Violence and global violence. So i would like to actually begin with the title itself, the violence inside us and the early portion of the book you take the reader through something of a short primer on both the biology and a history of violence. So i want to ask you why begin there . Why did you choose to begin with the nature of violence itself . Guest thank you so much for doing this and im really glad to be joining you to talk about this book. I start with this question of what kind of violence do we experience because for me it was the first real subject that i came upon when i began what would become the mission of my political career. While the book is mostly history of american violence and how we can overcome that history it also involves my own political story the shooting in connecticut in 2012. I had britain prodigious as a lawmaker beforehand but i never really had an emotional connection like i do now. And it was those days after sandy hook when i realized this would be my calling. The question i asked myself was not just one but the salmon that many others asked themselves when i heard about this young man with no prior history of violence and no conceivable clear motive walking into an Elementary School and shooting to gun down 20 firstgraders. How one birth can a human being do that . How does the brain work in a way that convinces yourself that that is a logical next step. So i really want to start the book there and talk about how the brain compels us to violence because well 99. 9 of us never ever conceived of mask murder almost every single one of us has had some moment in our life where we contemplated violence or we actually undertook an act of violence. Maybe he was a kid on the school yard and maybe it was a fight with a relative and i think its really important for us to understand that the rat Human History our species has been more prone to violence than almost any other animal species and it has long been a way in which humans organize themselves and maintain dominance over others and put themselves in a position. To me that discussion of how somebody like adam lanza comes to the position of conducting mask murder and understand that which the way a broken brain operates it is important but also just understanding the way a normal brain operates and how violence really is essential to the human story going out to the future. Host its a great point and i think an understanding violence to understand that you do you need to have this grounded and its hard to appreciate the ubiquity of violence and our historical struggle with it if you dont understand the topic that violence is not the exception. That is the norm through out history and so i found that particular compelling. Lets talk about violence in the United States in particular. Most people know that in terms of homicide the United States is something of an outlier having a much higher murder rate than any other wealthy nation. Why is that . Guest the book spends a lot of time trying to explore the reason why america is more violent and we talk about suicides and accidental shootings as well. We are clearly an outlier when it comes to the homicide rate. The book talks about the fact that that is not always been the case in the United States. In fact for much of americas early history we were not a global outlier. It wasnt until the middle 1800s in which americas homicide rate started to converge from the rest of the world and it never came back to the ground. We have been in global outlier now for 150 years. And there are two things that explained why those numbe. The first is the advancement of slavery in the United States. We have the cotton gin and we brought United States as a mechanism to Border Society in america early on became a nest of size to the use of violence. He was just a normal mechanism to organize half of the nation and it was also used in high numbers in the north for the same reason, for similar reasons and violence just became normalized. The second thing that happened in the middle 1800s we have the first wave of new immigrants to United States and these new immigrants were fighting for economic space and would also begin to expand the rate of violence. And then the third thing that happened in the middle 1800s and that is the invention of the self repeating handgun, handguns that can be used without reloading every single time and it can be concealed in your pocket. United states didnt have a history of gun regulations of those guns quickly spread throughout the United States. They were romanticized but the people who were selling them and there were three things the expansion of gun ownership, the greater ability to hide and conceal weapons and the new migrant groups fighting for economic space and the of violence that came out of americas expansion of the population all started to move the rate of violence and gun homicide unit dramatic upward direction for america essentially is never recovered from. Host so you are not saying that guns are the only reason that the United States has higher rates. You are saying the reason i rates of gun violence and violence in general are so much higher is because of these two things. To be clear its your position in the book that the United States would be a more violent than average country even without guns. Guest i think this may be a surprising concession to listen to me talk about guns over and over again. I knew some of this going into the research of the book but certainly was reinforced for me throughout. Guess the premise of the book is that america was always going to be a more violent place and the question is when you have this smoldering fire existing in this new country what should you do . The last thing you should do is to throw gasoline on that smoldering fire and the gasoline in this case was the explosion of firearms ownership and the antipathy to any kind of regulation that would make sure they only fall into the hands of folks who are responsible. My argument of this book is that in fact we have an elevated responsibility and the United States of america to control violence because our history of slavery, our history of the racist system that was reinforced by violence and our role as a melting pot of ethnicities that 10 track history to increase their rates of violence, puts us in a position where violence was already going to be elevated so we should be careful about taking further