Today, Explained - Has the gun control movement failed?

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

You might look at school shootings and think “Yes, obviously.” But two people who have been studying and participating in the movement for decades explain how its success isn’t obvious. This episode was produced by Jillian Weinberger, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and edited by Sean Rameswaram, who also hosted. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Noelle King. Hey, Sean. This weekend, did you notice that the March for Our Lives returned? I did notice, yes. Did you hear much about it being, you know, a protest that happened all across this country of ours? No, that I didn't know. I guess the past few weeks and maybe the past month has had me wondering if the gun control movement in this country is a failure. I mean, it doesn't seem like a success.

So on the show today, I thought we'd ask someone who's been studying this movement for decades and a guy who's been a part of it for decades to see how they feel about it. And it's part of something we're going to try and do this week on the show is just understand this issue of guns in America, understand it through the protest movement, understand it constitutionally, understand it politically, because there might actually be some action in the coming weeks. Very cool. I am looking forward to learning something. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. And as I told Noelle at the top of the show, I've been wondering if the gun control movement in the United States is a failed effort. Or maybe I've been wondering if it just could be more persistent. If the March for Our Lives had been happening every year, every month, every week, instead of once and then again four years later, could there have been more tangible change? On Today Explained, we're going to ask a couple of people who've been studying and participating in this movement for decades, starting with Kristen Goss. When we told people we wanted to assess the gun control movement,

everyone told us to speak to Kristen Goss. I am a professor of public policy and political science at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Kristen's been watching the gun control movement for decades. Out of Columbine, I wrote a PhD dissertation, which became a book about the challenges that gun violence prevention advocates have in organizing a mass movement. And the subtitle of that book was The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America. And that book came out in 2006. And she's got a surprising answer to the question of whether the gun control movement has just sort of failed. I can say without any doubt that the movement is no longer missing.

And it's better organized, better funded. And, you know, I would say arguably more successful than at any time in history. So why do things feel so hopeless to so many Americans? She had an answer for that, too. We all focus on Congress, and, you know, terrible shootings happen. Usually Congress doesn't even consider gun violence prevention legislation. They did after Sandy Hook. They didn't pass the key bill, which would have created some sort of universal background check system.

That failed to pass, so everybody said, oh, this horrible thing happened to Sandy Hook and nothing changed. Well, that's just false. I mean, many state laws changed. Many organizations were founded. A lot of money came in. It's all been slow, and a lot of what's been changing is happening under the media radar and under the public radar. But things are happening. joined a number of other similar high-profile events throughout history that each has sort of brought in a new group or a new constituency to advocate for stricter gun laws. Columbine was an

important event for bringing in mothers and, you know, those organizations that mobilized around the time of Columbine stayed active kind of under the media radar for a number of years and working, you know, chiefly at the state level. My own common sense tells me that safety locks on firearms, background checks on gun purchasers, and registering those same guns is common sense. I think Virginia Tech in 2007

was a really important pivot point. The parents of those students who were shot and the family members of the instructors sort of came together in this network and worked to get a bill through Congress, yes, our Congress, in a Republican administration to strengthen the reporting of records to our national background check system.

This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community. And it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. Sandy Hook was a really important pivot point. Some states after Sandy Hook strengthened their gun laws in significant ways. A number of other states strengthened their laws around mental health and firearms access. But more important, I think Sandy Hook really marked the beginning of kind of an expansion in the gun violence prevention movement. I'm here because I think you get to a point where enough is enough. And after going through Sandy Hook when I was younger and sitting in lockdown, literally scared for me and my siblings life. I don't think that any student should ever have to go through that. A lot of money flowed in to the gun violence prevention movement, and it's, you know, it ebbs and flows, but there's more money now than there was at any other time. And more importantly, groups that are organized around gun control and groups that just have an

interest in it, where it's one of many things they care about, got organized around a common policy agenda. So, you know, then Parkland comes along and almost half the states strengthen their gun laws in the immediate aftermath. And half of these states included something like 14 that had Republican governors. Today, we have an obligation to govern. It's time for us to be grownups. Grownups protect our kids.

It's our turn. Don't let them down. You know, the Orlando shooting brought in the LGBT community. So each of these mass shootings, which are, you know, terrifying and tragic, are serving as kind of galvanizing points for different constituencies of interest to sort of join in this. You gave us this sort of 20-year-or-so history dating back to Columbine, but surely that isn't when the gun control movement in the United States begins. Where does that trace back to, at least in sort of its modern form? Yeah, there were some kind of fleeting organizational efforts in 1968 after the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy. But the modern gun violence prevention movement

or gun control movement, as it was known at the time, really started coming together in the mid 70s. So in that time period, you had sort of an uptick in crime, the spread of handguns, particularly cheap handguns was occurring at that time. And two kind of national gun control groups that are still around were founded in 1974. So one is what we now call Brady. We are all Brady. We are all united against gun violence. And the other is what we now call the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go. Hey, hey. And the gun control organizers in that time frame, so we're talking 70s, 80s, really were focused on federal legislation.

