WEBVTT - Brian Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell Talk Policing and Guns 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:16.420 Pushkin. 0:00:25.140 --> 0:00:28.680 Hello, hello, everyone. Malcolm Gladwell here. Greetings from Los Angeles. 0:00:29.220 --> 0:00:31.460 I'm out on tour for my new book, The American 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.670 Way of Killing, The Invention of an Epidemic, which is 0:00:34.730 --> 0:00:40.130 my examination of America's ongoing problem with criminal violence, specifically 0:00:40.190 --> 0:00:43.630 gun violence. I'm actually recording this from the closet in 0:00:43.670 --> 0:00:46.620 my hotel room. Last week, we read a chapter from 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.380 the book, one of my favorite chapters, The Slave Owner's Lament, 0:00:50.780 --> 0:00:53.000 which you should listen to if you haven't yet, because 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.260 I'm guessing it's the story you haven't heard about the 0:00:56.300 --> 0:00:59.540 Second Amendment, and which left me more than a little 0:00:59.880 --> 0:01:04.820 surprised and angry. Next week, and the week after, we're 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:07.399 going to run a two-part series on the fascinating story 0:01:07.940 --> 0:01:10.380 about what's been happening in Baltimore over the last couple 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.570 of years, along with, because this is what we do 0:01:13.789 --> 0:01:16.970 at Revisions History, a little excursion into the world of 0:01:17.069 --> 0:01:20.530 cardiac bypass surgery. But right now, I want to share 0:01:20.569 --> 0:01:23.080 with you a really fun and interesting interview I did 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.940 with Brian Lehrer, who has one of the most popular 0:01:25.979 --> 0:01:30.800 shows on WNYC, New York City's public radio station. So 0:01:31.039 --> 0:01:34.050 have a listen. By all means, buy the book if 0:01:34.069 --> 0:01:36.410 you are interested. And if you want to catch me 0:01:36.430 --> 0:01:38.910 on the road, all of my book tour dates are 0:01:38.949 --> 0:01:42.770 up on my website, glabell.com. Thanks for listening, everyone. 0:01:52.260 --> 0:01:56.420 It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.640 Gun violence in America, not a new conversation or topic 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.300 by any stretch, right? But there's actually a bit of 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.740 a pattern. Every time there's a mass shooting, it comes 0:02:06.780 --> 0:02:10.760 back into the spotlight, into the headlines. Democrats express mounting 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.430 frustration and not being able to institute much meaningful gun 0:02:14.470 --> 0:02:17.850 control reform, and then it kind of peters out, right? 0:02:17.910 --> 0:02:20.910 The news cycle moves on. Well, we're going to talk 0:02:20.950 --> 0:02:23.489 to Malcolm Gladwell about this because he's got a new 0:02:23.530 --> 0:02:28.270 book coming out tomorrow, officially, called The American Way of Killing, 0:02:28.490 --> 0:02:32.130 The Invention of an Epidemic, in which he argues that 0:02:32.150 --> 0:02:35.690 the conversation around gun violence in the U.S. is misguided, 0:02:35.910 --> 0:02:38.510 that people focus too much on mass shootings and not 0:02:38.570 --> 0:02:41.680 enough on the kind of violence, gun violence, that disenfranchised 0:02:41.710 --> 0:02:45.560 communities see every day. To address that kind of violence, 0:02:45.900 --> 0:02:49.130 which makes up the vast majority, of gun violence in 0:02:49.150 --> 0:02:52.269 the United States. He says the country needs more cops 0:02:52.930 --> 0:02:56.810 and more intervention programs, both of those. By focusing so 0:02:56.870 --> 0:03:00.390 narrowly on gun control as a prevention strategy, he argues, 0:03:00.970 --> 0:03:04.380 gun violence activists are losing sight of the big picture. 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.300 You might know Malcolm Gladwell because, well, he's one of 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:11.060 the most popular nonfiction writers of our time. He's written 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:15.400 a whole range of bestselling books on social phenomena, including Blink, 0:03:15.940 --> 0:03:19.560 The Tipping Point, and Outliers. That's the one where he 0:03:19.620 --> 0:03:22.060 coined the idea that anybody can be an expert at 0:03:22.100 --> 0:03:25.700 something if they dedicate 10,000 hours of practice to it. 