Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: The Gun Machine

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

Mass shootings in America are now regular news. The latest happened days ago, at a Super Bowl parade for the Kansas City Chiefs. After the chaos and shock, the same question gets asked, "How did we get here?" In looking for an answer you can go all the way back to the founding of the nation and the birth of the relationship between the gun industry and the American government.Today on The Sunday Story producer Andrew Mambo talks to reporter Alain Stevens of The Trace and host of WBUR's podcast The Gun Machine. They talk about the roots of that relationship and how despite being deeply intertwined and often mutually beneficial, it has also led to scenes like the one in Kansas City.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is the Sunday Story. I'm Andrew Mambo, a producer on the show, and I'm sitting in for Aisha Roscoe, who's out this week. Today, we're going to be talking about guns. Guns regularly make headline news for all the wrong reasons. But as often as we talk about guns, we don't really talk much about our relationship with them. And from my years as a producer connecting with people around the country, I know the relationship we have with guns can be so different and complex and at times even contradictory. And that got me thinking about point of view and how the story

of American gun culture often depends on who's telling it. Today, I'm joined by Alon Stevens. He's the host of a new podcast from WBUR called The Gun Machine, which looks at the ways the gun industry has developed and thrived since the founding of the nation. For most of America's history, there is this symbiotic supportive relationship between the government and the gun industry. Alon comes to this story as a former member of the military, a former police officer, a victim of gun violence, a black man in America, and now as a journalist with The Trace, a newsroom dedicated to reporting on American gun violence. Alon, welcome to the Sunday Story. Thanks for having me.

So your podcast digs into the complex relationship between the gun industry and the government. And even though that relationship can seem to be antagonistic, you show it's actually often mutually beneficial. And you start at the beginning of this relationship, you go all the way back to the founding of the nation and tell the story of this famous inventor, Eli Whitney, who I think a lot of people know the name, but, you know, don't connect him necessarily with guns. Yes, that Eli Whitney, the cotton gin Eli Whitney. And so Eli Whitney created cotton gin and, you know, and solidified pretty much the cotton plantation economy in the American South. But the patents were so insecure for him that he pretty much made no money on it. So he went back up north where he interacted with the early American

government who was having an issue. Now that America was newly independent, they needed weapons and particularly they needed a technological upgrade, interchangeable parts. And so interchangeable parts essentially is something that we kind of take for granted. We see it in cars, we see it in computers today, but it's the ability to essentially standardize parts. So if one part breaks, right, you can just take that part out, replace that part with the identical part and everything fits back together. This was a promise that Eli Whitney said he can make. And, you know, at the time, this was like a monumentous weapons upgrade for the country. Yeah. And these inventors didn't just change the mechanics of the way guns were made. They

changed the way American society thought about guns. And I'm actually thinking in particular about people like Samuel Colt. So Samuel Colt comes during the early 1800s, right? And essentially, he is confronting this major problem that a lot of American gun manufacturers are dealing with, right? That business is really good when they can sell to the government during wartime. But again, how do you get these weapons sold to new customers? And so he decides to tap in to the civilian masses. He decides to sell something even better, which is the need for a gun. And so he starts telling these stories, spinning these yarns of conflict and combat, many of them involving regular old American citizens. And so he goes up and sells his gun to abolitionists up north. He doubles back down and

sells it to Confederates down south. He tells them that, hey, you may be under attack by indigenous people. You may be under attack by Mexicans. You may be under attack from all of these elements. And with that, it sells a ton of guns. Right. And as you point out, that message gets massive amplification 100 years later by Hollywood, specifically through classic Western films. Get three coffins ready. And the gun becomes the centerpiece, a focal point, an identity, a main characteristic of Americans battling out with many times other Americans on screen and in fiction.