You know, so on the theory that guns and bad guys with guns can flow easily across state lines. So if you really want to regulate firearms, you've got to do it nationally. A state-by-state approach is going to have limited effectiveness. But meanwhile, the gun rights side, epitomized by the NRA, was organized in a federated way. So there's a national NRA. they've got state affiliates and, you know, pistol and gun clubs in every state, I believe. There are local spaces where gun owners can congregate, you know, in gun stores or gun shows or gun ranges, where they can practice their hobby, but also share political information, recruit each other into activism.

So, you know, the NRA is organized the way that our government is organized. And so they're ready to plug in at any level to advocate for gun deregulation or to try to block proposed gun control laws. And the gun violence prevention movement has always been much more kind of top down, at least on the professional side. But there's a really important thing to say here, which is, you know, in communities of color and in cities where gun violence can have more pronounced spikes, there have always been community-based organizations, organic, led by often mothers. And, you know, these groups are doing yeoman's work trying to stop violence, but they don't tend to be connected to one another, connected to professional organizations. They don't have any money, and they often are doing kind of community-based interventions as opposed to sort of

policy advocacy. So the gun control movement or the gun violence prevention movement has a lot of different pieces to it. It hasn't been that coordinated historically, but I think that coordination and that kind of bridge building across different parts of the movement has really improved in recent years. But we're still in this place where we're still having mass shootings, like Buffalo, like Uvalde. And as of 2020, guns are the leading cause of death for American kids. And shootings are up across the country. These piecemeal accomplishments along the way haven't accomplished enough, it would seem.

Two things that I would say that are maybe a little bit of a copy out to what you said. So one is you can use the word piecemeal or incremental, and that sounds ineffective. One of the issues with gun laws is that a lot of them are not implemented very well. So we have these laws on the books at the federal and state level that say, this person can't buy a gun or this person can't possess a gun. But those are only as good as the enforcement mechanisms that are in place. So, for example, if you come under a permanent restraining order because you've committed domestic violence, you're not supposed to own a gun. Well, what if you already have a gun? Who's going to go get that gun?

What does the state say about whether you have to relinquish that gun? Is the judge ordering you to relinquish the gun? Do the states know that you have that gun? Are the police going to go to your house and get it? So there's all these, you can call them loopholes or just holes in enforcement that really can make a difference if they're tightened. And so these quote-unquote piecemeal incremental changes are aimed at doing that. I wouldn't write them off as just incremental changes to existing laws. They can actually matter a lot. And I think there's been a lot more attention to enforcement and implementation of laws in recent years. I mean,

still a lot of attention to getting new laws on the books, but that's only half the battle, right? You know, the other thing I would say, you know, you're right. Obviously, laws on the books did not stop Buffalo or Uvalde or the community-based gun violence that we're going to see. We're in Washington, D.C. tonight, you know, where I am. But we don't know the counterfactual either. So if none of these, quote-unquote, incremental or piecemeal laws have been passed, would it have been even worse? You know, we don't know that. So you always have to think about what's the alternative or what's the counterfactual that you can't see. How many Uvaldes might have happened if measures hadn't been put into place around the country?

And I'm not going to ask you to prove another counterfactual, but to sort of bring this back to my initial question, the March for Our Lives was this incredibly powerful protest. The school walkouts that happened were incredibly disruptive around the same time. And I can't help but feel that if there was that kind of sustained attention and protest on this issue, it could accomplish much more. And as someone who studies this, I wonder if you feel the same way. Yeah, I mean, of course. I think if young people walked out of school for three straight years or four straight years, politicians would notice. I think there is a lot of deja vu, Groundhog Day to the gun issue. So, you know, you can look at what happened after Columbine and what happened after Sandy Hook. Tons of parallels there.

But I think, again, you know, we are an incremental country. And, you know, that is very frustrating when you're talking about life and death situations like with gun violence or climate change for that matter. Politicians will pay attention when unexpected constituencies get involved. They like predictability. They like to know kind of how the distribution of votes is going to be. They like to know who's going to get agitated and who's going to stay quiet. When you start shaking that up, that's when they pay attention. And, you know, we recently opened up our phone lines and so many people just called in and said, I would like to know what average citizens like myself can do to stop gun violence.

How many more of these have to happen? What can we actually do? And it didn't sound like a political thing. It was just, I want to know what I can do so I can live in a country where this just doesn't happen anymore. As someone who's been studying what people have done for 25 years, what would you say to those people? I would say, what are your interests? What particular part of this gun violence problem that we have are you most interested in? Some people are really touched by suicide. Some people are touched by community violence. Some people are touched by school

shootings, et cetera. I'd figure out what is it that stirs your passion, and I would join an organization. I mean, the capacity is there. The expertise is there. There are organizations that are ready to take you in and use your skills. I think one example of this is family members and survivors. So when I was doing my first book, I remember asking a leading national gun control person, why is it that so many people are touched by gun violence, but there isn't a movement of victims or survivors or family members? Where are they in this? And they were always there, but they weren't there with a big megaphone and a big platform. And I remember he said, you know, we always feel really nervous about approaching people who have just experienced this life-changing trauma. And I think that that

reticence has gone away. So Everytown for Gun Safety, which is the largest now of the national gun violence prevention groups, has a whole sort of division devoted to supporting survivors and family members, and also if they want to be activists, to giving them a platform, giving them training, giving them money to go and speak to organizations. So I think it's just a matter of what are your interests and what are your skills. These organizations will bring you in. That's a big difference from the early era

where it was much more kind of elite staff-led organizations with not a lot of room for volunteer mobilization, everyday citizen mobilization. That's different now. That was Professor Kristen Goss with Duke University. In a minute, we'll hear from a lawyer who was touched by suicide and then became an activist. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura.