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.800 You've heard that. That comes from Malcolm Gladwell. He was 0:03:28.890 --> 0:03:32.010 a New Yorker staff writer for so many years, and 0:03:32.070 --> 0:03:35.850 he also hosts the podcast Revisionist History. Again, his new book, 0:03:35.890 --> 0:03:39.430 which comes out tomorrow, is called The American Way of Killing, 0:03:39.550 --> 0:03:44.090 The Invention of an Epidemic. Malcolm, thanks so much for 0:03:44.130 --> 0:03:47.330 coming on today. Always interesting to talk to you. Welcome 0:03:47.350 --> 0:03:48.410 back to WNYC. 0:03:48.430 --> 0:03:48.930 Thank you, Brian. 0:03:50.770 --> 0:03:53.490 Well, let's start with the title, The American Way of Killing, 0:03:53.610 --> 0:03:57.030 The Invention of an Epidemic. Why do you call the 0:03:57.090 --> 0:03:58.980 gun violence epidemic an invention? 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.140 Well, I feel like it's not something that's inherent to America. 0:04:04.500 --> 0:04:07.600 I mean, if you look at our peer countries around 0:04:07.620 --> 0:04:10.750 the world in Western Europe or our neighbor to the North, Canada, 0:04:11.270 --> 0:04:13.570 which are in almost every other way very similar to 0:04:13.590 --> 0:04:16.730 the United States— They have homicide rates that are a 0:04:17.370 --> 0:04:20.850 fraction of the United States. And so we're clearly doing 0:04:20.950 --> 0:04:26.700 something peculiar and different that sets us apart from the 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:33.980 normal way that developed 21st century Western democracies behave. So 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:38.490 it seems like we're inventing something, right? America wasn't born 0:04:38.510 --> 0:04:39.070 with this problem. 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.160 In the book, you say the conversation that the country 0:04:43.220 --> 0:04:47.350 tends to have around gun violence is dishonest. That's a 0:04:47.390 --> 0:04:52.110 strong accusation as opposed to kind of well-intentioned but misguided 0:04:52.210 --> 0:04:53.910 or something like that. Why dishonest? 0:04:54.630 --> 0:04:58.250 Well, I use a dishonest very broadly. And what I 0:04:58.490 --> 0:05:04.340 mean by that is that we focus on things that 0:05:04.620 --> 0:05:07.220 we pretend certain things are serious problems when they're not. 0:05:07.660 --> 0:05:11.860 And other things we focus on We pretend certain ideas 0:05:11.900 --> 0:05:14.880 are solutions when they're actually not really a solution. We 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:17.760 avoid conclusions when they're too difficult. I mean, each chapter 0:05:17.790 --> 0:05:21.090 of the book takes a different aspect of the problem 0:05:21.130 --> 0:05:27.210 and shows how we've been fooling ourselves. I have two 0:05:27.230 --> 0:05:30.110 chapters on the Supreme Court and the kind of absurd 0:05:30.170 --> 0:05:33.400 way that the Supreme Court passes down gun rights rulings. 0:05:34.340 --> 0:05:37.200 Or you mentioned in your intro, one of the arguments 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.159 of the book is that We have too few police 0:05:40.540 --> 0:05:43.520 in America. And the reason I say that is very simple. 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:47.820 If you could just compare North American cities with European counterparts, 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.260 I'll use LA as an example. LA and Berlin are 0:05:51.300 --> 0:05:55.219 exactly the same size. Los Angeles has 8,500 police officers. 0:05:55.820 --> 0:06:00.610 Berlin has 18,000. And that's typical of the difference between 0:06:00.620 --> 0:06:03.790 American cities and European cities. If you talk to any 0:06:03.830 --> 0:06:07.140 American police chief, they will tell you they have, they are, 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.640 they are radically understaffed compared to their peers across the ocean. 