America’s Half a Billion Guns: Jonathan Metzl
April 25th, 2024
”Gun politics are deeply seated in identity.”
Jonathan M. Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and the Director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book is What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms. We discuss lax gun laws and gun ownership as an identity.
The public health narrative is about how guns pose a health risk, a threat to mortality to our bodies. Those who vote based on guns see guns as symbols of power or protection. In fact, many people in the South own guns because they’re afraid of government tyranny. Unfortunately, gun laws have become more and more lax in a country that has almost 500 million civilian-owned firearms. Metzl shares that “We've had a dramatic erosion in the ability of states and towns and the country itself to limit who can own and carry a firearm.”
Follow Jonathan on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/JonathanMetzl
Follow Mila on Twitter:
Sponsor:
Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight! Sign up for a $1/month trial at shopify.com/hopeful.
Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/
Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!
http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&ver=standard
Take the Democracy Group’s Listener Survey!
https://www.democracygroup.org/survey
Want to support the show and get it early?
https://patreon.com/futurehindsight
Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Jonathan Metzl
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
-
Jonathan Metzl Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting future hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like us the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/hopeful. All lowercase.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:23] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
It's 2024 and the future of America is in your hands. Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we are here to bring you an independent perspective about the election this year and empower you to change the status quo.
Gun violence and mass murders in America are so common now that we are inured by the horrifying facts whenever they occur. And that's shockingly often our calls to cure us of this scourge have been centered around public health. But this frame is clearly not strong enough because gun violence is not decreasing. And perversely, states and municipalities are increasingly passing open carry laws. I think every day people understand that the debate about guns is part of the culture wars and the fact that we're mocking politicians for offering the feeble words of thoughts and prayers in response to a massacre, and fully understanding that no change is in sight anytime soon, is proof positive that the current efforts are falling on deaf ears. We're long overdue to change the public discourse.
Our guest today is Jonathan M Metzl. He is the Frederick B Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and the Director of the Department of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University. He's the award-winning author of Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland, and other books. His most recent is What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.
Welcome, Jonathan, and thank you for joining us.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:02:20] Thanks so much. It's great to be here.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:23] So to begin, let's set the stage. You are a gun violence expert and you've been studying it for a long time. We are in a moment where? And you cite this statistic in the book. American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the US military, and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement. In fact, being a gun owner has become an identity. What does that say about American gun culture and how has this culture shaped our society?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:02:53] Well, part of the story I tell in the book is what does that data mean for the soul of our society that we have so expanded, not just gun ownership, but also live with mass gun violence in a way that even ten years ago, our whole country used to stop when we heard about a mass shooting. And now it's no less horrific, but we habituate it the way that soldiers in wartime do. For example, we in part live in a traumatized society that not only has normalized gun violence, but also guns as a means of everyday self-protection. We don't trust governments or other infrastructures that we may be used to. You know, gun safety, in a way, has been individualized. And when that happens, what we see is a dramatic expansion in the idea of who is a gun owner. You mentioned gun culture in your question, but there is no monolithic thing called gun culture. We're nearing 500 million civilian owned firearms right now in this country. That's quite a bit more than one per person. And gun owners right now certainly are conservative white people in the South. But the fastest growing groups of gun owners are black Americans, for example. And black women and Jewish Americans ran out and bought a lot of firearms after the October 7th Hamas terror attacks, and people ran out and bought a bunch of guns during the pandemic when they were worried about chaos and civil society breaking down. And so I don't think public health has failed, but the narrative has not stopped this dramatic expansion in not just who owns a gun, but why people own guns in the first place.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:38] Yeah. The way that you're laying this out, it makes me think that really, people buy guns for their safety. They think that they're going to be more safe if they have a gun, which is why they go out and buy a gun in response to some of these events. So I mentioned in the intro that the current discourse is advocating for gun safety with a frame of public health. And we are, of course, familiar with the statistics of more gun deaths in places where they have loose gun laws versus in places with more restrictive ones. But this feels like fact checking disinformation, which, as we know in
