Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to woke F Daily with
Speaker 1: Me your Girl, Danielle Moody recording from the home bunker, Folks,
Speaker 1: I am super excited that today's episode we've been promoting
Speaker 1: for the last month, and I'm excited that it is
Speaker 1: finally here. Earlier this week, I had the great pleasure
Speaker 1: and honor of interviewing our friend, our in house doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel at the launch of his book tour
Speaker 1: in New York at green Light Bookstore in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 1: it was amazing. First of all, I want to shout
Speaker 1: out the hardcore, wonderful WOKF fans that came out to
Speaker 1: support myself and to support Jonathan and his book. It
Speaker 1: was so great to like meet real people in person.
Speaker 1: I said to a couple of people that I oftentimes
Speaker 1: feel like I'm just like recording into an abyss right
Speaker 1: like I work from home, I record with guests, you know,
Speaker 1: via remote And so to know that the show is
Speaker 1: impacting people, that it is helping people through dark times,
Speaker 1: that folks not only listen to WOKF but apparently do
Speaker 1: an overdose of me and listen to all three pods
Speaker 1: is just like I can't express to you all how
Speaker 1: much that means to me. And to be able to
Speaker 1: put you know, comment section names to faces was really
Speaker 1: beautiful and really truly truly meaning, and so I just
Speaker 1: wanted to thank those folks that came from near and
Speaker 1: far places like Yonkers. Shout out also to Holly who
Speaker 1: asked me, who got permission from Jonathan for me to
Speaker 1: be able to sign Jonathan's book next to Jonathan's signature,
Speaker 1: which was really a treat for me as well. So
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that. And so this episode
Speaker 1: that you're going to be listening to today was recorded
Speaker 1: at green Light Bookstore with a live audience, which was
Speaker 1: just again such an amazing treat. I also encourage folks,
Speaker 1: if you are what is the term bibliophile like I am,
Speaker 1: and you are drowning in books, to make sure that
Speaker 1: you support independent bookstores and booksellers if in when you can,
Speaker 1: because they're really important, right and they get gobbled up
Speaker 1: by the Amazon's, you know, and the big corporations. So
Speaker 1: this conversation you will hear is on our friend, doctor
Speaker 1: Jonathan Metzel's new book, What We've Become, and it is
Speaker 1: out now. So I tell folks to go and pick
Speaker 1: it up, gift it to folks, share it with folks,
Speaker 1: start a book club, do all of those things to
Speaker 1: help us support Jonathan. And you will also hear our
Speaker 1: conversation as well as questions that were posed from the audience.
Speaker 1: So I hope that you guys enjoy this special episode
Speaker 1: of WOKF. Like Jonathan said, we've been in conversation for
Speaker 1: the last four years, right, which is hard to believe
Speaker 1: that you can speak to somebody every week and have
Speaker 1: not seen them in person in four years. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that I have appreciated about Jonathan and
Speaker 1: the conversations that we've been able to have on wok
Speaker 1: F is how honesty is about the fact that look,
Speaker 1: and this is going to shock everyone. I don't think
Speaker 1: we're getting it right. So maybe we should pivot and
Speaker 1: not double and triple down, which is what our politicians
Speaker 1: are doing right now. Maybe he's saying we're looking at
Speaker 1: public health and I was one of those people who
Speaker 1: said this is a public health crisis. I'm not a doctor,
Speaker 1: but I could see it. I'm like, you're looking. When
Speaker 1: you look and you say that the number one thing
Speaker 1: that is killing kids is not cancer, it is not
Speaker 1: you know, blood disease, it's not diving, it's not heart attacks,
Speaker 1: it's guns, right, And so when you think about that,
Speaker 1: you would say that any normal quote unquote civilized society
Speaker 1: wouldn't want their kids turned into Swiss cheese on a
Speaker 1: regular basis and that be a normal part of their lives.
Speaker 1: So we said, well, we need to pull out the
Speaker 1: heart strengths. And that's what I think that the public
Speaker 1: health epidemic started out as. But the question that I
Speaker 1: have for you to start than is why don't you
Speaker 1: think that the pulling at the heartstrings narrative that democrats
Speaker 1: have been trying to do and doctors have been trying
Speaker 1: to do has taken hold in the way that we
Speaker 1: thought that it would.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to recognize what those areas are,
Speaker 2: which I think the issue is we kind of forget.
Speaker 2: So the very short answer is, we have won the
Speaker 2: war of popular opinion. We have won the moral war,
Speaker 2: we have won the health for we haven't won the
Speaker 2: power war. And the power war is ultimately what's going
Speaker 2: to dictate a lot of this stuff. And so the
Speaker 2: short answer is, oh the heck, I'll give you the
Speaker 2: long answer. The long answer is that there was a
Speaker 2: playbook that was in place in the nineteen nineties when
Speaker 2: all of this happened, and the playbook was what does
Speaker 2: public health do. Public health is really good at getting
Speaker 2: health data on the injuries and deaths caused by commercial products.
Speaker 2: It's good at making policies that can circumvent those negative
Speaker 2: health negative health effects. And then it's good at kind
Speaker 2: of bringing corporations and you know, industries to their knees
Speaker 2: by liability lawsuits. Now, if that sounds familiar, that worked
Speaker 2: for cigarettes, that worked for asbestos, that worked for cars
Speaker 2: and seat belts. So that was the playbook we tried,
Speaker 2: and in the nineties it made absolute sense. We're going
Speaker 2: to do this thing. We're going to do this same
Speaker 2: thing for guns, because guns, you know, consumer product killing people,
Speaker 2: industry right for you know, those kind of attacks. But
Speaker 2: the problem was guns are totally different cultural and social
Speaker 2: and political symbols. Number one, they are imbued with the
Speaker 2: history of race and privilege in this country. They are
Speaker 2: also imbued with regionalism. Right, Southern guns means something different
Speaker 2: from northern guns. So part number one is we thought
Speaker 2: a particular playbook was going to work, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of what I show in the nineties, we thought, oh,
Speaker 2: we're just going to cigarette these guys into mission. Now.