And this sells a lot of guns and sells a lot of guns to this day. My mistake. More coffins. So even from the early 1800s, guns are being marketed to Americans as a necessary means of protection. And, you know, that also is an argument we hear around the Second Amendment nowadays, though, that Americans have to have a means to defend themselves from government overreach. But you talk to Carol Anderson, who's a professor of history at Emory University, and what she says, like, it kind of flips the whole notion of the citizen militia and who they were actually protecting. The bad history that we have had about the Second Amendment, how it gets cloaked in this nobility of the militia fighting off

domestic tyranny and fighting off a foreign invasion, when in fact, the militia fighting off domestic tyranny and fighting off a foreign invasion, when in fact, the militia really wasn't really good at either of those. What it was effective at was putting down slave revolts. And the Second Amendment, Anderson says, was really just, you know, meant to keep the South happy. The Second Amendment was the bribe to the South to not scuttle the Constitution of the United States and to therefore not scuttle the nation itself because the need for the militia, the need to protect the white community from the enslaved population. I just never thought of framing it in that way. Can you explain how the gun came to be this, you know, this tool for managing slavery based economy and how that history has been ignored in favor of the myth not the other way around. Slavery as an industry had already existed.

The second thing that people need to understand, and this kind of just gets ignored because people don't delve into a lot of the criminal justice records and history around slavery, but there was always constant resistance. And so there is constant slave patrols and there is a constant need to keep one's eye open because there are stories and fears of slaves grabbing a knife and deciding, I'm done with this, right? This is where the Second Amendment comes into play, where many of the framers say, listen, if you do not include the security backstop for us, we're not going to be part of this fledgling nation. And so this is where the Second Amendment kind of becomes this tool that says, okay, we will allow you to keep your individuals armed. And of course, to make that happen, the government needs a gun industry, right? Absolutely.

But it goes back to this relationship between the industry and the government that has been there from the beginning. And you go to one place where that relationship started, Springfield, Massachusetts, which, as you point out in the podcast, it was a main manufacturing base for military weapons for much of U.S. history. And you end up going to Springfield and seeing how it's been transformed by guns. Can you just tell us a bit about what the city's like today? You know, I love that you brought up Springfield because I think that's such like a linchpin to the podcast and such a snapshot of what I feel like is happening to so many American cities.

When we talk about gun violence, I think we all want to lead with these kind of talking point towns, the Chicago's, the Baltimore's, the New York's, right? These major cities that are kind of exemplars of American crime and American shootings in the shooting debate. But they also have a lot of resources. They have a lot of attention brought to them, et cetera, et cetera. You go to a place like Springfield and it is just like a handful of dudes literally driving around trying to stop people from shooting each other. And so in Springfield, you met with this youth worker named Damian Johnson, who's trying to interrupt and stop gun violence.

And there's this really interesting exchange between the two of you while you're driving around the city where Damian tells you about the changes in the kinds of guns he's seen in the streets. You know, back in the day, you're lucky if you were to get your hands on, like, a little.32 Jennings or something like that. Now it's so common. These guys want assault rifles, specifically AK-47s. I've seen a kid running around with a SCAR-H, which is like a military weapon. When I heard that, you know, the first time I was, it's just shocking to me, like, thinking of having, you know, the first time I was, it's just shocking to me, like thinking of having, you know, young people, young kids having military grade weapons.

It just seems absolutely wild. This has happened for like a couple of reasons. One of the things is that just more people are now technically proficient with modding guns, piecing guns, building guns together, customizing guns to not only get him to shoot, but make him easier to shoot. Make him more reliable to shoot. Get him to do what you want him to do. And yeah, it's a semi-automatic handgun. But now you look in here, it's a semi-automatic handgun, which is like a shortened down AR-15 that shoots out a.223 with a 30-round magazine, 40-round magazine. It's been milled out.

It's got a holographic optic sight. It's got a suppressor on it. And you could drop it under your coat. The other thing about it, too, is that the technology and the ability to get these things has only gotten easier as well. And so I tell people that the cost of some of these weapons can be expensive, but the more Americans that buy weapons, the more the companies produce weapons and weapon parts and the cheaper they get.

And all of these have kind of converged where the guns you see out on the street aren't just basic anymore. They're almost perfect in some regards. You're listening to The Sunday Story. We'll be right back. Now, our change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change,

this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. We're back with the Sunday Story. I'm Andrew Mambo, in for Ayesha Roscoe, and I'm talking with Alon Stevens, a reporter for The Trace, a newsroom dedicated to reporting on guns and gun violence in America. Alon is also the host of a new podcast, The Gun Machine. So, Alon, can I ask you, are you a gun owner? I mean, I've actually wondered about this question. Like, can I ask you this?

