Everyone Out Here is Armed
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Description
In episode 1, our team travels to Montana, where cowboy culture reigns supreme, everyone is armed, and 86% of firearm deaths are suicides. There, we meet a couple that represents all the contradictions at the root of America’s gun debate: One is a suicide prevention advocate, and the other is the most adamant Second Amendment supporter we’ve ever met. Plus, our team tries out shooting some big-ass guns.
Resources:
To learn more about the people and organizations featured in this episode and access critical information about suicide and violence prevention visit: https://lastdayresources.simvoly.com/.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs is the host. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our producers are Kegan Zema and Giulia Hjort. Hannah Boomershine and Erianna Jiles are our associate producers. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. This season of Last Day is created in partnership with the Kendeda Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss & Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety.
Follow Stephanie on Twitter and Instagram at @wittelstephanie. Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. If you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, please join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/lastdaypodcast.
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
Zach, Kayla, Becca, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Wayne Yates, Dr. Emmy, Nancy Yates, Karl Rosston
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 00:00
This season, we’re talking about guns, homicide and suicide. We’ve worked hard to ensure that our storytelling is as safe as possible. But we can’t address this issue by avoiding difficult details. Instead of warning who should and shouldn’t listen before each episode. We want to encourage you to press pause if and when you need to. And please note, this episode contains the sounds of gunshots and descriptions of suicide.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 02:01
That’s me, firing a gun for the very first time in my entire life. I’m in Montana, there’s snow on the ground. It’s really cold. In front of me is a mountain, behind me a pack of gear. And above me is lots and lots of open sky. And fun fact, the gun I’m shooting for the very first time is a custom AR 15. That’s also being taken out for the very first time. At first, I shoot one bullet, the one you just heard. And then I just keep pulling the trigger. And each time my finger makes contact it gets easier and easier and easier. I wasn’t afraid. I was exhilarated and guess what? It was fucking awesome. I wanted an Instagram or the selfie standing next to my kill, which was a large piece of paper littered with bullet holes. You’ve seen these green guy targets, right? It’s this big silhouette of a human head and torso. And in the center. There’s an X right where you’d imagine the heart would be. And listen, not to brag, but I novice shooter hit that X. That guy gleefully pointing out that I just shot an AR 15 and shocker. We’re all still alive is Wayne Yates of Florence Montana. If I’m being honest, Wayne symbolizes every person I’ve ever blocked on Twitter. We may live in the same country, but we come from two completely different planets. I’m a coastal elite who voted for Biden and chastises lawmakers for their inaction in the wake of every mass shooting. Wayne is a Montana cowboy with dozens of guns in his machine shop. The walls are covered with flags, including that one with Trump’s head photoshopped onto what looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body holding a bazooka. It was a lot and yet, I loved Wayne. And it was mutual. You heard him. Total love fest. So when the opportunity to go out and play with Wayne’s guns fell into my lap, I was all in.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
We’re gonna shoot some guns this week. I’m excited. I have never shot a gun.
Wayne Yates
You never have? I got a place right up the hill. I got two I need to test right now. I don’t know if you’re scared of an AR?
Nancy Yates
No, I think she probably knows what to be scared of.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s Wayne’s wife, Nancy. We’ll get to her in a bit. But the truth is, even though I was saying no, like a middle schooler, or trying to sound cool when a high schooler asks if I’m scared to smoke pot, I was an spoiler alert. I still am very afraid of a ARs because when I think of an AR, I think.. In my world, this gun symbolizes mass shootings in America. I’ve posted about its eradication countless times on Twitter. And now that I’ve shot one myself, I know two things, how easy it is to keep pulling the trigger, and how thrilling it is to hit your target. But Wayne has a different relationship to ARs. In fact, Wayne’s a legit gunsmith. So for him, these aren’t super scary weapons of mass destruction.
Wayne Yates 06:32
It’s just a machine. Very simple machine. There’s a barrel, there’s an action or the receiver. And you got to have a way to ignite it with a trigger. That’s it. That’s a gun.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So yeah, it’s a simple machine. But it’s a simple, very fucking deadly machine. When you hear about people using these guns to harm others, and you know, what do you as a gun guy, like, what do you think about that?
Wayne Yates
Stupidity.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Simple as that guns are machines, but people are stupid, and some stupid people use guns to kill other people. How do you protect people in a world that has all sorts of dangerous things?