Speaker 2: The problem with that is gun makers are protected from liability,
Speaker 2: and they're also tied into a particular history of power
Speaker 2: and privilege that people aren't going to give up. And
Speaker 2: so while everybody all over the country has an ant
Speaker 2: that got lung cancer from smoking, or doesn't like to
Speaker 2: go into a to a restaurant and he smells second
Speaker 2: at simok, or know somebody who got into a car wreck,
Speaker 2: that wasn't true for guns, right, guns that you had
Speaker 2: conservative gun owners in the South, and the people who
Speaker 2: were making the policies were people like liberals, very often
Speaker 2: liberals from blue states, because only blue state universities could
Speaker 2: afford because gun research wasn't very profitable, so only the
Speaker 2: Harvard UCLA, Johns Hopkins other places. So it was a
Speaker 2: lot of liberals making policy that was then going to
Speaker 2: be imposed on Southern, conservative white people. And so that's
Speaker 2: different cigarettes, where everybody has the same relationship to it.
Speaker 2: And so what I show in the book is that
Speaker 2: was a structural imbalance that just made it way too
Speaker 2: easy for the NA to be like, these liberals are
Speaker 2: coming in and they say what we're doing is common sense.
Speaker 2: They're telling you you have no common sense, and they're
Speaker 2: just like, in a way, we made it too easy
Speaker 2: for them by using this very paternal model that was
Speaker 2: also incredibly aligned with red state blue state politics.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, because as you're explaining it,
Speaker 1: it sounds where it sounds about where we are in
Speaker 1: terms of going after university professors, going after these educated
Speaker 1: groups of people, and then looking down on us in
Speaker 1: the South and telling us what we should do with
Speaker 1: our guns, even though they're telling us what we should
Speaker 1: do with our bodies.
Speaker 2: And they're telling us what to do with our guns.
Speaker 2: I mean, it came full circle right the Bruin case.
Speaker 1: And so when you see when you're making the case
Speaker 1: now in this book, and you're also making the case
Speaker 1: in Time, which if you all did not read the
Speaker 1: Time article, it's up at Time dot com today, the
Speaker 1: article that Jonathan wrote. When you're making the case and saying, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that public health is wrong. I'm saying
Speaker 1: that our opposition is actually going after power. Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: with the help of Mitch McConnell during the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: elected more federal judges than any other first term president
Speaker 1: at that time, and that was purposeful. It was purposeful
Speaker 1: for Roe, and it's purposeful for guns and all of
Speaker 1: the other things that they want to do. When you're
Speaker 1: telling people to make the shift between public health, the
Speaker 1: moral we're good and power, what are you seeing as
Speaker 1: the pushback to that shift?
Speaker 2: Imagine this, right, people really care about their guns in
Speaker 2: the South where I live part of the time when
Speaker 2: I'm not playing South over with these guys.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: So imagine that there's this discrepancy already, and one side
Speaker 2: is telling you and this is not everybody. I mean,
Speaker 2: gun owners are complicated, right, The biggest, the fastest growing
Speaker 2: group of gun owners are black women. Actually, like it's
Speaker 2: not like, it's not like this, but this was the core.
Speaker 2: This was the playbook, and there's more to the story.
Speaker 2: But imagine one political side is saying, I'll just summarize
Speaker 2: the Democrats message, we want we want communal safety, and
Speaker 2: how we're going to get that is we're going to
Speaker 2: have a federal government database and you have to enter
Speaker 2: your name into that federal government database every time you
Speaker 2: purchase a gun. And if somebody is looking like they're
Speaker 2: a little cuckoo, we are going to then empower the
Speaker 2: police to come to a welfare check on your family,
Speaker 2: and if the person has seemed to be odd, then
Speaker 2: you take them in front of a judge. So that's
Speaker 2: what we're saying when we say we want background checks
Speaker 2: and red flag laws, and we also say that is
Speaker 2: common sense. To me, again, it's common sense. I personally
Speaker 2: do not like guns at all. I really don't like guns,
Speaker 2: So I think that's great for me, and I believe
Speaker 2: in blah blah blah. But the other side, imagine you're
Speaker 2: like somebody in the South. The other side is saying
Speaker 2: your guns are your power, and I'm going to let
Speaker 2: you keep your guns, and I'm going to let you
Speaker 2: keep your power. In fact, there shouldn't be any regulations
Speaker 2: on you whatsoever. So one side is the Biden platform,
Speaker 2: the other side is the Trump platform. Which one do
Speaker 2: you think people are going to gravitate toward more? And
Speaker 2: so part of the reason is this is what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: is not a surprise. Right, We've been seeing this play
Speaker 2: out for a long time, except that there's a mass
Speaker 2: shooting and we rush in and say it's common sense,
Speaker 2: it's common sense, and we don't understand why half the
Speaker 2: country doesn't agree with us. And this is what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to explain, which is the half the country doesn't
Speaker 2: agree with us because what they hear is government regulation
Speaker 2: and you're going to put regulations on my power. And
Speaker 2: the other thing they hear is the bad guys have guns,
Speaker 2: so why shouldn't we. And that's another important part of
Speaker 2: the narrative because if you think about the things that
Speaker 2: gun I'm just going to say a gun gun control
Speaker 2: for shorthand, even though I don't really like that term,
Speaker 2: but gun control is background checks at point of sale purchase,
Speaker 2: when you buy a gun, that's when you background check,
Speaker 2: assault weapons ban, if you have to be registered, safety lucks.
Speaker 2: These are all things for legal gun owners, like registered gunowners.
Speaker 2: But what they say is that doesn't do anything for
Speaker 2: crime because the criminals have guns, so we want guns
Speaker 2: or something like that. So there's all these these reasons
Speaker 2: why I guess the point I'm trying to make is
Speaker 2: public health is not common sense. In where I live
Speaker 2: and people you know, when I'm here, it seems total
Speaker 2: common sense. But part of what you can hear what
Speaker 2: I'm saying is we have these moments of rupture, and
Speaker 2: sometimes the moments of rupture are after mass shootings, when
Speaker 2: it's like, oh my god, how come they cannot see that.
