22. Land of Unlimited Gun Violence

Gun violence is a political problem, a democracy problem, an exceptionally American problem. We decided to do this episode after the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. But that was over three weeks ago, and so there have been so many more mass shootings since, so much more death and destruction. In the U.S., it’s always right after and right before a mass shooting, regardless of whether we apply the term to shootings in public space or in the home. And day after day, myriad social interactions and conflicts escalate because guns are ever present. We start our discussion with a personal reflection on how we react to the news of mass shootings, and how our thinking around this issue is shaped by the fact that we are parents, fearing for the lives of our children. We then reflect on why this issue is so complex: All the pathologies of American political culture, all the dysfunction of the political system, all the radicalization of the Republican Party are on full display; gun violence is not just a random fact of life in the U.S., but the result of an underlying social order that puts the right of some people – of white men, specifically – to defend their place and status against any and all threats, real and perceived, and defend it by violently lashing out, by preemptively using excessive violence, above all else. The U.S. is a country built on and around that social order, in which powerful political and economic forces have decided that the right to use violence, be violent, and access guns to be violent, must not be meaningfully restricted. We put the U.S. situation in an international context. Among comparable nations, the U.S. has by far the most guns, the most gun violence, the most mass shootings, the highest homicide rate – all of it by a wide margin. Gun violence is also one of the key factors for why life expectancy at birth has been falling in this country - falling significantly behind comparable nations. Here it is, the true face of American exceptionalism. We then discuss gun violence as a political issue, an issue directly related to and intertwined with the struggle over democracy in this country. That discussion has to start with the radicalization of the Republican Party. We try to explain why Republicans are almost uniformly embracing the gun cult and will only ever double down on the gun-toting militancy conservatives have made a key element of their political identity. The problem is not confined to “red” states: The Right, led by the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court, is determined to impose its vision of gun supremacy on the entire country. The vast majority of the population, however, rejects the gun cult. And yet, this has not translated to legislation or any kind of action that would be commensurate with the problem – a disconnect we also tackle. The escalation of gun violence constitutes an acute threat to the core tenets of any democratic society: Democracy depends on people feeling safe in the public square. If they don’t, because it’s ruled by intimidation and threats of violence, they won’t be able to participate. It’s what rightwing extremists want: Abolish democracy through coercion and harassment. Finally, we talk about how we got to this point – and where we might go from here. We outline the long history of gun culture and racialized gun ownership and regulations since the eighteenth century. But we also emphasize how the current situation, the pervasive Second Amendment extremism on the Right, is in many ways the result of rather recent developments and a very specific, deliberate rightwing political campaign since the late 1970s. There might be something to be learned from the decades-long rightwing “gun rights” crusade. And we allow ourselves to end on a slightly hopeful note: A younger generation that has had to grow up in the shadow of the gun seems ready to fight back. Follow The Show⁠

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This episode was produced by ⁠Connor Lynch