Wayne Yates
You can’t do that.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Well, I can’t accept that. Because it turns out we have 400 million guns in America. And they’re not going anywhere anytime soon for a variety of reasons that we’ll get into over the next 10 episodes. So the big question we’re asking this season is how do we live safely in a country with 400 million guns. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs and this is LAST DAY. Okay, so before we go any further with Wayne, I need to tell you why we’re in Montana in the first place.
Karl Rosston 08:18
In Montana, about 63 and a half percent of our citizens own a firearm. And over the last 10 years, 86% of all firearm deaths in Montana are by suicide.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Karl Rosston, the Suicide Prevention Coordinator for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. But what you really need to know about Carl, is that he’s kind of a legend. I mean, every single person we talked to in Montana was like, you have to talk to Carl. So when we touched base with them six months before our trip, he gave us a rundown of the issue.
Karl Rosston
Yeah, remember Montana, Montana hasn’t been near the top or suicide for a couple years, we’ve been near the top for 100 years. And this is a cultural issue. And out here. Guns are how you got things done. They how you protected your family. I mean, 100 years ago, that’s how you fed your family. I mean, seriously, there is a cultural piece to this. And people have to understand that. This is not going to be something we’re going to change overnight.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Guns are deeply woven into the fabric of these communities. And no one knows those communities better than Karl. A big part of his job is working directly with survivors in the aftermath of a suicide. So he’s seen a lot and he’s heard a lot.
Karl Rosston
I had a suicide of in high school a couple years ago with a young girl who used a firearm. And when the coroner went in, they found 33 handguns, all loaded, not one of them locked. That is not abnormal.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
If your jaw is on the ground right now, so is mine.
Karl Rosston
You know, you’re gonna have to get a better poker face before you come to Montana. You are you going to not, you’re not going to be well received if that’s the face you bring to Montana.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 10:08
Karl’s being funny about this, but there’s real truth to what he’s saying. These days, America is a land of extremes. And every day on a variety of fronts, the temperature is rising. Let’s take guns, on one side, confiscate all the guns on the other stockpile all the guns, and both sides think the other is totally out of their minds. But wherever you fall on the spectrum, I think we can agree, it ain’t fertile ground for progress. So at the risk of oversimplifying a very complex issue, it seems like listening to one another without expressions of horror on our faces is a good place to start. Thus, I took Karl’s advice to heart added poker face to my packing list, and the Last Day team hit the road for a 10-day trip to Montana to talk about firearm suicide. Now, you might be thinking, didn’t you already do a whole season on suicide? Yes, we did. And if you haven’t heard it, you should. But we managed to dodge ever really talking about guns, partially because I am pretty fucking terrified to jump into one of the most polarizing debates in all of American politics. But this time, we are devoting the whole season to guns. And here’s the thing, we won’t really be talking about mass shootings, because even though they get most of the attention, the reality is that they’re pretty uncommon, statistically speaking. According to the CDC, in 2019, Mass shootings accounted for just point 2% of firearm deaths, in terms of humans, that’s 465 lives compared to over 14,000 homicides, and almost 24,000 suicides when combined, homicides and suicides make up over 95% of firearm deaths in America. So this season, we are focusing our stories in two locations, Atlanta, to talk about homicide, and Montana to talk about suicide. Which brings us back to Wayne.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 12:16
That is Wayne’s ringtone on a cell phone. If you can’t tell, it’s the sound of an automatic rifle firing lots and lots of rounds. And when we heard it for the first time, I looked over at Nancy, and she winced.
Nancy Yates
That makes me a little crazy, but I’m used to it now. And it’s just him. You know?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It drives Nancy a little crazy, because 11 years ago, she lost her 20-year-old son, Zack, to a firearm suicide.
Nancy Yates
When I hear a gun go off, there are times when that’s right where I go still. I just flashback to seeing him in that hospital bed with a bandage on his head. And you know, I can’t get that image out of my head ever. I don’t know if that will ever go away. I doubt
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Nancy’s actually the reason we came to Florence, but when we got there, we learned she’s now married to a guy whose entire life revolves around guns, which might sound a little impossible, but they really love each other. And they are really cute together.
Wayne Yates
Who’s Junior High?
Nancy Yates
Yeah, we met in junior high, eighth grade.
