Let's Find Common Ground - Mass Shootings and Guns: Seeking Common Ground: Patrik Jonsson and Ryan Busse

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

In the first eight weeks of this year, America’s epidemic of mass shootings and gun crimes showed no signs of reprieve. In fact, the crisis may be getting much worse. According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that tracks firearms violence in the U.S., there have been at least 90 mass shootings since January 1.  We take a close look at gun violence and the search for common ground. We learn why so many Americans love guns and say they need them for self-defense. We also hear about differences in regional attitudes to guns, and what happens to communities that witness mass shootings.   Our guests are journalist Patrick Jonsson and gun safety advocate Ryan Busse, author of “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America”.  Patrik Jonsson is the Atlanta-based correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. He writes about The South, gun rights, race, extremist groups, natural disasters, and hockey. Ryan Busse grew up around guns — hunting and shooting with his father and had a long and successful executive career in the gun industry. Despite being a strong critic of the NRA, he's still a proud gun owner, hunter, and outdoorsman who lives in Montana. Please tell us what you think! Share your feedback in this short survey. For every survey completed, we’ll plant 5 trees.  Common Ground Podcast Feedback Survey (qualtrics.com)

The raw statistics on gun violence in America are stark. In 2020, the latest full-year measured by the Centers for Disease Control, more than 45,000 people died from gun-related injuries in the US. So today, we're going to look at the gun debate through a common ground lens. Can we agree on the difference between responsible gun ownership and the reckless use of guns? This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashleigh Miltite. And I'm Richard Davies. We wanted to do this episode in response to statistics that reveal America's epidemic of mass shootings and gun crimes shows no signs of reprieve.

In fact, the crisis may be getting much worse. According to the gun violence archive, there have been more than 90 mass shootings since the first of the year. We speak with a journalist and a former firearms industry executive who tells us about his love of guns, as well as criticisms of the business that he was once part of. It's a fresh take on an issue that leaves many people feeling divided and depressed.

First, we speak with Patrick Johnson, the Georgia-based correspondent for the Christian science monitor. He writes about the South, gun rights, race, extremist groups, natural disasters, and hockey, as for he loves. I asked Patrick first, just how bad is the gun violence crisis in America? Well, I think as far as mass shootings, I mean, I've been reporting on this for a while now, and it's as bad as I've seen it but I mean the statistics are on mistakeable as it's almost a daily it feels like daily headlines across the country and all regions doesn't seem to be sparing any particular part of the country.

Why do so many people love guns in this country do you think? Well what's not to love? I mean they're fun. I've owned guns. Not only are they interesting to a certain kind of person, they can be competitive. We have high schools here in Georgia that have competitive air pistol shooting, like ranges in the basements of high school here.

The appeal is pretty broad, really. And it has actually become broader the last few years. There's a lot of new kind of groups that are joining the rights or at least gun kind of carry or gun ownership movement, including a lot of Liberals and African Americans have done stories about African American men and women, also who are buying and carrying and learning how to use weapons. So I think 63% of people now carry their own guns for self-defense, but I think a lot of people that I've talked to at least also kind of have this basic notion that poor

there ever a time that they would need it, were there ever to, you know, a tyrannical kind of government to rise, that that's why the second amendment is there and people take it seriously you live in Georgia Is there a different attitude towards guns in the South then in some other parts of the country are people more likely to be part of a strong gun culture? It's a little hard for me to answer that because I've mostly lived in the South. I personally first shot guns in New England with my buddies on the Seacost of New Hampshire

where we used to go to an old Sam Pit and shoot. And I would say the rural aspects of gun ownership think, is everywhere in the country. But the South is, of course, very rural. And there is a very strong tradition here, just a kind of a pioneer mentality, you know, settler mentality, where a gun was how you fed yourself and how you defended yourself. That instinct or that idea, certainly, is very strong here and remains. So when you can see it, George has really led the way the last five or six years in liberalizing gun carry.

I mean, Hartzfield Jackson is, I think the busiest airport on the planet, the Atlanta airport, and a couple of years ago, the legislature allowed people to carry guns at Hartzfield Jackson. So it seemed like a huge shift at the time. I'm not sure it's a completely Southern tradition, but I'm not surprised a Southern legislature did that. This term open carry is used a lot. What is open carry?