Yeah, I'm a gun owner. Is this like asking somebody how much money they make? I'm a gun owner. I don't actually know. Man, it's crazy, too, because actually a lot of the sounds in there are my guns. Actually, the very first sound of the podcast where I say, you hear that? Hear that? That's the sound of a 30-round magazine being slammed.

It's the sound of a magazine getting slammed into an AR-15. That's my AR-15, and that is my Magpul magazine going into it. And so, yeah, I know. And it's like a shock because I get so many people who are like, you must hate guns. And actually, I tell people to do this job. And I think sometimes to do it well, you almost have to have a curiosity, a fascination, some sort of like for guns. And you can hear it also in the podcast too, when I do get around shooters and shooting and guns that firearms are such an identifier, right? There's such a saying your gun owner has like some sort of meaning.

I've always been somewhat drawn to it. It was something that was introduced to me by my father. I'm from Texas. I grew up in Texas. And so there is definitely a normalcy to firearms in that environment. You've actually got a really interesting background. Yeah, I never had any intention of ever being a journalist at all. I mean, you were in the military, in law enforcement, and now you're a reporter covering guns and what you call the heavy metal beat.

Can you just walk me through how you got here, like how you got to this point? I came from a family down in Texas that was very pragmatic and had a military background. My father was in the military. Both of my grandfathers were in the military. And so my parents told me, you know, you need to do a profession that is needed, that is necessary. And for me, I was actually looking to join federal law enforcement. I was applying for all sorts of, pretty much all the alphabet soups, three-letter agencies, FBI, the DA, all of them, Secret Service. And during that waiting period, because it's such a long period, I ended up volunteering at a public radio station. And I saw that there is such a significant gap between violence, criminal justice, firearms.

So many Americans are dying from this, yet the information behind it was just not there. And so early on, I had started off, I actually did my first investigative report because while I didn't necessarily know the journalistic path, from my background, I still knew investigations. I still knew paperwork. I still knew that world. And it wasn't really until I saw just the secrecy behind it and how hard it was to get information. And like I said, so many Americans are dying from this, yet the information behind it was just not there. And so what is occurring is Americans are dying in the dark. And that bothered me. I tell a lot of people, right, journalists, you know, it's not our job to really advocate for anything.

But there's one thing that we can advocate for, and that is transparency. Yeah. You have such a unique perspective. I mean, as is everybody. I grew up in Canada. So the culture that I grew up around guns is just very, very different from here. And even as a kid, I didn't know anybody that had a gun at their home except my grandfather. It was just for mostly for hunting.

You know, I remember shooting with him and he's taught me how to shoot when I was young. And it was really fun and have great memories about it. But like I never I never felt the need to have that gun myself or need it for any specific reason. So I'm actually curious, from what you found in your years of reporting and your experience in the gun communities that you've been in, what is the basis of that kind of attraction, that need, that want to have those firearms? I think American gun culture, the reason why people want guns now is somewhat different than what the majority of Americans wanted guns for 30 or 40 years ago. One of the things that has been consistently brought up among sociologists and criminologists is that we just

have urbanized very rapidly. And as we have urbanized, people are now confronted with more communal city problems rather than rural American problems. And so when you look at gun advertisements from old gun magazines years ago, a lot of the firearms being sold were based on American heritage. Use the weapon that your grandpappy used to have because it's reliable. Don't get any old newfangled whatever. Trust the cult 1911 because it's been doing the same thing since 1911 when it came out. And then suddenly, as we've kind of urbanized and people are closer to people, we become to get more afraid of each other. And that changes the prerogative to self-defense weapons. Now, self-defense weapons are implicitly made to kill and dominate against

one's enemy. On top of that, when we look in our American history, we are a fundamentally distrustful society. And that's exactly what Samuel Colt took advantage of, right? That fragmentation, the distrust from one's neighbor. And so when you have those two kind of sociological factors at play, it creates this really perfect storm where you're the most developed nation in the world that has tons of domestic shootings. And that reminds me that, you know, in The Gun Machine, you point out that although mass shootings make the big headlines, they only account for a small fraction of the total gun deaths and injuries each year. And the bigger problem that you point out is happening on a smaller and much more personal level. You tell one story that really illustrates that point,

and that's about Damian Johnson, the youth worker in Springfield. Can you tell me a bit about Damian's story? Yeah. So Damien actually starts off before he worked with ROCO, which is a violence interruption organization. He was part of a criminal street gang and his specialty was doing essentially gun modifications. I didn't build ghost guns because they didn't exist, but I would make decorations on people's barrels. I would add all sorts of fancy attachments. And he had an incident where he was playing with a gun and he accidentally killed his younger brother.

