Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. You know, folks, I'm always grateful, and I say this at the top of my interviews with Jonathan, that we have somebody whose work is to focus on gun violence in this country and how to solve it, how to have conversations that actually move push the needle and expand
people's minds. And you know, for that, I'm always grateful to get into conversations, whether there is a headline that is horrific and tragic about another mass shooting or not. It's important to keep these conversations at the front of our minds. And you know, as I talk to Jonathan today, a better session that is taking place in Tennessee where he is, where his university is, I keep thinking about the fact that, you know, we're headed into right summer
is winding its way down. There's still several weeks left of summer, but it is winding its way down. How do I know this because I see back to school commercials And as soon as I start to see back to school commercials, it's like, you know, just so depressing.
Even still as an adult. But what makes me depressed is not just the fact that summer is over, but that the headlines of school shootings will be back in the news because the only reprieve that we have from school shootings is summer, right, is when kids are not in school, or like we saw during quarantine and COVID, when kids are at home. Right, it's the only time that we don't see mass shootings. And so every year in September, I start to get a pit in my stomach.
And I don't have kids that I'm sending into the school system. So I don't know, honestly how parents are able to do it right. But they have no choice because we don't have a system that is centered around care, right and empathy and compassion. That's not how America works, right, It's you know, cash rules everything around me, and the
NRA is the one that has the bank roll. So in this conversation today with Jonathan, we talk about, you know, kind of the art of conversation, what he experienced in this pre session ahead of this legislative session that is coming up in Tennessee in a few weeks, And I ask the question, like, how do you come to the table with people who are just crazy. How are we supposed to meet in the middle with crazy? So that conversation with our fabulous in house doctor is coming up next, folks.
You know that whenever I have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor each and every week, the doctor Jonathan Metzel, I am always thrilled. And Jonathan, you have been a part of a event that took place in Tennessee because there is a big session that is coming up with regard to gun violence, and the folks remember which feels like a million years ago, but it wasn't. It was a few months ago that a religious school in Tennessee was the latest in a slew of school shootings.
There were protests led by young people walk out. So we learned about the Tennessee three and the two justins that were expelled for their participation and their solidarity with students that you know, don't want to be gunned down in their classroom. Jonathan tell us the latest on what's happening in Tennessee.
Well, thank you. I'm back in Brooklyn now, but I've been in Tennessee all week and we had a big event, the first of a number of events in Nashville a couple of nights ago that we're just bringing together religious leaders, congregants from temples and churches from around Nashville and just really having conversations with everyday people and faith leaders about
what can be done. It's a really important time for Nashville right now because, as you mentioned, August twenty first of this month, there is what had initially been called
a special Session on gun violence. This story of this for people who don't remember, As you mentioned, there was a mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, which not only was another horrific mass shooting at a school, but it was one that really hit home for a lot of people because a lot of people know people who go to this school or send their kids to this school. And it was also a school that followed all the quote unquote rules.
About having armed people all that kind.
Of stuff, but a very again discrontled former student with a grudge and easy access to multiple semi automatic weapons that that person had purchased by just going around and legally buying a bunch of ar fifteens, and so it's set off a kind of what the hell are we doing and how do we go here? Which many communities do. We've had that conversation in Nashville after the waffle House mass shooting in twenty eighteen, and this was kind of
like a man, enough is enough now. The other important thing about this shooting was that Governor Lee had the governor of Tennessee, had a personal connection to this shooting. They have friends who were among the victims and who worked there, and so it wasn't very far removed from a lot of people, and so there was a lot
of protests. There was a lot of pressure and either in a moment of bravery or calculation, it's kind of hard to tell, right, they called a session and he said we're going to have a session to talk about this. So initially this was being billed as a session to look at kind of what we can do, and people, a bunch of us were asked to submit proposals and what we can talk about. Do we need more red
flag laws, more background checks, more school safety. Obviously the other side is saying, you know, armed teachers, more guards. So it was going to be a kind of what do we do and is this a moment where a red state actually takes safety and public safety seriously about
this stuff? Particularly in schools and workplaces, and there's been a lot of well, when the call came out, I mean, the fact that the call came out is remarkable in the first place, because there was a lot of pressure from the right to cancel, and so a lot of people were thinking, is this thing to be canceled because the fire the right leaning Firearms Association in Tennessee said no, we don't want to have this, so they called to come out to call the legislators back to session a
couple of days ago. But people are noting that a lot of the stuff that people thought this was going to be about gun safety bridging divides is not on the docket, and so it'll be really important and people should really follow this space because again, on one hand, it's important that this conversation is taking place, but is this going to be something that just doubles down on more guns and guns in schools that seems like a real possibility, or is the place where we're going to
be able to have real conversations. And so that's kind of what we're doing in Tennessee is having a bunch of conversations leading up to this. A big one the other night, another big one through the group millions of conversations that's happening on the twentieth and then the sessions on the twenty first.
