Welcome to the making sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay. Well today, I'm speaking with G would G is a staff writer at the Atlantic. He's been on the podcast many times before. He wrote a great book on the Islamic State titled, the way of the strangers, encounters with the Islamic State, and he's also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he also teaches at Yale University.
Anyway, today we talk about guns and gun violence in America.
The unique character of that problem. We recorded this a couple days after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and we discussed the issue from every side. We can think to analyze it from no doubt. There's more to say,
Those of you who are not used to hearing me get choked up. Will hear me scarcely able to talk about Uvalde at one point.
I story and this specific details are unlike any I can think of at the moment and it is a kind of super stimulus. Morally speaking.
That I find it very difficult to think about.
Anyway, Graham and I do our best here. It seems like an appropriate podcast to release on Memorial Day. It's also a PSA. So no pay wall.
If you want to support what we're doing here on the podcast, the way to do that is to subscribe as Sam Harris, said, org, and I feel immense gratitude to all of you. Who do that. And now I bring you g would
I am here with G would once again, G. Thanks for joining me.
I'm glad to be here, Sam.
So, we are speaking, some days after the Uvalde Massacre and I want to have a conversation with you about the larger issue of guns and gun violence in America. And what we can do about it. You also, you recently, wrote a couple of pieces in the
Panic about this. And obviously, this is on everybody's mind. This is a, this is a problem that despite how excruciating it is. It seems just surprisingly intractable, you know, and it almost seems impossible to solve this conversation, will reveal how complex it is. And I mean that the, you know, the status quo is totally unacceptable, but it seems resistant to change for reasons.
Is that are more complex than the people who are calling for change. Generally seem to realize and so I think we'll add some complexity to this. I don't know if and perhaps some moral Clarity, but I'll be surprised if we arrive at anything like easy solutions, but you know, perhaps to start, maybe you can just summarize your engagement with this issue of I had it. What is your what has been your experience with with guns and gun cohle.
Sure, and your your focus on this as a journalist. I mean, obviously, you focused a ton on on violence and chaos, especially overseas, but we have just just in what part of your wheelhouse is this issue?
Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing to say is I'm a Texan. So if you want to know what my experience with gun culture is, I grew up in a place that identifies itself with having lots of guns around. And although I didn't grow up with a gun in my household at all. Probably the majority of the of the
Wren's. I knew had them shot them as kids. Certainly had them in the house and it feels totally normal for me to be around people who have guns and who use them responsibly. And, you know, I spent two years working on a ranch in California. And any rural environment you're in is likely to have a lot of guns in it too. And also to have people gone with guns who are using them responsibly and who think of them as just part of their culture and part of their work. Something they use for work and for fun, so it's
Or been for me. I think that as I think a lot of people in my journalistic Mill, you think of guns as scary things and they should be scared to some extent, but they might not quite understand. How deeply implicated in the culture guns are the other aspect of this that I think is has really influenced me is reporting for years on terrorism and counterterrorism. We're much like after you've already after
11e. I remember very vividly watching people understandably looking for for anything they could do to keep something like that from happening again. And just like after you've already coming up with a lot of really bad ideas that on just a moment's reflection would reveal how bad they were and how unlikely they were to stop the threat. So, you know, just like people, after September 11 would say for reasons. I, it's hard to Fathom in retrospect. Maybe we need a national ID card. Maybe that would stop this.
Similarly. Now, there are a lot of solutions being proposed like having fewer doors to the schools that I think similarly on just a few moments reflection would not solve the problem and certainly not the underlying problem. So that's the background that I take to this. And then in addition to that. I'm just someone who enjoys guns and who just happens to have a few days ago. I applied for my concealed, carry permit. So I have some very recent experience of what it's like
Like to try to be legally armed in this country at this moment.
Yeah, you wrote an article about how just comically easy that is to do. I mean, it's not comically easy, perhaps in every state but where you did it in Connecticut, it was, you know, that there really is no process of exclusion. Forget about getting guns me that now we're talking about you're getting a gun and getting a concealed permit to carry a concealed if you want to say anything about that.
Yeah, I expect
Suspected that Connecticut which you know, ten years ago. Had the Sandy Hook disaster to be one of the harder states, to get a concealed carry permit. It's not not compared, even to its neighboring states, like New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and all it really takes is doing a one-day gun course and after that going to the cops, and if you haven't committed, some of the 11 deadly sins, that would get you excluded from gun ownership like having been convicted of a felony or
Being the subject of a restraining order or having recently been a, a mental inpatient. These things will keep you from getting a gun. But I ask the instructor directly who was a in been in law enforcement for 30 years. I said, you know, when I go to the police station to get all this paperwork filled out an approved. What if they just look at me and say you look kind of crazy, you look maybe homicidal. You look like not the kind of person we want on our streets walking around authorized to be carrying.
Revolver. And he looked at me and said, he said, first of all, if they excluded people on that basis, you think they'd let me have a gun. He actually looked perfectly normal. But his point was well-taken. He said, you could go into the police station with your underpants over your pants and they would still hand you your permit back. So basically it's unless you've committed one of the very specific things that will prevent you from having a gun. And a gun is yours to carry around in Connecticut, if you can jump through the
Erick Redick hoops, and take a one day course.
Yeah. Yeah, and this is a problem when we're going to talk about what happened in Uvalde, or Buffalo before that, and we were, you're talking about people who wouldn't have been excluded on the basis of most. Even all of the remedies that people are suggesting could help solve this problem, right? You're talking about people who legally bought guns, who did not have criminal histories. I guess the Buffalo Shooter had some
With the mental health system, but not of A Sort that seems currently actionable and we'll talk about red flag laws and what we might do to mitigate this problem, but interested in so many cases were talking about someone who has legally acquired a gun and even you know, in the case of Uvalde who you went through a background check and passed it because they this person had no criminal history, you know.
SLI. There were many red flags in this person's life and we'll talk about what it might mean to respond to those kinds of things and more in a kind of pre-crime Minority Report, way and just how fraught that process might be. But, you know, this is, you know, as you said the, the conversation that happens in the aftermath of an atrocity, like this rarely hits upon the actionable ideas that would obviously have reduced the
Risk of the the very atrocity that has provoked the conversation.
Yeah, exactly. I mean and I understand why people would flail about in search of a solution here. But you know, none of the none of the things that were in place, they didn't fail in the sense of as far as we can tell. This guy was legally permitted to have a gun as an 18 year old, without any serious run-ins. So, you know, the system quote unquote worked. And unfortunately, the system working in this case.
Means couple dozen dead people.
So I guess I should Briefly summarize my background here. Some some people listening to the podcast will know it, but if not, you can read on my blog or listen to this podcast. Number 19, where I wrote an article almost 10 years ago titled, the riddle of the gun in response to a shooting of this sort. And I think it was Sandy Hook that was the proximate cause there and I also I've had
All of the podcasts and articles on on violence, so it may be just in brief. Your, I have very little affinity for the religious cult, that is organized around the second amendment in the US. And I share every liberals. Outraged at the, you know, the the outsized influence of the NRA has had politically over the years and just how obscene it looks from the outside. And even from the inside, that America is such an outlier with
Peck to gun violence, I mean, just it just makes absolutely no sense. And so when viewed from Australia or the UK or Canada, you look at the problem or suffering here, whether it's mass shootings, or just the, the ambient level of gun violence and suicides, that is mostly a problem of handguns and we'll talk about that. It just, it may it's just insane. That we are living this way. And yet I am also
One who has never believed that calling, 911 is a reasonable strategy for self-defense. If someone breaks into your home intent upon harming, you or your family. And so I've been a gun owner for many years. I've trained a lot with Firearms of various types. I've gone down the rabbit hole there and discovered how fun it is to do that. I mean, once you admit that you want to, you have a reason to own a gun and you need to get
Well, trained to use it and to use it safely. Then it becomes just incredibly fun to shoot, right? It's just a it's a guilty pleasure, honestly, and so, I understand why there are millions of Americans who love to shoot guns and and see a reason to own them because again, the, maybe I should just spell out the the moral logic of this briefly because it's it's easy to if you're at your outside of this. If you haven't gone, down, this particular rabbit hole.
