WEBVTT - The Gun Machine 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:05.359 Hey, Latino USA listener. So this is a sobering reality. 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:06.360 We know it. 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:10.560 All too many lives are lost to guns across the 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:15.560 United States every single day. Mass shootings have devastated entire 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:19.159 communities in El Paso, in Uvaldi, both of where I 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:23.120 have been tragedies that have broken our collective hearts and 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.320 that we've covered here at Latino USA. And the first 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:30.040 question we usually ask is why why did this happen? 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.640 But a new podcast called The Gun Machine from our 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:37.720 colleagues at WBUR and The Trace, seeks to remind us 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:41.040 what we usually forget, that in this country there are 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:45.400 centuries of history of violence that got us here. Hosted 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:49.279 by reporter Alan Stevens, The Gun Machine looks into the 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:53.760 past to understand where we are now. For example, how 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:59.640 early partnerships between mad scientists, gunsmiths, and a fledgling US 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:03.640 gouvern that actually created the gun industry in the Northeast, 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.080 and a look at how that industry has been partners 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:11.120 with the government well ever since today. We share with 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.200 you episode two where Alan talks to a historian about 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.880 the racist roots of the Second Amendment and he travels 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.319 down to Florida where he talks to black gun owners 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:22.920 about why they carry looking at the link between our 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:25.800 nation's fraud history and why it's so easy to sell 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.360 us guns today. And a warning to our listeners. This 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:35.680 episode includes some explicit language, so be prepared. Here's episode 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:40.120 two of the Gun Machine. 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:44.560 If there's one thing to know about America, it's that 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.200 it's a land of revolution, and no one would know 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:51.240 that better than a Virginia blacksmith with a plan, Gabriel Prosser. 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:59.120 He and his brother had in fact created swords as 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.240 part of their weapons in order to fight this rebellion, 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:03.920 but they knew the swords. 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:08.160 Gabriel and other early American arrivals had grown tired of 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:10.919 working under the boot heel of an institution they had 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:15.520 no stake in creating, no rights, a world where your 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:20.040 life and livelihood were dictated by born status, not merit. 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.960 So he spread the word to nearly a thousand like 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:25.880 minded men with a promise. 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.640 He said that all of those who believed in liberty 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:35.320 would be able to be in this incredible space, would 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:39.160 be able to enjoy this vibrant democracy. 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:44.840 Gabriel's enemies are better armed, organized, and already suspicious of sedition. 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.000 If he and his men were planning on getting out alive. 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.720 His operation would have to be executed sharply, swiftly, perfectly. 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:59.280 The plan was to have basically three divisions. One division 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:03.720 would set a warehouse on fire as a diversionary tactic. 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:06.679 The other division would go to the treasury and get 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.280 the money in order to be able to pay for 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.640 the insurgents. And the other division would go to the 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.360 armory and get the guns and the ammunition that they 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:21.080 needed in order to fight for their liberty. 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.800 You see, Gabriel Prosser and his conspirators were some of 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:31.360 America's first patriots, but you never know it because they 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:36.760 were black. An enemy they were fighting was the United States, 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:42.920 to be specific, the plantation. The gun machine looks a 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.640 number of slave people accounted for nearly forty percent. Sure 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:50.000 you episode two where Alan talks to Historian and his 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:56.760 followers needed guns to take on the government. Gabe's rebellion 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.960 would ultimately be dashed a freak storm on the even 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.920 the attack shook the resolve of the men one more 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:10.119 than the others. In particular, a conspirator named Pharaoh. 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.160 He's sitting out there and the rain and the thunder 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.200 is hitting and every time there was a crack of lightning, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.400 every time there was a burst of thunder. His nerves 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.680 were shattering, and so he was like, Okay, we're gonna die. 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:23.799 We're just gonna die. 