My little brother was the kindest human being I know. He's the only human being I've ever met that never actually wanted anything from me other than my company. He's such a good person and it's this is a fucked up situation and it had grave consequences for him he would actually get charged and and and get sent to prison for that for a period of time yeah it's such a heartbreaking story um and you really feel it in Damien's voice when you talk to him and in this series you share your own story of how gun violence impacted you are you good are you okay to to share that story here yeah yeah I could yeah I could talk about it what was your experience what happened to you so in 2008 my dad uh I found my dad and he had shot himself.

I was in my early 20s and I was very close to my father. And yeah, I walked in one day and he had taken his own life. And it had profound changes, I think, on my family. Things that a lot of people don't see. Things that happen after the funeral. One of the things that we often forget is simply the gravity of death. That when you rip out someone unexpectedly from a home or a community or a job, it has rippling effects that are permanent. Some of them are just simple. Like you work for a small business and the guy gets shot and killed or dies. What happens to that small business? Right? It shuts down. it has economic effects what happens to the children of that person well they don't do well they don't necessarily just become these productive citizens that find

healing and peace and just move on and stuff they don't they carry that baggage and burden and often the goal is simply to remain functional, right, in a society that doesn't understand them, that, you know, often is obsessed about talking about violence, but not really even understanding it. There's a lot of people who use gun violence as a vehicle for political debate or debate about something else. I bring up slavery, that there's a period in American history where people were sitting at dinner tables discussing the pros and cons of abolition, and neither one of them were actually in chains. None of them were actually the harmed individuals. And when it comes to the American gun violence conversation, the harmed

individuals are not centered. And the thing is, there's a lot of us. There's a whole lot of us. There's a ton of us, right? And I wanted to let people just taste a little bit of that on how it really is. You shared your story of your father tragically taking his own life with a gun. You report on gun violence. But you also own guns, and I imagine you enjoy your guns and being a gun owner. How do you kind of hold both of those truths at the same time, and how does that impact you in the work you do now at The trace it the kaleidoscope of history and feelings that i have for the firearm i think

i think grounds me uh to be honest um like i say like you could tell that i enjoy firearms a lot of the professions the life that i lived you know being in the military going to law enforcement carrying gun every day a lot of the guns i bought i bought, you know, being in the military, going to law enforcement, carrying gun every day. A lot of the guns I bought, I bought after, you know, my dad took his life. So many Americans are arguing viscerally about firearms because they are a symbol for so many different things like these beliefs. The problem, though, is, is that they try to tell you to pick one, right? That you either got to be all in on one or all in on the other one, you know? And you don't have to be that way, right? And so when I pick up a gun, I see these moments that are good moments, right? But I also have to see my dad's death. I

have to see the mass shootings. I have to see colonization. I have to see white supremacy. And that is the objective gun. You see what I'm saying? To deny one fails to understand the whole. I hope that your podcast is a huge part of that, you know, reimagining of America's relationship with guns. Thank you very much for your series and your reporting and for coming to talk to me about it today on the Sunday story. Thanks for having me. That is Alon Stevens, a reporter from The Trace and the host of a new podcast from WBUR called The Gun Machine. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Dan Gurma and Grace Tatter. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Ben Brock-Johnson. Our engineer for this episode was Maggie Luthar. It was fact-checked by Cecile

Davis-Vasquez and Greta Pittenger. Our team includes Justine Yan and Liana Simster. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. You can hear the entire Gun Machine podcast at wbur.org or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would like to learn more about the history of the Second Amendment, check out NPR's history podcast, Throughline, and their episode, The Right to Bear Arms. We appreciate hearing from you, so feel free to reach out to us at thesundaystoryatnpr.org. Up First is back tomorrow with all the headline news you need to start your week. I'm Andrew Mambo. Have a great weekend.