And you ask, you know, why would anyone want to own a gun? Right? Just say it will is not just increasing the likelihood of me. If you're going to take the end of this that many, you know, New York Times opinion columnists might take. It's just owning a gun is entirely fatuous because it just raises the risk that you're going to kill yourself or you're going to get killed with it by a member of your family who grows, deranged or the it's going to get used against you. So you're John Wayne fantasies of
Defending yourself and your family with a gun are irrational. There are many reasons to think that's just not true, in one's own case. And and to not fear that want to self-deceived, right? I mean, yes, if you have a life of chaos, if you're, you know, in danger of being suicidally depressed, if you, you know, or a member of, your family seems to be if you're running a meth lab, if you're, if you're hanging out with dangerous dysfunctional people, we asked an adding guns to your life. You you might. Well think is
Freezing your the likelihood that you're going to be harmed by them. But if you are an entirely responsible saying and well trained person, who understands, you know, almost to the level of a religious principle, how important it is to store your guns safely. Then it is true that the swimming pool in your yard is a greater risk to friends and family than the gun. That is safely locked in your house and responsible gun ownership in that case as a thing. And the reason why it makes sense as
Ethically is in my view a world without guns is a world in which the strongest most aggressive, most violent, most well-trained. And most numerous, you know, men always win, right? I mean, this is just, if that is what it is, that is what it is to live in a world where you don't have access to a weapon that gives you some kind of range in a physical altercation with a stranger who enters your house. The
Guy always wins. And if you want to live in that kind of world, I just I just don't think anyone should be sentimental or your nostalgic for that kind of world.
Yeah. One thing Sam, that really changed. My mind about guns was a few years ago for the Atlantic. I profiled a gun celebrity on YouTube name, John Korea, and one of the really amazing things about about YouTube is that, you know, you can see things that in the past.
You know, a person could live 100 years and not see you. No more than half a dozen serious acts of violence. Now, you can watch YouTube and there will be color commentary by extremely smart. Clever. People who have watched thousands, tens of thousands, in the case of John Korea and analyze them. And, you know, I think a lot of people who have no experience with guns, have the immediate assumption that there's just, no way that someone is going to defend himself with a legally acquired known firearm.
That, you know, the home Invaders, always have the drop on you that bad guys, end up using the guns against you and indeed those things happen, but you start watching these videos, which are curated by Korea and you start saying, it happens all the time that a self Defender uses a gun against a bad guy. So I think a lot of fantasies about guns pro and con are not surviving scrutiny.
Now that we can actually see more instances. Now we can talk about whether in Aggregate and it's hard to say, owning a gun is more likely to save you or harm you and as you say a lot of the answer to that is going to have to do with how responsibly you store it, how well-trained you are and its use. And also whether you're crazy person or not. So I'm guessing you've done the calculation and you were one of those people who uses guns with a sense of religious commitment to
Bring them and so forth and also that you judge yourself on crazy enough to be to be responsible enough to own them.
Yeah. Yeah, and so, I mean, it just and I feel like defensively, I need to put my the punch line somewhere up front here because many people who read my essay, the riddle of the gun. We're just blindsided by it, and horrified by they just could not believe that I would even own guns, despite the fact that I'm the sort of person who gets the occasional death threat and, and attracts the occasional
kick into my Orbit and it is a very nuanced and even confusing argument. I make because I really am on both sides of this issue and it's not an easy issue to parse. But the thing to put up front is that what I actually recommend in the policies, I would want to see enacted are more restrictive than any that, any one on the left is even arguing for, you know, and would be hopeless to try to implement in the
Environment politically. And I just, you know, the short form of this is I think getting a gun should be the equivalent of getting a pilot's license. Right? And I think you had should have to be trained. You should have to be vetted. You said, Ms. Just it should be two highly non-trivial to get a gun now that, you know, that you their arguments against that, you know, that that biases against poor people at biases against people who just don't have the freedom to do all that and yet still, You could argue, you know, the single mom.
Home Alone should be able to own a gun etcetera. But anyway, I mean, I'm definitely biased on the side of making things much harder than, than even, you know, the people who are banging on about gun, safety are inclined to argue for. And yet, I find it very difficult to wish for a world without guns. Again, for the aforementioned reasons. I've just spent a enough time training in martial arts and just studying human violence and just knowing, you know, knowing what the problem is.
As well, without a weapon, like a gun. When, you know, the guy who spent 10 years in prison, you know, basically going to graduate school for for Crime comes into your house, you know, with bad intentions, you know, you picking up a frying pan is a low percentage solution. So, you know, with that said let's talk about, I guess. I have another, you know throat clearing caveat to here on some level. I wonder whether conversations like this.
This are even good to have it specifically in the aftermath of a mass shooting I missed because again, we have a totally intolerable number of mass shootings. I think we've had 212 so far this year in the US, which is just insane. I think a mass shooting is defined as anything over for people getting shot in a single incident, but nevertheless that is a rounding error on the problem of gun homicide in this country. I mean, that's just
The way, you know, if we, if we solved all the mass shootings magically, we would still have something like 99% of our gun, homicide problem in this country,
right, and to speak of it in the context of a school shooting that there have been, I believe about 30 such incidents this year. So again, there's, you know, in my lifetime, I believe that the total number of school shootings is on the order of about 1,300, right? So 201 year of mass.
Things or 1342 years of school shootings. So we are, you know, quite reasonably exercised about what happens in Uvalde. But when we talk about gun violence in general, that's a very very small contribution to the number of actual dead
here. I'm looking at the, the FBI statistics on homicide and I think those we only have those up to 2019 if I'm not mistaken. So homicide has gone up since then.
And we famously in the aftermath of covid and George Floyd, we've had an uptick in homicides. I don't have those current figures. But when you look at 2019, we had nearly 14,000 deaths due to due to homicide. And that's that is, which would say we should acknowledge way down from where it was and in the early 90s and you know, the vast majority, over 10,000 of these.
Are due to Firearms of some type. Most of those are handguns over 6,000 or handguns unhelpfully, there are over 3,000 where the type of the firearm is not stated. So there's probably some mix of handguns and and long guns there, but there's only three hundred and sixty-four in 2019 that are acknowledged to be rifles, 200 to be shotguns. And, you know, when you're talking about the much-maligned AR-15,
Which is the everyone's focus in the aftermath of Uvalde as it was in the aftermath of Sandy Hook gets again. This is a rounding error on the problem of gun homicide and we can talk about the reasons. Why AR-15s are in fact scary. I mean the context in which they are, you know, you are at a significant disadvantage given that the a person with bad intentions or mental illness has acquired an AR-15 but having someone
A gain access to a classroom, and the ability to kill people at point-blank range. That is not a context where the unique advantages of an AR-15 are the problem. Right? I mean, it's very easy to believe that you've all the or Sandy Hook would have been a essentially. The same catastrophe had the shooter then armed, only with handguns.
Right. Oh, yeah. I mean an AR-15 is not. It's not necessarily the weapon of choice. If you're going to be going through hallways and two small rooms, you know, having a shotgun having handguns. Both of these things are more manoeuvrable and no one's shooting back at you is the other thing for most of the time here, fortunately for a very long time in the case of the guy and you've all day but Sam I won't ask you about the weapons that you keep in your home, but you know, one argument that I've heard.
People make is the AR-15 is an excellent weapon against tyranny. If you're a Ukrainian and you have an AR-15 in your house, that will be very useful since you were just invaded. But if we're just talking about self-defense which sounds like is one of your biggest concerns, then you could just say all right, no more are 15s, but anybody who wants to can have an over-under shotgun in his house and that will work very well. There will be the upper half.
Of the home Invader will no longer exist once he said with that and it will not be very useful as an offensive weapon. So you're not going to have Gangland Slayer slayings with these. It seems like the good guy uses of a shotgun are pretty high and the bad guy uses are pretty low. So what do you think about that? Is as a remedy saying no more AR-15s. Definitely no more handguns, but you can have a home defense shotgun anytime you want it.