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:27.200 He's like, I'm going to be free, but I'm going 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:31.680 to be free by telling my master about this plot. 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:41.680 Altogether, some seventy men would be arrested, Gabriel his brother, 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.360 and twenty three others would be made examples of and hanged. 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:48.760 A few others would be sold to plantations out of state, 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.440 and two would be granted freedom for being informants to 0:04:52.480 --> 0:05:01.880 the government. Many Americans may have heard of the Nat 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:06.280 Turner Rebellion in Virginia or the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina. 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.200 As a black journalist covering the history of American violence, 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.719 I discovered that there were nearly three hundred slave revolts 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.560 throughout the course of American history, most of which have 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:22.599 been purposely erased. And the erasure of those stories is 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:30.920 connected to the gun I'm Alan Stevens, and you're listening 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.039 to The Gun Machine How America Was Forged by the 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:39.760 Gun Industry, a podcast by WBR and The Trace. On 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.039 the last episode of The Gun Machine we explain how 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:46.839 America built its early gun industry. In this episode, we 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.640 have to go back to the actual beginning and ask 0:05:49.960 --> 0:06:00.480 the why, what type of the sign necessitate the need 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:04.279 for not just militaries to be armed but everyone all 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.400 the time? Today we talk about America's foundation a fear 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.960 and how the gun industry was built on top of it. 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:22.919 Chapter two, Why we Carry It's the sixteen hundreds. In 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:25.960 Central Europe, two things are about to happen that will 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:29.680 change the world forever. The first is the invention of 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:34.960 the flintlock musket. Before that, the systems that sparked the 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.440 gunpowder and guns were finicky and wet or humid conditions. 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.640 But the flintluck musket was reliable, battle tested and therefore 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.920 primed to be exported outside of the mild European temperatures. 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.520 And secondly, the Protestant Reformation had swept through Europe. The 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.480 Catholic Church had long banned the sales of European guns 0:06:55.480 --> 0:07:00.320 to non Catholic nations, but Protestant churches didn't care the 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:04.920 Catholics to abandon their policy, sparking a mass selloff. Europeans 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.720 dumping guns into new countries, and it was in Africa 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:13.040 where Europeans will find the closest and most worthwhile commodity 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:17.920 for trade, human cargo. And just like that, the Triangle 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:23.440 slave trade was born. The guns for bodies trade was 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.840 so high that by the eighteenth century, records show gunpowder 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.360 accounted for nearly forty percent of European imports to Africa. 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.000 But the firearm wasn't just the lubricant of the slave 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:38.040 trade abroad, it was also its guarantee right here in America. 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:42.320 The invention of the firearm was a force multiplier. It 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.480 was the gun that made colonial slavery even possible u 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.280 see Berkeley history professor Brian Delay says the firearm now 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:54.960 gave regular working colonists the ability to control those in bondage, 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:56.520 even if they were outnumbered. 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.440 Slavery was a fact in every single colony, and of 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:07.520 course it was concentrated in the southern colonies. And slavery 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:09.239 doesn't work without a weapons gap. 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.560 By seventeen seventy five, before we were the United States 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:19.440 of anything, twenty percent of America's colonial population was enslaved Africans, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.640 most of them living in the South, all of whom 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.000 posed a potential security risk to established order. 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:30.960 This required the able bodied, adult male population of white 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:35.760 colonists to be armed at a far higher rate than, say, 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:39.160 was the case among average working people in Great Britain 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:39.679 at the time. 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:44.280 So, if I was a black person living, say in 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.760 seventeenth century America, how would I go about getting my 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:52.960 hands on a gun? And what opportunities could that make 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:53.920 for me? 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.800 You would have the opportunity to be whipped thirty nine lash, 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:02.400 that's the opportunity that you had. 