Pledging Allegiance to the Guns

We've become concredibly numb to these targeted acts of domestic terrorism. That's what they are. That's not how the media reports it. But my friend jaredy eight Sexon said in an interview that you guys will listen to later this week, that's what these acts of violence are like. We like to think about terrorism in the form of bombs, in the form of you know, people in fatigues and ground fighting.

We don't talk about the experience and the exposure to largely a white, male dominated group of people who are the ones that are picking up AR fifteen's, you know, the pins that the House Republicans saw fit to switch out their American flags for because they pledge their allegiance to a weapon of mass destruction and violence. That these acts that happen largely from people who subscribe to right wing ideology, people who harbor racist, anti Semitic, anti black,

anti woman, anti LATINX. Just the list goes on and on sentiments, those sentiments that are fed to them by elected politicians. Their former president twice impeached white supremacist leader Donald Trump, a cadre right two hundred and twenty two Republicans in the House and all of the Republicans in the Senate, as well as being backed by multi billionaires who subscribe to a theory of violence and domination, oppression and power and greed. And so, I don't know what

else there is to say write about this country. Its addiction to violence, its desire to ignore its founding and the repercussions thereof, It's inability to have any type of reflection to make any pivots and changes from the way that quote unquote things have been done, to do them better, to do them safer.

not working. Maybe we need a pivot, maybe we need a shift because there are so many, any more things at play than what meets the eye. That's what it means to be a good leader, to be able to look at what you've been doing and see whether or not it's been effective, and if it hasn't been effective to the extent that you have wanted it to be, then you have the courage to make a shift. You

have the courage to say, let's try something else. That's not who America as a collective has ever been the masculine toxicity that is on display in our patriarchal society that hates women, the DNA of white supremacy that runs through the very soil and bodies of those people who call themselves Americans, because we refuse as a collective to address anything and march through life with the hubris and the ego that America alone can fix it. America is

the best. America is number one, and the thing that we are number one in.

of dollars that have gone to perpetrate genocide. Because to recognize the lives lost of Palestinians, of Palestinian children, babies, would force a change in course and a change in action. So let's pretend. Let's continue with the lie, and then when when people don't take in the lie and ingest it with their own free will will force it down

their throats. That's where we are. So this conversation that I have with Jonathan today talks about the need for pivot, talks about the need for a shift and why if we are to progress, we need to be examining our lives in the world through a place of expansion and not narrowness. Coming up next my conversation with our friend,

our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever I have the opportunity to speak with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Mepzil, I am always thrilled, And this week was so honored to be invited Jonathan, to speak in front of your class at Vanderbilt. I want to give you the opportunity to tell folks what this particular the topic of this particular class was and what you were hoping to get out of it.

We had one a week of guns and Crime, and we had a couple of officers from the Vanderbilt Police Force come in, and yesterday was Guns and the Media. And it was kind of typical of how we've been doing this in that if you, you know, if you look at guns in the media through for example, mainstream corporate media or something like that, you'll the question we

ask is like when when do guns show up? And it's very often stories after mass shootings, understandably, and stories like the Supreme Court case we're having come up, but not much else beyond that for understandable reasons. But that's kind of what drives those markets. But if you look at other forms of media and expression, you do not only see that there are other ways of talking about guns, but that the issues and the voices are really different.

And so guns and podcasts, for example, you can talk about guns and culture, guns and communities of color. So you were amazing and engaging and so present. It was just Honestly, I was just like, man, this is wonderful. You're so good because you were on zoom, but it was like you were with us in the room there. It was so nice. So we had you, and then we had Dwayne Bray who's from ESPN who actually writes about It's interesting he's with ESPN, but he writes about

violence and communities of color, not linked to sports. And his main argument was we put we like, why are we putting this on the backs of athletes like Lebron James and Chris Paul and stuff like that when the issue is really every day that we lose if it's just athletes, and really this is a big, a bigger societal issue. And so it was interesting because he was rejecting like people said, shouldn't athletes be involved in social justice and he said, well yes and no, because if

it's just them, it's just window dressing. And he also said it often is just black athletes that are speaking out and when did Tom Brady speak out about it? And stuff like that. So it was really it was quite interesting.