Yeah, well, so, I mean, it's just now we wade into why the problem is so complicated. So again, the problem, the overwhelming problem in our society with homicide and suicide based on Firearms is a problem of handguns, right? So all the talk about assault rifles AR-15s is not acknowledging the that fact, right? And but had the but the other problem is handguns are.
Are never on the table for Banning. I mean, it's just not it's just it's a political non-starter. It's not. Certainly when you're talking about it, a culture in which concealed carry is a thing. It's you know, it's the only thing you're going to carry concealed, this a handgun. The their reasons why I would consider a handgun preferable to a shot gun for self-defense, even at home. So that you know, there's an argument to be had there, but it's just that the handgun is the
The last thing anyone is going to ban and it is, it is 99% of the problem. And, again, if you take a situation like, you know, a school shooting a handgun is arguably, the most Insidious thing to use because it is the thing that can be concealed until the last moment. I mean the person walking into a school from with an AR-15 looks you know, every inch the dangerous Maniac as he approaches the school because he's what
Business to somebody have holding an AR-15, you know, in the parking lot of a school unless there are cop responding to a school shooting. So it, you know, it gives it gives someone if there. If there is protection of any kind at the school, it gives people the ability to notice that something completely out of the ordinary is about to happen. Where is it with a handgun, you know, a handgun concealed in a backpack, you know can be brought into any place of business any, you know, soft target, right?
Right? And a movie theater and Auditorium, you know, any place that doesn't have a metal detector is vulnerable to somebody with a handgun and again up close. There's virtually no advantage to an AR-15. Ballistically. It's usually worse to get hit with around moving that fast, but, in fact not always and it's easier to wrestle a long gun away from an attacker than it is a handgun, right? You didn't, you know, it's easier just to grab the barrel and point it toward the ceiling.
And then all of a sudden you're in a wrestling match. And so, the problem is, when you even when you're talking about mass shootings, handguns, present, every part of the problem. And so so everything you're going to hear about banning assault weapons. It's symbolic more than anything else. And it's not to say that I'm against Banning AR-15s. It's just if we could do that. We still haven't solved the problem. I should say that the, the situation in which a rifle presents a
I find Advantage is where a person is shooting from some distance, right? Me hitting something at 100 yards, with a handgun, is genuinely difficult. Even for a very good shooter and it's trivially easy with a rifle. And so anyone with, you know, 30 minutes of training with an AR-15 can hit something at 100 yards at will and that is not true with a handgun. It's just, it's easy and it's not true, the handgun, even if you are.
Good shooter, right? And so, that's, that's a huge difference. And so, when you're talking about a situation where someone's, you know, you know, at the clock on the clock tower and a University campus shooting people at distance, you know, Charles Whitman style. Yes, rifles, present the problem there, but the problem in that case is that many rifles that people would use for hunting, you know, the very same rifle is
precisely the rifle. A sniper would use to kill people at distance r. I so unless you're going to talk about fundamentally removing guns from circulation. It's very hard to see how you're closing the door to various aspects of this
problem. Yeah, which raises the question since the AR-15 is not the ideal weapon for wreaking havoc in a school or post office. Then why is it constantly being used and
That's I think there's some interesting answers to that one. Is that there's just a whole bunch of them. They're extremely common now and they weren't 20 years ago. But also I think it points to something else that's really important, which is that there's a social contagion effect. Yeah. Everybody knows what an AR-15 is. Everybody talks about an AR-15. They have this talismanic importance to people who love guns and people who hate guns and you know, one of the questions that I think we should be asking that. It's going to have a really complex and difficult answer is why?
This is happening. Now, given that there have been guns in the US for a long time. And I think these these questions are related to that is the social contagion that causes people to use an AR-15 is probably similar to the social contagion. That makes people think I'm an unhappy teenager. I mean, I'm not happy adolescent to end the way. I'm going to express that unhappiness is with a suicidal Rampage in a school. So I think just as you say that the precise frame of the rifle, the purse
This type of weapon is probably not what we should be thinking about, but instead, why is it that people have this idea in their heads, that if they want to say Express their politics and the case of Buffalo or Express their hatred of the world, and the case seems of Uvalde. Why did they go to schools to do it? And why did they pick up an AR-15 to do
it? Yeah. Yeah. I realize now, I never actually made the point. I wanted to make at the outset, which is a yet another caveat here, which is it around my uncertainty.
20. And even having this conversation focusing on a mass shooting. And for me, it's somewhat analogous to talk in about plane crashes in the aftermath of a especially horrific plane crash, right? And I noticed this in what I'm inclined to say or not say to my daughter's about both of those topics, right? So if there's a plane crash, the truth is I'm, you know, unless they bring it up. I'm not going to talk to my daughter's about plane crashes.
Because I don't want them to be afraid to fly the likelihood that they're ever going to be in a plane. Crash is infinitesimal and the likelihood that they could do. Anything useful in a plane crash is also close to Infinity testable. So I think their lives are better just not thinking about plane, crashes and being told accurately that the likelihood of being in one is vanishingly small and that they're safer on a plane. Then in many other places, including
Cars where they're not worried to be so and I do want them to feel that way about going to school, right? So in the aftermath of a school shooting telling kids, you know, especially, you know kids under 10 what they should be doing. If somebody come if a maniac comes in with a gun and starts murdering people, I'm really have misgivings about even having that conversation, right. And and it's it's just there's something so oppressive.
About this picture of the world that must be forming in the minds of our children where we're at. You know, we're talking about making schools resemble, you know more and more something like a prison in terms of the, you know, the the access to the campus and for them to be doing drills and being told, you know what to do in cases like this. It just I question the whole project psychologically, and it's not to say that if you're ever
In a situation like those you do, we wouldn't want your kid to know to run away from the sounds of gunshots, but it's just I'm uncertain about whether it's wise to focus on this in the way that we do given the actual probabilities and on the day that you have already happened. It's got to be something like 75 million kids went to school that day in America, right? So it's just, it is not. This is not a likely experience for anyone and yet focusing on it.
No amplifies. Everyone's Terror and concern. So anyway, that's you know, it will say that only to then focus on it because I do think we as a society. We have to get our heads around this but you know, I have not set my daughter's down and had a talk with them in any kind of extended way around this issue and I just Express them in my reasons for not doing that. And I know you just wrote an article that that sort of took the other end of this to some degree. So I'm just wondering what you think.
About
that. Well, first of all, I agree with you completely, you know, I mentioned before, the number of school shooting dead in the last 40 years is on the order of 400. So that's like 10 a year. That's that's, you know, 10 too many, of course, but the idea that the chances of a, a, you know, 10 in 50 or 75 million chance of dying, that that would cause us to change the architecture of our schools, the feel of our schools. And also,
Force our kids under the age of 10 to once or twice a year mentally and physically simulate the possibility, that there will be this extremely rare event of someone coming in and shooting as many people as possible. It seems to be, obviously, disproportionate and harmful. Yeah, for for kids to be asked to think about that. And, you know, on the topic of social contagion that meets
every kid in the
country, is on a regular basis, asked to think about
at this as something that might happen, which increases the psychological availability of that as something they might not just live through, but might perpetrate. So I think that's completely nuts. That we would rearrange the lives of children just on that basis. So and in particular, you know, I've written about why changing schools so that they're more prison, like first of all wouldn't help very much if at all. And second of all for pretty obvious reasons, I don't think kids should go to school and
And I think they should go to school and happy places where they can think about ideas and play and be kids on top of all that I do think that kids have to be, they can be told how to react in a way that that doesn't traumatize them. And that's what I've sort of come down to. When I talk with my loved ones about what they should do, in the case of a mass shooting. You just say, look this is almost certainly never going to happen. But if it does happen, all you have to do is run away.