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:09.920 This is Carol Anderson, a professor of African American history 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.480 at Emmer University, who has been investigating something you probably 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.480 haven't heard about in school, the link between the Second 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:21.679 Amendment an America's long history of slavery and racism. Let 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:23.840 me go ahead and burst that bubble and hurt your 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:28.360 feelings right now, most Americans subscribe to certain myths about 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.440 the foundation of our country. We hold these truths to 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:37.000 be self evident, that all men are created equal, But 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.560 that was never the case. The South had gone all 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:44.400 in on plantation slavery from the start, which brings me 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.880 to the next myth that plantation slavery as a system 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:53.000 just somehow worked, when in fact, the slave economy was 0:09:53.040 --> 0:10:00.600 a dangerous economy, large scale slave rebellions continuously rocked country, 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.240 not to mention many other individual acts of defiance and 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.120 violence in the face of enslavement, enslave people fighting back 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:12.680 against their enslaver. I'm talking about stabbings, beheading shootings, real 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.679 heavy metal shit. But it also meant that plantation societies 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.040 had to function like prison societies. So if you had 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:24.040 to imagine the South, imagine a network of omnipresent slave 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:28.480 patrols on the horizons, contraband and shakedowns, and the constant 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.480 looming suspicion that at any given time these plantation owners 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:35.920 could all get their little slaving heads cut off. In 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.800 sixteen eighty, Virginia prohibits black people from using a gun 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.720 in self defense against white attackers, even if they are free. 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.120 In sixteen eighty one, the Colony of New York bans 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:51.160 black people from having any sort of weapons. Seventeen forty one, 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:55.800 North Carolina's legislature implements state paid bounties for slaves and 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:58.840 the right for patrollers to keep any guns and other 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:03.559 contraband plus off the enslaved as personal rewards during shakedowns. 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.760 And this was all before the Revolutionary War. Even took place. 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.920 By the time the colonies began drafting the Constitution, there 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:16.080 was no standing military, and the creation of one would 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:20.080 be highly regulated. But at the same time, a number 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:24.079 of Southern colonies were concerned with the more internal threat 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:30.120 to their peculiar institution, so they demanded the Constitution include 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.240 a security backstop to their enterprise, give us the ability 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.880 to carry guns, quation surgencies, and support the web of 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.439 slave patrols that had already been established. 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.600 The bad history that we have had about the Second Amendment, 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:51.160 how it gets cloaked in this nobility of the militia 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:55.559 fighting off domestic tyranny and fighting off a foreign invasion, 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.679 when in fact the militia really wasn't really good at 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:04.000 I of those. What it was effective at was putting 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:05.240 down slave revolts. 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:10.120 Without the Second Amendment, many southern colonial forefathers refused to 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.520 ratify the Constitution at all. 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.960 The Second Amendment was the bribe to the South to 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.680 not scuttle the Constitution of the United States and to 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.640 therefore not scuttle the nation itself. And it was George 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.560 Mason talking about, we will be left defenseless if this 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.880 militia is put under the control of the Feds. We 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:35.120 cannot trust the federal government to protect us from these 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:36.000 black people. 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.400 Now, I know what you're thinking, why don't I know 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:43.760 about all this? And that is actually by design. First 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:47.440 and foremost Americans still struggled to talk about the national 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.320 embarrassment that was slavery. We don't like to think of 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:54.800 our society as violent, and after the writing of the Constitution, 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:58.679 it just gets more violent. Like I said earlier, there 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.240 were nearly three hundreds slave uprisings from the country's inception 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:04.960 to the end of the Civil War. And if you 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:09.040 read abolitionist newspaper clippings from the Antebellum era, you hear 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:13.280 of countless other tales of violence and threat escaped slaves 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:17.319 using contraband revolvers to shoot it out with captors, enslave 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.560 women bludgeting to debt their white assaulters, apparent killing their 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:27.040 own child rather than return them to the horrors of servitude. 