January 13, 2022 • 58 mins
Why is America an outlier in the world when it comes to gun violence and passion for gun ownership? What is the true origin of the second amendment? Find out the answer to these questions and more on this week's State of Play featuring interviews and bonus discussions with historian Dr. Carol Anderson author of The Second; Jocelyn Kiley of the Pew Research Center; Allison Anderman, Senior Counsel at the Giffords Law Center; Kourtney Redmond, President of the 761st Gun Club; and, anti gun violence advocate, Pastor Michael McBride.
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The following show is brought to youin partnership with the Institute of Politics,
Policy and History, Blue Star Strategies, Bright Road Incorporated, Make It Plain
Podcast, and RPC Media from thecampus of the University of the District of
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Columbia. This is State of Play. Welcome to State of Play. I'm
Sharon Pratton with me a Karen Tramentanoand the Reverend Mark Thompson. Our topic
today gun culture and America and howit may be tied to other issues in
America, such as possibly white supremacy. We have someone with us who can
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put it all in perspective, oneof America's leading scholars, Professor Carol Anderson.
She is the Charles Howard Candler Professorfor African American Studies at Emory University,
with a particular focus on public policy, race, justice, and equality.
She's been an author many times,including one around voter suppression, One
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Person, No Vote, and anotherWhite Rage. She now has one focused
on the Second Amendment, Second raceand guns in a fatally unequal America.
Thank you so much, Professor Andersonfor being with us. Thank you so
much for inviting me. So we'veat least I for one, have often
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into it. It's got to besomething to this obsessive commitment to the gun
culture in America. And you're sayingthat the Second Amendment was tied to protecting
slavery and a race based slave systemin America. Absolutely yes. One of
the things that became clear to meas I started this hunt through our history
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was the way that the slave stateswere intent on creating a nation that protected
slavery. This is why in theConstitution we get the three fifth claws,
why we get the fugitive slave clause, and why we get the twenty year
expansion of the Atlantic slave trade.But it is also why we get the
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Second Amendment, and that is becauseduring the ratification of the Constitution, Virginia
dug in its heels that having controlof the militia under the federal government would
lead the slave societies defenseless against aslave revolt, against a slave uprising.
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So much of the narrative at thattime had defined the enslaved and black people
as dangerous, and the thought thatthere wouldn't be a militia there to protect
them was unconscionable for them, andthey were determined to have embedded in the
Constitution protection for slavery protection for theirright to own human beings and keep the
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enslaves rights squashed by this militia.So, you know, I always think
of it as sort of an extensionof don't tread on me during the American
Revolution. And you're saying that there'sclear proof, clear evidence that the correlation
had everything to do with race basedslave system in the country. Yes,
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but one of the things is thatwe get this narrative of this heroic militia
that fought against the British and tookthe British one toe to toe. The
militia was not as effective as ournarrative would have us believe. George Washington
was disgusted with the militia. Sometimesthey would run, Sometimes they would be
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in the battle and then they're like, oh, peace out, I'm done.
So our narratives don't match with howprominent slavery and protecting slavery was.
We have a judicial system right nowin the Supreme Court that cares very much
about a strict construction of the Constitutionand looking at history for what people exactly
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met. So how do we getyour story to the judiciary or to the
public. Because I know I studiedhistory and I didn't know any of this
until I read your book. Thatis a great question. The theory of
originalism means that they're not really lookingat the role of slavery in the construction
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of the constitution. Doing originalism meansthat you're trying to construct a legal framework
back when white men, a strataof white men, had all of the
power. This is a dangerous philosophy. Part of what we have to do
is dismantle that philosophy and think aboutwhat is really going on at the time
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and how it affects our current daylives as American citizens. So to dismantle
this narrative that has been the compellingstory of our nation, we would have
to look at, you know,people who have been lionized throughout history,
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and you speak to that in yourin your book. Could you tell us
more about those heroes that maybe aren'tquite heroes. Yeah, so, you
know we think of Patrick Henry,for instance, give me liberty or give
me death. Well, Patrick Henrywas one of those leading the charge in
Virginia to scuttle the constitution, leadingthe charge saying, you know, they're
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going to take your inwards away fromyou. And so you have this give
me liberty or give me death,patriot arguing strenuously for slavery and embedding and
strengthening the protection of slavery in theConstitution. With history, we realize that
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there are folks who are who dothings heroically, but that doesn't necessarily make
them unvarnished heroes, and it requiresthat we just grow up and to do
real history. You tell it all, you tell the strengths, you tell
the weaknesses, because we get tothe complexities of how policy is made,
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how laws are made, how livesare lived. That's what's really heroic.
But you know, they're those whowould say, well, we're well passed
a race based slavery. There wasthe emancipation, there was the civil rights
legislation. Are you suggesting that thatattitude is still with us in the twenty
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first century? Anti blackness is longand strong in the twenty first century.
We see it in the ways,for instance, why Philando Castile is gunned
down, but Kyle Rittenhouse, theyoung white man who went to Kenosha,
Wisconsin, carrying a rifle, andthat he's not arrested even as he walks
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with his hands up after shooting threepeople, killing two of them. Anti
blackness is long and strong in America, and it affects the ways that we
move as a nation. Here's moreof my conversation with doctor Carol Anderson.
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Professor Anderson, you've written beautifully andeloquently about the issue of the right to
vote, one person, no vote. What do you think about what's going
on now with voting rights legislation andsome of the initiatives taking place at the
state level. I think what we'rereally seeing is what I have called white
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rage, where you had, inthe midst of a pandemic and in the
midst of an existential threat to Americandemocracy, black folks came out in droves
to fight for this democracy, tosave this democracy, to put their lives
on the line once again for thisdemocracy, and saved the democracy from a
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regime that did not believe in indemocracy. And what we have the response
to that, to that massive voterturnout was not this embraced like yes,
not this celebration, But instead,what we've got are a series of laws
coming out of the these legislatures thatare targeting black voters, looking at the
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ways that African Americans voted, andthen creating additional barriers to that vote,
and it is it is because ofwhat the US Supreme Court did in Shelby
County Beholder that gutted the Voting RightsAct, that allowed these states just to
run wild. And what they've learnedhow to do, and this is something
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that came out of Mississippi in eighteenninety, was to write these laws with
a race neutral veneer, but beingracially targeted and using what I call the
legacies of slavery in order to makethat happen. And so you see the
ways that in Georgia, for instance, one of the things that they did
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was to shut down a number ofpolling places. Then what they in this
new legislation, what they had isthat if the line is long, you
cannot have anybody bring you any wateror any food. And these out these
lines have run up to eleven hourslong in these black communities. And so
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what you see, though, isthat the determination you had black folks saying
I will stand in line for elevenhours to vote. Now we should be
heralding that kind of determination. Weshould also be doing the work to end
eleven hour long lines, knowing howdetrimental they are to democracy. But you're
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not seeing that kind of legislation comingthrough. Instead, what you're seeing is
the kind of legislation that puts upthe onus on black folks to make it
even harder to vote. These legislaturesare target targeting not only African Americans,
but Hispanics, Native Americans, youngpeople, and poor people, Asian American
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Pacific islanders. They are really tryingto create an originalist version of who should
be able to vote. Well,most of us in the District of Columbia,
with a population that's greater than Wyomingor Vermont, feel that our lack
of voter representation or sovereignty as asan entity has everything to do with voter
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suppression. And you think that's astretch, not a stretch at all,
not a stretch at all. AndI think that just the way I've been
talking about the power of anti blacknessin American society, the lack of representation,
the lack of statehood for Washington,DC is also in that bedrock of
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what that means. It's like,how do we stop black people from having
the power, the political power torepresent themselves in order to choose their representatives.
How do we stop the wielding ofthat power? And in the larger
context of the US Senate, thereis the fear because right now they're balanced
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at fifty fifty that what will happenis because African Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
Is that what that we'll do wasbring two Democratic senators into the US
Senate. It shifts the balance ofpower, and they are absolutely afraid of
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that. And so being willing todeny representation to over seven hundred thousand people
in order to maintain power is whatwe saw in the and the founding of
this nation, in the writing andthe drafting of this constitution, it is
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a through line. Great so,professor, just taking your back to your
book again, you mentioned in thebook that the colonist or some colonists would
have preferred to surrender to the Britishthen to have rights of gun ownership given
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to black men and women or blackmen at the time. And so what
that is dealing with was during theWar of Independence, you had the British
had been kicking some USDA grade aprime beef butt up north, and then
the Continental army began to diversify becauseblack men were then allowed to join the
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army, and so that led theBritish to go let's go to the soft
underbelly. That soft underbelly was theSouth. They went to attack the South.
They ran over Georgia like that.Then they're coming up to South Carolina.
And so George Washington since his emissaryJohn Lawrence, to South Carolina.
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And he's a son of South Carolina, a prominent family in South Carolina.
And he's like, we don't haveenough white men to fend off the British.
You must arm the enslaved. Andthe South Carolina government was like,
oh no, we are not doingthat. Let me tell you what we're
not going to do, and andand Lawrence is like, you don't understand.
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The British are coming. The Britishare coming. And they're like,
we don't care. We are notarming the enslaved. They had deployed the
vast number of their white men asmilitia in order to quell any kinds of
uprising from South Carolina's vast enslaved population. That's where the bulk of South Carolina's
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white men were. And they weren'twilling one to redeploy them, nor were
they're willing to arm that vast populationof enslaved people in order to fight for
the United States. Instead, whatthey said was, we're not you know,
you asking us a question like that, We're not sure this is a
nation worth fighting for. And sothat kind of sense that white supremacy is
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much more important than the United Statesof America is also actually a through line.
It was the through line that gotus to the Civil War. It
is the through line I've got tosay that is also undergirding our battles with
voting rights and gun rights, sothat the battle over voter suppression is the
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fear of black people's power, blackpeople's political power. The battle over gun
rights deals with the fear of beingleft defenseless if if, if, if
lights aren't armed, then these dangerousblack people will come get them. And
so underneath underneath both of those sowhen you act, that's the question.