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control, but we thought we'd pose the same question to an actual activist, one who's been at it since 1989. I'm Josh Horwitz. I'm the co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. I asked Josh how he's kept at it for 33 or so years when it seems like things have just gotten worse. The Talmud, the Jewish Talmud says to us, when you save one life, you save the world. And I live by that. I mean, my goal is to substantially, meaningfully reduce gun violence. And that's what I do. And that's why I focus on this.

And so while I acknowledge the inevitability of some of these, I also look to states where we've really reduced the gun death. We've really saved lives. We've saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives a year. And that's why I keep doing this. What happened 30 years ago that got you into this world? I graduated law school, went to a firm, and a colleague of mine at the firm who I helped get a job. It was just one of those things. We were slow that fall, and she was let go, not because of any problem with her. It was just, you know, work was slow.

And unfortunately, she went home and took her life with a firearm, died by suicide. And it was one of those things that just really struck me as a really painful experience. It struck me as like, how is this happening? How could someone have access to a gun and in a really quick moment take her own life? And so I, you know, thought about what I wanted to do with my life. I knew that I didn't want to stay in private practice. And I ended up, you know, looking out there and found this job. And, you know, I never went back.

It's been a rewarding, sometimes frustrating experience, but I never forget why I started with this. Do you think this country could get to the place where the movement for gun violence prevention feels as powerful as the movement for Second Amendment rights or whatever you want to call it? Absolutely. The NRA is a good example because their power is certainly on the wane, but people who adhere to that, it's like faith. It's like religion. It is part of their lives. It's a big part of their sort of social construct, right? After Sandy Hook, unfortunately, there were some votes in the Senate that were lost, right? Even though we got 55 votes for background checks, that's not enough in the Senate. Majority is not enough. You need 60. People said, well, that's it. That's the end. But what I saw was a

movement develop over the last 10 years. So the time of the Sandy Hook shooting, I was one of the very few lobbyists on the Hill. I mean, you could count them in one hand before that. And since then, we have become a movement of millions and millions of people with all sorts of government relations activities, all sorts of grassroots activities. From my perspective, thinking back on what it looked like in the Bush administration, for instance, after the Virginia Tech shooting, there was no gun violence prevention infrastructure. There's a couple of groups. There was the group I work for. There's the Brady campaign. But it was really small potatoes at the time. Now it's completely different. So we've seen an incredible growth in the movement since 2012. I think that's going to

continue. This is another moment we're seeing a lot of growth. So yeah, I do think we're going to be as powerful. If we're not as powerful as the NRA, we're going to be. In certainly some states, many states, we are. So this is a battle. This is a battle. You sound so committed in spite of the fact that, you know, in terms of how things look now, at least in terms of mass shootings, they look dramatically worse than when you got into this work, right? So not really. I started the year after, you know, 30 children were shot at a playground in Stockton, California with an assault weapon, with an AK-47. When the rampage was over, five students lay dead, a teacher and

more than 30 students were injured, more than half of them critically. One bystander said it sounded like a gun battle. Through that, you know, we were able to pass the Brady Bill, which created the background check system. On behalf of the Vice President and the Attorney General and myself, we believe very passionately in the Brady Bill. As all of you who are involved in the campaign know, I spoke about it at every campaign stop and every country crossroads in this country. And we were able to create an assaultman's ban for 10 years. The 19 assault weapons banned by this proposal are deadly, dangerous weapons. They were designed for one purpose only, to kill people.

And as long as violent criminals have easy access to them, they will continue to be used to kill people. We as a nation are determined to turn that around. We know because of that that that saves lives. It was very unfortunate there was a sunset in that. But I've been dealing with mass shootings my entire life in this field. What I'm distraught about now is the pace and the fact that the weaponry clearly increases the death count. And we're not able to do anything about that

in some states. Other states we are. The mass shootings have been around, but the pace and the ability to keep selling high capacity magazines and assault weapons, that is a just absolute moral failure of our country. And it doesn't mean that I can walk away or turn my back from this. It means that I got to keep going and try to make more changes. That was Josh Horowitz. He's the co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Our show today was produced by Jillian Weinberger, fact-checked by Laura Bullard,

engineered by Paul Mounsey, and edited by me. On tomorrow's show, we're going to get into the constitutionality of guns in America. That's the Heller case at the Supreme Court back in 2008. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Thank you.