Speaker 2: Another time, for example, is in the pandemic. Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the pandemic, public health comes in, But the gun debate
Speaker 2: had already That's another thing I should in the book.
Speaker 2: The gun debate had already set the stage for the pandemic,
Speaker 2: mistrust of government, regulation, public health, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: So the pandemic is a huge player in the book.
Speaker 2: And again this is not to say that I don't
Speaker 2: believe in gun laws. I do. But what I argue
Speaker 2: in the book is we had a strategy for health,
Speaker 2: but we needed in this debate, we needed a strategy
Speaker 2: for power. Right. We should have had our own federalist society,
Speaker 2: We should have had our list of own judges. We
Speaker 2: actually should have thought beyond health regulations to think about
Speaker 2: communal structural incentives, what I talk about in the book.
Speaker 2: So in this one case, the health and you know,
Speaker 2: maybe fifteen years ago, if we would have had liability
Speaker 2: for guns, they would have been a different thing. But
Speaker 2: that wasn't happening. They're protected by Congress. You can't sue
Speaker 2: a gun manufacturer for the way you if your blunder
Speaker 2: kills somebody, and so it's just it's a lot. But
Speaker 2: I think in a way, what I'm trying to explain
Speaker 2: is people wonder like, how do we get here? And
Speaker 2: that's part of what I think the story of the
Speaker 2: shooting shows.
Speaker 1: I think a part of the reason, the part of
Speaker 1: the way that we got here too, is also the
Speaker 1: assumption that people are better than they are. I think
Speaker 1: that the assumption was if you can explain to people
Speaker 1: that guns are hurting, that guns are hurting them, guns
Speaker 1: make your community unsafe. Do you want your kids learning
Speaker 1: how to army crawl across the floor, or do you
Speaker 1: want them to be able to concentrate on school and
Speaker 1: not worry that every single time a bell goes off
Speaker 1: that that that there is a mass shooter. We wanted
Speaker 1: to appeal, I think, to people's common sense in that way,
Speaker 1: but to their heartstrings. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it was this idea that democrats, which they consistently fail at,
Speaker 1: which is power, which is saying no, it's the judges
Speaker 1: that make the policy. It's the judge, because the judges
Speaker 1: are the ones that are passing and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we live in Tennessee. Your gun is your right and
Speaker 1: that's it. And for a country where you have a
Speaker 1: man like Trump, a white man that is feeding into
Speaker 1: this narrative that they're taking everything away from you. They've
Speaker 1: taken your jobs, they've taken your home right, it's all take, take, take,
Speaker 1: and now they want to take your gun. This conversation
Speaker 1: about power is inextricably tied to race. Is there a
Speaker 1: way for us to part and parcel it, like you
Speaker 1: offer solutions and ideas, But this is more so The
Speaker 1: book is about like a conversation switch, a narrative switch.
Speaker 1: And this is something that Democrats are desperately bad at,
Speaker 1: which is the narrative switch. But here you're saying, look,
Speaker 1: the conversation was never about public health. The conversation is
Speaker 1: about power. Donald Trump appeals to their need to hold
Speaker 1: on to power. What does Biden say to that? What
Speaker 1: do Democrats say to that? In nine months?
Speaker 2: Well, first again, I think in a true psycho psychiatry format,
Speaker 2: I'll say the most important thing is understanding first how
Speaker 2: we got here, and so in a way, I just
Speaker 2: think there's so much confusion about how we got here,
Speaker 2: so understanding why we're in a particular and it's not
Speaker 2: like we're in a whole I mean, I want to
Speaker 2: be clear. Thirty years ago, there was no gun safety movement,
Speaker 2: there was no data. We built the whole field out
Speaker 2: of scratch against tremendous headwinds. Gun safety researchers went unfunded
Speaker 2: for a long period of time. Mothers gave their lives
Speaker 2: to this issue. So I'm not trying to say everything sucks.
Speaker 2: What I am trying to say is it's interesting if
Speaker 2: you talk to a lot of conservatives and liberals about
Speaker 2: this issue, which I've done for now over a decade,
Speaker 2: and liberals will say, you know, they will talk in
Speaker 2: moral terms, which is a moral issue. It is a
Speaker 2: very moral issue for a lot of people. But even
Speaker 2: like like I remember it was when I was interfering
Speaker 2: people for dying of whiteness, and it was like twenty
Speaker 2: something or other, like before anybody, and there was really
Speaker 2: sick guys I was interviewing and I'd be like, hey,
Speaker 2: do you want your own healthcare? And he's like, well, no,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get signed up because if I
Speaker 2: sign up for this and this program stays, my side
Speaker 2: will get addicted to this program and then we're going
Speaker 2: to lose, and the most important thing for me really
Speaker 2: isn't my own life. It's that we control the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court to overturn row and have the Second Amendment be nationalized.
Speaker 2: Like the people at the very bottom understood that the
Speaker 2: bigger project was control, and I mean that is like
Speaker 2: I mean, people in like low income housing communities, white
Speaker 2: men were telling me this. So top to bottom people,
Speaker 2: I think understand that what they're doing has real power implications.
Speaker 2: And that's why it makes sense that I mean, how many,
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe the one protest I can think about
Speaker 2: is the one remember when the governor of Virginia he
Speaker 2: got elected, Ralph whatever, his name was, the doctor Orton whatever,
Speaker 2: and he said we're going to do tight gun laws,
Speaker 2: and all these gun guys came out and they had
Speaker 2: a huge rally in the Virginia state Capitol or something
Speaker 2: like that. But largely Democrats are protesting. We all protested
Speaker 2: after my shootings, as we should have. But Republicans are
Speaker 2: like playing the power game. They are like yeah, and
Speaker 2: so for them it's about that, it's like using those marches,
Speaker 2: and so for them, the strategy is the power of
Speaker 2: guns is in the courts, and that's what I write
Speaker 2: about the gun movement that the gun safety movement gave
Speaker 2: us many many important things, but it did not give
Speaker 2: us judges. That's kind of one of the core arguments.