these ongoing post-truth times, is not effective when it comes to mass shootings. Most of the times, people name mental health issues as the primary reason. So just before we discuss going beyond the public health frame, what are those talking points anyway?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:05:28] Well, I hope people read my book and I hope by the end of the book they never use the mental illness narrative again. Now, I don't deny that many mass shooters do suffer from psychiatric symptoms, but the idea that a mental illness caused somebody to murder other people in cold blood is really not borne out by the facts. The narrative itself is that after we have a mass shooting, often conservative politicians will get on television and say, guns don't kill people. Mental illness does. That's what Ann Coulter said. That's what President Trump has said multiple times. We don't have a guns problem here. We have a mental illness problem. Now, I don't deny we have a mental illness problem. We don't put enough money or treatment or infrastructure into treating mental illness in this country. But that's not the same as saying mental illness is causing mass shootings. That's just literally, factually not true. And so what I do in the book, in part, is to tell a story of a mass shooting committed by a clearly mentally ill person, the Nashville Waffle House mass shooting.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:06:31] The shooter was very clearly psychotic, and that was one of the 100 reasons why he committed a mass shooting. But as I tell the story, you start to see all the other 99 reasons that never make it as part of that story access to firearms, uh, living in a state with loose gun laws, conservative ideology that told him that guns were a symbol of his manhood, past history of violence, substance use, all these other factors. And so that narrative blames a stigmatized group of people, those people with mental illness, and it deflects recognition of all the other factors that are involved. And I think the other important part of that story is that as an aggregate group, people with mental illness are much more likely to be the victims of violence, not the perpetrators of violence. And there is a much more dangerous group than people diagnosed with mental illness. And that's the same people who are not diagnosed with mental illness. Sane people are much more likely to shoot other people. And I have that story also in the book as well.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:32] Yeah, well, let's go to the structural reasons first, because I think that makes it easier to understand how sane people end up doing these things. So
let's dig into how we got here, because public opinion, of course, by and large, is actually for gun safety, right. And against things like open carry. And it actually, right before our interview today, my 20 year old son sent me a reel on Instagram that said a majority of Gen Z wants to leave the US. And of those respondents of this survey, 60% of them cited gun violence as a reason. And one reason we have a lot of gun violence is that we have a lot of laws that are permissive. And also there's a culture about saying that it enhances your manhood and all that. So tell us a little bit about these interlocking structures that support and promote gun ownership.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:08:21] Right. It's really almost hard to imagine just how loose our gun laws have become in many places. And so really, where do you want to start? I could tell you that really before the 1990s and really before 2008, a Supreme Court case called the Heller decision. General knowledge, general sentiment, general legal precedent in this country was that guns were the domains of public safety officers or people actively in military units or things like that, or hunters. So we really had select criteria of people who even could own their own guns, let alone carry them in public. And in the aftermath of this really landmark case, the Heller decision in 2008. But more than that, all the cases that have followed, and most notably, a Supreme Court case called the Bruin case a year and a half ago, we've had a dramatic erosion in the ability of states and towns and the country itself to limit who can own and carry a firearm. And so in the South, where I am, we have this kind of ridiculous reading of the Constitution. It's called constitutional carry. And the assumption there is that anybody can own a gun, buy a gun 18 and older without any permit, background check, training, etc., etc.. And so part of what we're seeing here is just an explosion in gun sales. We have so many guns, such few laws. And the irony is that things like mass shootings actually spur more gun sales, because then people are more afraid and the gun becomes their answer. And so we've almost had the complete erosion in parts of the country of any laws that say that if you're somebody who is not like a wanted felon on the loose or somebody who has a restraining order or something like that, you can just go out and buy an AR 15 if you're 18 and older in. Many parts of the South. And really the question now is and that's why the 24 election is, is so important, is that going to become American policy, or is this something that is just going to be limited to the South?