0:06:11.180 --> 0:06:14.500 Americans think the opposite. We think we're over-policed. Nothing could 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.540 be further from the truth. That's a, to my mind, 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.550 there's a level of dishonesty involved in that, an unwillingness 0:06:20.610 --> 0:06:23.140 to kind of just look at the facts and draw 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.770 reasonable conclusions. Instead, we have a, a kind of a 0:06:26.810 --> 0:06:30.210 conversation that's burdened with all kinds of fantasies about what 0:06:30.250 --> 0:06:30.690 we're doing. 0:06:31.730 --> 0:06:37.380 Well, that's probably the most controversial part of your book. Uh, 0:06:38.350 --> 0:06:42.510 I'll read an excerpt of your words. In 2020, an 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.560 African-American man in Minneapolis named George Floyd was killed by 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.220 a rogue police officer, setting off an extraordinary wave of 0:06:49.280 --> 0:06:52.420 protests around the country over police brutality. The motto of 0:06:52.460 --> 0:06:57.160 the protesters was defund the police. If police were badly behaved, 0:06:57.180 --> 0:07:00.279 the thinking went it was because there were too many 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.850 of them, unquote, from your book. So there's a lot 0:07:03.890 --> 0:07:08.470 to unpack there. For one thing, You know, many people 0:07:08.510 --> 0:07:12.070 would argue, no, this was not a rogue police officer. 0:07:13.090 --> 0:07:17.470 Police officers are not maybe doing things every day like 0:07:17.790 --> 0:07:20.570 that officer did or those officers did to George Floyd. 0:07:21.970 --> 0:07:26.910 But they're a function of something systemic, the way policing 0:07:27.110 --> 0:07:28.790 is done. Do you disagree with that? 0:07:29.270 --> 0:07:33.150 I don't. In fact, I think that's spot on. However, 0:07:33.790 --> 0:07:38.400 the conclusion from that observation is wrong. It is absolutely 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.990 the case that American police as a group use more 0:07:43.060 --> 0:07:46.050 force and are more violent and kill more civilians than 0:07:46.110 --> 0:07:50.850 most other Western police forces around the world. We conclude 0:07:50.890 --> 0:07:52.910 from that that we have too many police. The exact 0:07:52.990 --> 0:07:56.710 opposite is true. Police, when you do an international comparison, 0:07:56.790 --> 0:08:00.520 you find that the most violent and repressive police forces 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.100 in the world are in countries where the police are 0:08:04.140 --> 0:08:07.750 the least numerous in Police violence is a response to 0:08:07.790 --> 0:08:12.370 being overwhelmed. If you feel like you're trying to police 0:08:12.410 --> 0:08:15.070 a large area with a limited number of people, you're 0:08:15.110 --> 0:08:17.470 only at one, not your only option, but one option 0:08:17.950 --> 0:08:21.910 is to project force, is to behave in an overly 0:08:21.930 --> 0:08:25.350 aggressive manner, is to try and demonstrate that you're bigger 0:08:25.370 --> 0:08:30.780 and tougher than you actually are. If you have police 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:33.219 in sufficient numbers, you don't have to behave that way. 0:08:33.500 --> 0:08:35.770 And that's what we see when you do a There's 0:08:36.030 --> 0:08:39.870 two really, really, really wonderful sociologists at Harvard did this 0:08:39.949 --> 0:08:43.929 international comparison where they showed this, that the most violent 0:08:43.949 --> 0:08:45.749 police forces in the country, in the world, are in 0:08:46.370 --> 0:08:48.540 countries where they have the fewest police and the best 0:08:48.569 --> 0:08:50.559 behaved are in the countries that have the most police. 0:08:51.199 --> 0:08:54.679 And this is their argument that police violence is a 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.759 response to being overwhelmed. 0:09:13.059 --> 0:09:15.379 So you argue we need more cops, but also that 0:09:15.420 --> 0:09:18.559 people need to trust them more and work with them 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.469 more in order to be safer. But there's such a 0:09:21.479 --> 0:09:24.030 long history of people not only being let down by 0:09:24.089 --> 0:09:27.790 cops when, you know, maybe they are under enforcing in 0:09:27.870 --> 0:09:31.850 some ways in high crime areas, but actually being brutalized 0:09:31.910 --> 0:09:32.429 by cops. 0:09:32.569 --> 0:09:32.809 Yeah. 0:09:33.189 --> 0:09:36.189 So how do you think that trust can be rebuilt? 