Away run as fast as you can and the chances that you will be. Fine are extremely high. I mean, if there's a mass shooter in a school that person is going to kill people. Yes, but if experience is any guide to what it's going to look like, it's going to be someone with no training going in there. Having just bought his AR-15 and the chances of his being able to hit someone who's running or vanishingly small. You said 30 minutes will be enough to hit someone from
Away, yes, if you've got a bench
rest, if you've been person is essentially standing still, you got me hitting something. Moving is hard, you know, and, and this is a mrs. Just generic advice for for somebody in a situation where a gun is pulled on them. Someone pulls a gun on you and says, don't move you run away. It, is it me the idea. Yes. You still might get shot, but the moment you're running. It is genuinely hard to hit somebody. And
even when you're even when you had some training on this and maybe even cops, don't get training on moving targets. Very often. It's just, you know, it's a fundamentally different situation than shooting a stationary Target. So yeah, I mean running away is is always good
advice. So I think that, you know, giving advice to people in ways that it is not itself traumatizing. You keep it simple. You let them know that it's not going to be something that you're ever going to have to do. But
Them that if it happens, all you have to do is pretty much just one thing and it's something that you do every time you go out, you know in recess is run and then you don't stop running and if you do that the chances that you get through, it are extremely high. So I know I hate the idea that kids. First of all, I think it's a bad idea to have them shelter in place to have them. You know, I would tell a kid if your teacher says, to shelter in place. And there's
Shooting going on and you break a window and run. You will not even be charged for the cost of the window. You will not be kept in detention the next day. There will be no one who faults you for for doing this. And I think that's the outcome is likely to be far better than a few shelter in place because the worst possible outcome especially with an untrained shooter is that he Corners you that he's standing in the doorway and the only doorway out of the classroom.
So avoiding that scenario is the main thing that we have to do. I have a, I have a suspicion about how the shelter-in-place suggestion came about. I think it's because schools thought about fire drills. It used to be that you really wanted to keep an account of where all the kids were you get them out. And you know who everyone is. So you don't have to run back in and look for some kid who's wandered off, but obviously, that's not a great template for dealing with an active shooter scenario since no one's ever going to go back in.
Unless they're going in to kill the shooter. So I think that keeping the the advice simple and based on thinking of it as a footrace I think is probably the way to go.
Yeah, I mean, the one thing I would add here is that as kids get older and was once you're talking about teenagers, who increasingly are physically equivalent to the size of an in strength of an adult? Then one thing changes, which is then it's possible.
To, you know, physically swarm a shooter and bring them down and there's there are some training and just a different mindset is relevant to me that, you know, a bunch of 16 year. Olds could definitely take down a shooter and, and if they're cornered knowing that acting and Unison is very different than acting. Serially. And just how you getting shot. See, really, I mean, this is a point you made in your article is the point that many of us made, you know, this, I made this 10
Years ago in my article, but this is just very much in the air. We all noticed in the aftermath of September 11th that the rules have changed in, you know, for four hijackings in the sky, right? If you are, if you are, if the plane is, is already flying, and someone stands up and says, okay, everyone just stay in your seats. If you don't move, nothing, bad is going to happen. There's a bomb on the plane. I'm just going to take control of this thing, and we're going to we're going to fly to Cuba.
That is a tote that used to be people would just comply in those situations for understandable, reasons. They're terrified and hoping against hope they're going to be safe if they just follow directions, but in the aftermath of September 11th, everyone probably on Earth who heard about it. Understood that there's a very different logic once that plan is flying and the moment, somebody stands up, whatever they're saying, whatever their rationale.
You're going to gouge their fucking eyes out, right? And you're going to all do it at once and it's just, you know, just yours raw animal response to an absolute imperative, right? There's just there's no negotiating in that situation. There's nothing to believe the person who is advertised his intention to take over. The plane, has to be overcome immediately. Now, I would recommend that we have that attitude on the
In an active shooter situation when running isn't the option, right? So, yes, if you can get away by all means, get away, but if you are stuck in a classroom or stuck in a movie theater, and someone is just shooting, you know, which is to say they've already advertised, their intention to kill people for no good reason, then then we have a real coordination problem that can be
Saved. And it can be solved exactly the way. It's now solved in an airplane. Right, which is everyone to just, you have to recognize that it doesn't matter who this person is, doesn't matter how big. It doesn't matter how well armed he is. It doesn't matter how big he is, doesn't matter how well-trained he is. There's no one who can deal with. 10 people, simultaneously swarming him, right? It doesn't matter if he's a member of SEAL Team, Six, if it's just bodies everywhere, pummeling him. The, the unarmed crowd is
To win and it is just the problem. In those situations is no one wants to be the first to get shot. Right? But if the person is already shooting people and there's no running away. We have to solve that coordination problem. And so, I mean that is that is advice that is completely useless for eight-year-olds, but it is, it's not useless for 16 year olds, right? So that's the one thing I guess I would add for the school scenario. When you're talking about high
school. I might add one thing to your addition to
Which is that you you pointed out that this is what you do, if you can't run. Yeah, one thing you can do in terms of the architecture and planning of schools, is make sure there aren't places where you can't run. I mean, Ted Cruz suggested having a single door and he added that it should be a single door for entry and for egress from the school. And that's one reason why this is a terrible idea. I mean here, you need to not just for for shooting but for fires of another reasons,
To have ways in ways out you want to have as few places few culs-de-sac as possible, where a guy with an AR-15 can be barricaded into a room with eight year olds. So the very fact that we would be suggesting that we'd have. You know, one way in one way out here, school. Does that tells me that we're in a kind of September, 11 mentality where we're thinking of, what specifically, what would we have liked? We would have liked to have, you know, some static Defense Force.
At the front of the school. Well, guess what? A that that that's not plausible to have it every school at all times and be there's going to be a lot of trade-offs there where instead what you want is ways for people to get out which of course, has the added upside of making the school more open, more pleasant and more like a school, and less like a prison. So I think really thinking carefully about how we react to this and not doing it in a stupid way. I mean, I
And in my piece of Maximum that the cryptographer and security engineer, Bruce schneier had after September 11, he's pushed for a long time. Saying, what you want is a security system that fails well, so if it doesn't work, then the outcome is is not a total loss. So if you have a single door to get in and an armed security guard, then if you are able to, if the shooter is able to Ambush that security guard and get in, then the fact that he's trapped inside the
with all the kids is not ideal. So instead you should organize this, the school in such a way that there's lots of ways out, so that once he gets in there, even if he managed to get the jump on the one security guard or the two security guards, in the single point of entry. Then, as soon as those gunshots ring out, then that's cool. Just empties out in every kid runs for his life. That is, that's a very robust security system. It's kind of the opposite of what's being proposed right now. So here yet.
Another reason to think that making decisions in the aftermath of a school shooting, a terrible way to go forward.
Again. We're focusing here on a mass shooting and a the worst possible type of mass shooting a school shooting, right? So this is, you know, you've all these happened. I think two weeks after Buffalo where many grown-ups were killed in a, in a market and that was a racist, inspired atrocity.
I guess it's worth differentiating. The type that the sources of violence here, because again, we're now we're talking about mass shootings, which are made. It sounds crass to say it, especially in the aftermath of a tragedy like this. But this is a rounding error on the problem of gun violence. I mean, that there will be more kids killed. I probably even in a, in a single City, like Chicago, this weekend by, you know, ordinary handgun violence of A Sort that were
all too familiar with and and all too ignorant of at the same time, you know, it's just, we're not, we're not paying attention to inner-city violence and it's just, it's just in the background and it's, you know, disproportionately young black men, killing young black men, for no good reason in cities All Over America, and if you're not going to get a handle on that, you're not going to change the outlier status of America in the world with respect to gun homicide, but
We're talking about a mass shooting like Uvalde or Buffalo. These can have very different characters. I mean, they're in my mind. There's at least three different sources of violence and they're highly non analogous. But there they can be overlapping, right? And therefore, an event like this can be over determined. Right? So in one case, you have just Frank mental illness, right? You have somebody who is deranged and whose reasons for doing what they're doing.
Are totally uninteresting and and probably inarticulate, right? I mean if we asked Adam Lanza, why he killed all those kids and teachers at Sandy Hook. He would probably have had nothing intelligible to say, right? He was clearly mentally ill. And that, you know, that might have been the case with, with the eovaldi shooter or or not. I don't think we know at this point. So how we respond to that problem in our society, how we flagged.
These people early and intrude in their lives, in such a way as to reduce the risk of anyone. Coming to harm on the basis of their mental illness. That is its own separate problem, which is worth figuring out if possible, but it's, it's a different problem. From the problem of comparatively normal people. It's hard to think of someone being normal, who would commit a mass shooting. But comparatively normal people who, you know, they're not delusional. They're not obviously mentally ill there.