For instance, in Georgia, the open carry law, what does that allow people to do? I mean, it's self-explanatory in a way, but it's a good question because it is a little more complicated than that. But it's basically just, if you're carrying a weapon openly, that in the past, I could have been a precursor for a police stop at the very least,

but today in Georgia, certainly, and many other parts too that have open carry is constitutionally allowed. And so that's not a reasonable cause for suspicion of anything, in other words. Last year, I think Atlanta canceled a music festival, right? Because of Open Carry. Can you just talk about what happened there? That was really interesting. Yeah, that hit me because it was, it was the music Midtown Festival, which I've been going on in Atlanta for years.

An absolutely wonderful, awesome festival. I've went there several times. I brought my little kids there one time, which was to see Weezer. Awesome show. It was part of kind of Atlanta's pride that it had this giant festival. So what happened last year with some of the shifts in Georgia law towards allowing open care, so-called constitutional care, and we never got really the answer, the event organizers kind of hedged a little bit, but it had to do with insurance, I believe, that they were concerned that they couldn't provide a sense of safety legally as well to the concert goers and attendees.

Well, there are a lot of recriminations. I mean, did that stir up a horn? It's nest of recriminations when they announced that they were canceling the festival. Well, I think it was just a real blow to civic pride in Atlanta. That was the biggest recrimination. It was a kind of a glimpse at what this debate is about. It's about safety, right? So that was, but yet safety is exactly what gun rights people are talking about too, is those two ideas really clashed at that moment. So I wouldn't say recrimination as much as just kind of civic shock. And what about the view of safety from gun owners and gun rights groups? You know there's different aspects to that but one thing that I've reported a lot on and that is

you can definitely see this idea that there's like a civic duty to carry and to protect people in your community from harm, where you kind of step up really and become someone who's willing to put yourself out there. When you talk to gun owners, carrying a gun, especially around as part of being in your identity, is a heavy burden. It's literally heavy, and it's hard to hide. It's hard to wear a gun.

It's uncomfortable. But like one guy I've talked to quite a few times, his point is, guns aren't made to be comfortable. They're made to be comforting. It kind of speaks to this idea of being part of, well, like you said, part of your identity, part of kind of who you present yourself and who you feel you are. A lot of people would say guns make a safe hope

whether they are carried openly on your personal, whether you just have one in your truck or at home, and is there any truth to that? Oh my gosh, well, this is such a perennial question. There's so much research on this and there isn't an absolute answer to that yet. I saw it in one of my stories where we talked about talk to young gun owners. We talked to this one guy who said he was aware of all the damage

that guns can do, because that's measurable in blood and victims and death. We can measure that in a million ways, but how do you measure the bad that's prevented by guns? And that kind of defines it right there. It is hard to measure that. That I've seen that is pretty good and taken in aggregate. There is evidence that on the whole, more gun carry, more open carry,

more guns in general will equal more violence. Do they also equal less property crime? Do people feel safer in many cases with a gun? Well, you nailed it, I think. And we were talking about the South earlier, and I've been doing some other stories about the South and the culture of violence that's kind of uniquely southern. The South has more violence per capita than any other part of the country. That's just the way it is. But it also has less property crimes

than other parts of the country. And it's... It's calm and sensical. If you want to go into someone's house to take their stereo or something, or even step on their property who'd grab something from the yard, if you know almost everyone's armed,

and if you don't know if that person has a gun or if he or she is home, you're more likely not to do that. You talked about common sense. What about common ground? Are there more prospects for finding common ground on this issue of gun violence than there were a year ago, a decade ago?

For sure. There's no doubt about that. I've shot guns, I've owned guns. I've interviewed lots of gun owners and people who don't own guns. I mean, there's a ton of common ground there because everyone is coming from the same point. They want to be safe, right? They want to be safe in their homes and the communities. They don't want their neighbors hurt.

They don't want to be the victim of random violence or guns or gun violence. So that is a huge common ground. And Congress last June, I think, passed the bipartisan Safe for Communities Act. And that was a huge deal. I mean, I've been covering this for years. I was shocked that that happened. It made some new allowances for kind of gun ownership where it kind of delineated.

If your gun is taken away from you under the law, or under any, it showed a clear way to get that gun back. You know, there were orders by keeping a clean record or whatever the specifics were, but it was definitely a nod towards kind of the more conservative viewpoint. But then it put real money and force behind trying to encourage states to pass red flag laws, which are laws that if you ever run in with police or with under certain crimes, there are ways that usually from your family that raises a concern that the government can say, well,

we're gonna remove your guns until you can, we're gonna remove them today, we're gonna have a process, a legal process for you to get them back, but that there's an actual mechanism to get guns away from people who may be having a mental breakdown or something that raises concern for people in the community. But I think there's lots of comic around there for sure.