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We get these questions, how isit that we keep having mass shootings?
You know, we had Sandy Hook. How is it that we have these
mass shootings and we get no movementon gun safety laws. It is because
of that fear that if we don'thave our guns, black people will come
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in from the cities and take otake our lives, take our property,
take our possessions. The same fearis underlying the battle over voting rights.
If black people vote, it meansthat whites will be left defenseless. And
so this is the battle that we'reseeing. When we recognize the power of
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anti blackness in American society, itmeans we're having a very different kind of
conversation about the ways that public policyworks and what's blocking movement with it should
be obvious that we should be movingforward. Well, we knew we had
an issue, or we knew therewas a problem around this issue of race.
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A few of us really grasped whatextent that applied to this compulsive obsession
with guns in America. So wecan't thank you enough for being here with
us on State of Play. Thankyou, Welcome back to State of Play.
We are continuing our discussion about Americansand their guns. Joining us is
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Joscelyn Kylie. She's the associate directorof Research for the Pew Center on Research.
Thank you, Jocelyn for joining us. Thank you for having me.
Pew released a survey the Key Factsabout Americans and Guns, So could you
give us some of the key factsand findings. Sure, we've been tracking
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Americans attitudes about guns for many yearsnow, and this is our most recent
report, and so we looked atsupport for various policy proposals as well as
general latitudes about the state of gunpolicy today. And we found, for
instance, that about half of Americansthink that gun laws in the country should
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be stricter than they currently are,while about fourteen percent say that they should
be less strict than they currently are. And that's actually a shift a little
bit from recent years, fewer peoplesaying that gun laws should be strict.
We also have asked about various gunpolicies, for instance, background checks and
a federal database to track gun sales, and we find high levels of support
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for those policies, but we findmore mixed support for policies like bans on
assault style weapons or bands on certainkinds of ammunition. So one of the
items that I noticed is that eightout of ten African Americans see gun violence
as an important issue. How doesthat compare with other demographics. Sure,
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Black Americans are more likely than WhiteAmericans, for sure, to say gun
violence is a major problem in thecountry today. Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans
are less likely than Black Americans tosay this, but more likely than white
Americans to say this, and thisis a divide we've seen for some time
and are pulling, with black Americansmore likely to express concern about gun violence
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than white Americans. And another itemin the study talked about partisans support for
a couple of restrictions, So whyis it framed in terms of partisan support?
Well, so much of what Ido look is looking at the political
landscape in the US and gun policy. It's political policy issue. It's really
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about what can get done in Congressor in state legislatures. And I think
one of the things that's important tounderstand is when there are areas of bipartisan
support, so areas that Republicans andDemocrats can agree on, and thus perhaps
in legislatures, you can see agreementin areas where there are divisions. So,
for instance, there's bipartisan support formaking it harder for people with mental
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illnesses to get access to guns,and there's a fair amount of support across
the board for background checks. Butwhen you get to things like bands on
assault style weapons, that's when yousee Democrats overwhelmingly supporting that, but Republicans
really buy and large rejecting that asa policy. And so you know,
some of that explains what we seein the political sphere. And I think
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you said earlier that you see adrop in support for restrictions. Are there
differences between Democrats and Republicans and whitesversus black in that drop of support.
Overall in the public there hasn't beenmuch change, but republic less Republican support
for some of these gun reforms thanwhat we've seen in recent years. So
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for the most part, we reallyhaven't seen change among Democrats and groups that
lean democratic, and Black American attitudesreally haven't shifted very much over the last
couple of years. We spoke morewith Joscelyn Kylie of the Pew Research Center,
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So looking back at the mass shooting, say a decade ago, what
have you seen in terms of shiftsof attitude regarding guns and gun violence.
So for the most part, whatwe actually see, more often than not,
is not a tremendous amount of changein public attitudes about guns over the
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last decade or so that shooting thatthe New Town shooting was in twenty and
twelve, for instance, And wedo see some minor shifts where there may
be a little bit more support forgun control in the weeks immediately following Newtown,
for instance. But by and largethere is more continuity than change when
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I comes to GOT attitudes in thecountry today over the last decade. And
do you see that is, youknow, different than other issues that you've
done research on. Well, Ithink, by and large, you know,
there are other areas where attitudes reallyhaven't shifted all that much. But
I think if we can point tosome other social issues like views on immigration,
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or views on racial justice or otherissues like that, we have seen
more significant change over over this timeperiode, or attitudes about LGBT issues,
for instance, or even climate change. You know, we don't always see
profound shifts, but we do seeshifts, and really we haven't seen really
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major shifts when it comes to publicattitudes about GOTTEN over the last decade or
so. Thank you, Jocelyn forjoining us and for the information you've provided.
Thanks very much for having me.Don't go away. We have more
on this topic Unstated play. Welcomeback to State of Play. I'm Sharon
Pratt and with me is Karen Tramintano. Our topic today gun culture in America,
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and now we have someone who canhelp explain how we're addressing it.
And where this dynamic is going.Alison Anderman, she is senior counsel at
the Gifts Law Center. Very fortunateto have you, Thank you for being
here. Thank you so much forhaving me so far our audience who may
or may not know, Can youexplain and tell us more about the Giffets
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Law Center. Sure so. Ourorganization is led by former congresswoman and gun
violence survivor Gabby Giffords, and wework with federal, state and legislators around
the country to draft and enact solutionsto gun violence, the epidemic of gun
violence in America. And we alsowork on impact litigation, fighting back the
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gun lobby's attempts to expand the SecondAmendment into all reaches of American society and
to invalidate strong, effective laws thatare currently on the books. Well,
it would appear well, I thinkby almost anybody's account, we're a very
polarized country, politically polarized, raciallypolarized. In that environment, What is
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happening with the gun culture. Arewe more aggressive about gun control or is
it moving in another direction. It'svery interesting because we are actually much less
polarized on gun violence prevention than Ithink the media would have you believe,
or gun advocates might have you believe. You know, ninety seven percent or
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more of Americans every year that theQuinnipiac conducts poling says that they are in
favor of universal background checks, sothat's background checks on all gun purchases.
And a majority of Americans support mostof the gun violence prevention policies that we
and other national and state groups advocatefor. What we're really missing is people
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at the federal level of government tohave the courage to enact these proven solutions.
So we're actually much more much closertogether on this issue, I think
than many people realize. If we'rethat close, and some states deems to
be going into permitless carries, whatare the consequences for the American people if
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that direction takes hold? Right,and again, there's a real discrepancy between
what voters want and what their legislativetours are doing at the state and federal
level. And we have seen anunprecedented number of these bills that repeal the
requirements that someone who wants to carrya hidden loaded gun in public gets a
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permit and is subject to a backgroundcheck. And we have about five states
already have enacted those laws this session, with a couple more that seem likely
to go forward, and that's justgoing to bring more guns into American society,
make it much harder for law enforcementto know who is legally caring and
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who isn't. And we're going tohave a lot of unvetted people out in
public carrying guns. And we knowthat more guns leads to more gun violence.
In twenty seventeen, we saw arecord high of Americans who are killed
with guns in the last forty years. So yeah, we're definitely some states
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are moving really in the wrong direction, and that weakens the efforts of states
that neighbor these states who have stronggun laws to keep their resonance safe when
they border states with such weak gunlaws. Let me also ask you some
of the research that your organization hasdone in this area of using guns for
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political threats. Is this, inyour view, a new phenomenon or have
we seen this before. We've definitelyseen this before. We've seen guns used
to intimidate communities of color from votingand exercising their constitutional rights to vote and
engage in free speech. So it'snot new, but it does seem to
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have taken on a more urgent qualityin the last year, given what we
have seen happening in the American politicalsystem, where we have the former president
putting forth big lies about the electionand the integrity of our free and fair
elections, and really ginning up hissupporters to go to polling places with guns
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and protest gun laws and COVID mitigationstrategies with their guns. So definitely,
I do think there has been anincrease in the use of guns to intimidate
people from exercising their constitutional rights.But it is not a new phenomenon.
So where does this come from?This temeritate of the state legislative branch in
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Texas, United States Senate basically resistingthe will of the American people. I
mean, you're saying that some ninetyseven percent of the American people want something
like background checks, and yet howdo they have the temeritate to ignore that
right? That's an excellent question.I mean, I think one answer is
the strength and power of the gunlobby and the gun industry. They've had
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kind of a stranglehold on federal legislatorsand legislators in many states for decades,
and that's a really hard thing tobreak. But I also think that because
of the nature of the polarization ofour political and voting systems in the United
States, we are at a timewhere unless this is a single issue vot
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you voting issue for people, they'restill going to elect legislators who are extreme
on gun issues because those legislators votefor other things that these people care about
in particular states. So we needto make this a priority voting issue for
people. We need to help theAmerican public understand that gun violence keeps everybody
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down. It keeps our not justour society down, but our economy down.
We spend billion millions of dollars incosts related to gun violence every year,
and this has to be something thatpeople prioritize when they're voting. Do
African Americans or other you know,black and brown communities, did they suffer
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great greater under gun violence than othercommunities. You have the demographics on that.
Yes, gun violence takes and absolutelytakes a disproportionate toll on communities of
color, in particular black men.Black men makeover half of the gun homicide
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victims in the United States. Thereare a number of proven solutions to reducing
this interpersonal gun violence that predominantly impactscommunities of color. Need to fund these
programs and make them priorities so thatwe can really address these racial inequities.
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Do you feel that, given youknow, what we experienced on January sixth,
with the insurrection on the Capitol andyou know, seemingly other acts of
intimidation, that we may be driftingin a dangerous direction. And maybe in
that environment we can get the attentionof the American people to make this issue
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a priority when they go to thevoting both. I certainly hope so,
and I want to also point outthat this has become a priority for many
American voters. We saw gun safetychampions win and essentially take control of the
legislatures in certain states in recent years, like Nevada and Colorado, and in
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those state and Virginia, and inthose states in the last year or two,
those states have passed tremendous gun safetylegislation to keep their residents safe.
