Metzl is frederick b rentschler, the second professor of sociology and psychiatry and the director of medicine and society at the vanderbilt. The Award Winning author dying of whiteness how the politics of racial resentment is killing americas heartlands and other books. He hails from kansas city, missouri and lives in nashville, tennessee he is joined in conversation tonight by Beth Simone Noveck professor at Northeastern University and director of the burn center for social. Jonathan metzl is presenting his new book, what weve living and dying in a country of arms and what weve become. Metzl reckons both with long history of distrust of Public Health, larger forces, social ideological, historical, racial and, political that allow Mass Shootings occur on a nearly daily basis. America. Looking closely at the cycle in which matts Mass Shootings lead to shock horror calls for action and ultimately political gridlock, he explores what happened to the soul of a nation and the meaning of safety community. When we normalize violence, an acceptable tradeoff for freedom. In the words of michael eric dyson, i know a few other thinkers who so consistently what ails america. This is the clarion call to everyone possesses who professes concern about the state of guns in this country. If we stand a chance in hell, were fighting back and remaking america in the image of gun safety. We need this book now. Were so pleased that its this event here at harvard tonight. Please join me in. Welcoming Jonathan Metzl and batsmen noveck. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. First, let me wish you congratulations not on the book, but on the super bowl. Yeah. Yeah. This is an important event. Kansas city from city. Thats an its an important day for you, but also on the book. Obviously it has gotten astounding, as you heard not only from dyson, but the New York Times named it a staff pick and editors choice was a phenomenal review today in the globe, Kirkus Reviews hailed it as a powerful, convincing effort to reframe the discussion around gun control and its discontents. So i want to just start off by asking to set the stage for us really how you came to write this book and really start with this story. Hundred million guns in this country. You framed this around this 2018 waffle house shooting, which obviously happened in your backyard. But im wondering if you could just start us off by explaining to us why you chose this of all the sadly mass and individual shootings, why you framed this book around this story and how it came to be . Well, first, thank you. It is such an honor to be here for so many reasons. Its just its great to be part of this great ongoing conversation about a that im telling, but that were all part of in this country, which is like what the hell do we do honestly . And not like i am like, oh, i studied this and this is what we do. Its more like, id like to raise some about how we got here. So we can figure out a better way forward. And its been a very humbling experience for me because the process of this book has led me to talk with a lot of families of who lost children from Mass Shootings, communities that are traumatized, but also a lot of gun owners who feel misunderstood and theyre kind of different notions of safety. So its been a really intense, really intense five years. Im so grateful to naughton for publishing this book. Honestly, its a risk to publish books about guns right now because everybody thinks they are on one side or the other and trying say, hey, wait, theres a middle ground where we can converse is is a risk and. So im grateful for that. And also just thank you to beth, who has been my friend, colleague and collaborator, im affiliated with the burn center and. Ive been kind of part of the amazing thats happening right here in boston around civic engagement, which which is such an honor now. That being said, i didnt think i was going to write another gun book. Ill just start with a personal part of this, which is my last book, dying of whiteness, was about a lot of things, but it was a lot about gun suicide in missouri. I spent a long time living in cape girardeau, missouri, in the south of missouri, among families who had lost relatives, children, very often to gun suicide. That book was intense and exhausting, and i like it just felt like this was the story that was story i wanted to tell about guns in a way. And i was ready to go on to like, i dont know, i would joke with my like a book about puppies, you know, or ponies, or Something Like that. Like, im not a downer but maybe i. And it was just that there was this moment in 2018, im kind of finishing dying of. And theres this moment when you live in a city in the United States or a town or a neighborhood. I mean, its almost inescapable. That said, we have more Mass Shootings, calendar days. But, you know, theres the people who are at the scene of the crime. There are the families who are affected. But then theres the community story, which is that youre sitting at work and you hear all the sirens and then you hear all the helicopters or youre at home as. I was on on the night that this happened and youre like, man, thats a lot of sirens and theyre going away from you and then theyre coming back toward you because. You live near the Trauma Center at vanderbilt hospital. And so there is something, first of all, thats really intense when it happens in your community and. I think thats part of it for me was the intensity of seeing it happen, seeing that trauma happen in my community was different from studying guns and other places. I think that the first level for me, but then the second part was, you know theres breaking news and this has not this has happened a number of times now. Nashville, where the Covenant School shooting last year, other shootings, there was one at a middle school, the other this shooting 2018. And you hear theres a theres a shooting, the waffle in the waffle house in, south nashville. And if you live in you know, thats not the cowboy boots and country bars part of town that is the black and brown part of town. Thats