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.480 But there is another reason we don't know about it, 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.880 and that is a strategic one. Back in the eighteen hundreds, 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:39.280 insurrection was bad for business. In the eighteen sixties, the 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.800 economic value of the enslaved was worth four billion dollars 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.000 and today's money that comes out closer to forty two trillion. 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.600 That was more than all the banks, factories, and railroads 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.960 in the US were worth at the time. Stories and 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:58.200 plans of rebellion were inspired to black people, and the 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.600 US government was aware of this and acutely aware of 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:05.360 similar things going on international with successful slaver votes in 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.240 places like Haiti. So there was a desire to keep 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:11.440 these stories out of public view. 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.680 The Haitian Revolution, I've got to say up front, scared 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:20.200 the bejeebers out of the founding fathers. When you look 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.760 at their correspondence, they're like, oh, my god, did you 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.840 see what just happened in zent domain. Oh if those 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.080 ideas come here, we are going to be in trouble. 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.200 If black people believe that they can be free, that 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:37.000 these ideas about liberty and justice apply to them, we 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:38.520 are doomed. 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.880 So these stories were erased from American history, But that 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:50.000 fear of black people and the need to defend oneself 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.680 from black people didn't go away after the end of 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.280 slavery with the Civil War. In fact, in many regards, 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:58.520 those fears got worse. 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.000 When thinking about what makes America unique, you know, it's 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.120 really not that much of a skip and jump to see, well, 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.440 is there anything to do with our history of enslavement, 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.600 our history of civil war in the ways that we've 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:16.920 thought about who is safe and who is dangerous in 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:17.480 our country. 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.760 Nicholas Buttrick is a professor of social psychology at the 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:24.960 University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has spent the last 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:28.480 couple of years researching how and why America formed its 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:31.560 current gun culture. What he found was a great deal 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:33.680 of how we view the need to carry guns today 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.440 stems from the attitudes formed in the wake of reconstruction. 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:42.040 You have emancipation, and with emancipation comes the rise of 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:46.880 black political power, and for the white Antebellum elite, it 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:51.760 seems as if this is something that cannot stand West. 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:52.520 You're wrong. 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:54.880 I do want to escape too. 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:58.840 I'm so very tired of it all. I've struggled for 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:00.640 food and for money, the. 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.880 Weed and holden piccottontil I can stand in another minute. 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:06.720 I tell you asked that the South is dead. It's dead. 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.600 The Yanks in the common din't gotten. 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:09.680 There's nothing left for us. 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:13.960 This line from Gone with the Wind may seem melodramatic 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:16.680 to us, but for Scarlet o' hear and crew, it 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.920 was an understatement. The American South during reconstruction was a hellhole. 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.960 Akin to any modern post war occupational environment you'd see today. 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:30.040 Law and order was nearly abandoned. Basic commodities were scarce. 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.560 The only thing and ready supply where the newly free 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.240 black Americans beginning to cement their burgeoning political power, and 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:42.040 an avalanche of post war guns. White Americans in the 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.920 South lose their goddamn minds at the new status quo. 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.920 A lot of the speeches that these redeemers were using 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.120 is that they seem to anchor a lot of sort 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:57.600 of southernness, Southern masculinity, ways of restoring a Southern way 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.680 of life in firearms specifically, and I think this makes 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:04.000 a lot of sense that the South, while destroyed physically, 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:06.280 was just totally a wash in firearms. 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.840 Homicide rates were eighteen times higher in the South than 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.400 they were in the North, and these guns were different. 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.119 The Civil War was one of the first conflicts with 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:19.240 mechanized production of guns. Soldiers return home with high quality 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.080 weapons and lots of them. 