I'm hopeful that the events of Januarysixth and what we witnessed in twenty twenty
will propel Americans to make this asingle issue voting topic for them and to
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really elect people who have the courageto do what we need to do to
end this epidemic. Because we knowthat there are proven solutions to this epidemic.
We do not have to live thisway. It does not have to
be this way, but we justneed legislators with the will to do it.
I gather from all of your research, and we're running out of time.
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We're the oddity on the planet thatis the United States of America as
a major power in terms of ourgun culture. Right absolutely, America stands
alone in its epidemic of gun violence. Americans are twenty five times more likely
to be shot than their peer nationcounterparts. We continued our conversation with Alice
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and Anderman, senior counsel at theGiffet's Law Center. You outline the proven
strategies, the strategies that work.Yes, so we know that community led
violence intervention programs are remarkably successful atreducing gun violence in community as a color
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who are disproportionately impacted by a gunviolence, and these are typically communities of
color in urban areas. These strategiesthat go by a number of names and
have different approaches, ceasefire and otherprograms have been remarkably successful in cities like
Richmond, California, Oakland, California, camped in New Jersey, Newark,
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New Jersey. And these strategies thatare not about criminalization as much as they
are lifting up communities. Investing incommunities have been shown to dramatically reduce shootings
in a community, especially because theseshootings tend to be committed by a very
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small number of people and perpetuate retaliatorycycles of violence. So really getting to
those individuals and improving their life circumstancesand giving them incentives to stop the violence
are extremely effective. So what statelegislators can do to support these programs is
fund them, and we have seenin recent years states do just that.
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And this year, in fact,Maryland passed a bill that would allocate over
five million dollars to these programs,and three million three million of that is
earmarked specifically for Baltimore, which hasa disproportionately high rate of violence and gun
homicide. Could you tell us what'sthe relationship between gun violence and police violence.
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Yes, there's actually a very strongrelationship between police violence that disproportionately affects
Black Americans and gun violence that occursin these communities when law enforcement over police's
minor crimes and under police's serious crimeslike murders and shootings, communities lose trust
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in law enforcement and they stop participatingin law enforcement investigations. They do not
call law enforcement when something happens,and crimes go unsolved, and community members,
usually a very small number, oftenseek justice among themselves and turn towards
retaliatory violence. And we know thatwhen police take this issue seriously and really
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invest their time and energy into repairingcommunity trust and community police thing strategies and
implementing programs that do not over police, we see dramatic results. Newark,
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New Jersey, is a great exampleof this. In twenty twenty, the
police in New Work did not firea single bullet, and believe it or
not, serious crimes plummeted in thatcity, actually at a time when violence
was increasing in most other cities,and Newark did have an increase in shootings,
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but overall serious crime dramatically decreased,And we can see a direct relationship
between law enforcement's investment in community policingand a result of fewer police, no
police shootings, and less serious crimein the jurisdiction. Well, thank goodness
for the work you're doing. Thankgoodness, for the GIFF. It's a
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law center and we're very honored andappreciative that you were part of this conversation
on State of Play. Thank youvery much for having me. Welcome back
to State of Play. I'm SharonPratt. With me Karen Tramontano and the
Reverend Mark Thompson. Our topic todaygun culture in America. Most of our
guests say control it. But ournext guest has another point of view.
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His name is Courtney Redmond. Heis with the Chicago chapter of the African
American Gun Association and the head ofthe seven hundred and sixty first Gun Club.
Wonderful to have you with us.Thank you for having me so,
mister Redman. Why do we havean African American Gun Association Since we have
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the NRA, but we have anNational African American Gun Association for the simple
fact that we want to provide anenvironment for black people to feel comfortable at
the range and learn from black peopleand to also podcast the information along in
our communities. I think a lotof times we have a miseducation of fire.
The National African American Gun Association providesa great platform for everyone to seek
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out education and fire mister Redman givenFilando Castile was murdered by police while legally
carrying a weapon. Do you believeAfrican Americans have a Second Amendment right?
It surely does, and we asAfrican Americans, we should enforce it.
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We should stick to it. Onething I do want to point out,
even with personal experiences in Illinois rightnow, currently we have one hundred and
eighty seven bills that are trying worktheir way through the legislation. We already
have to go through a three daywait period when we purchase a firearm.
We have a FOARD card. That'sfor those that don't know, that's the
Firearms Owners Identification Card. You haveto obtain that before you can even purchase
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a firearm or ammunition. You haveto be at the age of twenty one
in order to purchase a firearm,and that's any firearm. When the federal
man they says you could be eighteento purchase a longer, which is a
right for a shotgun. We haveall those restrictions and even more restrictions that
they're trying to pass, but yetwe still have seven hundred and ninety two
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murders in Chicago alone, and that'snot even counting the state brother Redmond.
With so much violence taking place withinthe African American community, and so much
gun violence in particular being turned inwardwhen it comes to the African American community,
how do you reconcile what you're doingand what your organization is doing with
(39:07):
regards to educating people about guns andencouraging African Americans to own guns. Well,
one of the first thing is education. This is not a toy.
We take our responsibility as serious asanything else. I think there has to
be priests in the black neighborhood totake that responsibility upon yourself to get a
(39:27):
firearms class, or to get abasic pistol, or to get a basic
rifle. If you talk to alot about brothers from down South, they
are always hunting. It's a wayof life. Firearms are a way of
life. They hunt, they fish. I think a lot of I think
a lot of people, even inChicago, sometimes that's the lost way.
(39:47):
My grandmother and grandfather were from RedHill, Mississippi. My grandfather he didn't
have a problem with hunting till hegot to Illinois. Another thing is the
sponding on the education. We haveto be cognizant that we have to be
at one day we may have todefend ourselves. Me and myself personally,
this is just a personal opinion.I'm not going to wait on the government
(40:10):
to come protecting when we had whenit has been proven throughout time that the
government has never protected us. AllRight, So if we can look at
look at the anniversary of Tulsa,we can look at all the Redwood massacre,
we can look at the nineteen Ithink it was nineteen nineteen to nineteen
twenty one, the Chicago race riot. I don't think we should just sit
(40:34):
there and wait for any political partyto protect us when we can protect ourselves.
Well, mister Revan, I seewhere or I've read where there's an
uptick in the purchase of guns withwomen and with the African Americans. Can
you explain why we're seeing this uptick? Well, one of the one of
the upticks in that is people seethe riding on the wall. They see
(40:54):
the fact that, um, yourgovernment or you can say police department is
not going to be there or inyour favor. So you have to be
able to protect yourself. Your firstline of defense is yourself. That's what
I tell my students. Your firstline of defense is yourself. It may
take twenty minutes, may take thirtyminutes, or police for a police departments
(41:15):
to respond. That's if you canget to your phone. If someone breaks
into your house in the middle ofthe night, you should already have a
plan as to what you're gonna do. I'm not saying that you have to
I'm not saying that that you shouldjust automatical to the firearm. What I'm
saying is be able to protect yourself, have a plan. That's one thing
(41:36):
we do offer the National African AmericanGun Association is learning about home defense,
whether it's nonlethal or legal. Youhave to be able to protect your family.
So the uptake with firearms, ifyou look at the riots, you
look at the civil unrest, ifyou look at the pandemic, people will
(42:00):
panicking. They were panicking. Theywere buying toy the papers, paper towels,
that the the supermarkets. Could heneed to stay stocked with food Because
people panicky, they panic and theybought all what they thought was a necessity.
And even with that going around inthe in the firearms world, ammunition
(42:22):
became uh skills. People will buyingfirearms. They knew that they had to
protect their self before they will relyon a police department and protect themselves.
Mister Redman, how does your trainingprogram address the fact that African American men
are much more likely to be killedby police than white men. I trained
(42:45):
my members. I trained my membershow to deal with the police encounter I
stopped. I trained my members.I trained my members and my students.
Because I do train outside of theorganization, my members and students on how
to conceal your firearm right, howto interact with the police when you do
have a firearm. What What aresome of the first things that you would
(43:07):
want to do when you stopped bythe police. Well, one first thing
you want to do is you wantto present um an opportunity for the police
officers to understand that you are caringa firearm. So in some states I've
known, Illinois is not required unlessyou are asked. But if you take
the extra step and say, hey, I have a firearm, or we
(43:29):
do not use the word gun,do not use that word, or you
have to have a weapon or evenan Illinois, they can see on your
license place that you are can stealcarry holding. Well, when one of
the first things I'm putting out ismy driver's license and my my CCL car
that lets me go this in thecar. And then I asked them,
what do you want me to doafter that situation? What do you want
(43:52):
me to do? What does thepolice officer want to do that you want
to step out the car, hecan take possession of a firearms. I
try to keep the conversation or thethe interaction as calm as possible. Well,
you know, you've certainly given usplenty of food for thought. Anybody
who thought there was only one pointof view, especially in the progressive and
African American communities, we have gottenan education. We can't thank you enough,
(44:15):
mister Redmond for being on State ofPlay. Thank you for having me.
Welcome back to State of Play.Our topic today gun culture in America,
and it's possible tied to racism.We're very lucky because we have one
of America's leading experts on this,Pastor Michael McBride. He is the founder
(44:36):
of Way Christian Center in Berkeley,a co founder of Black Brown Gun Violence
Prevention Consortium, and also with LiveFree. Very honored to have you with
us, Pastor McBride. Pastor Mikegreat great to be a sister Mere.
Thank you, Bradmon, you havereally become a strong and very respected voice
(45:00):
on this subject. What got youso engaged? What got you so involved
with this issue of gun violence?Well, I am a product of the
crack cocaine era of the nineties,eighties and the nineties and gub losing a
lot of friends to gun violence,losing a lot of loved ones to jail
and incarceration because of their involvement inthis activity. But my turning point came
(45:23):
when I was returning home the pastorhere in the Big area and one of
my young people that I was mentoringand helping to make their way through school
was killed. His name was Larry, and at his funeral, him and
a number of his classmates were thereat the funeral about five hundred young people.