Functioning perhaps in other modes in their lives, but they can be in the grip of an ideology that causes them to do something horrendous, because this is what they think is important to do, right? I mean, the there they can in the in a Muslim context, they could be jihadists. And you know, I don't know enough about the Buffalo shooter. Perhaps he was also mentally ill, but it's totally possible for someone to be a white supremacist asshole in.
Premise, who decides to kill people for Payton, Leigh racist reasons. And yet if you if you had, you know, psychometric data on this person, you would not diagnose a mental illness, right? So yeah, that's right. Those are very different situations and we have to talk about them differently.
I read the whole Manifesto of the shooter in Buffalo. Mmm, and I can say with some confidence that there is no, unless you're going to go reading his
Chan posts or is email. Then there's no way you're going to detect that this guy is so crazy, that you definitely should not sell them a gun. Whereas, in the case of the Uvalde shooter. I think it's pretty clear that he was unwell, I his co-workers at Wendy's thought he was crazy. There is a chance a chance. Anyway, that that an inquiry into his mental well-being, would have detected that maybe he shouldn't have an AR-15. So I think there are distinctions like that to be made, you know,
I mean, one thing that's I mean the Buffalo shooter. He spends a long time in his Manifesto describing his kit. What he's bought in terms of armor weaponry and so forth what he's planning to do, and he killed about 10 people. In Uvalde. The guy who was far less equipped far less, knowledgeable about his weapon killed, 20. So going back, briefly just to the questions of what the response can be.
In other words, someone who really knew what he was doing or at least somewhat knew what he was doing. Compared to someone who didn't know what, he's doing. Nonetheless killed far fewer people. And I think that's because in a supermarket, anyone who could run ran, and then in Uvalde, because they were kids, and they were told to stay put and wait and the doors were locked. So nobody could come in and save them. And then the cops for a horrifying, seemingly negligent reasons did not do so.
Yeah, we will get to that. And that's that's the thing that just pushed against way higher so far over the edge.
Age for me, as a, as a news story. Yeah,
your point though is, is totally right. If we're, if we're thinking about, how do we keep guns out of the hands of people who are going to use them in homicidal ways. Then you have to reckon with the actual people who are doing this. And in the case of Buffalo. I just don't think that there is any way where, you know, if he had to go and have an interview with the chief of police. He lived it to to show that he wasn't totally crazy. I bet he would have passed the interview. So,
You know, where does that leave us? Whereas the guy in Uvalde? I like to think that I'm a 15 minute conversation with someone used to having those conversations would have revealed that, maybe this guy should be looked into a bit before. He's he's given an
AR-15. Yeah, and that's certainly seem to be the case with someone like Adam Lanza, or who was, it was a James Holmes and Jared Loughner. I mean those guys were just properly Bonkers and alarming.
One with how crazy they were. And so you this raises the issue of red flag policy is and just what sort of intervention is possible when you know, even somebody's mom is terrified that they're going to commit some harm on the basis of their delusions. There seems to be very little to do, right. It's like you can't admit to incarcerate somebody in a some kind of mental hospital and and hold them there for long periods of
I'm until you're convinced, they pose no risk to society. I don't know where the, the current laws are state by state, but it seems like we're not in a position to do that at any kind of relevant scale. And that, you know, there are civil rights concerns around being able to do that, that that are an impediment. So and I guess I am in the thing. I wish it also acknowledges that these different sources of their, the pure cases of these differences, but then there than there are cases.
Where these variables overlap, where you can have somebody who's, you know, slightly crazy and who's also ideological, right? Who's also you? So, you know, I mean, there's just again, their cases were violence is over determined, but it's worth differentiating. The pure cases because they're very different problems. I mean, the problem of a dangerous device of ideology that is causing even normal people to support violence, or even engage in violence, that would otherwise be unthinkable.
People, you know, whether this is being leveraged by religious sectarianism or you know, racist sectarianism or some other belief system, that's its own problem that we have to figure out how to solve and then there's the problem of crazy people. There's then there's, I would say that there's a third class of person who's not crazy in the sense that they're delusional, but they're, they're morally insane. I mean, there are people who are being
You know, actual Psychopaths who are virtually guaranteed to harm people in various ways, but they're not delusional, you know, and they're not and to have a conversation with him is not going to produce signs of Florida mental illness. You might not notice anything other than a malignantly self-absorbed person,
more likely. If there is a psychopath, you'll enjoy their company on the first conversation. We invite them over to your barbecue, right? So it's, it's not likely going to catch.
Either way, I have one idea in this department though, which is I acknowledge that we exist in a political reality where it's unlikely that any of the things that I would like to see in the way of gun control are going to change anytime soon. But I do think there might be a small shift in Norms that we might be able to see, which is, you know, I'm always impressed when I talk to people who really think about their self defense.
They're their guns about how concerned they are about, making sure that their guns are kept safely, and that nobody gets anywhere near them who isn't supposed to have them. So, I wonder if that can be leveraged somewhat. So in, here's what I'm thinking of there, is someone who sold the Uvalde, killer his guns, your and I only wish that whoever that was felt more of an obligation to have a conversation with him. And
Check him out. Then that person did. And as far as I can see, I can tell much of gun culture, ignores that responsibility on the person who is handing off the gun and exchange for money. Yeah, they'll say, oh, you know, if you're selling someone steak knives, you don't check out. See whether that person is planning to use them to murder his wife. I think that Norm should change and whoever sold those guns, probably should. Well, that person is
Name should be known. I'm sure that person already feels plenty bad, but I think that person should probably feel worse and that should be the expectation that if you're going to be in the business of selling people guns, you're going to be in the business of making sure that you're selling the people you trust which currently does not seem to be the norm, but maybe we could push it there. And it would require no legislation to do
so. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe there's a role for insurance and liabilities.
Round this happening, right? If you're selling people guns, and we know one of those people turns out to be a mass shooter. Well, then, maybe maybe you're liable in some sense, right? And you know, then the that would be an industry of insurance. Presumably that would grow up around that and you know, that just the cost of their, the could be creative ways to make things expensive. And one of the things about the eovaldi
The shooter that was so surprising to many people. Just how many rounds of ammo he had on him, right? He had over 1,000 x 1600 rounds, you know, in the school. I think he shot some hundreds. I think he shot at least 150 rounds and you know, he'd apparently had magazines everywhere.
I think he shot about 100 in the first three minutes. Right? Which, by the way, means that he was deaf. You know, there's no way you can fire that many in that at that speed.
And still be hearing things that are going on around you unless you've muffled your ears in which case you're also not
hearing things going on around you. Yeah. Would now be the if I don't know if any of these guys show up with your protection, but it's and then that speaks to the possible advantage of having a law against high capacity magazines. There are many people who would emphasize that here that the difference between having, you know, Ten rounds before you go empty and having in the case of a name.
AR-15, you know, 30 or more rounds. It's potentially a big difference. Except if someone has any kind of training, you know, the break the time, it takes to pop in a new magazine is, is very brief. So unless somebody is standing right next to them unharmed and ready to gouge their eyes out during that brief, pause. It's not a Panacea to have only 10-round magazines. And so this is the question is, you know, in what context, does it make sense to own.
Thousands of rounds of ammunition if you're a non Maniac, there's a very clear case in a training context, you know, you know, IE at a shooting range, but there's not really a clear case out in the world, right? So I guess if I forget who Express this idea, somewhere recently, I think was on a podcast. The idea that you could make ammunition much, much more expensive than it is, so that it would just be just fundamentally unfeasible to have hundreds much.
As thousands of rounds of ammunition out in the world, but you could exempt shooting ranges so that you could actually go to a range. You could practice, you could shoot hundreds of rounds, add normal expense, but there'd be some way to actually not to have, you know, to ensure that people couldn't take hundreds of rounds away from a shooting range and, you know, out in the world, it'll be if every round cost 30 dollars or whatever. It is, presumably, you would not have someone show up with hundreds of rounds.