Speaker 2: And without judges, it's we're at the whim of opinion,
Speaker 2: which I think is scary, and it's scary now. But
Speaker 2: as you see what I was saying in the time
Speaker 2: piece today, it's really scary if you think about what
Speaker 2: the Supreme courts look like with guns if Trump wins
Speaker 2: in other term. And so for me right now, shifting
Speaker 2: this is a long way of saying, what do we
Speaker 2: do about it? I had a piece in having to
Speaker 2: post last week that I thought were the five pivot
Speaker 2: points I thought Democrats should make. I've been getting a
Speaker 2: lot of grief from my liberal friends about it, but
Speaker 2: I said, there are ways you can make gun safety
Speaker 2: more material. Now. I don't think we're going to change
Speaker 2: the minds of the most hardcore people, but I do
Speaker 2: think the election is going to come down to purple,
Speaker 2: swing state voters, and so those are the people I'm
Speaker 2: trying to target. The five points in my plan, if
Speaker 2: I can remember them, one is what's called gun entrepreneurialism,
Speaker 2: tie gun safety, to capitalism in much more overt ways.
Speaker 2: And there are really clear ways you can do that
Speaker 2: with AI, with smart guns, in collaboration with building communities, commerce,
Speaker 2: all these things. So one is tie gun safety to commerce,
Speaker 2: make it economically viable. Second is, for these voters, you
Speaker 2: have to do a better job talking about crime than
Speaker 2: we do. We often try to talk them out of
Speaker 2: crime by saying, well, gun safety laws, there's more crime
Speaker 2: in red states than blue states, and gun you know everybody,
Speaker 2: There actually isn't a ton of research that shows that,
Speaker 2: for example, background checks lower homicide. There actually isn't because
Speaker 2: they're not designed for that. And so we need a
Speaker 2: better narrative for crime. Not that I think I need
Speaker 2: it personally, but I think for these particular voters, talking
Speaker 2: about guns and crime is not self evident and they
Speaker 2: feel like they're talked down to if you just tell them, well,
Speaker 2: if you just had gun control the way New York did.
Speaker 2: And so two is crime. Three is be wary of
Speaker 2: who you're talking to about government regulations. Government regulations are
Speaker 2: really poison for a lot of people. So background checks
Speaker 2: is it's a federal database, right, So just telling everybody
Speaker 2: we need background checks, it doesn't work on particular audiences,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to remember a winning is not just
Speaker 2: we're going to win and we're going to make everybody
Speaker 2: do background checks. Winning is actually trying to upend the
Speaker 2: gun debate and trying to find common cause. And there's
Speaker 2: some fifth one that I'll think of it in a second,
Speaker 2: but it's really like, it's not just rechain framing the narrative,
Speaker 2: it's actually reimagining, reimagining what we're doing. I think it
Speaker 2: had to do with the building safe, safe neighborhoods, like
Speaker 2: what kind of investments in neighborhood There's a lot of
Speaker 2: literature out there that is from like South Chicago that says,
Speaker 2: you know, if you fix the street lights and build
Speaker 2: parks and fix the internet and all these things, that
Speaker 2: actually gun crime goes down. And so for me, that's
Speaker 2: a nationalizable model that if you actually invest in local
Speaker 2: communities in material ways that people see. So none of
Speaker 2: that is about regulations or mandates. It's all about like
Speaker 2: material things that have different kinds of alliances.
Speaker 1: Which I think is so incredibly important because where we
Speaker 1: lack right now is imagine. I don't think that the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party has a ton of imagination in terms of
Speaker 1: why these people were attracted to Donald Trump in the
Speaker 1: first place, why they continue to be attracted to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And it isn't just oh he's a talk show host,
Speaker 1: Oh he's a billionaire. He is enticing because he gives
Speaker 1: them this power, this long lost power of whiteness that
Speaker 1: they want to reclaim that liberals told them right, push
Speaker 1: them back to the corners and said this is bad.
Speaker 1: You're bad. You need to make more space. And that's
Speaker 1: what they heard, and then Trump reinforced it. And so
Speaker 1: those pivot points are not about telling people it's common sense.
Speaker 1: Are not about saying background checks are going to save us.
Speaker 1: It is so much more than that. The last question
Speaker 1: I have for you, because we going to have questions
Speaker 1: from all of you, Jonathan, is what do you hope
Speaker 1: that people take from your book? What do you want
Speaker 1: them to walk away with? This book took you so
Speaker 1: many years to write, It was difficult for you to write,
Speaker 1: and you're getting, you know, people pushing back against you,
Speaker 1: your colleagues and friends. What do you hope that people
Speaker 1: take away from it?
Speaker 2: Three things? The first and most important for me is
Speaker 2: to remember the history of the waffle house shooting, the
Speaker 2: stories are incredible. They're in the book. Every mass shooting
Speaker 2: you could probably say that this is no exception. The
Speaker 2: victims were just incredible of a local rapper who was
Speaker 2: going to become a superstar, a you know, a basketball star,
Speaker 2: a cook, a young Instagram model, like incredible, incredible people.
Speaker 2: So one is just to say, these mass shootings happen
Speaker 2: so quickly. What happens when we slow it down and
Speaker 2: tell one story? This is what we lose these stories. Second,
Speaker 2: I'm Glad Norton talking to me out of it. But
Speaker 2: the initial title was going to be how we lost,
Speaker 2: and it is about I do feel like in some
Speaker 2: ways my side lost the gun debate. I'll just be
Speaker 2: really honest about that. We won the popular opinion debate.