have millions of followers. And I think that we've seen that happen for better or for worse, when people are not informed, right, and they're and they're using their platforms and they have and they garner all this attention and then those that that are But I think to his point, you know, just recently, and I think you and I were having this conversation, I might have been having it

with somebody else, you know. The n h the n h L, which is largely all white, majority white players in the in the Hockey League, recently had passed a policy that was going to disallow the players from being able to use the tape for their hockey sticks during their practices and the games. To show their allegiance to the LGBTQ community. There was going to be like they were going to change the policy and disallow them from using the tape, and several of the NHL players said, yeah, no,

I'll take the fine. And so because of that, they were just this week reverse that policy and allowed the players to do what they've been doing for the last ten years and so to show their allegiance and support to the LGBTQ community. So it is really important conversation to have, and I'm glad that you brought that to your students, and I was glad that I had the opportunity to give my perspective on, you know, on guns and the media and how we shift narrative.

of there are a lot of media people. I mean, there are a lot of entertainers who like, we probably don't want to know what they think, you know, we just want to enjoy it. But I like what she does too, because it's like register to vote. I'm not telling you who to vote for. I'm just saying register to vote, which I think is really really powerful. But you know, you were so good about talking about the voices that were left out of mainstream media and the

perspectives of communities of color. I mean, we have a lot of football players in the class, and they all came up and they were like, Oh my god, I'm so glad, I'm so glad you said that, because nobody talks about like what it's like in our neighborhoods and stuff like that. That's not a story people ever hear. And so so yeah, thank you, thank you.

a little bit. And then and then the last part of the classes we have them go out in the world and do activism projects. But we have a lot of students who own guns, a lot of students to carry guns for protection. You know, Tennessee is a place where there are a lot of guns. So it's not inherently a pro or anti gun class. It's really like, let's figure out, like what what this.

the conversations that you have. And so I do want to switch gears to talk about what is coming up around your newest book, your latest book that won't drop until January. But you know, you're receiving some pushback from offering a pivot to a new path, and I think that that is I think I want you to share what's happening. Remind people of the title of the book, and are they able to pre order, because if so, folks, you should, but tell us what's happening right now?

from before to during and after. And as I followed the case, I realize that the things I've been advocating for through my whole career, background checks, red flag laws, assault weapons bands, they're important. But I also become very critical, not just because they wouldn't have solved, they wouldn't have stopped this crime. But the reason they wouldn't have stopped the crime wasn't because of whether or not the policies

were in effect. It was because the policies that I advocated for have no bigger theory of race, of political power, of all these things. And so the argument of the book I've been wrote it down in advance of what we were saying. My main argument is that civilian known guns cement conservative and racial power. It's not just a health issue, it's a political one, and the public health

frame by itself cannot fully grasp or address that. I show the limitations of our approach that's facing public health, even though I support it, but I think we need broader strategies that are political and racial in nature going forward. To be clear, I really support everything I've done, but I also think we need to be much more politically

and socially involved. And I just think that in a way, and I just show I trace the history in a way of the gun control movement, which I'm a part of, but I show how guns are metaphors for cementing power and if you don't have a theory of power to push back on that, like people armed civilians as a way to maintain racial hierarchies. They maintain they have civilian guns to make inevitable certain conservative policies, to have power

over the judiciary, over the electorate. So even though I think guns are a public health issue, I also think that just calling it a public health issue, that frame I show historically was too small in a way. What I show is the story of the Nashville shooting was a story about whiteness and about gun power in the South, and about how the policies that would have stopped the shooting were never going to happen because of the hold

that the NRA had on the courts. And so it's a story about judges, it's a story about race, it's a story about who codes as a as a criminal and who codes as a patriot and all these things. And so I'm getting a lot of pushback because I'm now being called just in early reads a sellout to liberalism in a way, because I'm not like there's you know, and I understand right, I'm part of the movement too. I think calling guns a public health issue is certainly important.

But what I argue is that doctors and public health by themselves don't have the expertise for how do you change society, which has to do with understanding judges and power and all these other factors.