Well, let me ask you this, because you know, I am a true believer in conversation, right. I am a true believer in people coming to the table. But what I recognize about the Republican parties that they're nuts.
Right.
So it's like coming to the table with a crazy person and expecting to have, you know, thoughtful conversation and meet in the middle on issues. They tell me that the sky is purple, and I tell them that the sky is blue, and I'm supposed to meet them in
the middle. I feel as if there have been numerous occasions, numerous school shootings, numerous mass shootings, where we said, oh, this is going to be it, and we can come to the table, we can have a conversation about sensible gun laws, right, Tennessee, Like you said, this particular school, they had an armed they had armed teachers, they had armed security, They had all of the things that the right tells us that we need just to have more guns. Right.
They had an active shooter drill. They had all of these things, and nine people were still killed. Right, children were still killed. And so when you say come to the table or or this isn't going to necessarily be what we thought it was, it's just like, where do you think these conversations can go when you have one party that is hell bent on murder?
Well, that's a great point. Let me let me take you to what we did the other night, because the panel we had was it was gun owners and non gon owners, it was Republicans and Democrats and independents. And I think a lot of people, at least this obviously is a sample, a skewed sample, because if you're going to go to a conversation about common cause on gun inform, you already are selecting out the people who aren't going
to do it. But I do think that there was a surprising level of frustration on across the board about the relationship between It's just a lot of people feel like this is a problem that every day people could come up with better solutions for than elected leaders who were in the pocket of the NRA, or judges who are put in there to do the bidding of the NRA, or who, for all we know, took twenty six paid vacations.
Did not Declarence Thomas over YEA thirty eight.
So I do think that the way we structured, at least the conversation you asked about the conversation was we started off the night and it was organized again by this incredible group millions of conversations that tries to do bridging the divide. So again I'm not saying this is a sample totally because to go to this, you're going to want to have the conversation. But the way the night started was that people were at like fifteen different tables of twelve people, and there were a bunch of
kind of icebreaker questions. Do you own guns, what do you think about guns, What do you think about firearms? Do you feel safe in your community? What makes you feel safe, what makes you feel unsafe? So we were having these kind of conversations that were pretty surprising before
the event started. And then there was a panel of three people, myself, David French, who's a columnist for the New York Times but is a wrote for the National Review, a Republican, a gun owner, has written in support of gun rights, and he and I disagree because he's also written in support of the bruined decision and the Supreme Court recently in other places. And Jason Dempsey, who's a former high ranking officer in the US military who's a
gun owner and a Democrat and supports gun control. So we had three people kind of modeling a conversation who were We were asked, how did you come to this topic,
what do you think can be done? Kind of things, and we had a pretty open conversation about where we agreed, where we disagreed, and that lasted about an hour, and then people went back to the table and they did take on points and calls for action, and one of the calls for action was come up with talking points and then bring them back to your community and make a fifteen minute call or outreach or something like that. So it's very community focused and just getting people to
talk to each other. Now again, I mean, I'm writing a book about this very point, So I know. The frustrating point here is it's not like we need more conversation about this, Like eighty percent of people in the country already agree about background checks and stuff. It's not like we need more conversation. But I think the idea is maybe this is a ground up kind of conversation
that needs to happen among other conversations. I know David Hoague has started an organization yesterday that also looks more at the electoral process. But I do think that I guess I'm surprised, at least in these conversations how much there are people who feel frustrated with the status quo, which is something you wouldn't know if you didn't have
these conversations. So I mean, again, I take that with a grain of salt, because I'm sure there are people who live in Hungary and Russia and China who are frustrated with the status quo. If you did, you know. So that's not how fascism works, right, It's a top
down process. But I will say that at least in our system, having these conversations that then maybe puts pressure on people about the will of the people is an important way to at least model and if not at least understand how the other side thinks so that you can better understand how to intervene.
