many,

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Speaker 2: I mean, maybe the one protest I can think about

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Speaker 2: is the one remember when the governor of Virginia he

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Speaker 2: got elected, Ralph whatever, his name was, the doctor Orton whatever,

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Speaker 2: and he said we're going to do tight gun laws,

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Speaker 2: and all these gun guys came out and they had

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Speaker 2: a huge rally in the Virginia state Capitol or something

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Speaker 2: like that. But largely Democrats are protesting. We all protested

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Speaker 2: after my shootings, as we should have. But Republicans are

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Speaker 2: like playing the power game. They are like yeah, and

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Speaker 2: so for them it's about that, it's like using those marches,

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Speaker 2: and so for them, the strategy is the power of

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Speaker 2: guns is in the courts, and that's what I write

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Speaker 2: about the gun movement that the gun safety movement gave

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Speaker 2: us many many important things, but it did not give

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Speaker 2: us judges. That's kind of one of the core arguments.

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Speaker 2: And without judges, it's we're at the whim of opinion,

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Speaker 2: which I think is scary, and it's scary now. But

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Speaker 2: as you see what I was saying in the time

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Speaker 2: piece today, it's really scary if you think about what

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Speaker 2: the Supreme courts look like with guns if Trump wins

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Speaker 2: in other term. And so for me right now, shifting

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Speaker 2: this is a long way of saying, what do we

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Speaker 2: do about it? I had a piece in having to

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Speaker 2: post last week that I thought were the five pivot

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Speaker 2: points I thought Democrats should make. I've been getting a

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Speaker 2: lot of grief from my liberal friends about it, but

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Speaker 2: I said, there are ways you can make gun safety

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Speaker 2: more material. Now. I don't think we're going to change

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Speaker 2: the minds of the most hardcore people, but I do

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Speaker 2: think the election is going to come down to purple,

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Speaker 2: swing state voters, and so those are the people I'm

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Speaker 2: trying to target. The five points in my plan, if

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Speaker 2: I can remember them, one is what's called gun entrepreneurialism,

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Speaker 2: tie gun safety, to capitalism in much more overt ways.

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Speaker 2: And there are really clear ways you can do that

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Speaker 2: with AI, with smart guns, in collaboration with building communities, commerce,

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Speaker 2: all these things. So one is tie gun safety to commerce,

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Speaker 2: make it economically viable. Second is, for these voters, you

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Speaker 2: have to do a better job talking about crime than

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Speaker 2: we do. We often try to talk them out of

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Speaker 2: crime by saying, well, gun safety laws, there's more crime

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Speaker 2: in red states than blue states, and gun you know everybody,

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Speaker 2: There actually isn't a ton of research that shows that,

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Speaker 2: for example, background checks lower homicide. There actually isn't because

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Speaker 2: they're not designed for that. And so we need a

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Speaker 2: better narrative for crime. Not that I think I need

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Speaker 2: it personally, but I think for these particular voters, talking

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Speaker 2: about guns and crime is not self evident and they

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Speaker 2: feel like they're talked down to if you just tell them, well,

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Speaker 2: if you just had gun control the way New York did.

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Speaker 2: And so two is crime. Three is be wary of

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Speaker 2: who you're talking to about government regulations. Government regulations are

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Speaker 2: really poison for a lot of people. So background checks

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Speaker 2: is it's a federal database, right, So just telling everybody

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Speaker 2: we need background checks, it doesn't work on particular audiences,

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Speaker 2: and I'm trying to remember a winning is not just

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Speaker 2: we're going to win and we're going to make everybody

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Speaker 2: do background checks. Winning is actually trying to upend the

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Speaker 2: gun debate and trying to find common cause. And there's

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Speaker 2: some fifth one that I'll think of it in a second,

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Speaker 2: but it's really like, it's not just rechain framing the narrative,

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Speaker 2: it's actually reimagining, reimagining what we're doing. I think it

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Speaker 2: had to do with the building safe, safe neighborhoods, like

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Speaker 2: what kind of investments in neighborhood There's a lot of

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Speaker 2: literature out there that is from like South Chicago that says,

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Speaker 2: you know, if you fix the street lights and build

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Speaker 2: parks and fix the internet and all these things, that

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Speaker 2: actually gun crime goes down. And so for me, that's

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Speaker 2: a nationalizable model that if you actually invest in local

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Speaker 2: communities in material ways that people see. So none of

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Speaker 2: that is about regulations or mandates. It's all about like

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Speaker 2: material things that have different kinds of alliances.