Speaker3: [00:10:41] Hmm.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:42] I want to talk to the Bruen decision, because that chapter in your book was so illuminating. But before we go there, I was wondering about some of the more popular gun safety legislations that people talk about, like red flag laws and background checks. And you point out that it puts the onus on family members to report on their own. And it rightly feels to many people like an encroachment on individual freedoms. So what would be a better policy for collective safety in public places, whether that's schools, restaurants, places of worship or parades?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:11:17] Well wonderful question. Thank you. I think there are two parts of the answer, if you don't mind. The first part is that I don't take the absolute party line in this book. I think people who know my work are going to be very surprised by the argument, because I'm quite critical of public health approaches for exactly what you're saying, which is not taking into account, really, the psychology of gun ownership. Many people in the South, in particular, own guns because they're afraid of government tyranny. And so the interventions that might make sense in Los Angeles or New York or Boston don't make sense in the South, where most of the guns are. And so I'm quite critical of public health interventions like background checks and red flag laws, in part because I feel like we've overstated their effectiveness in terms of stopping many kinds of shootings, but also because they reinforce the stereotypes that many gun owners are afraid of. For example, when you do a background check, you're literally entering your name into a federal government database that runs your past priors through that database. And so people with concern about government surveillance are not going to want their name in that database, which is many gun owners, but also many black gun owners. I interviewed, for example, said, yeah, I've been incarcerated or I've been stopped or I've been something. And so they felt kind of forced into buying their guns in illegal gun markets because of this federal database. Now, you know, we do databases all the time when you buy a car or when you buy a blender, something like that. And so it's not like I'm against that idea, but I just I'm trying to highlight why there's resistance to it and red flag laws.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:12:57] The other intervention you mentioned, well, again, I think it's a great concept that somebody who's spiraling toward violence, their family members are probably going to be the people who identify that. But with a red flag law, what you're doing is you're effectively inviting a safety officer, like a police officer into your home to do a safety check on your relative. And if that person is deemed to be a
threat, then you haul that person in front of a judge who can do a temporary block on that gun. And so that makes sense. When we read about mass shootings, it's like, why didn't they do that? But if you're living in gun country where I live, the idea that you're going to invite the cops into your home is just not super popular. And the idea that the answer to a problem is to limit somebody's God given Second Amendment rights, people aren't excited about that to understate. And again, white conservatives don't think that taking away someone's gun before they've committed a crime is justifiable. But black gun owners were not really thrilled about inviting the police in to assess their crazy uncle and things like that. And so it's not like I don't believe in these interventions. I'm just trying to highlight why, particularly where I live, the places where there are the most guns by far. They're just not as effective as they might seem. If you hear about a mass shooting on the news and say, well, gosh, why didn't they do that? So that's a long first part of the question. Do you want me to stop? Keep going.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:29] Tell us, tell us the second part. Yeah.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:14:30] So the question is then what do you do about that. Right. And again, I think, of course there should be laws. But in the book I talk about new frameworks. We might think of that join public health expertise with interventions from business, from urban planning, from a bunch of other fields. In other words, I think we need to make gun safety much more palpable and tactile and real for people. And so I argue that we could use gun safety to, for example, create something called gun safety entrepreneurialism. There's all this literature that fixing streetlights and building parks and creating jobs programs, those actually lower gun violence more than many of the laws, we say. And so we've only tried this in South Chicago. Why don't we try this for the entire country? That if we do kind of urban or suburban or rural revitalization and tie it to all of these opportunities, you know, I mean, for me, this kind of idea of fixing the streetlights was a bigger metaphor for how we could invest in infrastructure more broadly. But use. Gun safety as a metric for all of this structural renewal that in a way we would be lowering gun crime for sure, but we would be doing it without mandates and would be doing it in ways that were also very economically viable, that saw all this economic growth. And so that's one example of the structural competency of gun safety that we should take a structuralist approach that builds structures that have reward systems built in that make gun safety seem viable. And in a way, to me, that's the lesson of other countries. It's not just that they have strong gun laws, it's also that they
have structures that encourage community and civic participation in ways that make sense to people, so that they feel like they don't need to carry a gun around their neighbors in the first place.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:29] Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about the example in South Chicago, because I think most people don't know it.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:16:34] Yeah. So in South Chicago, there are all these incredible community organizations. They've built this entire metric of, first of all, it's putting people in networks where it's almost like a kind of loose. I kind of joke that it was kind of like an AA model, but they're in contact with their pastors and they're in contact with their sponsors, and they're talking to people all the time. And if they feel like they're having violent, homicidal, or suicidal urges, there's an entire support system that comes and supports them in the real world. It's not just to send a text or on social media or something like that. And so partially they're able to identify like, where are the hot zones already? We know that, for example, most shootings happen within predictable social networks. And so they identify high risk areas. Then they also partner with all of these civic and business organizations, you know, bookstores and jobs programs and internet providers and supermarkets and try to think like, how can we actually use this rhetoric to rebuild distressed neighborhoods? And what they see is, in many cases, a financial or economic turnaround of the neighborhoods themselves, which also lowers gun crime. And so the data is there about why civic engagement and infrastructure building work. But for me, there was a very generalizable model of how we could be encouraging this kind of participation more broadly, and using gun violence and shooting as a metric for renewal across our country.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:05] Yeah. I mean, I think we have said this many times on the podcast that what we really need to do is invest in communities and not just dollars, but our time, our effort and taking part and being there for each other all the time. Because we live there, we live together. We we are humans.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:18:21] And also it's a lot it's a lot more cost effective to make distressed areas, but all areas more economically vibrant than it is to pay massively high air bills from gun trauma, like it's actually way cheaper and way more lucrative in the long run. So even if you're just an economist, doing it this way to me makes more