Wayne Yates
I played the trombone so I could watch her.
Nancy Yates
And I played the bass clarinet.
Wayne Yates
And I didn’t know how to play. I had no idea what I was doing. But she was there.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Even though Nancy wasn’t swept off her feet by Wayne’s trombone skills, the two became inseparable.
Nancy Yates
We spent all summer together, I rode my bike up to where he lived all the time, or He’d ride his bike down and we saw each other a lot all that summer. And then freshman year, one day he was in school, and I remember we had because we were in the same PE class. That was really the last time I saw him before he was all of a sudden gone.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 14:08
Out of the blue Wayne left town. He was dealing with family stuff, but Nancy didn’t know that. She was just heartbroken. Eventually she decided to stop waiting around for him, started college and met another guy named Kevin.
Nancy Yates
My freshman year college, guess who shows up? That one over there.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
By the way, she’s pointing at Wayne.
Nancy Yates
And before he was getting ready to go on in the Navy, and he’s like, I think we should still be together and I still love you. And I’m just like, I’m already committed to this guy.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Nancy ended up marrying Kevin and they moved to Laurel Montana, a small city near Yellowstone that’s named after a local shrub. There they raised their three kids, Zach, Becca and their oldest Nick.
Nick
We all rode bikes, did kid stuff and it was just good times. In Little Laurel. Everybody knew everybody.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Growing up, Nick and Zach didn’t always get along.
Nick
Well, we fought like cats and dogs. And, you know, he did sports and I didn’t do sports, I didn’t really care to do any of the sports stuff. I was more of a lover, not a fighter, but he would always if the fight was started, he would try to finish it, which usually got him in trouble because it didn’t matter whether it was words or a punch, he would handle it. Like if Becca was getting picked on or whatever to he would definitely handle it.
Becca
I mean, he always protected me, he always made sure I was safe.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s Becca, the youngest of the three. We all sat down together in their living room to talk about Zach.
Becca
There was even one time we were going like 120 on the interstate. And the whole time, I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t scared at all, because I knew how good of a driver he was. She didn’t like it. I know she hated it. But I felt safe. And that sounds crazy, because it was a busy interstate. And he was, you know, like going in and out of traffic with semis. And, but I felt safe.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 16:12
When Zach was by her side, 120 miles per hour or not. Becca was going to be okay.
Becca
He was my protector. As much as I hated him for it more often than not, because I felt like he was always holding me back from experiences only to protect me. And I’d give anything to have that back.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Becca and her son Hayden actually live with Nancy and Wayne. They’ve got lots of land, a big cozy house, much of which Wayne designed and built himself. And it all overlooks a breathtaking mountain view that you find on a postcard. Today back is a social worker, but back in 2011. She had a lot on our plate.
Becca
It was a weird time because I was you know; I had just turned 18 and found out I was pregnant. And he was finally happy in a job. But he finally seemed like he wasn’t going to make it, because he struggled. And I always kind of felt that resentment of him not talking to me because I went through a really dark phase when I was 15. Because I was self-harming. And so I felt a lot of anger for him not to talk to me about the dark things that he had going on. But I think that was him protecting me. He didn’t want me to know that he was struggling.
Nick
All three of us struggled. I mean, I did have suicide ideation, my parents and they did drive me once to the ER for a psych eval because I asked for it. So I just asked my mom like, I just need help. I don’t know what but I need help. I need help. I don’t like feeling this way.
Nancy Yates
He got to this really dark place. I mean, he was only 12 I think he was sixth grade. And he was in his room. I’ll never forget rocking like I just want to die. So we found a psychologist who basically saved him. You know, he did a thorough assessment and was like this kid has severe depression.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 18:13
So Nick’s suicidal ideation started at 12. Becca started struggling in high school. And it seems like Zach was going through it too, just silently. Nancy told me there’s a history of mental illness on both sides of the family.
Nancy Yates
My sister had schizophrenia, and then their father’s family has strong depression. So all this genetic stuff coming together. Unfortunately, just landed in our children.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Today, Nick’s an EMT, and he’s studying to become a paramedic. He’s 33 and he still sees that same doctor, they all credit saving his life. But it didn’t go like that for Zach.