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Speaker 1: Which I think is so incredibly important because where we

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Speaker 1: lack right now is imagine. I don't think that the

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Speaker 1: Democratic Party has a ton of imagination in terms of

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Speaker 1: why these people were attracted to Donald Trump in the

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Speaker 1: first place, why they continue to be attracted to Donald Trump.

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Speaker 1: And it isn't just oh he's a talk show host,

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Speaker 1: Oh he's a billionaire. He is enticing because he gives

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Speaker 1: them this power, this long lost power of whiteness that

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Speaker 1: they want to reclaim that liberals told them right, push

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Speaker 1: them back to the corners and said this is bad.

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Speaker 1: You're bad. You need to make more space. And that's

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Speaker 1: what they heard, and then Trump reinforced it. And so

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Speaker 1: those pivot points are not about telling people it's common sense.

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Speaker 1: Are not about saying background checks are going to save us.

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Speaker 1: It is so much more than that. The last question

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Speaker 1: I have for you, because we going to have questions

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Speaker 1: from all of you, Jonathan, is what do you hope

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Speaker 1: that people take from your book? What do you want

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Speaker 1: them to walk away with? This book took you so

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Speaker 1: many years to write, It was difficult for you to write,

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Speaker 1: and you're getting, you know, people pushing back against you,

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Speaker 1: your colleagues and friends. What do you hope that people

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Speaker 1: take away from it?

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Speaker 2: Three things? The first and most important for me is

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Speaker 2: to remember the history of the waffle house shooting, the

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Speaker 2: stories are incredible. They're in the book. Every mass shooting

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Speaker 2: you could probably say that this is no exception. The

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Speaker 2: victims were just incredible of a local rapper who was

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Speaker 2: going to become a superstar, a you know, a basketball star,

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Speaker 2: a cook, a young Instagram model, like incredible, incredible people.

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Speaker 2: So one is just to say, these mass shootings happen

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Speaker 2: so quickly. What happens when we slow it down and

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Speaker 2: tell one story? This is what we lose these stories. Second,

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Speaker 2: I'm Glad Norton talking to me out of it. But

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Speaker 2: the initial title was going to be how we lost,

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Speaker 2: and it is about I do feel like in some

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Speaker 2: ways my side lost the gun debate. I'll just be

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Speaker 2: really honest about that. We won the popular opinion debate.

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Speaker 2: But over the course of writing this book five years,

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Speaker 2: we went from two states that had open carrie to

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Speaker 2: twenty eight twenty eight states about to have open carry,

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Speaker 2: which is unimaginable. For we just in October passed five

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Speaker 2: hundred million guns in circulation, and the rates of death

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Speaker 2: go up every year and so and we have a

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Speaker 2: lot of friends. My friend Mike's here on the front

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Speaker 2: were from Michigan. We have a lot of friends who

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Speaker 2: because of the gun policies are shifting from being Democrats

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Speaker 2: to being Republicans in a way, so we're winning in

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Speaker 2: some ways, right, we have won. This is an argument

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Speaker 2: I had with Morning Joe at four am their day

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Speaker 2: because he's like, well, ninety percent of people support background checks,

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Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, but ninety percent of people don't

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Speaker 2: vote based on background checks. You know, one hundred percent

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Speaker 2: of gun rights people vote because of guns. But people

431
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:03,200
Speaker 2: will tell you on to poll they support background checks,

432
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean they're going to vote out a

433
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 2: politician who doesn't support background checks. And so the second

434
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 2: part is people understand like where we're at because I

435
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 2: think the stakes are really really high. And then I

436
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:20,119
Speaker 2: guess the third is kind of personal, which is this

437
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 2: is the TM portion. But this was just a really

438
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 2: hard book to get published. Honestly, my last book, Dying

439
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 2: of Whiteness, sold I think two hundred thousand copies. It

440
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 2: won the BRFK Book Award. I didn't think I was

441
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:40,000
Speaker 2: going to have to make this claim, so I'm like,

442
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 2: my next book's going to be about a mass shooting.