Speaker 2: But over the course of writing this book five years,
Speaker 2: we went from two states that had open carrie to
Speaker 2: twenty eight twenty eight states about to have open carry,
Speaker 2: which is unimaginable. For we just in October passed five
Speaker 2: hundred million guns in circulation, and the rates of death
Speaker 2: go up every year and so and we have a
Speaker 2: lot of friends. My friend Mike's here on the front
Speaker 2: were from Michigan. We have a lot of friends who
Speaker 2: because of the gun policies are shifting from being Democrats
Speaker 2: to being Republicans in a way, so we're winning in
Speaker 2: some ways, right, we have won. This is an argument
Speaker 2: I had with Morning Joe at four am their day
Speaker 2: because he's like, well, ninety percent of people support background checks,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, but ninety percent of people don't
Speaker 2: vote based on background checks. You know, one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of gun rights people vote because of guns. But people
Speaker 2: will tell you on to poll they support background checks,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean they're going to vote out a
Speaker 2: politician who doesn't support background checks. And so the second
Speaker 2: part is people understand like where we're at because I
Speaker 2: think the stakes are really really high. And then I
Speaker 2: guess the third is kind of personal, which is this
Speaker 2: is the TM portion. But this was just a really
Speaker 2: hard book to get published. Honestly, my last book, Dying
Speaker 2: of Whiteness, sold I think two hundred thousand copies. It
Speaker 2: won the BRFK Book Award. I didn't think I was
Speaker 2: going to have to make this claim, so I'm like,
Speaker 2: my next book's going to be about a mass shooting.
Speaker 2: It got rejected for young writers out there, got rejected
Speaker 2: by twenty three publishers, including my own publisher from Telling
Speaker 2: of Whiteness. They said, nobody's going to buy a book
Speaker 2: about guns. Nobody really cares about this issue. It's like
Speaker 2: a done deal all the things and at every step
Speaker 2: along the way, and it's not sour grape. So I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, like people think, like, oh, a book about
Speaker 2: guns is a book that tells you we need more
Speaker 2: background checks. And I really wanted this to be a
Speaker 2: book that got people talking that maybe was uncomfortable for people,
Speaker 2: but that made people think. And so just the fact
Speaker 2: that like we made it, you know, to me, has
Speaker 2: been I mean, my agent, Tany McKennon, is just phenomenal.
Speaker 2: We worked so hard because I mean, when your own
Speaker 2: publisher is like, nah, thanks dude, you know, it's an
Speaker 2: uphill battle, and so we're trying to you know, it's
Speaker 2: just a very personal victory, honestly to get this book
Speaker 2: out and to say, look, we can have a debate
Speaker 2: about this that isn't just reinforcing what people know.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that your persistence and your
Speaker 1: relentlessness in order to get this done is so necessary,
Speaker 1: and I just am always so appreciative of the conversations
Speaker 1: that you bring to the forefront and that you're not
Speaker 1: afraid to get pushed back from the All right, oh
Speaker 1: hands already.
Speaker 3: So how many mass killers are men or boys as
Speaker 3: opposed to women, because one of the things that Trump
Speaker 3: does is emphasize male power, not just white power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to give you a three part answered
Speaker 2: lead to this question, this great question, the question of masculinity.
Speaker 2: But there's an interesting politics. So before I answer that question,
Speaker 2: let me just tell you. I'm going to repeat one
Speaker 2: of the points I made before, just for emphasis, which
Speaker 2: is that there are I'm just going to do a
Speaker 2: quick quiz. How many gun deaths a year are there
Speaker 2: in the United States? Fifty thousand? We're about that fifty thousand,
Speaker 2: about a fifty thousand. That's all gun does together, which
Speaker 2: is I mean one gun net is one gut to
Speaker 2: gundt too many? How many? I said this before. How
Speaker 2: many guns are owned in this country? Five hundred million.
Speaker 2: So if you talk to liberals about guns, which I'm
Speaker 2: a liberal and I talk about guns, I will always
Speaker 2: my first question is always about a shooting, a death
Speaker 2: of mortality. But just I think before we even go there,
Speaker 2: it's important to remember, as horrible as they are. That
Speaker 2: that's the fifty thousand, which is horrible and impactful and
Speaker 2: as I show in the book, traumatizes communities. But we're
Speaker 2: speaking to this right this side. The NRA is never
Speaker 2: talking about mass shootings and gun sellers and Trump. They're
Speaker 2: talking about gun owners. What does it mean to own
Speaker 2: a gun? What does it mean to carry a gun?
Speaker 2: So you just remember that's like two hundred million people
Speaker 2: they are talking to. So there's just a balance of
Speaker 2: one side's talking to fifty thousand and the other side
Speaker 2: is talking to two hundred million. So when I speak,
Speaker 2: I'm now again trying to get on Fox News. But
Speaker 2: they never asked me about shootings. They never do. They're
Speaker 2: like about power, and so it's just important to remember
Speaker 2: we are already limiting who we're talking to because we
Speaker 2: have the NRAs had just and Trump have a totally
Speaker 2: open field to talk about what it means to own
Speaker 2: and carry a gun. Now that is not what you asked,
Speaker 2: I realize, but I just think it's important to remember
Speaker 2: that there's an imbalance even in what we focus on.
Speaker 2: And then what we define as a mass shooting is
Speaker 2: incredibly political also, and I say that because in the book,
Speaker 2: I have all this data, which is until twenty ten,
Speaker 2: there were forty five mass shootings a year in this country.
Speaker 2: Mass shooting four more people killed. Now it turns out
Speaker 2: there weren't forty five mass shootings in this country year.
Speaker 2: There were like three hundred mass shootings a year. But
Speaker 2: initially we only counted white victim and white shooter mass shootings,
Speaker 2: and so the data self, we only counted mass shootings
Speaker 2: as like the stuff that gets on the news. But
Speaker 2: if there was a shooting in South Chicago or East
Speaker 2: New York or something like that, what do we call it.
Speaker 2: We called it a gang shooting or a revenge shooting
Speaker 2: or something like that. So even what we called a
Speaker 2: mass shooting was incredibly that the sociological term all use
Speaker 2: as sample bias, right, We were just focusing on shootings
Speaker 2: that were horrific and terrible and sensational and killed on
Speaker 2: average between three hundred and four hundred people a year.