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.480 And you also have a really dangerous society. You have 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.119 murder rates that are completely out of control and so 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.520 you have a dangerous world with a lot of weapons, 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:33.160 and it maybe makes sense that rich white Southerners might 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:35.840 look to different sorts of ways of picking out how 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:39.520 to suppress black power into rally white power. And one 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:41.480 of the items we think that was really super salient 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:42.639 were all these guns. 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:47.159 White Southerners formed hundreds of so called rifle clubs, claiming 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.680 they needed to defend themselves against black people, even though 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.400 most of the murders at the time were white on white. 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.239 The clubs were actually armed white supremacist groups meant to 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:02.080 intimidate voters and diminish black political power. This started forming 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.600 a modern gun identity and set forth ideas in people 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:09.280 about what the government could and couldn't do. In the 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:14.160 reconstruction South, state constitutions were being rewritten for the first 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:18.160 time black people had political power. Many white Southerners didn't 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:21.600 trust the government to represent their interest, to protect them 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.560 and their sense of order, so they felt they had 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.719 to take matters into their own hands, and guns were 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:32.680 an important symbol. Buttrick's research makes one thing abundantly clear. 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.520 The counties with the highest rates of enslavement before the 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:39.680 Civil War are the places where today we see the 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:45.720 highest rates of gun ownership and by following social media connections. 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:49.879 Buttrick also found that as those same Americans have migrated 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:54.000 around the country, so have those ideas about guns. The 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.719 communities with the deepest social and cultural ties to slaveholding 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:02.040 counties carry similar feelings about gun ownership in the present day. 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:05.919 His research also suggests that while people think of guns 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:09.520 as a defense against physical threats, they're also using them 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:12.359 as a defense against psychological threats. 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:16.760 Guns become a sort of a totem or a charm 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:20.600 that help gun owners to feel their lives are more meaningful, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.679 that they have or control, and that they feel safer. 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.720 It's also an identity that has fueled gun companies and 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:28.520 gun sales. 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:31.320 And so I think that the Civil War and its 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.120 aftermaths set a template, but the template that we've then 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.560 been building on as a society for quite a while. 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.080 And so it's not just that these things happened once 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.320 and ended. You know that there is quite a lot 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.840 of advertising, quite a lot of marketing which is sort 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:51.080 of reinforcing these beliefs that we've had about how guns work. 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.439 And for one hundred years, white people become ingrained with 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:02.520 the notion that firearms in this country equals autonomy, identity, 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.960 and most of all power. And that's all fine and 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:15.639 dandy until black people start getting guns too. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.960 The Black Panthers first made national news just a year 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:21.919 ago when they entered the state. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.760 Capitol and Sacramento armed with rifles and pistols. 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:27.320 In nineteen sixty seven, when the Panthers march on the 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:31.200 Capitol legally carrying guns to protest a newly proposed gun 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:35.359 control bill. Then Governor Ronald Reagan would respond by signing 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:39.199 it into law, banning public carry without a permit. The 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.800 NRA would approve it, would become the state's first major 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:46.080 piece of legislation restricting the right to carry a gun, 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:48.600 and would lead to a slew of gun control laws 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:54.440 targeting black people nationwide. Then the following year, we'd really 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:54.960 melt down. 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:08.879 Martin Luther Kingey twenty minutes ago die. 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:12.520 In the wake of King's death, There'd be over one 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:16.560 hundred uprisings, and Congress would renew a once stalled effort 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:20.000 to limit access to guns. They passed the nineteen sixty 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.000 eight Gun Control Act, which lay the groundwork for modern 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:25.840 laws around who is allowed to buy and sell firearms. 