443
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 2: It got rejected for young writers out there, got rejected

444
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 2: by twenty three publishers, including my own publisher from Telling

445
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 2: of Whiteness. They said, nobody's going to buy a book

446
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 2: about guns. Nobody really cares about this issue. It's like

447
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 2: a done deal all the things and at every step

448
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 2: along the way, and it's not sour grape. So I'm

449
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 2: just saying, like people think, like, oh, a book about

450
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 2: guns is a book that tells you we need more

451
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 2: background checks. And I really wanted this to be a

452
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 2: book that got people talking that maybe was uncomfortable for people,

453
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 2: but that made people think. And so just the fact

454
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:23,600
Speaker 2: that like we made it, you know, to me, has

455
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 2: been I mean, my agent, Tany McKennon, is just phenomenal.

456
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:30,200
Speaker 2: We worked so hard because I mean, when your own

457
00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 2: publisher is like, nah, thanks dude, you know, it's an

458
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 2: uphill battle, and so we're trying to you know, it's

459
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 2: just a very personal victory, honestly to get this book

460
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 2: out and to say, look, we can have a debate

461
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 2: about this that isn't just reinforcing what people know.

462
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: I just want to say that your persistence and your

463
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 1: relentlessness in order to get this done is so necessary,

464
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:59,200
Speaker 1: and I just am always so appreciative of the conversations

465
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:01,199
Speaker 1: that you bring to the forefront and that you're not

466
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 1: afraid to get pushed back from the All right, oh

467
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 1: hands already.

468
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:16,920
Speaker 3: So how many mass killers are men or boys as

469
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 3: opposed to women, because one of the things that Trump

470
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 3: does is emphasize male power, not just white power.

471
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to give you a three part answered

472
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:35,440
Speaker 2: lead to this question, this great question, the question of masculinity.

473
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:40,760
Speaker 2: But there's an interesting politics. So before I answer that question,

474
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 2: let me just tell you. I'm going to repeat one

475
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,639
Speaker 2: of the points I made before, just for emphasis, which

476
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 2: is that there are I'm just going to do a

477
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 2: quick quiz. How many gun deaths a year are there

478
00:27:54,480 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 2: in the United States? Fifty thousand? We're about that fifty thousand,

479
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 2: about a fifty thousand. That's all gun does together, which

480
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 2: is I mean one gun net is one gut to

481
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 2: gundt too many? How many? I said this before. How

482
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 2: many guns are owned in this country? Five hundred million.

483
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 2: So if you talk to liberals about guns, which I'm

484
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 2: a liberal and I talk about guns, I will always

485
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 2: my first question is always about a shooting, a death

486
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,479
Speaker 2: of mortality. But just I think before we even go there,

487
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:30,800
Speaker 2: it's important to remember, as horrible as they are. That

488
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 2: that's the fifty thousand, which is horrible and impactful and

489
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,880
Speaker 2: as I show in the book, traumatizes communities. But we're

490
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 2: speaking to this right this side. The NRA is never

491
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 2: talking about mass shootings and gun sellers and Trump. They're

492
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 2: talking about gun owners. What does it mean to own

493
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 2: a gun? What does it mean to carry a gun?

494
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,960
Speaker 2: So you just remember that's like two hundred million people

495
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 2: they are talking to. So there's just a balance of

496
00:28:57,240 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 2: one side's talking to fifty thousand and the other side

497
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 2: is talking to two hundred million. So when I speak,

498
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 2: I'm now again trying to get on Fox News. But

499
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 2: they never asked me about shootings. They never do. They're

500
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 2: like about power, and so it's just important to remember

501
00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 2: we are already limiting who we're talking to because we

502
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 2: have the NRAs had just and Trump have a totally

503
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 2: open field to talk about what it means to own

504
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 2: and carry a gun. Now that is not what you asked,

505
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 2: I realize, but I just think it's important to remember

506
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 2: that there's an imbalance even in what we focus on.