Speaker 2: But we didn't focus on all these other shootings. And
Speaker 2: so these shootings are I agree, a particular phenomenon. They
Speaker 2: are a particular phenomenon, and within the realm of like
Speaker 2: we're on the TV race, within the realm of fucked
Speaker 2: up white male masculinity. There is a phenomenon here, which
Speaker 2: is that there's a copycat phenomenon there is. It's incredible
Speaker 2: how similar, like the manifesto, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: but even now, like it's that trope, like the Covenant
Speaker 2: school shooting was a transitioning woman and then there was
Speaker 2: a whatever like it just it becomes a performance of aggrieved.
Speaker 2: It's the performativity of it. And so I do agree.
Speaker 2: I do agree that there is something about masculinity here,
Speaker 2: and I agree that there's something about guns and masculinity.
Speaker 2: But as I say in a lot of things in
Speaker 2: the book, Trump celebrates that masculinity and we pathologize it,
Speaker 2: and he's just speaking to a lot more people.
Speaker 1: He celebrates and he marketed, Yeah, he markets it.
Speaker 4: My name is Neil Feldman, and I've been exposed to
Speaker 4: guns since I was in Boy Scouts, and I'm comfortable
Speaker 4: with them, and I know I'm not I have a
Speaker 4: problem with gun ownership. On the other hand, I also
Speaker 4: think that guns are inherently saying more dangerous than mother vehicles,
Speaker 4: which are designed to transport people around, and guns are
Speaker 4: designed to shoot. And what has always confused me and
Speaker 4: I hope you could speak to this point is if
Speaker 4: we as a society long ago made the decision that
Speaker 4: to drive a car one must have a driver's license,
Speaker 4: they must prove they know how to operate the car,
Speaker 4: drive it, safely, operate it, why do we not have
Speaker 4: licenses to own guns? You know, in a way, because
Speaker 4: that I think would facilitate ownership of guns, and because
Speaker 4: I'm not sure about this night in fact, okay, another question,
Speaker 4: I would think many of the crimes are in fact
Speaker 4: done by people who do not have legal ownership of guns.
Speaker 4: That you spoke about fifty thousand people killed by guns
Speaker 4: when we have five hundred million guns in America, So
Speaker 4: most of those guns are not being used in crimes.
Speaker 4: But it would still make things easier and safer for
Speaker 4: all of us if we had standards through simple gun
Speaker 4: licensing the way we do cars.
Speaker 2: What you say makes an unbeloe leevable emine of sense.
Speaker 2: In fact, it makes too much sense. And in the
Speaker 2: talk that I give, I show like there was a
Speaker 2: huge gap. Motor vehicle deaths were here and gun deaths
Speaker 2: were here in like the nineteen seventies, and then you
Speaker 2: see motor vehicle deaths come down, not because people are
Speaker 2: any less aggressive or weird, but because we had anti
Speaker 2: luck breaks and airbags and you know, regulations and all
Speaker 2: these kind of things. Gun deaths go up there, as
Speaker 2: Daniel was saying, that everyone killer of kids. But the
Speaker 2: issue is power, right, So if you're building an entire
Speaker 2: political party on power, then the government is the antithesis
Speaker 2: of that power. Regulation is the unpower.
Speaker 3: It is that power.
Speaker 2: That power will not be regulated. And so the car
Speaker 2: analogy and the driver's license analogy, it's been it's we've
Speaker 2: been trying it for fifteen years, and it makes an
Speaker 2: unbelievable amount of sense, and it'll never happen, unfortunately. I
Speaker 2: mean that it'll happened with this Supreme Court. So to
Speaker 2: get there, making sense is not the battle. You actually
Speaker 2: have to win the power war first. And so, as
Speaker 2: Daniel was saying, part of the argument of the book
Speaker 2: is nothing's going to happen without judges for anybody. Here
Speaker 2: followed the Bruin case that overturned our gun laws here
Speaker 2: in New York. It made pretty much any It made
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the gun laws in the country unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: States across the country now are having to overturn all
Speaker 2: their gun laws. There was a prohibition on carrying gun
Speaker 2: into a post office that just got overturned because in
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy nobody was prohibited from carrying gun into a
Speaker 2: post office. So to win anything here, it's not just
Speaker 2: winning the common sense battle, it's actually winning the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court battle. That's kind of the whole point. That's why
Speaker 2: the book ends with the Supreme Court. And so I
Speaker 2: hope get to the point where that common sense matters.
Speaker 2: But to get there, we have to win all these
Speaker 2: other battles first. Unfortunately, and brother, let me just say,
Speaker 2: I went to camp the NRA. I have a certificate
Speaker 2: stall of shooting. Like, you know, my dad was in
Speaker 2: the Air Force. Like, I've learned how to shoot a
Speaker 2: gun at camp. Like it's not like I'm afraid of guns.
Speaker 2: I'm from Missouri. But that's not the er. The NRA,
Speaker 2: as I say in the book, really got addicted to
Speaker 2: the power game, not the training campers like me game
Speaker 2: a doctor.
Speaker 5: My name is Todd t. I'm a resident of Brooklyn
Speaker 5: by way of Howard University, by way of the South
Speaker 5: Side of Chicago, where I was born and raised as
Speaker 5: a black man. And I think maybe the only one here.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry me and you. I've been shot twice. I've
Speaker 5: been part of several. I'm sure what you would now
Speaker 5: deem mass shootings. As a teenager, I moved to New
Speaker 5: York for safety. But I won't, like, you know, I
Speaker 5: don't want to like do that whole like South Side
Speaker 5: of Chicago thing. But I do have many friends that
Speaker 5: can go right across the border to Indiana and just
Speaker 5: get a gun for whenever they, you know, whatever they wanted.