Nancy Yates
He made it through you know, high school. pretty okay. You could tell he struggled but he always found a way to find happy and wanted others to be happy. He’s really hit after he left home.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Zach dreamed of being a diesel mechanic. He tinkered with all sorts of cars in high school, a 1974 blue super beetle, or red Honda Civic, he would take them apart and put them back together like it was nothing. So after graduation, he enrolled in a trade school to make his dreams come true.
Nancy Yates
That’s when his you know suicidal anxiety sort of things started happening and he got admitted because he was in a bad place. And so we tried back and forth a couple times and it just he was not doing well at all and so…
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And how did that not doing well present like what was the symptoms of not doing well? What did it look like?
Nancy Yates
He was destructive behaviors, drinking a lot, drugs, just in a bad place. You know, not going to class saying he was going to class. And, you know, he ended up, you know, blowing all of his money, you know, so he had a really nice rig, he had to sell it and down, you know, because he just was in this..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 20:15
Despite his love for fixing rigs, which, if you don’t know, is Montana for car, he eventually failed out of school.
Nancy Yates
He decided he was going to go into the military, like that was going to be the thing that was going to give him the structure that he needed to get his act together and all of that, and so, you know, he should be fine. So he gets into boot camp, and it’s not fine.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
More struggle. For example, when everyone was instructed to stand at attention during boot camp, Zach just couldn’t do the whole chin up, chest out, shoulders back stomach in thing without fidgeting, he couldn’t hide his anxiety. And eventually, he was kicked out.
Nancy Yates
So you know, failed school, failed the military, you know, you can see the path happening here.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Did he talk about how it felt with you, you talk about the sort of string of failures, right that you can see, did he express or could you just see it on him?
Nancy Yates
You could see it more so, he didn’t really, he was always putting on this happy, I got it together. I’m going to be fine persona. And that time for me, I didn’t read through it. You know, of my three children. You know, he had the less obvious struggles. You know, we knew he had demons. But we didn’t know how haunting and awful those demons were until he was gone.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 22:02
It’s 2011. And Nancy’s family has moved to Oregon for her job. Becca is 18 and just found out she’s pregnant. Zach is 20 and has failed out of school and boot camp. Nancy and Kevin just celebrated 25 years of marriage but things have been feeling off for a while. And Nancy is messaging her old bandmate Wayne, on Facebook.
Nancy Yates 24:30
Hi, where you’ve been, how’s life? And he called me that same day and my phone rang and I’m like, oh my god.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
He broke all the rules for online correspondence. That’s right. Wayne, tough guy. gunmaker was also totally in love with Nancy for decades. And when she friended him on Facebook, he was not playing hard to get.
Nancy Yates
And I didn’t answer it because I was. I mean, Kevin was there and I was like having a heart attack. Like, you know, you never know what’s going to happen when you hit the like friend button.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
For Nancy, this was the beginning of a great love story, for Zach, this was the end of his family as he knew it.
Nancy Yates
He was really mad. He was really mad at me. Like how can you do this? And then once he stepped back and once he met Wayne, then I think he moved. I think he moved beyond that he never really told me one way or the other, but he was really really mad, really mad at me.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
But in other ways, Zach seem to be thriving. He got a job at Target and really hit it off with his co-workers who nicknamed him Superman. And he started getting serious with his girlfriend Kayla.
Kayla
Zach was super goofy. He had a super big smile he was very kind person very generous like would definitely like go the extra mile, had a very like charismatic character.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Kayla and Zack moved in together only a couple months after they started dating. She was 18. And Zach was 20.
Kayla 26:05
It’s a pretty good relationship. There was definitely times of struggle. But usually it was pretty good.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I asked Kayla to describe what some of those struggles look like when they were living together.
Kayla
1So whenever he would drink or smoke, things got a little out of hand. And so I would call a trusted friend and I’d stay the night elsewhere. And return in the early hours of the next morning once things had kind of calmed down.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Kayla kept a lot of this to herself. She just quietly carried it around. And Zach was still holding on to a lot of pain around his parents’ divorce.
Kayla
Zach took it kind of hard, and he started missing work. And he kind of like struggled with feeling like less of a man because like he didn’t feel like he could support us.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
If Zach was struggling to feel like a man, he knew at least one person he could turn to for guidance.