Of ammunition, you know, that's, that's just is one idea that had never occurred to me. And perhaps, there are other ideas like that. Again, if you're, if you've managed to lock yourself in a room with a dozen kids and you have, you know, some dozens of rounds of ammunition, you're going to be able to kill all those kids with whatever gun you have. And so that's just the problem of guns period, right? It's not a problem of a assault weapons, and it's not
A problem of high-capacity magazines and until we get our heads around that or get our heads around the impossibility of responding adequately to that challenge. We're really not thinking about the problem of gun violence in America. Unless you want to see more on that topic. That the thing, I think we can really must talk
about. I'll just I'll just point out, one of their agency, the idea of making ammunition, more expensive may have just occurred to you, but it's part of a Chris Rock routine. I believe where he's not really.
You can have got all the guns you want but let's have a tax of 1 million dollars per bullet. Right? Right. That'll just take care of everything.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's something there. But again, it's it's easy to see how if you're determined to get lots of ammo you're going to be able to do that in in America. So the thing that makes the eovaldi story so shattering for many of us.
I'm sure I can talk
about it.
Do you want me to to intro it?
It's have to get the tears back in my
head. We can either take a second to
or I know you take the lead all compose myself mean. The
Uvalde story is it's still coming out, of course, but the thing that is going to haunt us forever is what we now know about The Tick-Tock of the response, you know, that what happened play-by-play, which included a really long time. When the police were apparently, they're the shooter was still active. The shooter was still killing.
And some of the kids were actually on 9/11, for the better part of an hour saying, save us and 19 police officers were in the hall, not saving them. And the, the Texas authorities say they made the wrong decision. No kidding, but that decision was to treat this as if it was no longer an active shooter scenario, but a guy barricaded, in the classroom with nobody else. So, my understanding is the first 911 call came in at 11:30.
T and then by 11 35 or so, they were already police who were there. And then by 12:00 after which, hundreds of rounds have gone off, there are 19 officers in the hallway and it took until 1250 before border patrol showed up and sounds like at this point that it was, it was them just saying we're just going to do this and going in at 1250 having acquired the key to the room.
And then killing the suspect who sounds like now jumped out from a closet door, but we as a society are going to be thinking for a long time about how it can have gotten that bad, the response. And it's at this point, just days later. It's still gutting to imagine what those minutes were like for the kids, some of them survived and then some of them died because of the delay in that response.
Yeah, and there's this video of the
Police keeping the parents out while this is going down, right? So they say perhaps you've been able to characterize this video. I can see in this video which is perhaps the most infuriating thing I've ever laid eyes on. I worried that I didn't know exactly when this footage was shot and maybe there's some way in which, you know, the I just don't have the right frame around it. But if in fact, this is during those, I think 78 minutes when, you know, they're still kids, who are getting killed.
And there are now cops there with, you know, full tactical gear, right? They've got their long guns. They've got their body armor, and many of them are focused on keeping hysterical. Parents away from the school. Right? And you've got 19 of them stacked up in a hallway. Not going in to kill this guy and you've got, I mean, it just the parents eye view.
I know I like it. One of the moms you may have read. She
He got the word that this was going down. She got in her car and drove 40 miles got there, said I'm going in to save my two kids and then she was handcuffed the Uvalde cops handcuffed her so she wouldn't go in. Yeah, and then she convinced them to uncover and then wandered away and then jumped a fence into the school. Got her kids, and ran out. He sowed. And this is all happening before. They've neutralized the shooter. So, I mean,
Is Mom of the year right there? But the idea that parents who were willing to do anything to save their kids were being stopped from doing anything. Well, the police were doing
nothing and this is Texas, right? So, there's two ends of this, you can take and, you know, I guess both have been taken of. A certainly one has been taken by people who who are on the on the gun safety side of this. And they look at this. They look at them and this is in Texas, right? This is the, you know,
Is no state where the Second Amendment is trumpeted with more bravado. And this just seems like a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that the, you know, the answer for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun because you've got these officers with their guns, stacked up in the hallway doing nothing. And but of course, that's not the whole story. The whole story is the reason why this this situation is so lacerating is because the answer to the bad guy with the
On was a good guy with a gun and we needed that good guy with a gun 78 minutes earlier, right? And when the good guy with a gun, finally broke through the fucking mesmerism that had taken over that place and and kept those cops from doing the obvious and he opened the door and walked in and shot. The guy that was the solution. That's the solution. Everyone was pining for, and was right to Pine for in that situation
trained for as well. Yes. I don't know if you've seen some of this reporting but
journalists. I saw the New York Times got this that they looked at the training that had been done in Uvalde for this kind of scenario and it was standard. I mean, it's Min the protocol since after Columbine that what do you do? If there's an active shooter in the school, you go in close distance and neutralize the shooter and you do that. Even if it means hopping over the dying bodies of students, who have already been taught by him, because there's nothing that matters until that person is no longer shooting so that you would
Fall back and wait to see what happens next. Turn it into a possible hostage situation. Negotiate. This was contrary to the training that they in Uvalde had gotten just a matter of a couple of months before. And also, by the way, the training that should be obvious to anyone even without training near, nothing can happen that will be of any use until the person who's murdering people is no longer doing that. So
I may be anything changes. If anything's going to change as a result of this.
This catastrophe. You got to think it's going to be that. I mean, it's just people whose job it is to protect schools or you know cops who could be summoned to an event like this. Everyone now has to know that the barricaded shooter protocol doesn't exist in a school, right? I mean, like you respond immediately. If even if you're just the you're not waiting for backup, you know, if you're not going to, if you're not willing to go in alone,
In a situation like this, you're in the wrong job, right? I got to think that switch is going to get flipped as a result of this.
Yeah, I would think so. And almost every law enforcement officer. I've met, I'm pretty confident would react the right way. I mean, they certainly, they certainly seem to be that they've gone into that line of work because they want to protect people. And in most cases and there couldn't be a more obvious case than a guy with an AR-15 and it
Elementary School who still walking around? I think it might also be useful for that protocol. That post Columbine protocol to be maybe even better known despite this counter example. Mmm, you know, Shooters should know just like hijackers know that they are going to be torn limb from limb by passengers on an airplane. Shooters should know that. Here's what's going to happen. When you go in, you're going to kill some people. The school is going to empty out faster than you can imagine.
Then in a matter of seconds or minutes, you are going to be inundated by people with guns who are trying to kill you. There's not going to be time for you to negotiate. Not going to be time for you to record Tick-Tock videos. It's just going to be you with your very short life. And that's that's not how it was at Uvalde. I hope it can be credibly promised to people who are thinking about this in the future, that that's how it will be if they try it.
Also the this opens the door to the much maligned and are a talk.
Game point. And I should say, again defensively that I'm no fan of the NRA that the answer on some level is more guns, right? And to have teachers with guns or to have more of a presence at a school. And you know, this again, this sounds grotesquely comical in the immediate aftermath of ivaldi. When you have a, you know, 19 cops in full gear doing nothing, but you know, I'm just
I mean, if if there's, there are two ways we could go here, we could try to imagine a world where we do something akin to, what Australia did in the aftermath of it, a mass shooting and we just disarm our society fundamentally. And we could talk about a gun buyback and a change of the Second Amendment or say, you know, and and that politically seems totally hopeless, but perhaps it's not and maybe perhaps that's the thing people should be focused on.
On but given that we've got four hundred million guns on the ground and it doesn't even seem dimly possible that it will be hard to get your hands on one. If you really want to for the foreseeable future. Then you have, you have people. Certainly in gun culture saying well, the problem is problem. In this case is that you had cops who shouldn't have been cops, who didn't either didn't have the training, or didn't have the character or, or both to respond appropriately. And when somebody
It appropriately, we saw what happened in the border, patrol, agent opened the door and killed the guy and that should have been done sooner. So that it really, the solution was a gun. And I'm, I was thinking about a another heavily armed Society where, like, I don't think things like this happen and there seemed to be cases there where it plays out more or less as the most dewy-eyed and are enthusiasts, would imagine. And I'm thinking of Israel.