steps to inflame those already elevated risks. Host i wanted to ask you about another custom pricing concession that you made in the book that i found it interesting that you say that the Supreme Court decision, district of columbia versus heller was in fact rightly decided and for the audience that the 2008 case where the court recognized an individuals rights to bear arms that was not necessarily connected with any militia or military service. I would like to hear more about that. Why was it decided what should that mean for advocates of gun control . Guest the first gun control in the state of connecticut was a law compelling that individuals attending Church Services and counties in the state of connecticut must be armed. Thats probably surprising to folks who in connecticut find the strictest laws for the ownership of a gun but in fact in the early days of connecticut history when frankly there was a fear of conflict with native american tribes that people actually openly carried weapons and they think it speaks to do things. One it speaks to what i believe to be a common law right commonly understood by our Founding Fathers that individuals should be able to carry weapons. The 2nd amendment which is horribly convoluted and impossible to understand and conceivably can be argued it really only relates to militia and the ownership of guns. I think if you read the whole constitutional history youll find our Founding Fathers thought that people had the basic right to own a weapon but what that connecticut law tells you also is that right was heavily regulated. That instance the regulation was a requirement but there were far more laws during the early days of their public in which people were prohibited from owning guns where you are required to register your weapons or your gunpowder. There was a heavy regulation of weapons during our early days which i think tells you our Founding Fathers didnt think legislators could take away your right to own guns. They certainly thought that legislatures could heavily condition your right to own a weapon or keep weapons out of the hands of certain individuals but i think thats just a smart way for the movement to land. There was no secret agenda to take away your weapons and we dont think the constitution allows that but we do think we begin engage in making sure the only the right weapons. Get into the right hands. I think it also happens to be what the constitution. Host very good. You talk a lot about the nra in the book and a one point the nra was among the most powerful if not the most powerful special Interest Group in the country. Would you say thats true today and why or why not . Its a not true today. Its not true because we have spent the last 70 years building up a movement around combating gun violence that has become more and more powerful and now overtook the nra. We have also done a very good job of exposing the nra. One of the things i talk about in this book is how the nra is starting as a marksmanship organization in the thames to try to make soldiers more effective with their weapons and to do the same thing for folks who are hunting or shooting for sport. Ellen carter who i tell the story in this book. Host thats a fascinating part of the story. Could you to tell us about that. I dont think many people know that part of the story. Harlan is from a texas border country. His whole family has worked for and around u. S. Border protection. As a young man he has a runin with some young mexican youth who he thinks have committed a crime against his family and he confronts them. In that confrontation he ends up shooting one of the boys to death on a technicality. He ends up not going to jail but it stays on his record is such that he actually changes his name. He moves one vowel in his name from an a to an all so that he can paper over his past. He eventually joined the nra who objects to the idea that the nra can out of politics and goes along with some of the early gun laws of the 1960s especially and in the 1970s he and a group of radicals essentially take over the nra. They mount a coup in which they take and convention in cincinnati and act as an advocate of gun control in an advocate of responsible gun ownership. Harlan takes the nra in plasters it to the rest of the developing rightwing movement in the country and he sees the opportunity for the nra not just stance for their lax regulation of guns but also the antiera and the anticivil rights movement. He sort of an convinced br nra as the leader of a broad group of rightwing political infrastructure in this country that has no compromising gun laws. Its an organization that was pretty sleepy politically until the 70s and with the 70s, was the epicenter of americas sort of rightwing antiregulation movement. That is what the nra is in 2013. When i first encountered meaningfully in our thames to get a background bill passed. Host what do you think is going to be the future of the nra and where do you see the organization three years or five years . The second part of the nra story is one that played out in the last 20 years. What happens is the nra starts to rely on more and more guns than the gun industry finds itself having to deal with the changing a changing commercial or around firearms. Back in 1980 half of american households have begun so you could make a lot of money just selling one gun but today less than a third of american households and guns and its going down to the gun industry has to sell a lot of expensive weapons to a smaller amount of people in the gun industry goes along. The gun industry helps create the mythology of the government getting your gun so you better creative private arsenal before they ban all those weapons that youve been buying. The gun industry says they start to be against background checks because thats the way they will catalog the guns and they vehemently oppose restrictions. They get way out of step with their members. They are still in step with the gun industry but they are way out of step with their entries members are the reason the gun industry has become atrophied and has become increasingly impotent is because we have done a great job and particularly the kids who have taken control of the antiGun Violence Movement. They are letting people know the gun lobby is fighting for stuff that even its own members of believe in and thats the consequence of the industry changing. I found the interest