(45:44):
Asking how many of you have beento more than one funeral? All
of them lifted their hands. Isaid, how many have been up to
five funerals? Their hands were stilllargely up. I got as high ast
ten funerals, and half of thecongregation still had their hands lifted, weeping.
And it demonstrated to me that asa faith leader and a community leader,
whatever I was doing was not adequateto save the lives of young black
(46:06):
people, and I have to makea radical shift. The first revolution is
always an eternal one, and forme, that was my first kind of
life revolution around becoming a peacemaker andmaking sure we could end the epidemic of
gun violence in black and brown communities. So we all know that it's a
particular issue for people of color interms of victimizing our young people. Were
(46:28):
there any particular events either in Berkeleyor Oakland, I know you're involved with
Ferguson's to sort of underscore just howdramatic a problem this is. Well,
we have to appreciate that gun violencedisproportionally visits black and brown communities, largely
because of the disproportionate police contact.Many of our community members have the underground
(46:52):
economy that is a result of disinvestmentin our communities and the criminalization of poverty
that happens with black communities often bylawmakers, police departments, etc. And
when we're in Ferguson dealing with thepolice violence that is done violence, when
we're in Oakland or Chicago or Detroitor New York dealing with the manifestations of
(47:14):
poverty that result in lethal conflicts.We did find that too many of our
young people are besieged by hopelessness andtrauma, and we often say hopelessness is
as deadly as a bullet. Wehave to figure out how do we heal
the trauma in our communities without criminalizingand sending to jail black and brown families.
(47:36):
And this has been a big lionshare of the public health generated approach
that has literally seen gun violence droppingin black and brown communities pre COVID by
thirty to fifty within eighteen months usingthe strategies that we use. This is
work that can be scaled up,but we have to invest in it,
and we have to invest in it, particularly now given the way COVID has
(47:57):
created quite a jump and gune bythe across the country. Have you gotten
buy in from some of the politicalleadership and the other stakeholders, because you
know, it's hard to mitigate againstthe circumstance if your community is being flooded
with guns. Yes, and andyou you're so right to highlight the flooding
of guns in our communities. Rightthere is a left foot and a right
(48:21):
foot part of this conversation. Oneis about common sense gun laws that ensure
that trafficking of weapons from gun showsfrom unlicensed dealers do not make it into
the black and brown communities, thathopefully will be addressed by the ATF and
other federal agencies that will not resultin the criminalization of black people. Right.
(48:44):
But then there is a public healthapproach that we have been powerfully attempting
to really evangelize the country around.And we're excited to have an audience with
the Ambassador Susan Rice and Cedric Richmond, who is one of the obviously advisors
to the President, and our wholecoalition of the fund piece coalition of Blackgrown
(49:06):
Gun by Prevention for Sort team,folks like Erica Ford and Greg Jackson and
Anthony Smith and chick o' Tilman,Eddie Bocanegra, etc. We had a
great opportunity to talk with Susan Riceand give her a real comprehensive overview of
the work. And thankfully President Bidenagreed to include five billion dollars in the
(49:29):
infrastructure bill to ensure that we couldscale these efforts up all across the country,
and they also included three hundred andfifty billion dollars of the AARP money
to be eligible in cities right nowto fund this work ahead of the summer.
So we have I think the nationalsupport. Now it's up to governors
and mayors to help us fund peacein your city and state all across the
(49:52):
country. So how do you convertthat so you get the mayors to really
buy in, get their support andfor example, I mean Black Lives Matter
movement and the like, they've onboard with what you're doing. Yes,
you know, it's a really importantquestion. In every city we've worked in,
there are groups that are literally workingevery day to reduce gun violence,
(50:14):
interrupt gun violence. We call themviolence intervention and Prevention specialists VIPs, right,
people who are literally trained to gointo communities and help alleviate the conflict,
de escalate the conflict. We haveindividuals who show up in hospitals right
after a shooting and help make surethere's no retaliation. We have individuals that
(50:35):
go and visit homes of those whoare the highest risk of shooting or being
shot. All of these strategies arehappening in many cities, and it's important
for mayors and governors to seek theseindividuals out. We will be chasing you
down, so have no fear ofwill hopefully meet in the middle and then
use the tax dollars that are beingafforded to us the American Rescue Plan,
(50:58):
hopefully through the Infrastructure Bill, throughthe twenty six different programs, and the
five agencies that the President used forexecutive orders. Put these resources in our
hands and let us heal our communities. Healing can save the United States of
America. We have to do that, not incarceration, not more policing of
their strategy that we can use.When I was in office, it was
(51:20):
hard to sell preventative programs, includingto the black community, because, after
all, it was the black communityoften most victimized by violence and crime.
So how do you get that buyin? I mean, we know at
one level it's terrible what happens withour young people, but at another level,
in terms of survival, people wantthe quick fix. How do you
(51:44):
reconcile that. Yeah, this isan important question about our organizing, right,
A disorganized truth will find it difficultto defeat an organized lie, And
the organized lie is that police makeour communities more safe. Our disorganized truth,
meaning we've not fully gotten everyone toecho this truth, is that investment
(52:05):
of resources of our tax dollars attackthe root causes of poverty that actually make
the conditions for violence possible. Ibelieve in black and brown young people.
I believe in black and brown families. I do not believe we are inherently
criminal. So that means that wemust invest early and often, not just
in children, but in the youngpeople as they matriculate through the course of
(52:28):
their life and they may make awrong turn. We must invest in those
solutions now. In many of ourcities, including Oakland, within eighteen months,
we saw a thirty percent reduction ingun relady, shootings, and homicides.
That is a higher reduction than anylaw enforcement based strategy would ever produce.
We must tell our people the truth, and then we must organize and
(52:51):
scale these strategies with fidelity. Ithink black folks will be converted by the
results and not by the reader.Well, one needs the support, certainly
of one's own community. We needthe support of people in black and brown
communities to be thoroughly on board withthis kind of preventative approach. But it's
a struggle to get America to investmoney. I mean it's a struggle to
(53:14):
get America to invest in education.Generally, education what are the critical stakeholders
you think you need to get buyin from. So we are building to
the fund piece coalition, a wonderfulnational coalition of frontline violence interrupters and specialists.
We're building a great coalition of mayors, of police chiefs, of elected
(53:35):
officials, of faith leaders, motherswho've lost children of violence, A growing
coalition that can be the megaphone forthis. We think if we built that
coalition, we'll have the political powerand the narrative that can shift the country's
response. Well, God blessed yourpastor, Mike. I'm sure God has
blessed you, because we're blessed tohave you. Thank you so much for
being on State of Play. Thankyou for having me, sister Mayor py
(53:59):
Will welcome back to State of Play. Our topic today the gun culture in
America. And we've had great guests, rich content, at least for me,
clarity about why the Second Amendment inour constitution, why it matters so
much to so few. And thefrustrating thing for me was to learn that
(54:20):
over ninety percent of Americans really wantto do something about the proliferation of guns,
want background checks and the like,and yet here we are still fighting
it. It is so frustrating andit's so disparaiting for me to watch those
kids from park Land who took upthe cause, and here we are we
just ignore them. So that wasmy takeaway. I think it speaks to
(54:45):
a couple of broader issues. Oneis this narrative about gun ownership in preservation
of one's life and the right toliberty. Well, it's just wrong.
The other reflection, I would sayis about our system, one of redistricting
(55:07):
and jerrymandering, where people who arerobust in their support of guns get elected
into state legislatures and then drive anothernarrative of the essentiality of guns. It
doesn't seem as if anyone is willingto stand up for what you have correctly
(55:30):
outlined ninety seven percent of the Americanpeople who want gun safety and gun laws
that protect us. I think thegun industry uses the Second Amendment to continue
to keep whites in this country miseducatedand uninformed. Most don't know. As
(55:54):
Professor Anderson pointed out that the SecondAmendment has its roots in enslavement. The
perception of where the prevalence of gunviolence is is stereotyped within the black community.
That's why you have the term blackon black violence. No other community
is referred to in that way,and I think unfortunately it has led the
(56:16):
white community to think that they don'thave a problem, that in fact,
they are safe. But as manywhites die from gun violence as African Americans,
and so I think it's time,and I think this show has been
important, hopefully and awakening the publicas to what this is really all about.
(56:37):
It affects us all. It's rootedin something that was wrong, and
until we do something about it,people are going to continue to die needlessly.
Well, I think from all ofour guests, what is very,
very sorely needed is grassroots action.I mean, the more people, and
you reference the young people at Parklandare out speaking to our state legislators and
(57:02):
our congressional representatives, and to theextent that they're not listening, make sure
that they are no longer in office. I mean that has to happen.
The agenda is clear that people havespoken just as loudly as they have before,
and we've got to stop sending thoughtsin prayers and instead enact laws that
(57:25):
protect them. Well, I thinkwe're again at a reckoning point on a
critical issue. I mean this gunculture. We are, as Alison and
Aman said, we are the outlieron the planet. We are really the
strange one in terms of how wepermit a proliferation of guns and just have
massive shooting after massive shooting. Butwe know where we stand and we know
(57:49):
that the American people want a changeto the situation. So I'm glad we
had the conversation. It's an importantone and I'm glad we did it here
on State of Play. You canfind more IPPH on air programs like today's
show on Guns in America. Whereveryou listen to podcasts, don't forget to
(58:10):
rate and review us. And ifyou enjoyed listening to this episode, share
this podcast with your friends on socialmedia,
The following show is brought to youin partnership with the Institute of Politics,
Policy and History, Blue Star Strategies, Bright Road Incorporated, Make It Plain
Podcast, and RPC Media from thecampus of the University of the District of
(00:45):
Columbia. This is State of Play. Welcome to State of Play. I'm
Sharon Pratton with me a Karen Tramentanoand the Reverend Mark Thompson. Our topic
today gun culture and America and howit may be tied to other issues in
America, such as possibly white supremacy. We have someone with us who can
(01:07):
put it all in perspective, oneof America's leading scholars, Professor Carol Anderson.