0:09:36.569 --> 0:09:40.029 I think I had a really fascinating discussion when I 0:09:40.050 --> 0:09:42.250 was doing my book with a guy named Daniel Oates. 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.910 who is one of the most progressive, thoughtful police chiefs, 0:09:46.989 --> 0:09:48.890 big city police chiefs in this country. And we were 0:09:48.910 --> 0:09:51.429 talking about this. He used to be the police chief 0:09:51.469 --> 0:09:55.829 in Aurora, Colorado, among other places. And he was, you know, 0:09:56.229 --> 0:09:59.959 when I said to him, do you have too few 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.259 police officers? He was like so wholeheartedly in agreement. He 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:07.900 was like, unbelievable. You don't understand how undermanned we are. 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.739 He talked about what would happen if he had European 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.059 levels of police officers. In other words, what would happen 0:10:15.839 --> 0:10:18.660 if we doubled the size of his police department in Aurora? 0:10:19.300 --> 0:10:22.199 He was saying that would permit me to get my 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.429 officers out of the car, to work closely with community leaders, 0:10:27.030 --> 0:10:30.519 to find out about troubles before they bubble to the surface, 0:10:31.099 --> 0:10:35.220 to have a much closer feel for what's going on 0:10:35.260 --> 0:10:39.929 in schools, because that's where juvenile delinquency leads in many 0:10:39.969 --> 0:10:42.949 cases to more serious crimes down the road. You really 0:10:42.969 --> 0:10:45.189 want to be intervening and getting to know kids before 0:10:45.250 --> 0:10:47.569 they get in serious trouble. He went down the list. 0:10:47.929 --> 0:10:51.080 For 40 minutes, he talked without stopping about all the 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.199 things he could do if he had more police officers. 0:10:53.770 --> 0:10:56.829 And he said, when you have too few, as almost 0:10:56.910 --> 0:10:59.629 every big city police officer, police chief, police department in 0:10:59.670 --> 0:11:03.020 this country does, you can't get your officers out of 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.780 the car. What they're doing is they are racing from 0:11:05.900 --> 0:11:08.900 one emergency to the next and never have the time 0:11:08.979 --> 0:11:11.559 to build those kinds of ties with the community that 0:11:11.599 --> 0:11:15.189 are so important. We have so got this backwards in 0:11:15.209 --> 0:11:17.900 this country and every I could line up every police 0:11:17.939 --> 0:11:20.280 chief in this country and they would say, oh, you're 0:11:20.319 --> 0:11:22.660 absolutely right. I can't do what I need to do. 0:11:23.099 --> 0:11:26.030 They don't want to be, they don't want to have 0:11:26.059 --> 0:11:29.270 a mistrustful relationship with the general public. They don't want 0:11:29.290 --> 0:11:32.130 to have people in their force who use excessive violence. 0:11:32.689 --> 0:11:37.150 They're trapped in this situation because they have half the 0:11:37.189 --> 0:11:39.409 resources of other countries around the world. 0:11:41.290 --> 0:11:44.349 But do you also not think that there need to 0:11:44.370 --> 0:11:51.939 be big reforms? in how the police approach policing. You 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.319 did a stat, which is part of what you do, right? 0:11:55.339 --> 0:11:58.839 You look at data and you try to draw conclusions 0:11:59.140 --> 0:12:02.360 about issues in the world from big data sets. And 0:12:02.439 --> 0:12:06.719 so you were comparing the high rates of gun violence 0:12:06.780 --> 0:12:12.959 in the United States with relatively fewer police to. 0:12:14.699 --> 0:12:17.620 Lower rates of gun violence in cities around the world 0:12:18.179 --> 0:12:20.660 with more police. But I think a lot of people 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:23.540 would argue there are other reasons, at least in addition, 0:12:24.179 --> 0:12:27.599 for the violence in the United States, including the police 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:30.360 violence in the United States, the history of slavery and 0:12:30.380 --> 0:12:34.679 the role of the police early, early on in enforcing 0:12:34.699 --> 0:12:36.640 that being among them. 0:12:36.939 --> 0:12:37.260 Oh, yeah. 0:12:37.319 --> 0:12:39.860 I mean, this is, Brian, I was just talking about 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.039 one chapter in a book with many chapters. You're absolutely right. 