where there are black communities and latino communities and kurdish communities. And so you think like, well, gosh, thats really intense. There must be a mass shooting in the in the south part of town and then the news breaks that the victims were all young adults color and there were incredible. Well talk about it a little. But a young rapper who was well known, a basketball star who was well known, like the names of the victims to come out and they were truly truly rising stars in our in our community. And then you hear that the shooter, a naked white man with r 15 and i dont know im somebody who has studied race and Mental Illness and and gun violence and. I just thought, how can i not like this story . How can i not be at least part of the person who tells story . Now, this story has been told in our community and again by the families who keep the stories alive by, the friends of the victims, just our community. But there is something that happens where, as youre suggesting, Mass Shootings happen so often that they kind of blend. I mean, thats kind of the i call it what weve become. Weve become a a country that perpetuates this kind of trauma in order to go on with the next day and i wanted to slow down the story and say what happens when we tell one story . What do we learn . And especially for me, a story about race and about Mental Illness. And really, thats the center of this story is so many unexpected twists and turns that were just not where i thought it was going. And every time i thought, well, this will just be a good new yorker article, but then some other crazy thing would happen, you know something . I totally didnt. And so it just kind kept going and it just became for this bigger parable, not so much about all Mass Shootings, but just about our country and, you know, ill just the last thing ill say about that is the normal story. You turn on fox news or something is like, you know, we need guns because theres a shooting in the subway or gang or carjackers. But this was the inversion of that story, this was white guns coming to kill black bodies. And for me, there was such a powerful such a powerful lesson in that also about how became kind of an embodiment this this naked white shooter for me became an embodiment. I mean, he was a pathology himself and he was an embodiment of our cultural choices and values to be honest. And so it just became like a much bigger project than i was expecting and led me into the story and then much broader. And it is such a multilayered story that you tell here about race about values, about politics. And apropos of new yorker article, this is such a gorgeously book, i have to say, and especially you bring out the voices of, the victims and the families so poignantly. So i do hope we will talk a little bit more about that. But i want to talk for a moment about the perpetrator and this naked travis ranking, who goes in and shoots up the waffle house, maybe as a way into this story little bit, because travis was not unknown to the police, to the fbi. He had been stopped. He was a known quantity. He had a Youtube Channel where hes sleeping with his air 15 in a rather erotically charged way. As you explain Something Else that you get into so, i just want you to maybe tell us a little more, get into the story a little by telling us how is it that somebody who had so many guns was known to the police, who was a known how did how did we allow this to happen . It was not out of the you make very, very clear and its one of the beautiful pieces of writing in the book is how you really follow us through the many, many incidents that lead to this shooting, which frankly never should happened. So maybe you could just get to it a little bit, the story of travis and how we got here and why wasnt he stopped at any point. Yeah i mean so thank its so there are this is just the way my mind works there are multiple stories happening at one time in this book theres the story of the gun which i think were going to talk about next. And i kind of track the story of how the gun got to the waffle house and how the story of the man got to the waffle house. Now it wasnt the most obvious way to tell the story. And in fact, in in literature that i respect from field its like were not going to say the name of the shooter were not going to glorify the shooter. And i, i dont know just felt like i actually had to tell the story of the shooter because i feel like telling the story of this white and this ar 15 is just i didnt i wanted it to be exposed. And, you know, thats kind of like obvious because his body was so exposed. But wanted. I couldnt tell the story of this white body without telling the story of him. So i mentioned his name, talk about him. But part of the story when you when you see and also the other part is to be honest im not im not convinced that not telling his name would another shooting. I mean, ive no evidence that. But anyway, we can talk about that later. But the issue is when you track the story of how he got there and how the gun got there he buys gun legally in illinois like pretty much every other shooter i mean so many mass shooters buy their guns legally. And it kind of you know, when i talk to conservative gun owners are like but we have because of the illegal gun market and im like yeah and so but he buys gun legally and living in a conservative part of illinois morton illinois and while hes in his of illinois he has a number of psycho freakish episodes that also guns hes hes picked up at the cvs parking lot by police and the ambulance and his parents come they take him to a psych hospital for like 5 minutes. And then he later jumps into a public pool. Thats full of people on a summer day. And got a semiautomatic weapon in the back of his truck. He pulls out the weapon and points it at an employee of his fathers. A number of incidents. This to the point where he goes to the white house and hes hearing he wants to talk to trump, who is like his, you know, scion of titan hes like, i have to talk to trump. I have to ask trump. He tries to jump the fence. He has an fbi file. And after