sense. But again, it's also working against alienation. And I guess one other point to think about in this regard is that there are all these models we have algorithms already of how do we get people to protect their health and work in communities. I mean, that's how health insurance premiums work, for example, and many other examples of algorithms that surround our life and reward people for working together to improve their health. And so it was mind boggling that we hadn't really applied these in a structural way to gun violence.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:13] Well, you just mentioned alienation, and that makes me wonder about the role of racism and white supremacy in terms of gun ownership. So how how do race and white supremacy fit into the picture?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:19:29] In the book, I'm telling the story of the Waffle House mass shooting in Nashville in 2018. For anybody who remembers that a naked white shooter goes into a waffle House in South Nashville, and it's entirely full of black and brown young adults and kills four incredible young adults, injured four others. And so I couldn't write this book and not talk about what does it mean to be a white male gun owner. And part of that story is that we have a couple of centuries history of laws in this country that basically validated the rights of white men to be seen as patriots, but that was from pre colonial America. Only white men could carry guns in public, and hundreds of years of that of laws, particularly in the South, reinforcing the rights of white men to carry guns, and also a bunch of examples of efforts to disarm everybody else. You know, the nightriders, the Ku Klux Klan were trying to disarm black Americans, and the so-called Black Codes in the South were efforts to disarm Black Americans. And so carrying a gun in public was seen as a white male prerogative. So part of that story inflects the story I tell in the book. You know, when you take away all the gun laws, pretty much anybody can buy a gun. And that's true. That's kind of the goal of gun sellers is they realized by only selling guns to white men, they were really limiting their market for the product they were trying to sell.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:21:00] And so now it is true that we've evened that out kind of exponentially, like the efforts to market guns to black Americans are quite active after the murder of George Floyd, for example, tons of ads to black and Latino Americans saying the police could kill you. You don't want to be caught unprepared. It's time for you to arm up and things like that. And so this is seen as a growth market for gun sales.
But it's also true that because of history, a white man carrying a gun into Walmart and a black man carrying a gun into Walmart elicit completely different responses. The white gun owner is seen as a patriot, and the black gun owner is seen as a threat or a robber or a criminal, and they're treated accordingly. And so, I mean, the guy I tell the story about in the book, he has years of violent threats. It was no surprise to his relatives that he became a mass shooter, but because he was ultimately seen as a white man with a gun, there was nothing anybody could do about it because he coded as a patriot until the second he pulled that trigger.
Speaker3: [00:22:05] Mhm.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:06] Yeah. Thanks for explaining it so clearly. So you just mentioned of course, the book is about the Antioch Waffle House shooting. Why did you write about this incident and not another?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:22:15] What I wanted to do was to work against the idea that we've habituated this. And so what I wanted to say is, look, if we tell the story of one mass shooting, if we slow it down and just tell the before and after of what happened in one story, look at what we learned. We learned so much by telling the story of one shooting. And so part of what I was trying to do is work against the human nature of habituation, which is what we do. We hear a story, we feel it. It's horrible. But research shows that within four days, if you're not someone directly affected you, go on to another story. Even the worst mass shootings, that's the case. And so you know why I called it. What we become is we've become a nation that habituates something that we really shouldn't be, I mean, soldiers. Habituate trauma because they have to go fight the battle the next day. But in civilian life, you really shouldn't have to do that. But the other part of it, again, is that this was also a much bigger story for me. This story of a naked white man with an AR 15 in a waffle House. It was 2 a.m. the clubs had closed. These were celebrating young adults. And so a naked white man with an AR 15, in a waffle House full of black and Latino Americans to me, was a metaphor for the bigger pathologies of guns and shootings in America. And so the question is kind of a question of values, a question of democracy. I talk about that a lot, that our society can either learn from these shootings and say, we never want this to happen again, or we can do what the state of Tennessee did, which is that they ended up reinforcing the rights of people like the white gunman, which to me was the racial horror story beyond the
shooting itself. And so really, race really impacts this particular mass shooting. And I'm a scholar of race and guns and mental illness. And so in a way, it tied in, in so many ways to things I've written before.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:22] We're taking a break to hear about our sponsor, Shopify, and we'll be back with Jonathan Metzl in a moment.
But first. Sherlock and Watson. Phineas and Ferb. What about the perfect duo when it comes to growing your business? That's you and Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage, to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million order stage? Shopify is there to help you grow. Whether you're selling custom stickers or offering original recipe books, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. You heard that right! From their all in one e-commerce platform to their in-person POS system. Wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify has got you covered. Shopify also helps you turn browsers into buyers, with the internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. Sell more with less effort thanks to Shopify Magic, your AI powered all-star. Shopify powers 10% of all e- commerce in the US. It's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. What I love about Shopify is how no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash hopeful. All lowercase. Go to shopify.com/hopeful now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com/hopeful.