507
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 2: And then what we define as a mass shooting is

508
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 2: incredibly political also, and I say that because in the book,

509
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 2: I have all this data, which is until twenty ten,

510
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 2: there were forty five mass shootings a year in this country.

511
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 2: Mass shooting four more people killed. Now it turns out

512
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 2: there weren't forty five mass shootings in this country year.

513
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 2: There were like three hundred mass shootings a year. But

514
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 2: initially we only counted white victim and white shooter mass shootings,

515
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 2: and so the data self, we only counted mass shootings

516
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 2: as like the stuff that gets on the news. But

517
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 2: if there was a shooting in South Chicago or East

518
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: New York or something like that, what do we call it.

519
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 2: We called it a gang shooting or a revenge shooting

520
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 2: or something like that. So even what we called a

521
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 2: mass shooting was incredibly that the sociological term all use

522
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 2: as sample bias, right, We were just focusing on shootings

523
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 2: that were horrific and terrible and sensational and killed on

524
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 2: average between three hundred and four hundred people a year.

525
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 2: But we didn't focus on all these other shootings. And

526
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 2: so these shootings are I agree, a particular phenomenon. They

527
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:44,239
Speaker 2: are a particular phenomenon, and within the realm of like

528
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:47,720
Speaker 2: we're on the TV race, within the realm of fucked

529
00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 2: up white male masculinity. There is a phenomenon here, which

530
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 2: is that there's a copycat phenomenon there is. It's incredible

531
00:30:56,320 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 2: how similar, like the manifesto, all that kind of stuff,

532
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 2: but even now, like it's that trope, like the Covenant

533
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 2: school shooting was a transitioning woman and then there was

534
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 2: a whatever like it just it becomes a performance of aggrieved.

535
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 2: It's the performativity of it. And so I do agree.

536
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 2: I do agree that there is something about masculinity here,

537
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 2: and I agree that there's something about guns and masculinity.

538
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:25,480
Speaker 2: But as I say in a lot of things in

539
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 2: the book, Trump celebrates that masculinity and we pathologize it,

540
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 2: and he's just speaking to a lot more people.

541
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 1: He celebrates and he marketed, Yeah, he markets it.

542
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 4: My name is Neil Feldman, and I've been exposed to

543
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 4: guns since I was in Boy Scouts, and I'm comfortable

544
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 4: with them, and I know I'm not I have a

545
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 4: problem with gun ownership. On the other hand, I also

546
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 4: think that guns are inherently saying more dangerous than mother vehicles,

547
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 4: which are designed to transport people around, and guns are

548
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 4: designed to shoot. And what has always confused me and

549
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 4: I hope you could speak to this point is if

550
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 4: we as a society long ago made the decision that

551
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,440
Speaker 4: to drive a car one must have a driver's license,

552
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 4: they must prove they know how to operate the car,

553
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 4: drive it, safely, operate it, why do we not have

554
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 4: licenses to own guns? You know, in a way, because

555
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 4: that I think would facilitate ownership of guns, and because

556
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 4: I'm not sure about this night in fact, okay, another question,

557
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 4: I would think many of the crimes are in fact

558
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 4: done by people who do not have legal ownership of guns.

559
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 4: That you spoke about fifty thousand people killed by guns

560
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 4: when we have five hundred million guns in America, So

561
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 4: most of those guns are not being used in crimes.

562
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 4: But it would still make things easier and safer for

563
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 4: all of us if we had standards through simple gun

564
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 4: licensing the way we do cars.

565
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 2: What you say makes an unbeloe leevable emine of sense.

566
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 2: In fact, it makes too much sense. And in the

567
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 2: talk that I give, I show like there was a

568
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 2: huge gap. Motor vehicle deaths were here and gun deaths

569
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 2: were here in like the nineteen seventies, and then you

570
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 2: see motor vehicle deaths come down, not because people are

571
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 2: any less aggressive or weird, but because we had anti

572
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,000
Speaker 2: luck breaks and airbags and you know, regulations and all

573
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 2: these kind of things. Gun deaths go up there, as

574
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 2: Daniel was saying, that everyone killer of kids. But the

575
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: issue is power, right, So if you're building an entire

576
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 2: political party on power, then the government is the antithesis

577
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 2: of that power. Regulation is the unpower.