every one of these things, they say this guy probably shouldnt have guns guns, but they give the guns back to the parents or to him every single time. Now, part of why that is, as i argue in the book, is of race that if i have a kind of alternate alter character, black travis ranking who goes through the book black chivers drinking makes it through the first event because. A black man is not going to get five chances, but a white man looks like the kind of guy whose rights be protected. And thats kind of the again, they trust the father whos business owner, so they keep giving guns back and even after the fbi, he his guns are confiscated, but they give him to the dad to lock up and they say, now, dont give him back. Dont give him back. And what ultimately happens is he there in illinois . And ranking figures out that if goes to tennessee, tennessee doesnt have tight gun laws and so the laws prohibiting him having the guns in illinois wont pass in tennessee. So hes like, dad, if i go to tennessee, i can carry these legally. And the dads like, you know, youre right. And he gives the guns back and he goes to tennessee. So the crappy gun laws in tennessee become a beacon for. Him and as beth was mentioning, i have a lot of home videos of the shooter these guns have very profound erotic meanings for him and so have them taken away is is catastrophic for him psychologically and tennessee its like these loose gun laws restore restore him thats kind of his feeling and so in a way we always think like loose gun laws theyre bad because of shootings and stuff like that. But they were also theyre also like, i, i just always think of the siren of titan. This erotic song thats calling people like this to feel their manhood like it was. Im not. Ive tried to move away from psychoanalysis in my career, but it was hard to in this case. And so part of the story is just the story of how it gets there has to do with whiteness, Mental Illness and the draw loose gun laws that that really beckon him in this powerful way before. We get to the laws, though. I want to maybe just to complicate our edibles story. The father is concerned. The father takes the guns and yet gives them back to him. The father is supposed to watch the guns and yet gives him access to them, especially with the conviction of jennifer crumbly. This week in michigan. Im just wondering how you view role of the parents in this and i dont want to jump ahead to all of our policy solutions here, but do you think his father should have been held liable . Do you think Jennifer Crumley should be held liable . What is the role of the parents in this situation . Well, in this case, the father was found culpable. Hes actually prison right now for 18 months for giving the giving the guns back. And and i the crumley case is another where you dont get a warning from the school and take your kid to the target practice the next day encourage them with the guns so i do think parental culpability is another layer of responsibility. The system that we can build in. But if i but do i think that these are going to lead to any systemic change . I truly dont, unfortunately and the reason i say that is because that the ranking case is illinois, a blue state. The crumley case isnt a concern ever to part of a blue state. But but a case like that never be filed in nashville in tennessee. It wouldnt be filed in a red state. I dont think. I mean, if it if that happens, you know, its an issue. But i think so. I do think that the i mean, the premise behind a red law is that people who close to somebody know know when that persons to go off the way that a Police Person wont but that are two problems with that as i see it. Well many many problems with it. In this case he the guy was he was over 18. So Something Like this wouldnt have really mattered except that there was this legal issue. So again, the father was liable. He shouldnt have given the guns back. But i would just say like i talk a lot about, you know, the idea, the Mental Health story of a mass shooter is that one day he just snapped, you know, the kind of like dog day afternoon story or the whatever, like the, you know, just that was the day he couldnt take any more or that one story with them. Michael douglas where he got out of his car and traffic in los angeles. But actually in reality, as talk about psychiatrists are really judges of when is going to shoot somebody else in part because well first theres no Mental Illness that shooting somebody else is a symptom of that illness. So theres nothing theres no tool. But the other thing is most a mass shooters if were just in the realm of mass shooter, its characterological. Theyve been this way for a long time. And so its more about their personal ality than it is about a snap psychotic episode. And so if psychiatrists really are not good at out like whats the one day and holding liable has led to catastrophic implications like a psychiatrist ended up in new york when they passed the safe act there 400,000 put people put on the list because psychiatrists every single person, they had no idea who was going to go, who was going to be violent. So surveilled everybody because theyre like, oh, my god, im responsible. And i think it would be the thing with parents. I think about a character logically, personality damage, people who have been this way for a long time. Whats the one day that theyre going to . You know, i think guns and parents is, another whole issue. But its not like its not like, oh, this is the one day he got out of bed and hes going do this. Usually, if people are smart enough to pull one of these off, theyre hiding it from the people to them. So i dont know what im worried that it would lead to the same implications it does kind of with psychiatrists, which is oh my god, youre liable. Therefore your kids never youre never going to go out of the house. Heres the thing. So i want start to shift a little bit. And again, the the the beautiful nature of this book is you tell this incredible individual story, this family story, the stories of the victims. But then you pan and give us the broader