We also want to tell you about a podcast we think you'll enjoy called "Home Interrupted." Climate change affects everyone, but it doesn't affect everyone equally. Immigrants often bear a unique burden due to climate change, but they're also leading the way with impactful solutions. Feet in Two Worlds, the news outlet and journalism training organization for Immigrant Voices, presents "Home Interrupted." From flooded basement apartments in New York City to indigenous Maya farming practices in Nebraska, "Home Interrupted" by Feet in Two Worlds brings you deeply reported
original stories from across the United States. Episodes drop each week starting April 2nd. Find "Home Interrupted" by Feet in Two Worlds wherever you listen to podcasts.
And now let's return to my conversation with Jonathan Metzl.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:30] Well, you just mentioned democracy. We talked about elections. It's 2024. It turns out that gun owners are a super reliable voting bloc. To your point, in Tennessee, they made it easier for gun owners to own guns. And the in the wake of this, on Super Tuesday, Congressman Tony Gonzalez of Texas, who also represents Uvalde, where the mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two teachers. He did not win his primary outright, so he'll have to go to a runoff in May. And one of the reasons is because he voted for the bipartisan gun violence measure after that mass shooting and was challenged by a Second Amendment activist. So I feel like this is a perverse sense of accountability. I think we agree. And so the person who voted for gun safety legislation is potentially going to lose his seat. And most notably, another Texan, Beto O'Rourke, is deemed unelectable in Texas for saying, "we're coming for your AR-15s!" I'm not sure why gun safety advocates are not a more reliable voting bloc, and I feel like one obvious reason is that being pro gun safety legislation is simply not as sexy, you know, as defending your freedom to carry. So if you were a politician, how would you be playing hardball politics against lax gun laws?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:28:50] Well, I think partially it's first to understand why is that the case? And just to put this in, I think the most simplistic terms that I can, or clear terms that I can, to even to think about guns through the rhetoric of prevention, it seems universal, but it's not. Liberals think about guns in terms of the negative effects that guns can have on bodies. But I interview hundreds of conservatives in this book, and you'll see that they don't see guns that way. They see guns as power, as protection. And while we were successful as liberal public health people, for example, getting people to, for example, see cigarettes as health risks. You know, you walk into a restaurant, if you smell a whiff of secondhand smoke, you are all over that person. If someone gets in your car, they don't put on their seatbelt. You're going to tell them, put on your seatbelt or I'm not starting the car. We convinced people rightly that these were health risks, but we didn't convince a lot of conservative gun owners that guns were health risks. And so liberals often think about guns in terms of the threats they can pose
to mortality, to our bodies, to other bodies. But the people who own the guns or who vote based on the guns, they see guns as symbols of power or of protection. It's not about a health risk for them. And so if you're voting based on guns, it probably means that you see your gun as your protector. And any language of casting it as a risk is just not how you see the weapon. Part of what I would do is to think about, are there power rhetorics? I mean, are there other ways? You know, I'm kind of slow to answer here because I don't want to give like, "oh my God, here's exactly what these politicians exactly should do." But for me, step one is to understand how we got here. And we have cast gun safety prevention as the rhetoric that is, as we say, common sense. And I think it's just step one to realize why that is not common sense to a lot of people who are voting based on guns, who see guns again, as their symbols of power.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:01] Um hum. Well, you just mentioned that you talk a lot of conservatives who own guns, and to them this is not common sense at all. And of course, you argue that we need a new unifying narrative to counter the master narrative by the NRA that implies that gun ownership protects people and places. So when you talk to these gun owners, what are things that make their eyes shift, something that you think gun owners can embrace about having fewer guns, at least in public spaces?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:31:32] Well, even the way you ask that question, I don't think I would be able to convince people of having fewer guns. So it's just interesting for me when I do my interviews. For example, if I ask them, what could we do to get you to have fewer guns? I am outing myself as somebody who's not who's not on their side.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:51] Well, let me rephrase. Let me rephrase.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:31:53] Well, I'll give you a counter example just to put this in context, which I thought was pretty interesting. I've been doing this a long time and in a lot of different venues, but one is that we hosted an art exhibition in downtown Nashville about guns and gun trauma to get people to kind of come together to talk about art. And so it was guns and art, and we had 45 pieces and maybe 42, I would say were either about gun trauma or gun violence or we have too many guns or gun safety or the power of gun control politics. And then we had three that were people who loved their guns, and they painted their AR-15. In very vivid color, and I was standing in front of one of those pieces with the artist and he said, "do you find my work beautiful?" And I said,