578
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 3: It is that power.

579
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 2: That power will not be regulated. And so the car

580
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:55,280
Speaker 2: analogy and the driver's license analogy, it's been it's we've

581
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 2: been trying it for fifteen years, and it makes an

582
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 2: unbelievable amount of sense, and it'll never happen, unfortunately. I

583
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 2: mean that it'll happened with this Supreme Court. So to

584
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 2: get there, making sense is not the battle. You actually

585
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,839
Speaker 2: have to win the power war first. And so, as

586
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:16,719
Speaker 2: Daniel was saying, part of the argument of the book

587
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:20,759
Speaker 2: is nothing's going to happen without judges for anybody. Here

588
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:24,000
Speaker 2: followed the Bruin case that overturned our gun laws here

589
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:29,239
Speaker 2: in New York. It made pretty much any It made

590
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the gun laws in the country unconstitutional.

591
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 2: States across the country now are having to overturn all

592
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:39,759
Speaker 2: their gun laws. There was a prohibition on carrying gun

593
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 2: into a post office that just got overturned because in

594
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy nobody was prohibited from carrying gun into a

595
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 2: post office. So to win anything here, it's not just

596
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 2: winning the common sense battle, it's actually winning the Supreme

597
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:56,359
Speaker 2: Court battle. That's kind of the whole point. That's why

598
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 2: the book ends with the Supreme Court. And so I

599
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:02,440
Speaker 2: hope get to the point where that common sense matters.

600
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:04,400
Speaker 2: But to get there, we have to win all these

601
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 2: other battles first. Unfortunately, and brother, let me just say,

602
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 2: I went to camp the NRA. I have a certificate

603
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 2: stall of shooting. Like, you know, my dad was in

604
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 2: the Air Force. Like, I've learned how to shoot a

605
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 2: gun at camp. Like it's not like I'm afraid of guns.

606
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:22,919
Speaker 2: I'm from Missouri. But that's not the er. The NRA,

607
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 2: as I say in the book, really got addicted to

608
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 2: the power game, not the training campers like me game

609
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:30,840
Speaker 2: a doctor.

610
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 5: My name is Todd t. I'm a resident of Brooklyn

611
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 5: by way of Howard University, by way of the South

612
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:42,279
Speaker 5: Side of Chicago, where I was born and raised as

613
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 5: a black man. And I think maybe the only one here.

614
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 5: I'm sorry me and you. I've been shot twice. I've

615
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 5: been part of several. I'm sure what you would now

616
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 5: deem mass shootings. As a teenager, I moved to New

617
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 5: York for safety. But I won't, like, you know, I

618
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 5: don't want to like do that whole like South Side

619
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 5: of Chicago thing. But I do have many friends that

620
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 5: can go right across the border to Indiana and just

621
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 5: get a gun for whenever they, you know, whatever they wanted.

622
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:15,640
Speaker 5: And this is back in the nineties. You know, you

623
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 5: could go to a gun show. You can go to

624
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 5: the parking lot, particularly outside of the gun show, and

625
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:26,720
Speaker 5: get guns from people's trunks and come right across the border.

626
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 5: That has always been our issue on the South Side

627
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:33,880
Speaker 5: is that we are surrounded with this little blue drop,

628
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:38,279
Speaker 5: surrounded by red. So my question more so and then

629
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:40,080
Speaker 5: I want to speak to you ask you a question

630
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 5: as a psychiatrist. Is it not driven by fear?

631
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:44,359
Speaker 3: Yea?

632
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 5: Is it not driven by fears? It's not about I

633
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 5: don't know, power, but it seems more to be about

634
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 5: like fear. And this is back from you know, when

635
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 5: we as enslaved people were the majority in our country

636
00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 5: and thus the gun was the equalizer to all of

637
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:01,480
Speaker 5: the you know, enslaved people that you had on your plantation.