She is the Charles Howard Candler Professorfor African American Studies at Emory University,
with a particular focus on public policy, race, justice, and equality.
She's been an author many times,including one around voter suppression, One
(01:32):
Person, No Vote, and anotherWhite Rage. She now has one focused
on the Second Amendment, Second raceand guns in a fatally unequal America.
Thank you so much, Professor Andersonfor being with us. Thank you so
much for inviting me. So we'veat least I for one, have often
(01:53):
into it. It's got to besomething to this obsessive commitment to the gun
culture in America. And you're sayingthat the Second Amendment was tied to protecting
slavery and a race based slave systemin America. Absolutely yes. One of
the things that became clear to meas I started this hunt through our history
(02:16):
was the way that the slave stateswere intent on creating a nation that protected
slavery. This is why in theConstitution we get the three fifth claws,
why we get the fugitive slave clause, and why we get the twenty year
expansion of the Atlantic slave trade.But it is also why we get the
(02:38):
Second Amendment, and that is becauseduring the ratification of the Constitution, Virginia
dug in its heels that having controlof the militia under the federal government would
lead the slave societies defenseless against aslave revolt, against a slave uprising.
(03:00):
So much of the narrative at thattime had defined the enslaved and black people
as dangerous, and the thought thatthere wouldn't be a militia there to protect
them was unconscionable for them, andthey were determined to have embedded in the
Constitution protection for slavery protection for theirright to own human beings and keep the
(03:27):
enslaves rights squashed by this militia.So, you know, I always think
of it as sort of an extensionof don't tread on me during the American
Revolution. And you're saying that there'sclear proof, clear evidence that the correlation
had everything to do with race basedslave system in the country. Yes,
(03:50):
but one of the things is thatwe get this narrative of this heroic militia
that fought against the British and tookthe British one toe to toe. The
militia was not as effective as ournarrative would have us believe. George Washington
was disgusted with the militia. Sometimesthey would run, Sometimes they would be
(04:11):
in the battle and then they're like, oh, peace out, I'm done.
So our narratives don't match with howprominent slavery and protecting slavery was.
We have a judicial system right nowin the Supreme Court that cares very much
about a strict construction of the Constitutionand looking at history for what people exactly
(04:33):
met. So how do we getyour story to the judiciary or to the
public. Because I know I studiedhistory and I didn't know any of this
until I read your book. Thatis a great question. The theory of
originalism means that they're not really lookingat the role of slavery in the construction
(04:59):
of the constitution. Doing originalism meansthat you're trying to construct a legal framework
back when white men, a strataof white men, had all of the
power. This is a dangerous philosophy. Part of what we have to do
is dismantle that philosophy and think aboutwhat is really going on at the time
(05:21):
and how it affects our current daylives as American citizens. So to dismantle
this narrative that has been the compellingstory of our nation, we would have
to look at, you know,people who have been lionized throughout history,
(05:42):
and you speak to that in yourin your book. Could you tell us
more about those heroes that maybe aren'tquite heroes. Yeah, so, you
know we think of Patrick Henry,for instance, give me liberty or give
me death. Well, Patrick Henrywas one of those leading the charge in
Virginia to scuttle the constitution, leadingthe charge saying, you know, they're
(06:06):
going to take your inwards away fromyou. And so you have this give
me liberty or give me death,patriot arguing strenuously for slavery and embedding and
strengthening the protection of slavery in theConstitution. With history, we realize that
(06:27):
there are folks who are who dothings heroically, but that doesn't necessarily make
them unvarnished heroes, and it requiresthat we just grow up and to do
real history. You tell it all, you tell the strengths, you tell
the weaknesses, because we get tothe complexities of how policy is made,
(06:47):
how laws are made, how livesare lived. That's what's really heroic.
But you know, they're those whowould say, well, we're well passed
a race based slavery. There wasthe emancipation, there was the civil rights
legislation. Are you suggesting that thatattitude is still with us in the twenty
(07:10):
first century? Anti blackness is longand strong in the twenty first century.
We see it in the ways,for instance, why Philando Castile is gunned
down, but Kyle Rittenhouse, theyoung white man who went to Kenosha,
Wisconsin, carrying a rifle, andthat he's not arrested even as he walks
(07:31):
with his hands up after shooting threepeople, killing two of them. Anti
blackness is long and strong in America, and it affects the ways that we
move as a nation. Here's moreof my conversation with doctor Carol Anderson.
(07:55):
Professor Anderson, you've written beautifully andeloquently about the issue of the right to
vote, one person, no vote. What do you think about what's going
on now with voting rights legislation andsome of the initiatives taking place at the
state level. I think what we'rereally seeing is what I have called white
(08:15):
rage, where you had, inthe midst of a pandemic and in the
midst of an existential threat to Americandemocracy, black folks came out in droves
to fight for this democracy, tosave this democracy, to put their lives
on the line once again for thisdemocracy, and saved the democracy from a
(08:39):
regime that did not believe in indemocracy. And what we have the response
to that, to that massive voterturnout was not this embraced like yes,
not this celebration, But instead,what we've got are a series of laws
coming out of the these legislatures thatare targeting black voters, looking at the
(09:05):
ways that African Americans voted, andthen creating additional barriers to that vote,
and it is it is because ofwhat the US Supreme Court did in Shelby
County Beholder that gutted the Voting RightsAct, that allowed these states just to
run wild. And what they've learnedhow to do, and this is something
(09:28):
that came out of Mississippi in eighteenninety, was to write these laws with
a race neutral veneer, but beingracially targeted and using what I call the
legacies of slavery in order to makethat happen. And so you see the
ways that in Georgia, for instance, one of the things that they did
(09:52):
was to shut down a number ofpolling places. Then what they in this
new legislation, what they had isthat if the line is long, you
cannot have anybody bring you any wateror any food. And these out these
lines have run up to eleven hourslong in these black communities. And so
(10:15):
what you see, though, isthat the determination you had black folks saying
I will stand in line for elevenhours to vote. Now we should be
heralding that kind of determination. Weshould also be doing the work to end
eleven hour long lines, knowing howdetrimental they are to democracy. But you're
(10:39):
not seeing that kind of legislation comingthrough. Instead, what you're seeing is
the kind of legislation that puts upthe onus on black folks to make it
even harder to vote. These legislaturesare target targeting not only African Americans,
but Hispanics, Native Americans, youngpeople, and poor people, Asian American
(11:00):
Pacific islanders. They are really tryingto create an originalist version of who should
be able to vote. Well,most of us in the District of Columbia,
with a population that's greater than Wyomingor Vermont, feel that our lack
of voter representation or sovereignty as asan entity has everything to do with voter
(11:24):
suppression. And you think that's astretch, not a stretch at all,
not a stretch at all. AndI think that just the way I've been
talking about the power of anti blacknessin American society, the lack of representation,
the lack of statehood for Washington,DC is also in that bedrock of
(11:48):
what that means. It's like,how do we stop black people from having
the power, the political power torepresent themselves in order to choose their representatives.
How do we stop the wielding ofthat power? And in the larger
context of the US Senate, thereis the fear because right now they're balanced
(12:11):
at fifty fifty that what will happenis because African Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
Is that what that we'll do wasbring two Democratic senators into the US
Senate. It shifts the balance ofpower, and they are absolutely afraid of
(12:31):
that. And so being willing todeny representation to over seven hundred thousand people
in order to maintain power is whatwe saw in the and the founding of
this nation, in the writing andthe drafting of this constitution, it is
(12:54):
a through line. Great so,professor, just taking your back to your
book again, you mentioned in thebook that the colonist or some colonists would
have preferred to surrender to the Britishthen to have rights of gun ownership given
(13:16):
to black men and women or blackmen at the time. And so what
that is dealing with was during theWar of Independence, you had the British
had been kicking some USDA grade aprime beef butt up north, and then
the Continental army began to diversify becauseblack men were then allowed to join the
(13:41):
army, and so that led theBritish to go let's go to the soft
underbelly. That soft underbelly was theSouth. They went to attack the South.
They ran over Georgia like that.Then they're coming up to South Carolina.
And so George Washington since his emissaryJohn Lawrence, to South Carolina.
(14:01):
And he's a son of South Carolina, a prominent family in South Carolina.
And he's like, we don't haveenough white men to fend off the British.
You must arm the enslaved. Andthe South Carolina government was like,
oh no, we are not doingthat. Let me tell you what we're
not going to do, and andand Lawrence is like, you don't understand.
(14:24):
The British are coming. The Britishare coming. And they're like,
we don't care. We are notarming the enslaved. They had deployed the
vast number of their white men asmilitia in order to quell any kinds of
uprising from South Carolina's vast enslaved population. That's where the bulk of South Carolina's
(14:46):
white men were. And they weren'twilling one to redeploy them, nor were
they're willing to arm that vast populationof enslaved people in order to fight for
the United States. Instead, whatthey said was, we're not you know,
you asking us a question like that, We're not sure this is a
nation worth fighting for. And sothat kind of sense that white supremacy is
(15:11):
much more important than the United Statesof America is also actually a through line.
It was the through line that gotus to the Civil War. It
is the through line I've got tosay that is also undergirding our battles with
voting rights and gun rights, sothat the battle over voter suppression is the
(15:37):
fear of black people's power, blackpeople's political power. The battle over gun
rights deals with the fear of beingleft defenseless if if, if, if
lights aren't armed, then these dangerousblack people will come get them. And
so underneath underneath both of those sowhen you act, that's the question.
(16:00):
We get these questions, how isit that we keep having mass shootings?
You know, we had Sandy Hook. How is it that we have these
mass shootings and we get no movementon gun safety laws. It is because
of that fear that if we don'thave our guns, black people will come
(16:21):
in from the cities and take otake our lives, take our property,
take our possessions. The same fearis underlying the battle over voting rights.