0:12:43.199 --> 0:12:44.699 I understand. 0:12:46.339 --> 0:12:48.760 I don't mean to suggest, and I don't argue, that 0:12:48.780 --> 0:12:51.620 this is a problem solely about the police. The police, 0:12:53.099 --> 0:12:56.080 the under-resourced nature of police departments in the U.S. is 0:12:56.239 --> 0:13:00.360 one factor of many that account for this ongoing American crisis. 0:13:01.079 --> 0:13:04.020 And I kind of walk through, you mentioned, for example, 0:13:04.079 --> 0:13:06.500 the legacy of slavery. And I have a whole chapter 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.000 called The Slave Owner's Lament, which talks about how our 0:13:10.079 --> 0:13:14.760 notion of gun rights in America arises out of our 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.579 experience with slavery. The reason the Second Amendment exists is 0:13:18.650 --> 0:13:23.569 that plantation owners in the 18th century, in places like 0:13:23.630 --> 0:13:29.209 Virginia and South Carolina, were very anxious when the Constitution 0:13:29.270 --> 0:13:32.510 was first proposed that they would lose the right to 0:13:32.569 --> 0:13:38.630 have militias, slave patrols. The armed groups of men who 0:13:38.670 --> 0:13:43.829 went around making sure that the slaves were under direct control, 0:13:45.010 --> 0:13:52.189 weren't rising up and protesting or trying to overthrow their overseers. 0:13:53.569 --> 0:13:56.290 And the Second Amendment was an attempt by James Madison 0:13:56.729 --> 0:14:02.429 to mollify the plantation owners of Virginia and South Carolina, 0:14:02.890 --> 0:14:05.549 whose votes were essential for the ratification of the Constitution. 0:14:06.130 --> 0:14:10.909 So when the Second Amendment says, because a militia is 0:14:10.949 --> 0:14:17.490 so central to a safe and secure country, we need 0:14:17.770 --> 0:14:19.870 the right to bear arms. What he's doing is he's 0:14:19.910 --> 0:14:23.300 saying to the slave owners, we're giving you this so 0:14:23.340 --> 0:14:26.460 you can continue to keep your slaves under control. 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.419 And yet, and maybe ironically, you also have in the 0:14:29.460 --> 0:14:33.060 book this bit about the Wild West, but a lot 0:14:33.100 --> 0:14:36.290 of it is in the South. which of course was 0:14:36.609 --> 0:14:41.370 the slaveholding part of the country, that when pistols came 0:14:41.470 --> 0:14:44.570 onto the market in the first half of the 19th century, 0:14:45.070 --> 0:14:48.450 gun violence became a huge issue. And then a lot 0:14:48.500 --> 0:14:51.779 of places that were dealing with this violence, like Texas, 0:14:51.900 --> 0:14:54.920 which we might not guess, and Arkansas, which we might 0:14:54.979 --> 0:14:59.840 not guess, actually instituted pretty strict Gun laws, much stricter 0:14:59.880 --> 0:15:02.479 than they have today. Give us a little of that history. 0:15:02.620 --> 0:15:07.440 Yeah, it is a fascinating kind of deja vu moment 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:12.389 in American history. The exact same argument that we have 0:15:12.430 --> 0:15:16.390 today about gun violence was happening in America in the 0:15:16.710 --> 0:15:21.230 mid-19th century because the arrival of the revolver dramatically changed 0:15:21.270 --> 0:15:24.860 the scale of violence that people were seeing, particularly in 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.830 the frontier West, that all of a sudden, Pistols were cheap. 