How did the talking the drafting of the talking points go. Were you able to see any of those that folks came up with on their own, as opposed to, like you said, it coming from the top down.
The story I told in my part of the channel. When I was writing Dying of Whiteness, I was in southern Missouri, and I came as a really kind of openly as a liberal gun control person. But I wanted to understand what guns meant in people's lives, and I interviewed as people who know the book, I interviewed people who had lost family members to guns suicide, and it was they were incredible, like brave, remarkable survivor, people who were suffering the most unimaginable loss you can think of.
But when I would they and they agreed to speak with me, which I thought was incredible. I don't know if I was in issues if I would if a conservative Republican came to talk to me about something like this, I don't know if I would do it or not, honestly, but they were great. But when I would do the interviews, I would go in and I'd you know, we talk about the loss and what it meant and really horrible stories.
And then when they would say I would, I would ask this question in the beginning of the interviews when I started doing them, and it was did this experience change the way you think about guns? Like losing a child to gun suicide, and they would look at me like, you don't get it at all, do you. And that that was the moment where I was kind of outed as a liberal because what they said. You know, what people would tell me is, you know, it's not the gun's fault, or this is guns are part of our
religion or whatever. Now judgment aside about how people might think about that answer. The point was, it's kind of like if you're a really religious person and then somebody you know, gets struck by lightning, and somebody gets interviewed and they say, this outsider asks you, does this change how you feel about God or something like that, And what you find is when people suffer loss like that,
they actually become more ideological, more religious, more talismanic. And so in a way, this was a question that identified me as an outsider in a way, and they were like, no, it doesn't change how I feel about guns. Guns are my protector. It makes me think about responsible people or something like that. So I actually changed that question when I was doing the interviews. I would later ask what can we do to better keep our families safe? You know, just kind of.
Keep which is a totally different question, right, But for you as a researcher, it is going to provide you with some insight as to how people are thinking. But the first question was one that would just shut people down.
Well because it identified like what I was asking them was just having this horrible thing happened to you make you want to become a Democrat. But I mean that's how they heard it, and that's probably what I meant in the beginning. And so I realized, like, oh, I'm coming in with some preconceived assumptions that having this thing happen will change people from point A to point B, and I live at point B, and it was just
one of these things. It wasn't about a debate, It wasn't about who you're going to vote for or anything like that. It was just about people's life and loss and mourning and trauma. And I realized, you know, I'd need to learn better how to have this conversation if I'm going to talk to people who don't agree with me, but who also are the people who own guns and
support gun owners. And so that was the story I told at the panel about how I learned a lesson in my own research just about what it means to talk to people about this. And I felt like it was actually really instructive for me because my aim was not to change their mind, it was to have the conversation. But the way I asked the question, they heard it
as like, why won't you change your mind? And I think for me that was the kind of story that people were telling, Like how do other people think about this when you have a gun? What do you imagine that gun's going to do? Or what do you think about gun owners? Like those kind of things that kind of get people talking about assumptions, biases, and also about
the thing itself. I will say, if I have time, just one other thing that happened out of this thing, which is that they asked this question, and you know, I go back and forth between Tennessee and Brooklyn, and they said, how safe do you feel five on a scale of five in your neighborhood?
By being the most safe.
And five being them was safe. And the other interesting thing is I didn't realize I was going to say this, but they said, and all these people were like, I live in the suburbs, and I feel four out of five safe because somebody could still come and attack me. Or there could be a mass shooting or something. And when it got to me, it's like, this is really weird.
And I hadn't thought about this before, but I split time between Nashville and New York, and when I'm in Brooklyn, I really feel five out of five safe for the most part. I mean, there's bad stuff if you go on like one of those apps, the crime apps, like stuff's happening everywhere, but there are also like people around, and there are gun laws, and there are bike lanes
and people are looking out for each other. Like I have to say, I feel really pretty safe when I'm in Brooklyn, Like there's just.
So did you say, did you say a five?