And I think we're seeing it over concern of some of those mass violence that we're seeing too, that's disturbing to every American. No matter where you are on the spectrum of gun ownership or gun rights, that people realize there's a problem. Just over 10 years ago, the mass shooting took place at Sandy Hook School, New Town Connecticut. 26 people were killed, I think, and most of those were young children. And I know you were there just a day or two afterwards to cover the aftermath. What do you most remember about that time? Well, that came back to me last year after the shooting in Evalde, which was so similar, Evalde, Texas, right, which was also a school

shooting where almost as many children and teachers were killed there as were in Newtown. But I arrived in Newtown just a day or so after that shooting, 11 days before Christmas. I didn't know what to expect. The community was in shock, but it was as a reporter it was probably the hardest story and the one that most affects me to this day because of something that happened that evening, but I went to get something to eat that night. It was a pizza place, I was sitting at the bar, and there was a Christmas party going on, and it was a very somber Christmas party. And one of the guys came up, and it turned out it was the fire department's Christmas party, and these were all the same men and women who had just

a day before been in that school with all those kids. I just never forget the look in this guy's eye, which was, it's hard to describe. It was just so sad. Here they were trying to have a party, because they didn't want to cancel it, I guess. It was really his eyes that stay with me and that really underscored just how psychically damaging gun violence can be. But that was searing, so that still colors my thinking on this a lot. I realized later that that actually was very traumatic.

And the whole thing was traumatic, but seeing how it manifested in those firefighters was really tough. And it still is. Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me and I really appreciate it has been great talking to you. Yeah, thank you very much. Patrick Johnson joining us from his home in Georgia. And hearing that story of the fireman, he saw just after the Sandehook shootings and

the look in his eyes and how that's remained with Patrick all this time and how it's affected him as well. I thought that was really moving. Yeah, many of his journalists covered tragedies and it affects us as well. I've covered wars the aftermath of plane crashes, natural disasters, and stories involving violence. It can be very hard sometimes to separate my own feelings with the need to do the job and also write the story, broadcast the story in time for a deadline. We mentioned numbers at the beginning and they're relatively easy to find, but the emotional toll of gun violence is really difficult to put into words or quantify.

Yeah, you're listening to Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard. And I'm Ashley. You can find more episodes of Let's Find Common Ground at commongroundcommity.org slash podcasts. There's also a link, a blue box that says, click here and tell us what you'd like to hear. We want to get some new ideas about future shows. Who do you want us to talk to? What subjects, what ideas around finding common ground should we be tackling?

Give us feedback. We'll mention the web address again at the end of this show. And next, our interview with former Firearms executive, Ryan Bussey. Ryan grew up around guns, hunting and shooting with his father. Despite being a strong critic of the NRA, Ryan is still a proud gun owner, hunter and outdoorsman. He lives in Montana. His recent book is Gun Fight. My battle against the industry that radicalized America.

We first spoke with Ryan for the podcast last year. He insisted that he was in no way anti-gun. Just because I think background checks are a good idea or because I believe in the right of states to permit concealed carry or I think the armed intimidation is wrong or I think that open carry should be outlawed in a democracy. There are those on the far right who believe that that makes me anti-gun but I refuse to live under that label. I'm not anti-gun. I literally, I don't even know how many guns I own. More than 3,000. I don't, I have a count of them. So I've sold millions of guns. I don't know how I can be labeled

as anti-gun, but I think the idea that I, that me, an award-winning firearms executive who shoots with his boys every chance he gets and doesn't know how many guns he owns can be labeled as anti-gun. I think that's there you have a very illustrative example about how divisive our country has become. What is the difference between responsible gun ownership in your mind and reckless use of guns? Well, I think any healthy democracy is debating those sorts of questions every day. I don't think there is a clear answer to that. I think that a healthy democracy lives

its life in the gray area. I believe that guns isn't extremely illustrative and important fault line in our society. But I think there are things that are clearly not responsible. I don't know where the line is exactly, but I can give you some examples of things that I think are not responsible. The idea that firearms should be used to intimidate protesters, lawmakers, average citizens, which we've seen many, many times in the last two to three years,

this idea of authoritarian intimidation with guns in the open. People who do that want to try to cover up what they're actually doing. They say that they're just exercising their rights. No, they're not. You take a gun out of the open in front of a bunch of kids who are protesting, you're trying to intimidate them. That's not reasonable, it's not responsible.