Speaker 5: And this is back in the nineties. You know, you
Speaker 5: could go to a gun show. You can go to
Speaker 5: the parking lot, particularly outside of the gun show, and
Speaker 5: get guns from people's trunks and come right across the border.
Speaker 5: That has always been our issue on the South Side
Speaker 5: is that we are surrounded with this little blue drop,
Speaker 5: surrounded by red. So my question more so and then
Speaker 5: I want to speak to you ask you a question
Speaker 5: as a psychiatrist. Is it not driven by fear?
Speaker 3: Yea?
Speaker 5: Is it not driven by fears? It's not about I
Speaker 5: don't know, power, but it seems more to be about
Speaker 5: like fear. And this is back from you know, when
Speaker 5: we as enslaved people were the majority in our country
Speaker 5: and thus the gun was the equalizer to all of
Speaker 5: the you know, enslaved people that you had on your plantation.
Speaker 5: It seems to still carry. But now being that we
Speaker 5: are I wouldn't say New York, but like, there are
Speaker 5: so many cities like you're from Missouri, so Saint Louis,
Speaker 5: for instance, and you can go anywhere outside of it,
Speaker 5: you know, right across to I guess Tennessee or Kentucky
Speaker 5: or whatever, and just get a gun. So how to
Speaker 5: as cities where most of us are in terms of liberal, BIPOC,
Speaker 5: LGBTQIA and so forth, where we might reside, how do
Speaker 5: we combat the fact that you can go ten minutes
Speaker 5: from where I grew up to any gun show, illegally
Speaker 5: or legally, probably purchase a gun and bring it right
Speaker 5: back over. And that's how the cities are now flooded
Speaker 5: with these guns.
Speaker 2: So I have two chapters about the myth of Chicago
Speaker 2: in the book. I actually talk a lot because the
Speaker 2: shooters coming from Illinois, and I make exactly those points.
Speaker 2: And the point I make is that Chicago has to
Speaker 2: fail and other cities have to other diverse cities have
Speaker 2: to fail for the strength of the conservative arguments in
Speaker 2: other words, they need multi racial cities to be dangerous
Speaker 2: to show that gun control never works and black people
Speaker 2: are ungovernable and all this stuff. So in a way,
Speaker 2: there's a lot invested. Like Trump and I talk about
Speaker 2: in the book, how often Trump uses Chicago as an
Speaker 2: example of sewing gun control will never work, which is
Speaker 2: all these like very thinly coated racial stereotypes about like
Speaker 2: unruly masses and.
Speaker 4: Stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Now, as I say, it's not just drive on the
Speaker 2: Indiana toll road. I think it's twenty four minutes. But
Speaker 2: the other thing is sixty five percent of the gun
Speaker 2: homicides the gun actually goes through one gun store in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: in Green Bay, And so you've got Indiana and Wisconsin
Speaker 2: and like one hundred percent of the like it's just
Speaker 2: like so you could just drive a mini van, load
Speaker 2: up with AR fifteen's and fireworks and bring it right back.
Speaker 2: And so it's posterous and a conservative UH councilman weekend
Speaker 2: Illinois gun laws anyway, over over the years it had
Speaker 2: it had actually a pretty good gun law system about
Speaker 2: thirty years ago. And so but part of the point
Speaker 2: I make is that they need the foil of liberal
Speaker 2: cities as being like remember escape from New York with State.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be like a bash Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like snake pliskin and all that stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and I lead that to the end. The book ends
Speaker 2: with with Alito speaking in the Bruin Case, where he's
Speaker 2: making all these stereotypes about New York, like you know,
Speaker 2: there's a gang banger around the corner and a mugger
Speaker 2: and all this stuff, and I'm like, dude, you've never
Speaker 2: been to New York, like, but they need that, and
Speaker 2: so for me, they're coming for New York. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that's really important. It's like initially it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that stuff happens in the South, but we're safe up here.
Speaker 2: But the Bruin Case showed how much like the goal
Speaker 2: is New York and if Trump wins, like having New
Speaker 2: York be a hell hole is going to be really
Speaker 2: important to his agenda of like, oh my god, that's
Speaker 2: why we're doing all these resources. And so in a way,
Speaker 2: I just I could I could talk all night about
Speaker 2: this point. There's so much in the book about it,
Speaker 2: and I hope you read it because it really makes
Speaker 2: a lot of those exact same points that Chicago has
Speaker 2: to be a particular way to prove to people how
Speaker 2: like laws will never work on those people and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So it's really it's just I get mad
Speaker 2: and even talking about it, but it's incredible, how like
Speaker 2: the whole story of the book is about a white
Speaker 2: guy from suburbia who goes into like he's the dangerous guy,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's the whole point of the book
Speaker 2: is there's the stereotype, the fear, but then looks look
Speaker 2: at the reality of like, who's actually really dangerous here?
Speaker 2: It's the guy who's not captured by that framework. And
Speaker 2: so that tension, for me is really what it's It's
Speaker 2: all about.
Speaker 6: What correlation do you see between the two books? Because
Speaker 6: and it ties back to the blackman, and he's not
Speaker 6: only black men in the room, at least from what
Speaker 6: I can see, from what I can see, So I'm not.
Speaker 7: I just have to say that.
Speaker 8: Sorry, sorry, But the thing is, if anybody is gonna
Speaker 8: how do you see the dying of whiteness and how
Speaker 8: it correlates to what the other person said?
Speaker 6: Because I feel like racially we're so divided, but there's
Speaker 6: so much commonality. But I feel as long as we
Speaker 6: buy into the racism and the colonialism. We will we
Speaker 6: will for the perpetuate guns because it's like, in order
Speaker 6: for you to perpetuate the NRA, you have to perpetuate
Speaker 6: the black and round people are dangerous, and so it
Speaker 6: really ties back from I mean, I know I'm not
Speaker 6: a psychiatrist, but common sense alone and just watching would
Speaker 6: tell you that if a lot of the mashootings are
Speaker 6: not black and round people, and I would think that
Speaker 6: white people would have more common with black and brown
Speaker 6: people just based around that one subject matter. So I
Speaker 6: don't understand why are the ovalot I mean, I think
Speaker 6: I feel like it goes back to the history of
Speaker 6: this country, and we've never really tackled that because like
Speaker 6: even just if you look at the last couple of
Speaker 6: years in places, you know, where they've had mass shooting
Speaker 6: in other parts of the world, they've clamped down here.