So, you know, again, I don't have a lot of data on this, but I've just seen various videos and and heard stories where somebody begins killing people, you know, a jihadist of one sort or another started stabbing people on a sidewalk and it's, you know, it's about 15 seconds. Later, the somebody pulls out a gun and shoots him. I'm just wondering, do you know anything about? Is there any lesson to draw from Israel for American society? Or they're just too many ways in which that
A different case
and I've been to Israel and I've observed this you go in and you know, you get a bagel with schmear and by the counter there are two armed men who were making the bagel for you. So it's true that weapons are absolutely everywhere and in the rare cases where they're needed they're produced and then often used to it with great efficiency. So yeah that that's a that's a data point. They're also just rarely abused in the way that they are.
Are in the United States. So I suppose that the takeaway from that is that there's not it's not just the presence of guns, but a culture of guns that were looking at that the number of people who have those guns because they are motivated by self-defense and who have training in most cases because they've been in the military and many cases that they are combat veterans, you know is so high that it just makes all the difference. I mean if
In the case of the United States, we've got lots of people who have guns, who are totally untrained. I mean, if my concealed carry class last weekend was any indication, then the modal concealed carrier is not John Wick, you know, it's a guy who has a pretty good chance of shooting his own hand, or foot in ordinary training and you know who really has to have rules of firearm safety like tattooed on his hand, if he's
He's going to be expected to remember them. So I'm not sure how much we can take away as if we armed the same number of people in the United States, as are armed in Israel. I don't think the results would be great. Hmm. Now you and I have talked to Sam about Finland where there are a lot of armed people and it's completely anathema to just be walking around with a handgun. So there are ways that that and this is because of
Finland's, territorial defense plan, which is to be ready in the event of an invasion to start an Insurgency. So almost every man who's under the age of 45 is part of that Defense Force in case of like a Russian style Invasion. Like it happened to the winter war or second world war. So I think there are cases where you can see lots of guns everywhere with as there is in Finland as there in Israel very little abuse of them, but the fact is,
We don't live in those countries. We live in a country where there's an enormous amount of abuse of guns crime with guns and just a lot of guns, four hundred million guns. So, I'm really hesitant to try to extrapolate from countries that are not ours.
Mmm. Yeah, and we have, I think a unique cultural problem. I mean, you mentioned the social contagion Factor here and it and we have we have different cultural problems, amazing size, as
Said, you know, most of the problem of homicide is a problem of homicide in the black community on a daily basis and it's, you know, it's black on black young male crime overwhelmingly. And that's its own problem. When you're talking about the problem of mass shooting. Certainly, the prototypical case is of a white guy, that's not not the case and you have all they have a Hispanic there.
But it's just, you know, it is disproportionately White young men at the center of these Horrors. And there you have a very different kind of cultural contagion. I mean, I don't know what we know about it, but this fetishizing of AR-15s and, you know, whatever connection there is to, you know, video game culture and and just the social isolation of many, of these young men. I mean, when you look at
They are and how they spend their time. Prior to snapping. There is a profile of this sort of person. And it's a, you know, it's different than the profile of a teenager in the inner city was in a gang, you know, who's dealing drugs. I mean, it's just a very different logic to the the violence of the that ensues there.
I take your point. I might make one sort of pedantic correction or elaboration.
Which is mass shootings, you know, first of all, there's a lot of them right now. We're on track for, I think 600 or 700 in this calendar year, which is twice as much as there were 10 years ago, but that includes drive-by shootings. So, if and that I think what the sort of prototypical workplace or school shooting, you is a white guy who's gone Bonkers or is in some cases, ideologically motivated, but mass shootings in general.
A lot of them do happen in in scenarios that are pretty different from what we tend to think
of exactly. Yeah, go your hairstyle, isn't the definition for more people getting
shot. Yeah. I think that's the sort of criminological are cut off at they use. Yeah, and then I think you put your finger on something else though, which is video games and social isolation, which they have a, I think important and interesting relationship where it seems like video games.
Alms for a lot of people turn into outlets for their rage, you know, if you really like the idea of shooting a room full of people. There are very realistic ways. You can simulate that and seems like some people get that from video games. And then, there are other people who play video games because of their social isolation and they just fall deeper and deeper into that isolation in lieu of any engagement with any other social reality. And it seems like the Buffalo shooter crazed, anti-semitic racist.
Also, just was deep into the isolation of the pandemic disappear down racist and anti-semitic rabbit holes. And then when he emerged was completely nuts and then in the case of the Uvalde shooter, I he to it sounds like was spending a lot of time alone because for some reason of social dysfunction and then also probably it sounds like he was also using video games as a remedy for that social isolation. So
So I wonder how much of the jump and numbers in the last couple of years, which has been significant, both in mass shootings, and in school shootings, how much that has to do with people who are just alone and not able to deal mentally with the effects of
that.
So I'm enclosing my it might be useful to talk about possible remedies here and we you know, we've mentioned a few in passing and I again, I don't know how quixotic either these ideas is amazed it. I think I said at the beginning that I this conversation May produce really nothing actionable as an idea, but I keep coming back to you again. Now, we're focused on the distinct problem of
Mass shootings of the crazy or ideological sort right, where you have somebody, who's who, however, isolated they, they are the, you could imagine them attracting the attention of family members. And, you know, the other kids in school and I think that in the case of the evolving shooter people were just obviously concerned about, you know, what a hostile person he was and, you know, he seems scarcely hinged to people. I'm sure more. Those more information will come out about that.
Question is, what do you do? You know, when you're a student in a school or a parent and you, there's a young man in your life who you're you have every reason to worry about and if they haven't done anything illegal yet. Is there any hope that we would have some process of intrusion in the lives of such people, you know, add scale, you know, perhaps facilitated by social media networks. That could get us actual.
Data on this. I mean, obviously you have companies that can profile people fantastically. Well for the purpose of delivering them ads. We could be profiling people who worry us and delivering those data to the appropriate authorities. The question is, what would be the end result there? That could conceivably be therapeutic, right in? Like what you do, if you imagine cops showing up because Facebook has coughed up and immense.
Out of probabilistic data on all the dangerous people in any given City, the idea that you're going to get a knock on the door by, you know, from the NYPD and that something good is going to come of that. When you're an ice socially isolated game, plane AR-15 worshiping quasi lunatic already. It just you know, that sort of seems hopeless. Like, what is it? You know, what army of social workers and
And you know mental health professionals. Are we going to Marshall to intrude in the lives of people if we produce these data and if you have any thoughts about
that? Well, yeah. Yeah, I think you've you've adequately described how hopeless that situation is Facebook. Does not want to be the clinical counselor to the world the NYPD and every other law enforcement agency has nothing like the amount of resources to check out everybody who would be flagged.
This way. So I'm not sure where that leaves us. I mean there are enough crazy people all over the world. Like he there's a guy recently convicted of killing a bunch of people in, you know, sleepy Norway with bow and arrow. Who was, he's unwell, but he was sort of undetected by the system in the sense that nobody expected him to go on and bow and arrow serial Killing Spree. So that suggests that even extremely well. Resourced societies, which are
Pretty good at monitoring their own are not going to be able to come up with some magic ability to detect people and then not detect them. So sensitively without specificity to that they'll be able to identify which ones really need their attention. And and that's why I keep coming back to this idea of you want people who are getting on the radar to interact with with others in person. And I'm talking about others who have the ability to
Actually, stop them in their tracks. Stop them in their, in their plans. And I don't know about you when I think, oh, this person might be a psychopath. My first instinct is not to personally intervene in that person's life. It's to get as far away as possible. But there are people who are trained to do that and those could be school counselors. And as a last line of defense, I keep coming back to this idea that if I'm selling guns. I want to be confident to who I'm selling to and have a conversation with that person. And I want that for my own well-being.
And because I couldn't live with myself. If I sold a AR-15 to someone who later used it, it took to kill people so it would be it would be good to try to work on the points in the chain of bad events, where there's a possibility of having that face-to-face with someone, where there has to be a moment. When you look the person in the eyes and try to figure out if persons homicidal or just wants to shoot targets or feral Hogs, so maybe
The way to do it. I don't know, quite how to change the culture, so that that happens. But it seems not to have been adequate
in this case. Mmm. And what do you think about the prospects of having a true sea change in culture of the sort that Australia had in the aftermath of their mass shooting, where they literally just bought back all the guns. I mean it, so we've got four hundred million guns, you know, a plausible buyback would probably be, you know, four hundred billion.