638
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 5: It seems to still carry. But now being that we

639
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 5: are I wouldn't say New York, but like, there are

640
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 5: so many cities like you're from Missouri, so Saint Louis,

641
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:12,799
Speaker 5: for instance, and you can go anywhere outside of it,

642
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 5: you know, right across to I guess Tennessee or Kentucky

643
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 5: or whatever, and just get a gun. So how to

644
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 5: as cities where most of us are in terms of liberal, BIPOC,

645
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 5: LGBTQIA and so forth, where we might reside, how do

646
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,840
Speaker 5: we combat the fact that you can go ten minutes

647
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:34,200
Speaker 5: from where I grew up to any gun show, illegally

648
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 5: or legally, probably purchase a gun and bring it right

649
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:39,440
Speaker 5: back over. And that's how the cities are now flooded

650
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 5: with these guns.

651
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 2: So I have two chapters about the myth of Chicago

652
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:45,759
Speaker 2: in the book. I actually talk a lot because the

653
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 2: shooters coming from Illinois, and I make exactly those points.

654
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 2: And the point I make is that Chicago has to

655
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 2: fail and other cities have to other diverse cities have

656
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 2: to fail for the strength of the conservative arguments in

657
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 2: other words, they need multi racial cities to be dangerous

658
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:09,879
Speaker 2: to show that gun control never works and black people

659
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 2: are ungovernable and all this stuff. So in a way,

660
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:15,919
Speaker 2: there's a lot invested. Like Trump and I talk about

661
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 2: in the book, how often Trump uses Chicago as an

662
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 2: example of sewing gun control will never work, which is

663
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 2: all these like very thinly coated racial stereotypes about like

664
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 2: unruly masses and.

665
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 4: Stuff like that.

666
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 2: Now, as I say, it's not just drive on the

667
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 2: Indiana toll road. I think it's twenty four minutes. But

668
00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:39,359
Speaker 2: the other thing is sixty five percent of the gun

669
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 2: homicides the gun actually goes through one gun store in Wisconsin,

670
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:48,400
Speaker 2: in Green Bay, And so you've got Indiana and Wisconsin

671
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:51,839
Speaker 2: and like one hundred percent of the like it's just

672
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,479
Speaker 2: like so you could just drive a mini van, load

673
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 2: up with AR fifteen's and fireworks and bring it right back.

674
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 2: And so it's posterous and a conservative UH councilman weekend

675
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,920
Speaker 2: Illinois gun laws anyway, over over the years it had

676
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 2: it had actually a pretty good gun law system about

677
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:12,960
Speaker 2: thirty years ago. And so but part of the point

678
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 2: I make is that they need the foil of liberal

679
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:22,320
Speaker 2: cities as being like remember escape from New York with State.

680
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: They wanted to be like a bash Yeah.

681
00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:27,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, like snake pliskin and all that stuff like that,

682
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 2: and I lead that to the end. The book ends

683
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,919
Speaker 2: with with Alito speaking in the Bruin Case, where he's

684
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 2: making all these stereotypes about New York, like you know,

685
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 2: there's a gang banger around the corner and a mugger

686
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 2: and all this stuff, and I'm like, dude, you've never

687
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:46,319
Speaker 2: been to New York, like, but they need that, and

688
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 2: so for me, they're coming for New York. I mean,

689
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:50,719
Speaker 2: I think that's really important. It's like initially it was like, oh,

690
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 2: that stuff happens in the South, but we're safe up here.

691
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,359
Speaker 2: But the Bruin Case showed how much like the goal

692
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 2: is New York and if Trump wins, like having New

693
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 2: York be a hell hole is going to be really

694
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 2: important to his agenda of like, oh my god, that's

695
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 2: why we're doing all these resources. And so in a way,

696
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:08,919
Speaker 2: I just I could I could talk all night about

697
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 2: this point. There's so much in the book about it,

698
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 2: and I hope you read it because it really makes

699
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:14,919
Speaker 2: a lot of those exact same points that Chicago has

700
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,399
Speaker 2: to be a particular way to prove to people how

701
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 2: like laws will never work on those people and stuff

702
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 2: like that. So it's really it's just I get mad

703
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 2: and even talking about it, but it's incredible, how like

704
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 2: the whole story of the book is about a white

705
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 2: guy from suburbia who goes into like he's the dangerous guy,

706
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 2: you know. So that's the whole point of the book

707
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 2: is there's the stereotype, the fear, but then looks look

708
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 2: at the reality of like, who's actually really dangerous here?