0:15:29.370 --> 0:15:36.369 They were efficient. You didn't have to reload. You could 0:15:36.390 --> 0:15:39.460 fire six shots at one time. And this created a 0:15:40.020 --> 0:15:43.440 huge spike in the level and the concern over gun 0:15:43.479 --> 0:15:47.840 violence in the United States. In response to that, one 0:15:48.020 --> 0:15:50.320 town after another, and the list of cities and towns 0:15:50.340 --> 0:15:53.980 that enacted very, very strict gun control laws, ordinances in 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.340 response to the rise of the revolver is, I mean, 0:15:57.359 --> 0:15:59.279 it's as long as my arm. It's like all around 0:15:59.300 --> 0:16:02.100 the country, particularly in the South and the West. City 0:16:02.140 --> 0:16:06.200 after city passed laws that said things like, if you 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:08.140 enter our town, you have to give up your gun, 0:16:09.180 --> 0:16:11.580 or you have to pay a massive tax if you 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:13.940 want to buy a gun, or you have to, you know, 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.180 register your gun with the local authorities, or, I mean, 0:16:17.220 --> 0:16:20.200 the kinds of things that we think of as unthinkable 0:16:20.270 --> 0:16:24.820 today were a a matter where commonplace, particularly in the 0:16:25.140 --> 0:16:31.170 so-called Wild West, I have a whole chapter about the 0:16:31.430 --> 0:16:35.289 myth of the Wild West. The Wild West is a incredibly, 0:16:35.350 --> 0:16:37.970 the notion of this kind of violent period on the 0:16:37.989 --> 0:16:42.249 American frontier was incredibly brief because one town after another 0:16:43.250 --> 0:16:47.210 on the frontier enacted these incredibly strict gun control ordinances 0:16:47.609 --> 0:16:50.250 to make sure that when young men came into town, 0:16:53.850 --> 0:16:56.000 armed young men came into town and started drinking in 0:16:56.060 --> 0:16:58.340 the local bars, they had to give up the guns first. 0:16:59.920 --> 0:17:04.800 It's a funny kind of version of American history. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:05.879 So how did it flip? 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:10.800 How did it flip? It flipped because our conversation about 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.680 gun violence became dishonest. If you talk to people, if 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:21.270 you look at the way the public discussion about gun 0:17:21.310 --> 0:17:26.490 violence happened in the mid-19th century, what you see is 0:17:26.610 --> 0:17:29.970 a very kind of honest understanding about what the problem was. 0:17:30.030 --> 0:17:32.290 The problem was young men were getting drunk and were 0:17:32.310 --> 0:17:36.040 settling arguments with pistols, with pistols that were very deadly, 0:17:36.540 --> 0:17:39.960 and that that was causing a spike in homicides, and 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:42.960 that the quickest way to get control over this problem 0:17:42.980 --> 0:17:45.320 was to take away the pistols. So they settled their 0:17:46.060 --> 0:17:51.460 arguments with fists and knives instead of a more lethal weapon, right? 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:54.850 People weren't pretending. They weren't pretending the problem was something 0:17:54.910 --> 0:17:58.870 other than it was. And they weren't erecting some kind 0:17:58.890 --> 0:18:02.170 of ideological barrier to taking that kind of action. It 0:18:02.210 --> 0:18:05.240 was felt that if you were in some, you know, 0:18:05.330 --> 0:18:08.340 roaring frontier town where things were veering out of control, 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:11.440 there was some common sense steps you could take to 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.780 bring them back under control, right? And it wasn't progressives 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:17.970 and bleeding heart liberals making this argument. It was the 0:18:18.010 --> 0:18:21.220 town father's who were tired of seeing young men being 0:18:21.260 --> 0:18:26.560 killed on Friday and Saturday nights in their city. So 0:18:27.360 --> 0:18:31.060 what has happened, I think, is that we've allowed politics 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.190 and ideology to kind of permeate every aspect of this discussion. 0:18:35.830 --> 0:18:41.109 And in my book, I try and stay completely out 0:18:41.130 --> 0:18:46.350 of politics entirely. There is no ideology here. in the 0:18:46.370 --> 0:18:48.670 American way of killing. I'm not making a Democratic argument 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.480 or a Republican argument. In fact, I place the blame 0:18:51.540 --> 0:18:54.420 equally on both sides. This should not, there is no 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:58.800 reason that this argument, this discussion should be partisan. The 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.740 minute you make it partisan, you lose track, lose contact 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:02.380 with reality. 