of the nra aligns with the interest of the gun industry which aligns with the interest of the conservator Republican Party and it reminds me of the classic challenge that you hear about all states which is that a wellfunded well supported specialInterest Group can often overcome the will of the silent majority. So i want to ask you, how do we overcome that in the area of gun control but also how do we deal with it more generally in washington . Part of it is having confidence that we are right. Another story i tell in the book is the story of the 1994 midtown election. Its been sorted mythologize the democrats lost control when they voted for the seeker weapons ban. That this is fundamentally not trooper the assault weapons ban was wildly popular 1994. Ronald reagan was one of the primary cheerleaders. There were all sorts of things that the Clinton Administration did that were unpopular. Assault weapons ban was not one of them but the nra did a wonderful job in 95 and 96 with the help of people like though clinton to create this story that was the assault weapons ban that caused democrats to lose. That created a new realities to which for 20 plus years democrats said stay away from the issue of guns. We thought it was a political maneuver was never political maneuver. Only recently we have started to tell people that restrictions on guns because they love universal background checks. Theres another story i tell him the book which is lost her son from it true horrific he decides to run for congressional seat in georgia thats been held by her puppets for 40 years and she decides shes going to run an antigun violence as an advocate sing and do background checks. And she wins because guess what they love background checks and part of how we will win is to stay we are running and by going out and running more thats why we won it one control of the house in 2010 and thats why think we will win in 2020 because we are unapologetically running on these issues the way we did back when i ran for congress. Post i want to move from politics to policy for a moment and you begin the book, sorry to back up. It was said that the United States doesnt have one gun violence problem. Has several and by my count we have at lease for separate gun violence challenges. We ever been gun violence, domestic gun violence, gun suicide and mask shootings. Do you agree with these categories and if so how are these challenges similar and how are they different . Guest i would agree with those categories and you can see in my book that i have worked through each of them one at a time. Urban gun violence in a chapter devoted to mask shootings and a section devoted to suicide and Domestic Violence. That may start with what unites them and thats important. What unites them is a country thats a wash if you have easier access to weapon you were more likely to shoot your wife, and you are more likely to commit suicide are more likely to commit murder in an urban center and you are more likely to be a mask shooter. We have to accept that if we were smarter about gun regulating and we had less guns in the country come if we had less powerful weapons in this country all of those numbers would come down. And i go through methodically the evidence that suggests that states that have fewer background checks have much lower suicide rates and much less Domestic Violence break in a to get has four times less gun homicides than florida and thats not coincidental to the fact that our gun laws are much stronger. Was good then you mentioned the different and there are to discuss in this event but lets just take one. The difference between gun homicides. Gun homicides happen happened in this country primarily or most often by africanamerican gun suicide in this country is primarily an epidemic of white males and its important for us to explore how we get to those places. Gun homicides in this country tends to attract the handful of neighborhoods with huge rates of poverty, high levels of the illegal gun usage whereas suicide cant be a little bit more of a rural phenomena and in the book i argue its probably connected to the sword of loss of economic power that white males have experienced over the last 50 years. The recent trend of suicide tells you that its we have a loss of connection to the community and that loss of connection for white males as an Economic Security is substantial so thats why you see more suicides. Frankly the result of lack people this country havent been subjugated for years but they dont actually feel a sudden loss of connection or economic power because they have never had economic power and that im part explains the suicide but because they have is tremendously elevated cycle of marginality. Biracial criminal Justice System and other factors you see high. Certain things connect them and certain factors explain them and explain why they are different. Host i want to ask you a question. In your book as you said you discuss urban violence and Domestic Violence and suicide all in one chapter but do give mask shootings a chapter of its own. In 2018 according to mother jones magazine mask shootings killed 80 people and obviously each one of those death was a horrible tragedy but at the same time during that year there were over 16,000 other homicides in the west u. S. According to the fbi. The majority of which were due to urban violence. Why do you focus so much on mask shootings . Guest is a great question and its a book devoted to the proportional amount of states to people who die from gun usage based on the numbers, 80 of this book would be about suicides because they are the vast majority of gun deaths. What i think im trying to do is to be true to the entry point for Many Americans to this debate and the fact of the matter is like it or not the mask shootings do command nations attention when they happen. And they are the reason why today we have a movement that is on the precipice of changing the nations laws for the better and my hope the antigovernment Gun Violence Movement can be purged in some way shape or form at the black lives Matter Movement because as i suggest in the book you cant gun homicide rates in this country especially in cities without doing socioeconomic work. But i do have this whole chapter devoted to the issue of mask shootings because their reality is that right now thats a lot of the reason that people enter this movement. Thats a reason why