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:28.800 But more importantly, just look at the here and now. 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:35.000 As demographics change, we fragment. The Obama administration sparked record 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.159 gun sales for the time, but it wouldn't hold a 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:42.639 candle to twenty twenty. If COVID had us locked. The 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.880 murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed would 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:47.560 get us absolutely loaded. 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:00.840 These are not acts full protests. 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:06.560 These are acts of domestic durrah arresting. One person shot 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.840 and killed at a Black Lives Matter protest an Austin Tech. 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.119 When the Proud Boys group showed up, a confrontation caused 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:15.800 a violent street fight to break out. Police ordered the 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:18.320 crowds to disperse, and they also did. 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:31.320 Americans would buy over forty million guns and twenty twenty one, 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:35.520 that's more guns than the entire population of Canada. Five 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:37.760 million of those Americans would be grabbing a piece for 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:40.320 the first time, and it would pour billions into the 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:43.160 pockets of the gun industry. I would watch in real 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:45.159 time as my beat as a gun reporter went from 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.320 niche specialty to sitting front row to the largest wave 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.840 of gun buying and recorded American history. How's that for 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:57.159 job security? And it's not like it's an undercurrent that 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:01.119 gun culture hasn't been afraid to tap into. Make them protest, 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:05.680 make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia, 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:09.639 to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and areas. 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:13.800 In that ad, the NRA calls racial justice protests madness 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:16.159 and calls on Americans to fight them with what they 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:20.640 call a clinched fist of truth. Rifle producer Daniel Defense 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:24.040 ended up in Congress last year where lawmakers grilled them 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:26.760 on using extremist iconography in their ads. 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:29.760 That's a fall knot, and it's a symbol that has 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:32.800 been increasingly embraced by white supremacists, But. 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.640 It doesn't have to be that explicit. I've always been 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:39.119 a gun nerd and growing up I'd cringe at the 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:43.359 number of times I'd come across Confederate flags, Nazi war gear, 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:47.919 end or straight up disdain of anything not quite American. 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:51.439 It's this shadow that no matter how far I go 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:56.480 into the community, is still always there. And don't get 0:23:56.520 --> 0:23:58.639 me wrong, I'm not trying to say that everyone who 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:01.320 is buying a gun is doing so because they are racist. 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:04.800 More so that when your country is founded on a 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.280 fundamental fear of the person next door. Carrying a gun 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:13.399 is a lot more palatable than not carrying one. But 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:16.760 if gun ownership and the gun industry was built on whiteness, 0:24:17.240 --> 0:24:19.480 what does it mean to be a black gun owner? 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:52.200 Now we'll find out in a minute. 0:24:52.520 --> 0:24:53.080 Have you heard that? 0:24:53.320 --> 0:24:54.399 Yeah, that was a gator? 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:59.520 Did not hear that? 0:24:59.520 --> 0:25:03.359 That's pretty grace tatter. And this is the Bunker Club. 0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:07.120 It's a field in Claremont, Florida where hundreds of gun 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:10.440 enthusiasts as symbol in the swamp like humidity to do 0:25:10.800 --> 0:25:14.960 one thing, play with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:19.200 of high powered weaponry. And we're gonna play two. It's 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:23.920 asking me, am, I currently on probation. No, have ever 0:25:23.920 --> 0:25:26.800 been ampudicated as a mentally defective or committed and meant 0:25:27.000 --> 0:25:32.480 to a mental institution. No under influenced. 0:25:32.119 --> 0:25:37.960 Alcohol or drugs or anything negative issued or restraining order, 0:25:38.640 --> 0:25:44.199 Domestic Violence Act, borrowing. Now, have you ever handled a handgun? 0:25:44.880 --> 0:25:46.480 This is pew Party two. 0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:49.760 Yes, you ever handled a rifle or shotgun? 0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:54.320 Yes? Click here to sign. It's a black led shooting 0:25:54.320 --> 0:25:56.560 event and it's the second time it's being held in 0:25:56.600 --> 0:26:00.119 as many years. It's a playground of burns, tires, and targets. 0:26:00.480 --> 0:26:04.960 Have I ever handled a handgun? No, rifler shotgun? No, 0:26:05.400 --> 0:26:07.440 I think I'm the only person here. You can probably answer 0:26:07.480 --> 0:26:08.520 notableth those questions. 0:26:09.359 --> 0:26:11.960 P Party two is an event created by j Jenkins 0:26:12.080 --> 0:26:16.200 Akaj the Shooter, a self described gun tuber, a firearms 0:26:16.240 --> 0:26:17.520 social media influencer. 0:26:17.600 --> 0:26:20.479 Do you Sementein has consistently lost? So I'm gonna get 0:26:20.480 --> 0:26:22.119 a block seventeen A here start, I'm gonna let a 0:26:22.119 --> 0:26:22.800 few rounds off. 0:26:24.440 --> 0:26:27.159