"well, yeah, actually it has a certain beauty." I mean, he had painted like almost an Andy Warhol AR-15 with lots of colors. It was quite arresting and powerful. And I said, "yeah, it actually catches my attention a lot". And he said, "does it make you want to carry an AR-15?" And I said, "well, no, actually it doesn't. It just beautiful art, but it doesn't make me want to carry an AR-15," and he said, "well, what piece of art would make you want to carry an AR-15?" And I said, "there's probably none, to be honest. I mean, unless I was actively living in a war zone, there's probably no art that would convince me to carry an AR 15 in my daily life." And he said, "well, how do you think I feel every time all these liberals come to me and say, well, doesn't this story or this shooting or this news make you want to give up your gun? It's nothing. There's nothing you can say to me because my gun is my identity. It's my sense of beauty and power. This is how I feel about my gun. And it's similar to you." I just thought it was such an interesting story, because I guess now when I do my interviews, I flip the narrative on my head a lot of times and I'll say, what could this person say to me to get me to change my politics? And it's really hard, right? Because gun politics are deeply seated in identity and the things we're asking conservatives to do a lot of time abut their identity. And so for me, it was just this really eye-opening moment about maybe the answer here is not about talking to people about their identity. It's building structures that reward cooperation and disincentivize competition in ways where that we could solve this problem without having to try to ask people to change their identity. Now, I understand that we are facing an issue, which is we just have an awful lot of guns in circulation. But I do think it's important to remember it took the NRA 40 years to get here. And as much as I know we're all thinking about '24 right now, it's also true that this is a long game. And so changing those structures is going to take a long time to reverse.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:40] You're absolutely right. We're not going to succeed at asking people to change their identity. I feel also very strongly, and I say this all the time, that you're not going to change people's political beliefs. It's like asking them to change religion. That's incredibly difficult. You know, you're going to waste a lot of time there without success. But you also just mentioned the NRA and their long game. So they are clearly a big part of how we got here in radicalizing, really, gun owners and by extension America at large. And I've been wondering what the end goal is here for the NRA, because it seems to me that it can't just be about selling more guns. And one logical conclusion in my mind is that the aims are to destabilize American democracy, which sounds super dramatic, but what do you think?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:35:30] You know, there's a lot of talk now about all the financial problems that the NRA and everybody's like, "oh, they're going under." And I'm like, you know, the NRA could end tomorrow and their work would be done. In many ways. The NRA was part of a bigger movement with the Federalist Society and others to overtake the American judiciary. And so part of what the NRA and others realized was that if we control the judges, we control the country in a way, because if you have people who are A-rated NRA judges on the Supreme Court, you're overturning the will of voters, for example, in New York City who voted in gun safety laws that were deemed, quote unquote, unconstitutional. Don't get me started about that. In a way, the goal of the NRA was to overtake the judiciary. And you see this across the country. I don't think the gun safety movement was in any way attuned enough to what has been happening over the past decade, 15 years. I mean, in Alabama, I think it was a 35 year old lawyer with no trial experience. Zero became a lifetime federal judge solely based on his belief that there should be no gun laws, and he was an avid NRA supporter. We've got people like this in lifetime appointments in major courts all across the country. And so part of the story of reversing the NRA is going to be to overturn just the effect they've had on the judiciary. It's not just about like gun laws for every day. It's about the power. And part of why that is, is because those judges, they don't just hear gun cases, they hear cases about free speech, about voting rights, about women's reproductive choice, about all these other factors. And so these quote unquote NRA judges who were put in place based on this particular litmus test are also now impacting democracy in all of these other ways. And so to kind of take back the country, if you want to use that language, it really is going to take a concerted effort. Take back, in a way, the judiciary in a more centrist platform. And again, that's part of my critique of public health, is that we paid attention to the health effects of guns, which are massive, but we didn't pay attention to the judiciary effects of gun politics. And in a way, that was a blind spot for us until it was too late. Part of the story is not so much to end democracy. It's to reframe the entire country through this very conservative lens. It was very useful to have an organization that was so powerful. And then, of course, it links to money they get from Russia, for example, and all these other international movements. And so it's not just in the United States.