the started. Thats what commands the attention on tv and thats what drives the legislative progress. The moment in which we got the closest to universal background check bill was in the wake of sandy hook in the wake of el paso and so while i dont like the fact that this country only cares about gun violence when a mask shooting happens and i tell the story in the book, you not just getting yelled at my first Public Meeting after sandy hook with africanamerican moms and dads and we are in denver. Now you care about gun violence . Where have youve been . Because we know their pain. But why do their lives matter to this country and hours dont in any of the pages of this book i tell the story of a young man who died a hartford two months before sandy hook and he opened the book with his story because its important for people to understand that while my awakening to this issue comes through sandy hook, his life matters just as much as any of those children who died in sandy hook. But his story occupied no space in the headlines and was never told by the National News but every single kid at sandy hook have their story told hope this is an attempt to acknowledge through Mass Shootings and in connecticut we have done that we could pass really strong gun laws after sandy hook because we joined forces and literally we march together through the streets and ended up with the guidelines to be changed for the better. And that corresponds to different policy and urban violence is not as responsive for legislation yet is more responsible they focus deterrence so remember that this is about dollars. And your work obviously highlights the importance of this and i tried to make clear to trash that exposure to violence and that is poverty and frankly that is true across several buckets that we talk about. You are more likely to be the victim of Domestic Violence and a homicide if you are lower income so much of the solution is coming to this conclusion that economic desperation does beget violence and whether deterrence efforts which is a way to say we will identify the populations and to put resources into those populations to give them a pathway to success. And it is targeted to solve the economic problem i have a story from baltimore as part of my research for this book and a guy said he was shot multiple times himself and he talks about why theres more violence happening and he says it hardens your heart. So what he says is that you do things when youre hungry and cannot put on been on the table and that explains many of the elevated rates of violence. Poverty and lack of opportunity all correlate but the evidence that you have seen the hyperfocus programs to identify those and directly work with the populations. And redo talk about these programs and i just want to make sure we dont use that as a substitute so in my opinion with that Economic Standing of white americans leads to the suicide epidemic so i think the focused investments of money in these populations is a way to provide a temporary fix the more permanent fix is that we just have an economic crisis putting people in all sorts of situations that in part that i believe tries not drives our stories the targeted intervention but that broader conversation. Absolutely you cannot divorce the broader social justice issues but it is important that when you talk about violence that is disproportionately or randomly impacting white americans we have direct concrete solutions. But violence to disproportionately impact black americans we have indirect or root cause making a difference generations from now that those communities learned from violence but i want to turn to the moment were in today it is possible to ignore the conflict in the country right now and you are wellpositioned to speak to this how do we navigate our way through her Current Crisis there is a violence between left we protesters encounter protesters literally fighting in the street on both sides. How do we stop them . If you were president how would you lead us out and if you are joe biden . I rewrote the introduction to this book because i wanted to make people understand even though i wrote at one year ago you can read this book through the prism of today because much of what we see today has long historical roots in this country vigilante justice has been around for a long time and there is a connection between the rise of the kkk in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds and caravans of americans from these protesters there is a Straight Line between zoning laws put in place with the jim crow era to the experience today in which black people and white people dont live with each other so a black mans experience cannot be understood by a white Police Officer who has his knee on his neck. I hope this is a way to understand how we got to this moment and if you dont understand then you cannot fix the country for the future thinking of getting rid of donald trump is a big step forward because that hinges on the chaos as we tape this he talks about going to kenosha not to help them but to turn up the heat to cause more riots so he can claim this is a law and order election that contributed to the separation. Thats a big step forward so the new administration should then recognize the economic crisis that exist for low income communities is a big part of the reason. And they should move quickly on refer one reform for gun laws and they should think boldly about policing reform and really ask yourself the question does every Law Enforcement officer or need a firearm does every Emergency Response call require police . Can we reorient the way in which we enforce the laws that there are not so many potential explosions of violence . And then back up and think to ourselves how do we create a common understanding . You are less likely to go to school as a white kid with a black kid then you were ten years ago. Schools are becoming radically more segregated. So lets start thinking about how we go to school so we can have more shared experiences in which i dont have to buy a book to understand what a black persons life is but i have a neighbor who is africanamerican or Asian American or latino. All of that has to be part of that policy. You are the president right now and we see this chaos in kenosha and portland and seattle and other cities. What word you do right now what would be the actions you would take . Again its harder to create