Hours, maybe even put that a trillion dollars. There's a lot of people who would sell their guns at you. One would imagine if you were giving giving them two thousand dollars or so per gun, but obviously there are probably Millions who wouldn't at any price because the gun ownership is their religion, but if there was a will to change the laws and a buyback, you could imagine just changing the facts on the ground where all of a sudden, we look more like the UK in terms of the number of guns in existence.
In. And I mean, that that is some there, some Universe in which that, that is possible. But the question is, How likely are we to live in that
Universe? Yeah. I mean the, you would know as well as I do. We live in that country the country where people turn in their guns and exchange for a few thousand dollars. I don't think so. When I talk to people who are really into guns in a way that I'm not, you know, I don't own guns. I don't shoot guns every week. But the people I know who do they think of there.
Guns is part of their identity part of their life. Sometimes part of their work, definitely part of their Leisure part of their existence. I mean, no exaggeration to say that a dozen times a day. They are thinking about where their guns. Are there thinking about how to store their guns. It's just like a huge part of how they're spending their mental Cycles. So I don't think these people are going to be willing to just give up their guns and they'll immediately ask themselves if the laws
Danger, or if there's a social push for them to give up, why me. I'm the world is safer with me, carrying a gun than it would be without my carrying a gun and, you know, sometimes they're right when they think that, you know, it will be extremely difficult to convince them at scale that that they should think otherwise.
Yeah. I mean, that's the that's what it's so hard to parse about this because I mean there are people I know who carry firearms.
Arms people who I've trained with right, you know, current and former SWAT operators, who off duty. We're never going to be caught unarmed. And, you know, honestly, I feel safer with them living that way, then being unarmed right? Let me just given that given the reality of violence and the, the current facts on the ground. Yeah, it is it is genuinely hard to think about, but in the, in the aftermath of an event like
There's it's it really is. It's tempting to hope for a total reset of our society. And it's just, I just don't see any path politically that we could even begin to walk to make that possible. And that's that is very frustrating. I mean, just even things that virtually all gun owners agree on like the making a tree in a truly comprehensive National background, check system that would catch.
Anyone who had a, you know, any reason not to be sold a gun, as far as I know there's widespread support for that even among gun owners, and I think even among NRA members. And yet, that is thus, far been politically a
non-starter? Yeah. I think you're right that most gun owners. They like to think of themselves as special. They like to think of themselves as people who are extremely responsible and unlike Joe Schmo should be allowed to have guns because they can be trusted.
The other thing that is the hardest part of this puzzle to deal with. But I think serious consideration of it is going to be part of the solution that really thinking about the social contagion portion of this, our friend Steve Pinker likes to talk about how the problem of streakers running on two football fields was solved. When networks decided. We're just going to cut to commercial. You're not even going to know if you're at home, right? There's a Streaker on the field and then suddenly there were just no streakers.
The field for the for most people who were watching football games because they never heard about it because they were watching TV and nobody even mentioned them and then suddenly just isn't a thing anymore. Now, obviously journalists can't stop reporting on the existence of mass shooting but there is the availability of this idea of mass shooting as what one might do, when one has a political point to make. That's that's not great there that we're in a
Society, where that's one of the first things you think about as a way to you know, tell the world how much you hate it or how much you want fewer Jews in charge. So changing that. I have no real advice. I'm afraid but that that is that's going to be part of the solution when someone smarter than me comes up with ideas and how to change it.
Well, I feel like the mainstream media has drawn some lesson about this. I don't know when things change, but that
You know, there's I perceive a reluctance to cover a mass shooting of this kind in any way that focuses on the shooter. I mean, there are many cases where I don't even wind up learning the name of the shooter. I mean it is not to say that it's been completely suppressed. But like in the in the Buffalo case if I knew the guys name, I have since forgotten that and I think that I think that is good. I mean there's definitely a way that there's a type of coverage is a type of Fame that can
Visited Upon A shooter, you know, what, alive or dead in the aftermath of something like this. That is genuinely counterproductive. Right? And it's just, it is part of the contagion problem, because then you have the aspiring Mass shooter thinking about how famous he is going to be after what he does. And so, I think insofar as we can draw a lesson from The Case of the streakers, I think we want to do that and and they're what they're actually there.
Was a mass shooting that the biggest mass shooting in American history, the Vegas shooting, which just went down the memory hole so fast, I mean, inexplicably fast. I think the only thing that explains it was just how wrapped up we were in some trumpian cycle of indiscretion politically aware. You know, it just there was just no oxygen left in the room, even for a mass shooting that killed. I think. I think that was 58 people and wounded hundreds.
Again, the name of that shooter is not in my brain. Do you have a any ideas about why that the greatest mass shooting in American? History is has been. So fully forgotten.
The main reason is that we don't know why he did it. We truly have no idea. Isis, interestingly enough claimed it very soon after it happened and there seems to be no reason to believe that Isis had anything to do with it. It is weird though because ice is typically does not do that. Yeah. They very rapidly said, this is our
Are our handiwork and it's strange that they would claim the one mass shooting that we're no even remote motive ever came up
and he also didn't, he wasn't. He was like, was he in his fifties or sixties and he didn't really fit the profile either.
He was in his ya later middle aged at least and pretty wealthy and everything about that mass shooting was so strange. It was such an outlier that I kind of understand why we
Memory hole it because it doesn't fit with anything else that we've seen before or since the numbers, the venue the planning the motive. All of these things just don't fit with any previous every any previous case. So you'd think that the most quote-unquote successful mass shooting would be one that we try to learn from but if we did try to learn from it, we probably make some bad decisions because it turns out not to be a very good model for anything that's happened.
Yeah. Well, Graham.
Um, it's it has been very interesting and hopefully useful. I again, I don't, we've arrived in a place that I was. There's unsurprising to me. I, you know, it would have been a miracle in my mind. If we hit come up with something that was genuinely novel, and actionable here, but it seems useful. Nonetheless. Is there any? Are there? Any points? We haven't made that you. You want to make in closing?
No, I mean, I think it's really difficult to come up with solutions that are good.
It's not that hard to find. Seriously proposed solutions that are really bad. So even when I kick myself, for not figuring out how to solve the problem, at least take some Solace and maybe I'm pushing against some, some bad ideas. That would make the lives of our children worse here. And in this case, I think we identified a few of
those. Yeah. I think that maybe I just want to reiterate one that came from. You that you know, honestly, I hadn't thought about all that much but
I do think moving in the direction of more open campus. It's counterintuitive for people, but you just want that campus to be able to empty as quickly as possible. Right? And so that so that the Ted Cruz solution is just should be obviously wrong. And yet, it's tempting to many people, the idea that you can have a single single choke point. That's well defended. And otherwise the, the, you know, everything is a brick wall. I mean, that just, that is
Usually not the way to go and you know, happily what seems, you know, most practical here is you know, emotionally speaking the most desirable and I think what we do not want schools to resemble penitentiary's, we want schools to be, you know, open non paranoid places to be and if you can get out of school immediately wherever you happen to be, that's that's also the outcome you want in the case of a mass shooting.
Yeah, I think
All of that. Would having a more open school would be a having a much better school. And if kids are feeling alienated, if they're hating the world. I don't think it's going to help for their school to be prison, like for their teachers to be like correctional officers. To generally be in an environment where they're thinking about death because of the very way that their campus is laid out. So, you know, it seems like there's a lot of positive externalities that would come from just setting up the school in a way that if there was one of
Rare events and the kids could scatter like a flock of birds and the place would be empty in a matter of
seconds here. Yeah. Well G, as always, it's great to talk to you. Thanks for everything you're doing. I you know, as you know, I read you whenever you show up in the Atlantic and and then I tap you whenever something in your in your dark wheelhouse appears in the news and that unfortunately, that's all too often. So you're my go-to.
Just for for all things violent. So thanks. Thanks
for that Sam. Thanks
for the reminder of the
Dark World that I live in yet. Yeah, stations with you are always the best. I appreciate it.