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:05.980 What's the part that you blame on Democrats? 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.140 I think that Democrats have people, that there's a certain 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.380 kind of gun control fetishism that has taken over a 0:19:14.450 --> 0:19:17.580 lot of the progressive response to gun violence. And I 0:19:17.620 --> 0:19:19.920 have no problem in theory with that. Like I've just said, 0:19:19.940 --> 0:19:22.340 I think that this is an important piece of the puzzle. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:31.210 But it can't be the only thing you're doing. Realistically, 0:19:31.250 --> 0:19:33.610 how quickly could we get meaningful gun control in this country? 0:19:33.870 --> 0:19:38.190 The court has been leading, both Congress and the courts 0:19:38.250 --> 0:19:40.750 have been leading the country in the opposite direction for 0:19:40.790 --> 0:19:45.240 a generation. This is, even if it works... This is 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:47.340 a battle that's gonna be 25 or 30 years in 0:19:47.360 --> 0:19:49.900 the making, right? So what do you do in the interim? 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:52.520 If you put all your eggs in that basket, you've 0:19:52.540 --> 0:19:55.030 got nothing to help people right now. And when I 0:19:55.070 --> 0:19:56.889 went in for this book and talked to people who 0:19:56.950 --> 0:19:59.700 are doing homicide prevention on the front lines, they don't 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.480 even mention gun control. Not because they aren't in favor 0:20:02.500 --> 0:20:04.940 of it. They are. But just because it doesn't help 0:20:04.980 --> 0:20:08.920 them right now. With the last two major Supreme Court 0:20:08.980 --> 0:20:12.110 rulings on gun violence, the Bruin case and the Heller case, 0:20:12.510 --> 0:20:15.530 the court is making it harder and harder and harder 0:20:15.910 --> 0:20:18.770 to pass meaningful gun control in this country. The The 0:20:18.790 --> 0:20:23.740 Bruin case took away New York State's handgun law, which 0:20:23.780 --> 0:20:26.440 had been in place for 100 years, in which there 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:31.379 was clear evidence that it reduced suicides by gun in 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:34.000 New York State, dramatically reduced suicides by gun in the 0:20:34.020 --> 0:20:36.900 United States. The court took that away. That's where we're 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.100 going with gun control. We're not winning right now. So 0:20:40.120 --> 0:20:43.050 the question is, we should continue to fight the good fight, 0:20:43.090 --> 0:20:46.790 but that can't be the only thing you talk about, right? 0:20:46.830 --> 0:20:49.240 You've got to You have to broaden your response. And 0:20:49.260 --> 0:20:53.620 I feel like even in doing interviews for this book, 0:20:54.020 --> 0:20:56.640 I find that my interviewers, they just want to talk 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.030 about guns all the time. You can't just talk about guns. 0:20:59.820 --> 0:21:13.470 All the time. Malcolm Gladwell. is my guest with his 0:21:13.530 --> 0:21:16.270 new book about gun violence in the United States called 0:21:16.310 --> 0:21:19.610 The American Way of Killing, The Invention of an Epidemic. 0:21:20.230 --> 0:21:21.330 And Carolyn in St. 0:21:21.390 --> 0:21:21.710 Louis. 0:21:21.750 --> 0:21:24.810 You're on WNYC with Malcolm Gladwell. Hi, Carolyn. Thank you 0:21:24.830 --> 0:21:25.369 for calling in. 0:21:25.390 --> 0:21:31.100 Hi, Brian. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this discussion. 