Speaker 6: It's like we have to find every single excuse. What
Speaker 6: excuse can you find for somebody walking up in a
Speaker 6: school and shooting children? Like I really it drives me
Speaker 6: and saying I can't so what overlap? What overarching things
Speaker 6: have you seen in the book in your book I'm
Speaker 6: dying of whiteness. I'm like this one.
Speaker 2: Well, first, I'm glad you didn't say that. I'm glad
Speaker 2: you didn't say that all bald men look alike, first
Speaker 2: of all. But both books are about a particular form
Speaker 2: of the pathology of the mainstream in my mind, and
Speaker 2: the extent to which they attempt to alleviate that by
Speaker 2: admitting that we're all bitter off by forming alliances is
Speaker 2: subverted by the power game that the mainstream plays. And
Speaker 2: so in Dying of Whiteness, it's really about the self harm,
Speaker 2: the self harm of guns for the gun section. And
Speaker 2: now even that self harm perpetuated a narrative of remember
Speaker 2: that Joiner book, like fifteen years ago, it's lonely on top.
Speaker 2: It's about like, you know, you just have to keep
Speaker 2: telling yourself this story to maintain your imagined position, even
Speaker 2: if it's like it's like killing you or something like that.
Speaker 2: So for Dying of Whiteness, it was kind of the
Speaker 2: way that that narrative, it was bad for everybody, including
Speaker 2: the people who were ostensibly benefiting from it, except for
Speaker 2: the people at the very very top. Now this is
Speaker 2: about a different form of pathological whiteness. The white mass
Speaker 2: shooter this is about homicide, not suicide. And I talk
Speaker 2: a lot about a similar narrative that kind of plays
Speaker 2: out with guns, which is, you know, the race story
Speaker 2: of this book is it couldn't have like how much
Speaker 2: more literal do you need about the pathology of whiteness
Speaker 2: than like a naked guy with an AR fifteen like
Speaker 2: killing young rappers. He's literally he's the what's that twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen in netwhere Nashville? Yeah, Nashville. But the thing is, like,
Speaker 2: it's just it was, it was embodied, like, man, this
Speaker 2: system is not working for anybody, especially not for us
Speaker 2: and for you know whatever and so and so. In
Speaker 2: a way, the part of the book is about the
Speaker 2: calisthenics that the system had to do to craft a
Speaker 2: narrative on all sides. I mean, I actually blame it's
Speaker 2: not just a conservative issue on all sides to keep
Speaker 2: the system intact, to tell the story, which is that
Speaker 2: this shooter does not represent us, but you know whatever.
Speaker 2: But again, the story of the book is the entire
Speaker 2: to mobilized. I mean again, we had a choice. We
Speaker 2: could have passed laws learning from them ass shooting to
Speaker 2: make sure it never happened again. Or we could have
Speaker 2: passed laws to liberalize and we chose the laws that
Speaker 2: protected the rights of the damn shooter. And so that's
Speaker 2: the race story of the book.
Speaker 1: We have one more Oh wow, okay, we had there
Speaker 1: was time for one more good question. The one more
Speaker 1: good question.
Speaker 7: My quest. Oh, first of all, I'm Keisha, I'm from Brooklyn.
Speaker 7: So my question is you were talking about power. What
Speaker 7: like politicians or thought leaders have been receptive to your message,
Speaker 7: and like, how can we kind of support them? Right,
Speaker 7: because we have to kind of build it up. I
Speaker 7: listen to walk af all the time and Dayelle was
Speaker 7: always talking about, oh, you can't vote for third party candidates, right,
Speaker 7: they just can't come out the blue. And then all
Speaker 7: of a sudden the president. We have to kind of
Speaker 7: build it from the ground up. So like, who's like
Speaker 7: supporting your message? Ry and how can we support them?
Speaker 2: Well, if you look on my social media and look
Speaker 2: at the really interesting responses I've had from the Time
Speaker 2: magazine piece that came out today, believe it or not,
Speaker 2: a lot of really cool stuff is happening in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: I've had an incredible reception with the Justin's and Gloria
Speaker 2: in Tennessee. So something really interesting is happening in Tennessee,
Speaker 2: which is worth forming policy right now in a place
Speaker 2: that has a lot of guns. We've already all the
Speaker 2: crappy stuff's already happened to us, and so to follow
Speaker 2: what's happening in Tennessee. First of all, in the old days,
Speaker 2: the idea of a red state blue state divide about
Speaker 2: these issues may be held true. But right now the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is coming for the country, and so form
Speaker 2: alliances with people in red states, I think is super,
Speaker 2: super super important. We're not doing it anywhere anywhere near enough.
Speaker 2: I talk about the global politics of this. This NA
Speaker 2: playbook is being tried in Brazil, it's supporting Ntaenyahu in Israel,
Speaker 2: it's supporting all these other things. And so in a way,
Speaker 2: there's I feel like a global alliance of've gun safety
Speaker 2: right now. And so there are all these alliances. I
Speaker 2: think that our potential, but man, so much depends on elections,
Speaker 2: and so getting people to vote, vote on vote, voting
Speaker 2: is really key. The other side is very mobilized, right
Speaker 2: They're very, very energized about guns right now, and so
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want them with more power and
Speaker 2: with more guns and that's what we're looking at. So
Speaker 2: voting in general is important now, but follow along with
Speaker 2: me on Twitter because I'm going to be trying to
Speaker 2: do a lot of outreach on that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I just want to once again thank all of you.
Speaker 2: We're doing a lot.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're going to oh yeah, all right. That is
Speaker 1: it for me today. Dear friends on wok f as always,
Speaker 1: power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.