Let's look at that what the strengths of that frame are. But also it's important to look at what is what are the blind spots, because the blind spots are considerable and they're impactful. And I said, like, for example, without a theory of whiteness, you're not going to be able to talk to the majority of the people who own

guns in places like Tennessee and stuff like that. In a way, So, so we have theories of health, but I think the pandemic made pretty clear that if we just assume that health is self evident, we get in trouble because health for a lot of people has to do with government and regulation and control and the opposite of freedom. And so I just argue that in a way, what happened in the pandemic was really it didn't come

out of nowhere. It was actually a reflection of the tensions that had been building in the gun debate for twenty years, where public health was seen as the enemy of the people. And so I argue that, like, let's just look at how we got there. But I think the issue is I mean, I obviously stand by what I wrote, I stand by also dying of whiteness, but

dying of whiteness. It was me, obviously writing to liberals saying, let me explain the other side to you, whereas here I'm writing to liberals, but I'm saying we need to look at ourselves a little bit right. And you know I'm not alone in this. There are people like David Hope, for example, is starting in a great new organization that's tied entirely to electoral politics. The Lancet had a big piece come out the other day that said that a health model is not enough, that we need to look

at all these structural factors. In the end of my book, I say we need to focus on making communities safer. It can't just be about like regulating guns. I understand why those are the arguments we have, but what does it mean to invest in communities. There's all this research that putting in street lights and making more parks and more bike lanes, all those things actually reduce crime, and

so we actually have to invest in communities. And I also explain why communities of color are potentially distrustful of the gun safety movement because the policies that they advocate. I'll give you an example, like red flag laws. You actually have to call the cops on your relative pretty much to get them to come take the gun and

do an assessment background chat. You're asking people to enter their name into a database that prings people with a history of incarceration and arrest and so all these things are kind of you know, you understand, if you're like a person of color with a rest record, you're not going to want to buy a gun.

be the cause of violence, right. And so I think that you were the way that you are examining this and understanding and I kind of want to get back to what you said around a theory of whiteness. I think it's difficult to even express the ideas around a theory of whiteness when we are still trying to convince people that racism and white privilege and all of these

other things actually exist. And so, Jonathan, you know, what do you see as like the biggest barrier to developing a strategy or expanding a strategy that you said is twenty years old.

is already happening. I'm not the only person saying this, to be clear, but much more engaged with building building communal infrastructure that awards people collaborating with each other on local level. So that's kind of for me where the money is. And also doing what David is doing now, which is building political groups that can combat they can kind of speak to people on the ground and combat you know, being pro gun and pro n is a form of white identity. I'm not saying that in any

way critically. Actually, I'm saying that that's just kind of a fact. And so if you say, like, hey, I'm a conservative American, but I actually think gun safety is a good thing, you're a trader to your side in a way. And so how do we combat that. It's not by trying to talk people out of what they're doing. It's kind of like figuring out what they're figuring out what drives them, and then answering that with things not that are important to me, but are important to them.

And so I'm arguing that, you know, local investment, infrastructure. The whole last part of the book is about how can we create what I call a structural competency gun safety, This idea that basically it's kind of extrapolating from that idea of like more street lights and more parks reduced

reduced gun crime. It's not about mandating individual behavior, which I think is important, But it's just that that model, as we saw on the pandemic, is going to be inherently polarizing just given the way our country is.

higher income, that is the basis of everything. And what and what we need as a society is to move away from that center and say, what is the basics that we all need regard list of how much money individually or community wide folks are bringing in, right that it benefits the whole. If we have communities that are walkable, that have clean air, that are safe with street lights, and are well tended to, that benefits the whole.

a mobilizing argument for a lot of people. But did it lead to us having the kind of power that impacted being able to mobilize the kind of resources you're talking about which then let us create street lights and parks and things like that. You actually have to win elections. You have to know how power works. So that I just feel like the coalition we built was not going to do that. We were always going to be, in effect a protest movement because we had no counterbalance to

the to the n RA, which wasn't the case. Like with cigarettes and seat belts and all the other public health campaigns we've fought, we've actually brought corporate America to its knees in a way. But guns were a really different issue again because of the politics of race in America, and so the playbook we used for cigarettes was never going to work for guns. Yeah, and but but again we'll see how this goes.

turn out, but well, we'll see. But after it's published, I'll tell you that I've had some pretty crazy interactions already, have people saying I was selling out my own side, and that's not my goal. I'm trying to help my own side.