If black people vote, it meansthat whites will be left defenseless. And
so this is the battle that we'reseeing. When we recognize the power of
(16:41):
anti blackness in American society, itmeans we're having a very different kind of
conversation about the ways that public policyworks and what's blocking movement with it should
be obvious that we should be movingforward. Well, we knew we had
an issue, or we knew therewas a problem around this issue of race.
(17:02):
A few of us really grasped whatextent that applied to this compulsive obsession
with guns in America. So wecan't thank you enough for being here with
us on State of Play. Thankyou, Welcome back to State of Play.
We are continuing our discussion about Americansand their guns. Joining us is
(17:25):
Joscelyn Kylie. She's the associate directorof Research for the Pew Center on Research.
Thank you, Jocelyn for joining us. Thank you for having me.
Pew released a survey the Key Factsabout Americans and Guns, So could you
give us some of the key factsand findings. Sure, we've been tracking
(17:47):
Americans attitudes about guns for many yearsnow, and this is our most recent
report, and so we looked atsupport for various policy proposals as well as
general latitudes about the state of gunpolicy today. And we found, for
instance, that about half of Americansthink that gun laws in the country should
(18:10):
be stricter than they currently are,while about fourteen percent say that they should
be less strict than they currently are. And that's actually a shift a little
bit from recent years, fewer peoplesaying that gun laws should be strict.
We also have asked about various gunpolicies, for instance, background checks and
a federal database to track gun sales, and we find high levels of support
(18:30):
for those policies, but we findmore mixed support for policies like bans on
assault style weapons or bands on certainkinds of ammunition. So one of the
items that I noticed is that eightout of ten African Americans see gun violence
as an important issue. How doesthat compare with other demographics. Sure,
(18:55):
Black Americans are more likely than WhiteAmericans, for sure, to say gun
violence is a major problem in thecountry today. Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans
are less likely than Black Americans tosay this, but more likely than white
Americans to say this, and thisis a divide we've seen for some time
and are pulling, with black Americansmore likely to express concern about gun violence
(19:18):
than white Americans. And another itemin the study talked about partisans support for
a couple of restrictions, So whyis it framed in terms of partisan support?
Well, so much of what Ido look is looking at the political
landscape in the US and gun policy. It's political policy issue. It's really
(19:41):
about what can get done in Congressor in state legislatures. And I think
one of the things that's important tounderstand is when there are areas of bipartisan
support, so areas that Republicans andDemocrats can agree on, and thus perhaps
in legislatures, you can see agreementin areas where there are divisions. So,
for instance, there's bipartisan support formaking it harder for people with mental
(20:04):
illnesses to get access to guns,and there's a fair amount of support across
the board for background checks. Butwhen you get to things like bands on
assault style weapons, that's when yousee Democrats overwhelmingly supporting that, but Republicans
really buy and large rejecting that asa policy. And so you know,
some of that explains what we seein the political sphere. And I think
(20:26):
you said earlier that you see adrop in support for restrictions. Are there
differences between Democrats and Republicans and whitesversus black in that drop of support.
Overall in the public there hasn't beenmuch change, but republic less Republican support
for some of these gun reforms thanwhat we've seen in recent years. So
(20:51):
for the most part, we reallyhaven't seen change among Democrats and groups that
lean democratic, and Black American attitudesreally haven't shifted very much over the last
couple of years. We spoke morewith Joscelyn Kylie of the Pew Research Center,
(21:14):
So looking back at the mass shooting, say a decade ago, what
have you seen in terms of shiftsof attitude regarding guns and gun violence.
So for the most part, whatwe actually see, more often than not,
is not a tremendous amount of changein public attitudes about guns over the
(21:37):
last decade or so that shooting thatthe New Town shooting was in twenty and
twelve, for instance, And wedo see some minor shifts where there may
be a little bit more support forgun control in the weeks immediately following Newtown,
for instance. But by and largethere is more continuity than change when
(21:59):
I comes to GOT attitudes in thecountry today over the last decade. And
do you see that is, youknow, different than other issues that you've
done research on. Well, Ithink, by and large, you know,
there are other areas where attitudes reallyhaven't shifted all that much. But
I think if we can point tosome other social issues like views on immigration,
(22:22):
or views on racial justice or otherissues like that, we have seen
more significant change over over this timeperiode, or attitudes about LGBT issues,
for instance, or even climate change. You know, we don't always see
profound shifts, but we do seeshifts, and really we haven't seen really
(22:44):
major shifts when it comes to publicattitudes about GOTTEN over the last decade or
so. Thank you, Jocelyn forjoining us and for the information you've provided.
Thanks very much for having me.Don't go away. We have more
on this topic Unstated play. Welcomeback to State of Play. I'm Sharon
Pratt and with me is Karen Tramintano. Our topic today gun culture in America,
(23:07):
and now we have someone who canhelp explain how we're addressing it.
And where this dynamic is going.Alison Anderman, she is senior counsel at
the Gifts Law Center. Very fortunateto have you, Thank you for being
here. Thank you so much forhaving me so far our audience who may
or may not know, Can youexplain and tell us more about the Giffets
(23:30):
Law Center. Sure so. Ourorganization is led by former congresswoman and gun
violence survivor Gabby Giffords, and wework with federal, state and legislators around
the country to draft and enact solutionsto gun violence, the epidemic of gun
violence in America. And we alsowork on impact litigation, fighting back the
(23:56):
gun lobby's attempts to expand the SecondAmendment into all reaches of American society and
to invalidate strong, effective laws thatare currently on the books. Well,
it would appear well, I thinkby almost anybody's account, we're a very
polarized country, politically polarized, raciallypolarized. In that environment, What is
(24:18):
happening with the gun culture. Arewe more aggressive about gun control or is
it moving in another direction. It'svery interesting because we are actually much less
polarized on gun violence prevention than Ithink the media would have you believe,
or gun advocates might have you believe. You know, ninety seven percent or
(24:41):
more of Americans every year that theQuinnipiac conducts poling says that they are in
favor of universal background checks, sothat's background checks on all gun purchases.
And a majority of Americans support mostof the gun violence prevention policies that we
and other national and state groups advocatefor. What we're really missing is people
(25:06):
at the federal level of government tohave the courage to enact these proven solutions.
So we're actually much more much closertogether on this issue, I think
than many people realize. If we'rethat close, and some states deems to
be going into permitless carries, whatare the consequences for the American people if
(25:30):
that direction takes hold? Right,and again, there's a real discrepancy between
what voters want and what their legislativetours are doing at the state and federal
level. And we have seen anunprecedented number of these bills that repeal the
requirements that someone who wants to carrya hidden loaded gun in public gets a
(25:53):
permit and is subject to a backgroundcheck. And we have about five states
already have enacted those laws this session, with a couple more that seem likely
to go forward, and that's justgoing to bring more guns into American society,
make it much harder for law enforcementto know who is legally caring and
(26:15):
who isn't. And we're going tohave a lot of unvetted people out in
public carrying guns. And we knowthat more guns leads to more gun violence.
In twenty seventeen, we saw arecord high of Americans who are killed
with guns in the last forty years. So yeah, we're definitely some states
(26:38):
are moving really in the wrong direction, and that weakens the efforts of states
that neighbor these states who have stronggun laws to keep their resonance safe when
they border states with such weak gunlaws. Let me also ask you some
of the research that your organization hasdone in this area of using guns for
(27:03):
political threats. Is this, inyour view, a new phenomenon or have
we seen this before. We've definitelyseen this before. We've seen guns used
to intimidate communities of color from votingand exercising their constitutional rights to vote and
engage in free speech. So it'snot new, but it does seem to
(27:26):
have taken on a more urgent qualityin the last year, given what we
have seen happening in the American politicalsystem, where we have the former president
putting forth big lies about the electionand the integrity of our free and fair
elections, and really ginning up hissupporters to go to polling places with guns
(27:48):
and protest gun laws and COVID mitigationstrategies with their guns. So definitely,
I do think there has been anincrease in the use of guns to intimidate
people from exercising their constitutional rights.But it is not a new phenomenon.
So where does this come from?This temeritate of the state legislative branch in
(28:15):
Texas, United States Senate basically resistingthe will of the American people. I
mean, you're saying that some ninetyseven percent of the American people want something
like background checks, and yet howdo they have the temeritate to ignore that
right? That's an excellent question.I mean, I think one answer is
the strength and power of the gunlobby and the gun industry. They've had
(28:40):
kind of a stranglehold on federal legislatorsand legislators in many states for decades,
and that's a really hard thing tobreak. But I also think that because
of the nature of the polarization ofour political and voting systems in the United
States, we are at a timewhere unless this is a single issue vot
(29:03):
you voting issue for people, they'restill going to elect legislators who are extreme
on gun issues because those legislators votefor other things that these people care about
in particular states. So we needto make this a priority voting issue for
people. We need to help theAmerican public understand that gun violence keeps everybody
(29:30):
down. It keeps our not justour society down, but our economy down.
We spend billion millions of dollars incosts related to gun violence every year,
and this has to be something thatpeople prioritize when they're voting. Do
African Americans or other you know,black and brown communities, did they suffer
(29:53):
great greater under gun violence than othercommunities. You have the demographics on that.
Yes, gun violence takes and absolutelytakes a disproportionate toll on communities of
color, in particular black men.Black men makeover half of the gun homicide
(30:15):
victims in the United States. Thereare a number of proven solutions to reducing
this interpersonal gun violence that predominantly impactscommunities of color. Need to fund these
programs and make them priorities so thatwe can really address these racial inequities.
(30:36):
Do you feel that, given youknow, what we experienced on January sixth,
with the insurrection on the Capitol andyou know, seemingly other acts of
intimidation, that we may be driftingin a dangerous direction. And maybe in
that environment we can get the attentionof the American people to make this issue
(30:57):
a priority when they go to thevoting both. I certainly hope so,
and I want to also point outthat this has become a priority for many
American voters. We saw gun safetychampions win and essentially take control of the
legislatures in certain states in recent years, like Nevada and Colorado, and in
(31:22):
those state and Virginia, and inthose states in the last year or two,
those states have passed tremendous gun safetylegislation to keep their residents safe.