0:21:31.120 --> 0:21:37.700 And my husband and I believe that part of the 0:21:37.740 --> 0:21:42.100 problem is what your guest is talking about the police 0:21:42.180 --> 0:21:48.629 in other countries, their philosophy is that they're to remind 0:21:48.650 --> 0:21:53.710 the people of the law. But in the U.S., our 0:21:53.810 --> 0:21:58.410 police have the philosophy that they are the law. And 0:21:58.450 --> 0:22:03.250 I think if we could just define those two differences 0:22:03.670 --> 0:22:06.310 and take a look at how we might start to 0:22:06.350 --> 0:22:10.030 change people's minds here in the United States, That might 0:22:10.070 --> 0:22:11.790 be an approach. I don't know. 0:22:11.810 --> 0:22:15.810 What do you mean by are the law? Do you 0:22:15.850 --> 0:22:17.910 want to expand on that a little bit and get 0:22:17.930 --> 0:22:19.250 a little specific, Carolyn? 0:22:20.830 --> 0:22:24.780 Well, you know, as we see it, there are so 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:31.119 many situations where there are definitely not enough people to 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:37.619 help with those that have mental illness. and things that 0:22:37.660 --> 0:22:42.240 the police are just not trained to deal with. But 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:47.740 like George Floyd, I mean, if you look at situations 0:22:47.820 --> 0:22:55.860 around the country, it's just that we, our police, think 0:22:55.900 --> 0:22:59.380 that they are the law. And I think that that's 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:03.570 coming down from the top, not just the top of 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.620 the police, department, but I think from the very top 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:11.500 of the administration. And we've got to remind people that 0:23:11.820 --> 0:23:15.300 the police, I think, and I'd like to know what 0:23:15.340 --> 0:23:20.280 your guest thinks, that the police are here to remind 0:23:20.470 --> 0:23:22.490 people of what the law is. 0:23:22.510 --> 0:23:25.530 Carolyn, thank you very much. Malcolm? 0:23:26.550 --> 0:23:30.690 Yeah, so I think she's, I think Carolyn is raising 0:23:30.730 --> 0:23:33.470 an important point, which is, if you go back to 0:23:33.510 --> 0:23:37.080 the The father of modern policing was Sir Robert Peel, 0:23:37.300 --> 0:23:40.830 who was the Englishman who founded the Metropolitan Police in 0:23:40.870 --> 0:23:44.770 London in the late 18th century. And he has a 0:23:44.850 --> 0:23:48.070 famous set of 10 principles of policing, which are as 0:23:48.130 --> 0:23:50.910 relevant today as they were back then. And one of 0:23:50.950 --> 0:23:53.990 his principles, the one I love the most, is the 0:23:54.070 --> 0:23:56.350 police are the people and the people are the police, 0:23:57.830 --> 0:24:00.500 which I think is what Carolyn was talking about, that 0:24:00.820 --> 0:24:03.660 his idea from the very beginning was that the police 0:24:03.820 --> 0:24:07.450 are one of us and there ought not to be 0:24:07.490 --> 0:24:11.360 a clear line between the ordinary citizens and the people 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:14.330 who are charged with reminding us about what the law is. 0:24:15.010 --> 0:24:18.290 And that principle is not lost in America. There are many, many, 0:24:18.330 --> 0:24:23.170 many wonderful police officers and police chiefs in this country. 0:24:23.790 --> 0:24:27.550 But we have these really troubling edge cases like George Floyd, 0:24:28.010 --> 0:24:31.690 which cause an enormous amount of mistrust between the general 0:24:31.710 --> 0:24:35.030 public and the police. And we need, I think, to recapture. 0:24:35.050 --> 0:24:38.410 If you just look at something as simple as what 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:41.700 they call clearance rates, what percentage of crimes are solved 0:24:41.740 --> 0:24:45.000 by the police? In Europe, clearance rates are often for 0:24:45.020 --> 0:24:48.700 a homicide. These sort of 85% to 90% of homicides 0:24:48.900 --> 0:24:55.320 are solved by the police. In many American big cities, 0:24:55.360 --> 0:24:58.550 that number is well below 50%. And why is that? 0:24:58.950 --> 0:25:01.510 Because people don't trust the police, right? The only way 0:25:01.530 --> 0:25:03.610 you can solve a homicide is if people come forward, 0:25:04.730 --> 0:25:07.850 people from the community. So we need, I think that 0:25:08.490 --> 0:25:11.810 part of the thing that needs to be restored is 0:25:11.860 --> 0:25:13.500 that notion that the people are the police and the 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:15.700