709
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 2: It's the guy who's not captured by that framework. And

710
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 2: so that tension, for me is really what it's It's

711
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:54,919
Speaker 2: all about.

712
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 6: What correlation do you see between the two books? Because

713
00:40:56,640 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 6: and it ties back to the blackman, and he's not

714
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 6: only black men in the room, at least from what

715
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:04,799
Speaker 6: I can see, from what I can see, So I'm not.

716
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 7: I just have to say that.

717
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 8: Sorry, sorry, But the thing is, if anybody is gonna

718
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 8: how do you see the dying of whiteness and how

719
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 8: it correlates to what the other person said?

720
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 6: Because I feel like racially we're so divided, but there's

721
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 6: so much commonality. But I feel as long as we

722
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:35,200
Speaker 6: buy into the racism and the colonialism. We will we

723
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,919
Speaker 6: will for the perpetuate guns because it's like, in order

724
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 6: for you to perpetuate the NRA, you have to perpetuate

725
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,239
Speaker 6: the black and round people are dangerous, and so it

726
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 6: really ties back from I mean, I know I'm not

727
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 6: a psychiatrist, but common sense alone and just watching would

728
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 6: tell you that if a lot of the mashootings are

729
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 6: not black and round people, and I would think that

730
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:00,879
Speaker 6: white people would have more common with black and brown

731
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 6: people just based around that one subject matter. So I

732
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:06,359
Speaker 6: don't understand why are the ovalot I mean, I think

733
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 6: I feel like it goes back to the history of

734
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 6: this country, and we've never really tackled that because like

735
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,400
Speaker 6: even just if you look at the last couple of

736
00:42:13,480 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 6: years in places, you know, where they've had mass shooting

737
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 6: in other parts of the world, they've clamped down here.

738
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:23,319
Speaker 6: It's like we have to find every single excuse. What

739
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,960
Speaker 6: excuse can you find for somebody walking up in a

740
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 6: school and shooting children? Like I really it drives me

741
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 6: and saying I can't so what overlap? What overarching things

742
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 6: have you seen in the book in your book I'm

743
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 6: dying of whiteness. I'm like this one.

744
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 2: Well, first, I'm glad you didn't say that. I'm glad

745
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:44,879
Speaker 2: you didn't say that all bald men look alike, first

746
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 2: of all. But both books are about a particular form

747
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:55,399
Speaker 2: of the pathology of the mainstream in my mind, and

748
00:42:55,440 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 2: the extent to which they attempt to alleviate that by

749
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 2: admitting that we're all bitter off by forming alliances is

750
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 2: subverted by the power game that the mainstream plays. And

751
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 2: so in Dying of Whiteness, it's really about the self harm,

752
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 2: the self harm of guns for the gun section. And

753
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 2: now even that self harm perpetuated a narrative of remember

754
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,040
Speaker 2: that Joiner book, like fifteen years ago, it's lonely on top.

755
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 2: It's about like, you know, you just have to keep

756
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 2: telling yourself this story to maintain your imagined position, even

757
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 2: if it's like it's like killing you or something like that.

758
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:37,000
Speaker 2: So for Dying of Whiteness, it was kind of the

759
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 2: way that that narrative, it was bad for everybody, including

760
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 2: the people who were ostensibly benefiting from it, except for

761
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 2: the people at the very very top. Now this is

762
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 2: about a different form of pathological whiteness. The white mass

763
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 2: shooter this is about homicide, not suicide. And I talk

764
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 2: a lot about a similar narrative that kind of plays

765
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:02,320
Speaker 2: out with guns, which is, you know, the race story

766
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:05,959
Speaker 2: of this book is it couldn't have like how much

767
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,800
Speaker 2: more literal do you need about the pathology of whiteness

768
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 2: than like a naked guy with an AR fifteen like

769
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 2: killing young rappers. He's literally he's the what's that twenty