I'm hopeful that the events of Januarysixth and what we witnessed in twenty twenty
will propel Americans to make this asingle issue voting topic for them and to
(31:47):
really elect people who have the courageto do what we need to do to
end this epidemic. Because we knowthat there are proven solutions to this epidemic.
We do not have to live thisway. It does not have to
be this way, but we justneed legislators with the will to do it.
I gather from all of your research, and we're running out of time.
(32:07):
We're the oddity on the planet thatis the United States of America as
a major power in terms of ourgun culture. Right absolutely, America stands
alone in its epidemic of gun violence. Americans are twenty five times more likely
to be shot than their peer nationcounterparts. We continued our conversation with Alice
(32:36):
and Anderman, senior counsel at theGiffet's Law Center. You outline the proven
strategies, the strategies that work.Yes, so we know that community led
violence intervention programs are remarkably successful atreducing gun violence in community as a color
(32:58):
who are disproportionately impacted by a gunviolence, and these are typically communities of
color in urban areas. These strategiesthat go by a number of names and
have different approaches, ceasefire and otherprograms have been remarkably successful in cities like
Richmond, California, Oakland, California, camped in New Jersey, Newark,
(33:22):
New Jersey. And these strategies thatare not about criminalization as much as they
are lifting up communities. Investing incommunities have been shown to dramatically reduce shootings
in a community, especially because theseshootings tend to be committed by a very
(33:42):
small number of people and perpetuate retaliatorycycles of violence. So really getting to
those individuals and improving their life circumstancesand giving them incentives to stop the violence
are extremely effective. So what statelegislators can do to support these programs is
fund them, and we have seenin recent years states do just that.
(34:07):
And this year, in fact,Maryland passed a bill that would allocate over
five million dollars to these programs,and three million three million of that is
earmarked specifically for Baltimore, which hasa disproportionately high rate of violence and gun
homicide. Could you tell us what'sthe relationship between gun violence and police violence.
(34:32):
Yes, there's actually a very strongrelationship between police violence that disproportionately affects
Black Americans and gun violence that occursin these communities when law enforcement over police's
minor crimes and under police's serious crimeslike murders and shootings, communities lose trust
(34:57):
in law enforcement and they stop participatingin law enforcement investigations. They do not
call law enforcement when something happens,and crimes go unsolved, and community members,
usually a very small number, oftenseek justice among themselves and turn towards
retaliatory violence. And we know thatwhen police take this issue seriously and really
(35:23):
invest their time and energy into repairingcommunity trust and community police thing strategies and
implementing programs that do not over police, we see dramatic results. Newark,
(35:44):
New Jersey, is a great exampleof this. In twenty twenty, the
police in New Work did not firea single bullet, and believe it or
not, serious crimes plummeted in thatcity, actually at a time when violence
was increasing in most other cities,and Newark did have an increase in shootings,
(36:05):
but overall serious crime dramatically decreased,And we can see a direct relationship
between law enforcement's investment in community policingand a result of fewer police, no
police shootings, and less serious crimein the jurisdiction. Well, thank goodness
for the work you're doing. Thankgoodness, for the GIFF. It's a
(36:29):
law center and we're very honored andappreciative that you were part of this conversation
on State of Play. Thank youvery much for having me. Welcome back
to State of Play. I'm SharonPratt. With me Karen Tramontano and the
Reverend Mark Thompson. Our topic todaygun culture in America. Most of our
guests say control it. But ournext guest has another point of view.
(36:52):
His name is Courtney Redmond. Heis with the Chicago chapter of the African
American Gun Association and the head ofthe seven hundred and sixty first Gun Club.
Wonderful to have you with us.Thank you for having me so,
mister Redman. Why do we havean African American Gun Association Since we have
(37:13):
the NRA, but we have anNational African American Gun Association for the simple
fact that we want to provide anenvironment for black people to feel comfortable at
the range and learn from black peopleand to also podcast the information along in
our communities. I think a lotof times we have a miseducation of fire.
The National African American Gun Association providesa great platform for everyone to seek
(37:38):
out education and fire mister Redman givenFilando Castile was murdered by police while legally
carrying a weapon. Do you believeAfrican Americans have a Second Amendment right?
It surely does, and we asAfrican Americans, we should enforce it.
(37:59):
We should stick to it. Onething I do want to point out,
even with personal experiences in Illinois rightnow, currently we have one hundred and
eighty seven bills that are trying worktheir way through the legislation. We already
have to go through a three daywait period when we purchase a firearm.
We have a FOARD card. That'sfor those that don't know, that's the
Firearms Owners Identification Card. You haveto obtain that before you can even purchase
(38:23):
a firearm or ammunition. You haveto be at the age of twenty one
in order to purchase a firearm,and that's any firearm. When the federal
man they says you could be eighteento purchase a longer, which is a
right for a shotgun. We haveall those restrictions and even more restrictions that
they're trying to pass, but yetwe still have seven hundred and ninety two
(38:45):
murders in Chicago alone, and that'snot even counting the state brother Redmond.
With so much violence taking place withinthe African American community, and so much
gun violence in particular being turned inwardwhen it comes to the African American community,
how do you reconcile what you're doingand what your organization is doing with
(39:07):
regards to educating people about guns andencouraging African Americans to own guns. Well,
one of the first thing is education. This is not a toy.
We take our responsibility as serious asanything else. I think there has to
be priests in the black neighborhood totake that responsibility upon yourself to get a
(39:27):
firearms class, or to get abasic pistol, or to get a basic
rifle. If you talk to alot about brothers from down South, they
are always hunting. It's a wayof life. Firearms are a way of
life. They hunt, they fish. I think a lot of I think
a lot of people, even inChicago, sometimes that's the lost way.
(39:47):
My grandmother and grandfather were from RedHill, Mississippi. My grandfather he didn't
have a problem with hunting till hegot to Illinois. Another thing is the
sponding on the education. We haveto be cognizant that we have to be
at one day we may have todefend ourselves. Me and myself personally,
this is just a personal opinion.I'm not going to wait on the government
(40:10):
to come protecting when we had whenit has been proven throughout time that the
government has never protected us. AllRight, So if we can look at
look at the anniversary of Tulsa,we can look at all the Redwood massacre,
we can look at the nineteen Ithink it was nineteen nineteen to nineteen
twenty one, the Chicago race riot. I don't think we should just sit
(40:34):
there and wait for any political partyto protect us when we can protect ourselves.
Well, mister Revan, I seewhere or I've read where there's an
uptick in the purchase of guns withwomen and with the African Americans. Can
you explain why we're seeing this uptick? Well, one of the one of
the upticks in that is people seethe riding on the wall. They see
(40:54):
the fact that, um, yourgovernment or you can say police department is
not going to be there or inyour favor. So you have to be
able to protect yourself. Your firstline of defense is yourself. That's what
I tell my students. Your firstline of defense is yourself. It may
take twenty minutes, may take thirtyminutes, or police for a police departments
(41:15):
to respond. That's if you canget to your phone. If someone breaks
into your house in the middle ofthe night, you should already have a
plan as to what you're gonna do. I'm not saying that you have to
I'm not saying that that you shouldjust automatical to the firearm. What I'm
saying is be able to protect yourself, have a plan. That's one thing
(41:36):
we do offer the National African AmericanGun Association is learning about home defense,
whether it's nonlethal or legal. Youhave to be able to protect your family.
So the uptake with firearms, ifyou look at the riots, you
look at the civil unrest, ifyou look at the pandemic, people will
(42:00):
panicking. They were panicking. Theywere buying toy the papers, paper towels,
that the the supermarkets. Could heneed to stay stocked with food Because
people panicky, they panic and theybought all what they thought was a necessity.
And even with that going around inthe in the firearms world, ammunition
(42:22):
became uh skills. People will buyingfirearms. They knew that they had to
protect their self before they will relyon a police department and protect themselves.
Mister Redman, how does your trainingprogram address the fact that African American men
are much more likely to be killedby police than white men. I trained
(42:45):
my members. I trained my membershow to deal with the police encounter I
stopped. I trained my members.I trained my members and my students.
Because I do train outside of theorganization, my members and students on how
to conceal your firearm right, howto interact with the police when you do
have a firearm. What What aresome of the first things that you would
(43:07):
want to do when you stopped bythe police. Well, one first thing
you want to do is you wantto present um an opportunity for the police
officers to understand that you are caringa firearm. So in some states I've
known, Illinois is not required unlessyou are asked. But if you take
the extra step and say, hey, I have a firearm, or we
(43:29):
do not use the word gun,do not use that word, or you
have to have a weapon or evenan Illinois, they can see on your
license place that you are can stealcarry holding. Well, when one of
the first things I'm putting out ismy driver's license and my my CCL car
that lets me go this in thecar. And then I asked them,
what do you want me to doafter that situation? What do you want
(43:52):
me to do? What does thepolice officer want to do that you want
to step out the car, hecan take possession of a firearms. I
try to keep the conversation or thethe interaction as calm as possible. Well,
you know, you've certainly given usplenty of food for thought. Anybody
who thought there was only one pointof view, especially in the progressive and
African American communities, we have gottenan education. We can't thank you enough,
(44:15):
mister Redmond for being on State ofPlay. Thank you for having me.
Welcome back to State of Play.Our topic today gun culture in America,
and it's possible tied to racism.We're very lucky because we have one
of America's leading experts on this,Pastor Michael McBride. He is the founder
(44:36):
of Way Christian Center in Berkeley,a co founder of Black Brown Gun Violence
Prevention Consortium, and also with LiveFree. Very honored to have you with
us, Pastor McBride. Pastor Mikegreat great to be a sister Mere.