I said a five about Brooklyn? I did. I mean, I know it's crazy because it's but I just feel like there are people around. I mean, stuff can always happen, and stuff's happened to you and to me, but somehow I feel like I'm part of a system where there's just like you're just there are people around, and somehow I find that reassuring.
And I thought, I find that I feel absolutely the same. I feel that if I were in a place where let's say I'm in a I remember house sitting for a former boss of mine who lived in like rural Maryland, and his neighbor his next neighbor was you know, like a mile away and either in either direction, and it was so quiet, and I felt so unsafe. I was like, if I were to scream, no one is going to hear me. If like something happens, like, no one is
going to come to my aid. And I realized that I felt like, and this is a product of living in the city, is that I felt more comfortable and more safe knowing that there's somebody on the other side of the wall, whether up or down or next door, that, like I muffled sounds is a comfort in me.
But also, like people think, it's not just about the noise. It's about people think community, right, Like if you just go on the subway and drop a dollar, twenty people will say, hey, you dropped a dollar, you know, like it happens all the time in a million different ways in New York. And what I said the difference is I live in a city in Nashville too. I have
an apartment in downtown in Nashville. And I said, but in Nashville, I have like I feel a three out of five because the system is not built for safety right in Nashville. The example I gave is in New York, there are bike lanes that are protected bike lanes pretty much everywhere. I mean, I know people get hit all
the time on their bikes. But in Nashville, they just paint a picture of the bike on the road so that the cars are supposed to see you, but you're actually there's no bike lane, so that it's just like and so people get whacked all the time. Like there's nobody saying like protected bike lanes in Nashville. There are no gun laws in Nashville. And so I said, like, I only feel a three out of five in Nashville because like the system is set up. It's not a
public health system. It's like whoever has the biggest car runs down the road and tough if you run over a biker. That's kind of how it feels. And everybody there freaked out and they're like what New York, that's where like Biggie Small's just had that thing in Union Square giving away, like you know, that's just they're like, oh, that's whatever. It's like it's just like and conversely, you know,
people in New York. I mean whatever Nashville does, But I just said Nashville feels less safe for me, and I realized it's in part because of gun laws. Also that there are just are no gun laws in Tennessee, and so I feel like the chance of anything happening in that regard just feels much higher there, and data bears that out. And so I don't know, those kind of conversations I found to be really helpful. You asked like,
how can we have conversations? But I think in a way it was just kind of it was more usually I just get up and give a lecture, and this was let's talk openly and honestly, and then everybody would say, here are the take on points I heard about what you said, and here's how we can build off of it. So I don't know, I thought it was kind of cool. No matter what happens from this possible quite possibly bogus session on the twenty first.
I do think that it is important. One. I would be really interested to see what the response is to that question of safety, how safety you feel in you know, pick a state and go to the rural area, the city and the suburbs and ask that same question about safety and how and how safe people feel, because it's it's really interesting that everything is shaped by your perspective and your lived experience, and that's what that's the beauty
of conversations are to understand other people's perspectives and like how the world has shaped them right, so that you can figure out, Okay, well, how do I really connect with this person? Because the purpose is right in humanity, is for us to be able to connect to one another right and not just live a life of dismissal, dismissing people and their opinions and their experiences. And so for me, it's just like I think that that that
conversation is important. I think that all fucking like focused groups to probably fit in on that sit in on that conversation to figure out how to construct the questions that they ask for the polls that they give us
on a regular basis. But Jonathan, you'll have to follow up with us when this session actually does take place to let us know what the outcome is and if it is bogus as you're as you're thinking it is going to be, or if it actually can be used as a model for how we move forward in red state.
No, I think it's important. I mean, at the most basic level, going to win a debate if you don't understand the other person's perspective and talk to it. So, even if it's strategic about why people are having these conversations, I think they're important conversations to be having. But again, TVD, on this session, we'll have to see that there's a lot of people talking about it and paying attention to it, so it'll be interesting to see what happens.
All right, Jonathan, we will leave it there and pick it up again next week.
Thank what's new? What's my new sign off? Now?
Stay safe? I love puppies.
Yeah, you know, gogo go by the tree.
Yeah, ride a bike safely in a real bike lane. But we appreciate you. That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke app as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.