that hypothetical because that moment is created in part by a president has done nothing but fan the flames its a little hard to say what you would do but i would argue may not that not be in this moment who obama early on and the steps would have telegraphed we would take the black lives Matter Movement seriously not just word but deed. People right now are appreciative of the words but they want actions. They want reform bills passed they want the nations gun laws and investment of public housing. If i were president i would to champion those legislative efforts and be using healing rhetoric that immediately doesnt erase the payment gives a tangible signal that we will change as a nation and right now the president is doing the exact opposite. Talking about housing segregation and make it harder fighting any and all Accountability Measures and go to the protest as a mechanism and thats the response that makes it worse, not better. Thank you for letting me press you on that. You call your book a template for action. What are three policy actions relating to gun violence that if you had the vote in the budget you would take right now . First and foremost universal background checks no matter how strong my state background check is its only as strong as the weakest state because those that are used for homicides in my state more often than not come from those states with looser laws thank you will see a big dinner munition with the National Requirement nobody can buy a gun without a background check. That would be the first. Second pick up what we were discussing with the National Investment to say every Single Community we well identify the community at risk of violence and to make investment in those communities and give thes kids a pathway a vision of the future to put down violence as a mechanism and. And given the moment were in we would double down on policing reform. It is true one of the things that i believe drew violence in communities of color was Law Enforcement some in the city of los angeles only 35 percent of homicides occur to victims of color and then you start to think if you take justice into your own hands a mother in baltimore had no success to get the police to take it seriously but then they come to her to say let me go out there and deal with it. And say i will not put another but they are focused on rounding people of color and not just getting the police out of communities of color and i think that is another big part of the solution. Unpacked this a little bit. So now we have some reformers calling for significant changes and yet some reformers calling for defending the police. And at the same time we had significant homicide between 20 and 30 percent in Many American cities and that was that have documented this pretty well. And this is violence that isnt happening between recent protesters but import communities of color with young men without a lot of hope or opportunity that are often involved in this type of violence in some people believe the police have some role to play in responding so how do we find our way out of this . It feels like politics of today make it impossible to find a reasonable middle ground. I dont think its impossible. I spent a lot of time the last couple months sitting down with the organizers in connecticut who have been open to defending the police rally. So did they acknowledge of course there has to be a mechanism to enforce laws and the current structure is so broken it cannot just be reform and its important to understand there should be no enforcement of laws and with that existing structure is so broken to be unrepairable. Know whether or not we have to do that i think we should be bold in the way we think about how our laws are enforced. So what is the Domestic Violence call . Does that mean a Police Officer with a weapon . We want her schools to be safe does that require a Police Officer to arrest kids with a minor drug offense so i dont support defunding the police i do think we should have comprehensive conversations how to enforced one enforce our laws. And so to issue a call to action that if you are moved by this book for one of the final chapters so what are the few things that the average person can do right now. I talk a lot in my book the young men that i spoke about and then to killed by another 20 yearold but then killed over fighting over a girl with over a transaction with a customer it was going to collect the last payment on the car and then they started to mouth off about his girlfriend and shane fought back on behalf of the girl and threw a punch in the can back to his car got the illegal gun and fired it but he died later that day in the hospital. And then my life growing up in a peaceful suburb had nothing to do with shanes life. And was constantly dealing with the threat of violence even with one arm that did not work to protect himself so i decided to structure my life in a way with huge amounts of my time to make up for lost time. Thats why ran for another term in senate to make sure there are not more shane olivers. I have to do is run for local office. Meant to make sure it was the cycle of criminality. Just Pay Attention to businesses their National Boycott campaigns right now with those establishments and to work with that movement that has worked tremendously well. You can make a donation five dollars makes a difference so there are all sorts of things you can do 90 percent of americans believe in universal background check but we lack a Political Movement that is Strong Enough to get the changes made. We are so close. And the 2020 election will probably be that decisive election especially with the nations gun laws. The important thing we can d do. It is trickier than it was and then to make a plan to vote and then to make sure you know we are going on election day but this year with the trajectory of violence thank you senator murphy. Thank you for writing the book and your leadership on this issue is there anything youd like to share with the audience before you go . I am really grateful to be part of a movement and with that anti gun violence a great social change that you read about in the history books have not succeeded right off the bat. Maybe we will not pass all the laws but thats what relegates you perseverance. To be educated that ultimately prove successful but also to give them the facts and the arguments that are necessary. Thank you senator