Thank you, Bradmon, you havereally become a strong and very respected voice
(45:00):
on this subject. What got youso engaged? What got you so involved
with this issue of gun violence?Well, I am a product of the
crack cocaine era of the nineties,eighties and the nineties and gub losing a
lot of friends to gun violence,losing a lot of loved ones to jail
and incarceration because of their involvement inthis activity. But my turning point came
(45:23):
when I was returning home the pastorhere in the Big area and one of
my young people that I was mentoringand helping to make their way through school
was killed. His name was Larry, and at his funeral, him and
a number of his classmates were thereat the funeral about five hundred young people.
(45:44):
Asking how many of you have beento more than one funeral? All
of them lifted their hands. Isaid, how many have been up to
five funerals? Their hands were stilllargely up. I got as high ast
ten funerals, and half of thecongregation still had their hands lifted, weeping.
And it demonstrated to me that asa faith leader and a community leader,
whatever I was doing was not adequateto save the lives of young black
(46:06):
people, and I have to makea radical shift. The first revolution is
always an eternal one, and forme, that was my first kind of
life revolution around becoming a peacemaker andmaking sure we could end the epidemic of
gun violence in black and brown communities. So we all know that it's a
particular issue for people of color interms of victimizing our young people. Were
(46:28):
there any particular events either in Berkeleyor Oakland, I know you're involved with
Ferguson's to sort of underscore just howdramatic a problem this is. Well,
we have to appreciate that gun violencedisproportionally visits black and brown communities, largely
because of the disproportionate police contact.Many of our community members have the underground
(46:52):
economy that is a result of disinvestmentin our communities and the criminalization of poverty
that happens with black communities often bylawmakers, police departments, etc. And
when we're in Ferguson dealing with thepolice violence that is done violence, when
we're in Oakland or Chicago or Detroitor New York dealing with the manifestations of
(47:14):
poverty that result in lethal conflicts.We did find that too many of our
young people are besieged by hopelessness andtrauma, and we often say hopelessness is
as deadly as a bullet. Wehave to figure out how do we heal
the trauma in our communities without criminalizingand sending to jail black and brown families.
(47:36):
And this has been a big lionshare of the public health generated approach
that has literally seen gun violence droppingin black and brown communities pre COVID by
thirty to fifty within eighteen months usingthe strategies that we use. This is
work that can be scaled up,but we have to invest in it,
and we have to invest in it, particularly now given the way COVID has
(47:57):
created quite a jump and gune bythe across the country. Have you gotten
buy in from some of the politicalleadership and the other stakeholders, because you
know, it's hard to mitigate againstthe circumstance if your community is being flooded
with guns. Yes, and andyou you're so right to highlight the flooding
of guns in our communities. Rightthere is a left foot and a right
(48:21):
foot part of this conversation. Oneis about common sense gun laws that ensure
that trafficking of weapons from gun showsfrom unlicensed dealers do not make it into
the black and brown communities, thathopefully will be addressed by the ATF and
other federal agencies that will not resultin the criminalization of black people. Right.
(48:44):
But then there is a public healthapproach that we have been powerfully attempting
to really evangelize the country around.And we're excited to have an audience with
the Ambassador Susan Rice and Cedric Richmond, who is one of the obviously advisors
to the President, and our wholecoalition of the fund piece coalition of Blackgrown
(49:06):
Gun by Prevention for Sort team,folks like Erica Ford and Greg Jackson and
Anthony Smith and chick o' Tilman,Eddie Bocanegra, etc. We had a
great opportunity to talk with Susan Riceand give her a real comprehensive overview of
the work. And thankfully President Bidenagreed to include five billion dollars in the
(49:29):
infrastructure bill to ensure that we couldscale these efforts up all across the country,
and they also included three hundred andfifty billion dollars of the AARP money
to be eligible in cities right nowto fund this work ahead of the summer.
So we have I think the nationalsupport. Now it's up to governors
and mayors to help us fund peacein your city and state all across the
(49:52):
country. So how do you convertthat so you get the mayors to really
buy in, get their support andfor example, I mean Black Lives Matter
movement and the like, they've onboard with what you're doing. Yes,
you know, it's a really importantquestion. In every city we've worked in,
there are groups that are literally workingevery day to reduce gun violence,
(50:14):
interrupt gun violence. We call themviolence intervention and Prevention specialists VIPs, right,
people who are literally trained to gointo communities and help alleviate the conflict,
de escalate the conflict. We haveindividuals who show up in hospitals right
after a shooting and help make surethere's no retaliation. We have individuals that
(50:35):
go and visit homes of those whoare the highest risk of shooting or being
shot. All of these strategies arehappening in many cities, and it's important
for mayors and governors to seek theseindividuals out. We will be chasing you
down, so have no fear ofwill hopefully meet in the middle and then
use the tax dollars that are beingafforded to us the American Rescue Plan,
(50:58):
hopefully through the Infrastructure Bill, throughthe twenty six different programs, and the
five agencies that the President used forexecutive orders. Put these resources in our
hands and let us heal our communities. Healing can save the United States of
America. We have to do that, not incarceration, not more policing of
their strategy that we can use.When I was in office, it was
(51:20):
hard to sell preventative programs, includingto the black community, because, after
all, it was the black communityoften most victimized by violence and crime.
So how do you get that buyin? I mean, we know at
one level it's terrible what happens withour young people, but at another level,
in terms of survival, people wantthe quick fix. How do you
(51:44):
reconcile that. Yeah, this isan important question about our organizing, right,
A disorganized truth will find it difficultto defeat an organized lie, And
the organized lie is that police makeour communities more safe. Our disorganized truth,
meaning we've not fully gotten everyone toecho this truth, is that investment
(52:05):
of resources of our tax dollars attackthe root causes of poverty that actually make
the conditions for violence possible. Ibelieve in black and brown young people.
I believe in black and brown families. I do not believe we are inherently
criminal. So that means that wemust invest early and often, not just
in children, but in the youngpeople as they matriculate through the course of
(52:28):
their life and they may make awrong turn. We must invest in those
solutions now. In many of ourcities, including Oakland, within eighteen months,
we saw a thirty percent reduction ingun relady, shootings, and homicides.
That is a higher reduction than anylaw enforcement based strategy would ever produce.
We must tell our people the truth, and then we must organize and
(52:51):
scale these strategies with fidelity. Ithink black folks will be converted by the
results and not by the reader.Well, one needs the support, certainly
of one's own community. We needthe support of people in black and brown
communities to be thoroughly on board withthis kind of preventative approach. But it's
a struggle to get America to investmoney. I mean it's a struggle to
(53:14):
get America to invest in education.Generally, education what are the critical stakeholders
you think you need to get buyin from. So we are building to
the fund piece coalition, a wonderfulnational coalition of frontline violence interrupters and specialists.
We're building a great coalition of mayors, of police chiefs, of elected
(53:35):
officials, of faith leaders, motherswho've lost children of violence, A growing
coalition that can be the megaphone forthis. We think if we built that
coalition, we'll have the political powerand the narrative that can shift the country's
response. Well, God blessed yourpastor, Mike. I'm sure God has
blessed you, because we're blessed tohave you. Thank you so much for
being on State of Play. Thankyou for having me, sister Mayor py
(53:59):
Will welcome back to State of Play. Our topic today the gun culture in
America. And we've had great guests, rich content, at least for me,
clarity about why the Second Amendment inour constitution, why it matters so
much to so few. And thefrustrating thing for me was to learn that
(54:20):
over ninety percent of Americans really wantto do something about the proliferation of guns,
want background checks and the like,and yet here we are still fighting
it. It is so frustrating andit's so disparaiting for me to watch those
kids from park Land who took upthe cause, and here we are we
just ignore them. So that wasmy takeaway. I think it speaks to
(54:45):
a couple of broader issues. Oneis this narrative about gun ownership in preservation
of one's life and the right toliberty. Well, it's just wrong.
The other reflection, I would sayis about our system, one of redistricting
(55:07):
and jerrymandering, where people who arerobust in their support of guns get elected
into state legislatures and then drive anothernarrative of the essentiality of guns. It
doesn't seem as if anyone is willingto stand up for what you have correctly
(55:30):
outlined ninety seven percent of the Americanpeople who want gun safety and gun laws
that protect us. I think thegun industry uses the Second Amendment to continue
to keep whites in this country miseducatedand uninformed. Most don't know. As
(55:54):
Professor Anderson pointed out that the SecondAmendment has its roots in enslavement. The
perception of where the prevalence of gunviolence is is stereotyped within the black community.
That's why you have the term blackon black violence. No other community
is referred to in that way,and I think unfortunately it has led the
(56:16):
white community to think that they don'thave a problem, that in fact,
they are safe. But as manywhites die from gun violence as African Americans,
and so I think it's time,and I think this show has been
important, hopefully and awakening the publicas to what this is really all about.
(56:37):
It affects us all. It's rootedin something that was wrong, and
until we do something about it,people are going to continue to die needlessly.
Well, I think from all ofour guests, what is very,
very sorely needed is grassroots action.I mean, the more people, and
you reference the young people at Parklandare out speaking to our state legislators and
(57:02):
our congressional representatives, and to theextent that they're not listening, make sure
that they are no longer in office. I mean that has to happen.
The agenda is clear that people havespoken just as loudly as they have before,
and we've got to stop sending thoughtsin prayers and instead enact laws that
(57:25):
protect them. Well, I thinkwe're again at a reckoning point on a
critical issue. I mean this gunculture. We are, as Alison and
Aman said, we are the outlieron the planet. We are really the
strange one in terms of how wepermit a proliferation of guns and just have
massive shooting after massive shooting. Butwe know where we stand and we know
(57:49):
that the American people want a changeto the situation. So I'm glad we
had the conversation. It's an importantone and I'm glad we did it here
on State of Play. You canfind more IPPH on air programs like today's
show on Guns in America. Whereveryou listen to podcasts, don't forget to
(58:10):
rate and review us. And ifyou enjoyed listening to this episode, share
this podcast with your friends on socialmedia,
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