770
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 2: eighteen in netwhere Nashville? Yeah, Nashville. But the thing is, like,

771
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 2: it's just it was, it was embodied, like, man, this

772
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,960
Speaker 2: system is not working for anybody, especially not for us

773
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 2: and for you know whatever and so and so. In

774
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,359
Speaker 2: a way, the part of the book is about the

775
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:43,359
Speaker 2: calisthenics that the system had to do to craft a

776
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 2: narrative on all sides. I mean, I actually blame it's

777
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 2: not just a conservative issue on all sides to keep

778
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:52,800
Speaker 2: the system intact, to tell the story, which is that

779
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 2: this shooter does not represent us, but you know whatever.

780
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 2: But again, the story of the book is the entire

781
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 2: to mobilized. I mean again, we had a choice. We

782
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:06,799
Speaker 2: could have passed laws learning from them ass shooting to

783
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 2: make sure it never happened again. Or we could have

784
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 2: passed laws to liberalize and we chose the laws that

785
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:17,640
Speaker 2: protected the rights of the damn shooter. And so that's

786
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 2: the race story of the book.

787
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 1: We have one more Oh wow, okay, we had there

788
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 1: was time for one more good question. The one more

789
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 1: good question.

790
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:35,720
Speaker 7: My quest. Oh, first of all, I'm Keisha, I'm from Brooklyn.

791
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 7: So my question is you were talking about power. What

792
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 7: like politicians or thought leaders have been receptive to your message,

793
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:46,359
Speaker 7: and like, how can we kind of support them? Right,

794
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 7: because we have to kind of build it up. I

795
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 7: listen to walk af all the time and Dayelle was

796
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 7: always talking about, oh, you can't vote for third party candidates, right,

797
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 7: they just can't come out the blue. And then all

798
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 7: of a sudden the president. We have to kind of

799
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 7: build it from the ground up. So like, who's like

800
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 7: supporting your message? Ry and how can we support them?

801
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:05,560
Speaker 2: Well, if you look on my social media and look

802
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 2: at the really interesting responses I've had from the Time

803
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 2: magazine piece that came out today, believe it or not,

804
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:14,800
Speaker 2: a lot of really cool stuff is happening in Tennessee.

805
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 2: I've had an incredible reception with the Justin's and Gloria

806
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,720
Speaker 2: in Tennessee. So something really interesting is happening in Tennessee,

807
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 2: which is worth forming policy right now in a place

808
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:31,880
Speaker 2: that has a lot of guns. We've already all the

809
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:35,840
Speaker 2: crappy stuff's already happened to us, and so to follow

810
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:40,399
Speaker 2: what's happening in Tennessee. First of all, in the old days,

811
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,280
Speaker 2: the idea of a red state blue state divide about

812
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 2: these issues may be held true. But right now the

813
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:48,879
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is coming for the country, and so form

814
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,760
Speaker 2: alliances with people in red states, I think is super,

815
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 2: super super important. We're not doing it anywhere anywhere near enough.

816
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 2: I talk about the global politics of this. This NA

817
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 2: playbook is being tried in Brazil, it's supporting Ntaenyahu in Israel,

818
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 2: it's supporting all these other things. And so in a way,

819
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:09,440
Speaker 2: there's I feel like a global alliance of've gun safety

820
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 2: right now. And so there are all these alliances. I

821
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 2: think that our potential, but man, so much depends on elections,

822
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 2: and so getting people to vote, vote on vote, voting

823
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 2: is really key. The other side is very mobilized, right

824
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 2: They're very, very energized about guns right now, and so

825
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want them with more power and

826
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 2: with more guns and that's what we're looking at. So

827
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 2: voting in general is important now, but follow along with

828
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:41,600
Speaker 2: me on Twitter because I'm going to be trying to

829
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 2: do a lot of outreach on that kind of stuff.

830
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:46,359
Speaker 1: I just want to once again thank all of you.

831
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 2: We're doing a lot.

832
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:55,359
Speaker 1: Yes, we're going to oh yeah, all right. That is

833
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 1: it for me today. Dear friends on wok f as always,

834
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:03,240
Speaker 1: power to the people and to all the people. Power,

835
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:05,919
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.