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:11] Well, speaking of the judiciary and long term goals, you end your book with the Supreme Court Bruen decision. And I was struck that you cited the
transcript of Justice Alito verbatim. It was incredibly illuminating. I had not read it before. So for the benefit of the audience, what exactly is the Bruen decision and what are the long term repercussions for all of us, not just in New York?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:38:38] Well, thank you for asking me this. The book's been out a month, and you're the first person who's asked me about this, and I want people to read the book because it's a compelling story. I mean, there's incredible stuff about the mass shooter. But this Bruen case was basically, there have been certain public carry gun laws on the books for over a century in New York. It governs the city's ability to not let people carry guns in the subway, which is, as we record this, a very big deal, because subway crime is a big issue in New York right now and not carry guns in Central Park and in Times Square on New Year's Eve, where there are a bunch of drunken tourists. And while they're biking with a Citi Bike down Second Avenue and things like that. So this, this city basically had said, look, New York is not rural Kansas. We have a really dense urban area, and we should be able to limit that people who carry guns in New York should only do so if they have a compelling reason to do so, like you're being stalked by your ex-partner, or you are a private investigator, or you work in a bodega that has been robbed a couple of times, then you should be able to have a gun. But just everybody shouldn't be able to carry a gun. And this was a totally fake case -- as many are. They found two random gun owners who said that they were being oppressed because they couldn't carry their guns from their home to their target practice, blah, blah, blah. And they built up this whole narrative about the oppressive nature of these New York gun laws that weren't letting people exercise their Second Amendment rights, and those gun laws were oppressive and racist and all these factors. And they have been trying cases like this for a long time. But the difference now is that the Supreme Court is dominated by people who were chosen for cases like this, right? NRA-rated judges and also all of our good old time friends. Alito, as I talk about in the book, being top among them. And the transcript is just unbelievable. It's just unbelievable. So I'm glad you recognized just how crazy it is, because on one hand, the City of New York says, here's all this slam dunk data that we have that says that, for example, having everybody armed in a subway car is a really bad idea, that there's a ton of literature about how defensive use gun shootings lead to all these civilians getting shot and people misperceive just random noises or or stimuli as being shootings, and they whip out their guns, and there are people who are coming home from bars and are drunk and they have guns and all these things. It's just like a really dumb idea to have
armed people in subway cars. And that seems kind of obvious. And so New York had all this completely compelling data. And the flip side was Alito, who kept saying, "well, what if I'm coming home in the middle of the night and Mr. Saggy Pants gangbanger mugger," like, all these just incredible racial stereotypes "could be lurking, and I might need my gun to defend myself." It was a total racial stereotype of like, why people imagine they need guns. And that was the argument that carried the day that in a way, you could be in a subway car, you could be in there with Mr. Saggy Pants gangbanger, you could need your gun. And so what they did is they overturned 100 years of precedent in New York and other cities that let the city regulate guns in public places. And that has profound, profound implications for public safety in dense urban areas in blue cities in particular, because the governments now, in effect, can't regulate guns. And it leads to I mean, I know there's a lot of controversy, for example, about Governor Hochul in New York bringing in the National Guard, basically, and saying bag checks and all this kind of stuff. But what people need to realize, no matter what side of that they're on, is that the city has lost one of its main vehicles for assuring public safety, which is gun laws. And so it's really an uphill fight in the aftermath of Bruin. That's part of the story. And then the other part is I talk about in the book is that this idea of speculative threat imagining you're carrying a gun because of who might be a danger is totally tied to race and racism. And so it ends up having incredibly disparate racial outcomes that I think are also important for, for people to know.