Really has no place in a functioning democracy. So I guess to me that's a very clear example of something that's far over the responsible line. And how do you contrast that with your behavior as a gun owner? Most people who grew up like I did and are still being raised in, you know, a responsible gun owning America, understand there are certain things that you never do. And this applies to me, it goes the way I was raised, it's the way that, you know, hundreds of people who have reached out to me since the release of my book

and the various podcasts have been on, they all adhere to these same sorts of things. You never take a gun to a fight. The idea of responsible gun ownership is you want to do everything possible to never have to use a gun in any sort of societal against, you know, human, human interaction. So you never go to the fight. You always try to leave. You never brandish a gun to intimidate. It's not part of your identity. It's not part of some sort of weird faux patriotic machismo

that we've seen, like all of these things are things that responsible gun owners would never do. For me, it's very important that we adhere to those sorts of rules. I think what you're saying, the sense that there is nuance in an intelligent conversation about guns, is something we so rarely hear in our media and in our very often angry debates about the role of guns. You are very comfortable around guns that guns are very much part of your lifestyle, but that there's an aspect, and some of it's a recent aspect of owning guns, which really troubles

you. Can you explore that more? Sure. I think, you know, John Adams is famous for basically, for essentially saying that our democracy or our constitution can only be applied to immoral people. And by moral, I think he meant responsible. And I think that anything that this society, we have always tried to enumerate our freedoms very carefully in all of our founding documents and in our reams and reams of laws on which our country is supposed to function. But responsibilities have always sort of been this ethereal thing that we just

understand. They're sort of our part of our cultural norm. And I think what's happened is that we have this sort of runaway focus on freedoms, which we all agree are important, owning guns as one of them. But with each freedom, there's a commensurate need for responsibility. And I think with guns, because of the exceedingly powerful reality of owning guns and what they represent, what they can do, what they're designed to do. We have a commensurate, exceedingly important need for responsibility. And it's that responsibility that I think has been largely dispensed with, certainly over the last, you know, through the Trump years.

And the reason I think that is is because political intimidation and authoritarianism has become a tool of the right or a desired outcome of the right. And nothing jump starts authoritarianism like guns do because they upend our civility. Then if you're sitting around with a group of friends at dinner waiting on one to show up and you have a nice civil dinner and then that last person shows up,

banishing a gun, your entire civil existence is upended. And that's very similar to what I think radicals have intended to do to our political situation in our country with guns. Demand for guns reached by all accounts of record high during the first year of the pandemic and then precise statistics vary, but according to official statistics, more than twice as many guns are being sold now compared to 20 years ago. Is gun industry marketing mostly the reason for this, do you think?

It's certainly part of it. The through line of my book and my existence, my life, is that I came to understand the NRA and very powerful political forces meant to divide our country, realized that the sort of things that could drive terrible political outcomes for our country, but good political outcomes for a narrow band of our society, meaning like, in our eight sort of political radicals, for a narrow band of our society, meaning like in our A sort of political radicals, the sort of hatred, fear, divisiveness, racism, the sort of things that increase angst in the society, those drive fearful people to vote in irrational ways. And so we've seen some sort of what feels like irrational political outcomes. But those are precisely the same things

that drive firearms purchases because fearful people purchase guns. And so it's not an accident that the worst sort of tumultuous time that any of us can remember probably this period between let's say March of 2020 and January 6, 2021. That sort of angsty tumultuous time let's say March of 2020 and January 6, 2021. That sort of angsty, tumultuous time corresponds perfectly with the highest ever firearm sales in the United States.

And actually it's not double. When I entered the firearms industry in 1995, there were about three and a half million guns sold a year in 2020, 2021 in any 12-month period. You're gonna find evidence of about 22 to 25 million guns sold a year in 2020-2021 in any 12-month period. You're gonna find evidence of about 22 to 25 million guns sold. So we're talking about a 600% increase. Ryan Bussey speaking with us on episode 55 of our show, it was published last April.

And you can hear a longer version of that interview on our podcast website. In fact, you can hear all longer version of that interview on our podcast website. In fact, you can hear all of our common ground conversations at commongroundcommittee.org slash podcast. And that's also where you can give us feedback on what you'd like to hear next. I'm Ashlyn Entite. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening.

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.