Mila Atmos: [00:43:23] Yeah. Well, thank you for mentioning that. New York Governor Hochul has just called in the National Guard to the subway system. And as a frequent subway rider, I have to tell you, when I first read the news, I thought, what for? You know, like, there's so many police officers, honestly, they look like they're not doing very much in the subway station. They're hanging around, they're looking at you. They don't actually catch subway style jumpers. And and I just kind of feel like, "And now we need the National Guard?!" But now now that you're explaining it in this way, it makes so much more sense.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:43:59] Because I would just say that I found this so much. It was so interesting in my research. Like I would ask people in the middle of Kentucky, I would say, "you know, what about gun laws?" And they would say, "well, if I go to New York and I'm riding the subway," like people would bring up the subway all the time in the middle of like, nowhere rural Kentucky. And they'd be like, "If I'm in New York and
I'm riding the subway and I can't protect myself against Mr. Saggy Pants gangbanger," who I guess is like, it's like SpongeBob SquarePants of the right or something. And so I'd be like, "well, have you ever been on the subway?" And they'd be like, "well, no, I've never been to New York. But if I ever do go..." So like this idea of the subway as being like the place where there are a lot of dangerous Black people, it is like urban myth level stuff. And the reason I think that's important to think about in terms of what's happening in New York now is because if you do let tons of guns in the subway, ultimately there's going to be a horrible shooting. I mean, that's just kind of the way it works. Every place else in the world is the more guns, the more shootings. You're increasing the risk of there being shootings. And so part of what I argue that the goal of the Bruen decision was not to praise New York, but to kill it.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:45:19] In a way, having a subway mass shooting would just be like the greatest thing that ever happened to people in red state America, because they'd be like, you see, subways are totally unsafe, and therefore we need more guns and no more gun laws and gun laws don't work. That's what's happened in Chicago and other places. And so even though I understand deeply the civil liberties aspect of this and the trauma of stop and frisk, for example, that many people still have in a place like New York, but I would also say that there's a bigger, long game being played here, which is that New York needs a way to keep guns off the subways. And if there is a mass shooting in a subway, for example, it's just going to have all these perverse effects. That was a very long retort. But I just think it's important for people to recognize, at least from the Bruen angle, why safety in subways just has all these bigger implications. I mean, honestly, I don't think it was handled greatly by New York. You can't just have soldiers show up one day. But I would say that in the bigger context, there is an issue of subway safety, which is tied to all these bigger issues.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:26] Um hum. Yeah. Well, just gave me chills. Everything you just told me.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:46:30] Yeah. It's important. It's important to know. I don't think they explained it, but I think it's important to know.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:35] Yes. Thank you. Thank you for explaining that. I think this is incredibly helpful. So this is obviously an election year. And we at Future Hindsight are
always looking for ways to bolster our civic action toolkit. What are two things an everyday person can do to be a part of the solution to end gun violence?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:46:53] Well, I think first is to educate people how much elections have consequences. In other words, having three new NRA judges on the Supreme Court radically changes not just life, but civil liberties in places across the country, including New York City, but other places. And I think another four years of Trump overturning the judiciary with these particular judges, it will change life to almost ways that are unrecognizable. And I think that's true for guns. It's also true for civil liberties. And so people are arguing about a bunch of reasons about why they are or aren't voting. And somebody told me the other day, "well, it doesn't matter if Trump or Biden wins." I'm obviously giving you an answer that's very partisan. But hey, I'm partisan. I don't think people fully recognize the implications for civil liberties of who wins this election. In Tennessee, where I am, we have a gerrymandered red state control, and they've just made protesting on government property a felony. So if you don't have a permit to go protest against a mass shooting, for example, you can go to federal prison for 10 to 13 years now or something like that. And so that's kind of what's coming, right? Judges and legislators really matter. And so the implications of this election for civil liberties are so dramatic, and they're so hidden by all the other stuff we're arguing for. So I just think educating people about judges should be reason number one. And reason number two. I think those are both the reasons, because I just think that in a way, if that's not the driving force for people voting, not sitting this out, our great, great great grandchildren are going to be trying to fight back for liberties that we take for granted right now. And I really think that that's kind of what's at stake.
Mila Atmos: [00:48:45] Hear, hear. So here's my last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:48:51] There's a lot of recognition. I mean, it's it's funny, but being a gun researcher for now, over 15 years, there's been a lot of kind of Cassandra- like you're screaming or you're like the person in the scary movie who you see the monster, and many people don't. And I'm hopeful that people are mobilized right now. There's no mystery about what grassroots civic organizing means. And I also am encouraged because there are organizations like March for Our Lives. David Hog does incredible work. All those people, they're not just looking at gun laws. They're having
people run for, you know, Secretary of state and election board and school board and library board, all these things that we kind of forgot about. And so I think being challenged like this has led to a lot of civic participation. And people are realizing the importance, really, of every single election. Right? I think we've gotten quite maybe blasé about it or taken it for granted. And now we realize that, as you say, it's a daily fight and that every, every single election really, really matters.
Mila Atmos: [00:49:54] Yes, I totally agree. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for writing this eye opening book. Congratulations. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Jonathan M. Metzl: [00:50:04] Thanks so much. It was my honor.
Mila Atmos: [00:50:07] Jonathan Metzl is the Frederick B Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and the Director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University; and the author of What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. He's the policy director at the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit organization that aims to bolster the United States by shaping immigration policies and practices grounded in evidence, compassion, justice and fairness. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks so much for listening. If you like this episode, you'll love what we have in store. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, so you'll catch all of our upcoming episodes. Thank you! Oh, and please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:51:42] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.