Wayne Yates
When he started getting close, he always wanted to be around, what are we going to do? What are we doing? And then he asked me to teach him how to be a man and it kind of what? Isn’t that your dad’s job? I don’t know what to tell you, man. Don’t take things so seriously. I mean for one, relax. Don’t worry about girls, there’s a bazillion of them out there.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Just have to point out that this is pretty ironic for a guy who pined after the same girl for literal decades. Proceed.
Wayne Yates
We didn’t have these big long talks. You know, we just what are we gonna do? Let’s just do man stuff. I mean, he didn’t care about making muffins or anything. He wanted to go do guy stuff, guns and cars and fishing and hunting and you know, like, guys, that guy stuff we do here.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 28:05
Zach and Wayne went fishing days before he died. But even with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Zach stayed quiet.
Wayne Yates
He’s happy we’re going fishing, so am I. I wasn’t going to be a psychiatrist did try to find anything out. I just didn’t do that. I don’t do that, you know?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And he put on the same brave face for his mom. That Tuesday he called her and said..
Nancy Yates
Mom, I’m doing great. I have 300 bucks in my pocket. My rent is paid. I love my job. And I think he was just doing that to say I’m okay. But even though he wasn’t okay.
Kayla
That Morning, we were fighting about something I don’t remember what finding about it might have been something as simple as like the dishes. I was starting to feel to the point where I needed to, like get out and get some space than I had told him. You know, like hey, I need some space. And I think this time, it might be for more than just a night. It might be like a week or it might be a little bit longer. I just need to find some space so I can get some clarity for myself.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Kayla didn’t say they were breaking up. But that’s definitely how it felt to Zach. She was leaving, and neither of them knew when she was coming back. So she called her friend Cameron to pick her up. And Zach called his mom.
Nancy Yates
And said, Mom, I, I failed again. And I’m going to have to move back home. I can’t do this on my own. And I’m like Zach, you’ve got a good job, you’re going to be okay. And I was at work. And I said I will, I’m going to go to my meeting and I’m going to call you right back. But know that you’re going to be okay. We’re going to figure this out because we always had, remember that we don’t always plan and we figure out what’s going to be next. And I knew my mom intuition kicked in and I like something’s not right.
Kayla 30:04
When I walked on the stairs to let camera know that I needed some time. It is when Zach pulled the trigger on the nine-millimeter in our bedroom. And so I walked in the room and I said, babe, as I was coming around the corner, and then I said, Babe, and then I say, and I couldn’t even get the rest of the word out because I could see Zach had shot himself in the temple. And like, I could see everything. And you hear him still breathing?
Nancy Yates
So I called and his hysterical girlfriend answered the phone. And all I heard was, Zach shot himself. And I’m like, what?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Zach was life flighted to the nearby hospital. And Nancy was there by a side.
Nancy Yates
And I remember the social worker, it was before Wayne and Becca got to the hospital walking in and I saw on her little clipboard, you know, pupils fixed and dilated. And I’m like, I knew he wasn’t gonna make it.
Becca
Wayne called me a few times. And I’m like, this is weird, like, why would he ever call me. And so I answered, he was like, just finish what you’re doing and come home. And he’s like, we have to go the hospital. Your brother did something stupid.
Wayne Yates
I didn’t remember calling her until she said that.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And that you stayed so calm, she had no idea..
Wayne Yates
There’s no reason to get excited. That’s just me. Total self-control at all times. Try to.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I mean, my God, if ever there was a time to get excited, this feels like the one. But we should give Wayne some context.
Wayne Yates 32:01
I’m the hardest. That’s what I am. I grew up with like an extremely intimidating guy. Extremely. And then go on the Navy and just loved it. And all the discipline and etc. I just loved it. And then what I did for a living kind of makes you a little hardened too, and teaches you how to compartmentalize really well.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Honestly, everyone was doing their fair share of compartmentalizing, there was a lot going on in the summer of 2011. And it doesn’t sound like anyone was fully acknowledging the impact of everything happening all at once. And yet, it’s still hard when you’re in the middle of it, to think that the worst-case scenario is going to happen to you.
Nancy Yates
You know, for me, suicide was like, yeah, it happens. It’s not gonna happen in my family. Even though Becca had her experience, Nick had had his, Zach had been hospitalized as well, but not gonna happen in my family. I’m the mom and I’m gonna protect my children. They’re never gonna do that, because I’m here for them, but just wasn’t enough. And I should have asked him, Are you thinking about taking your life? And I didn’t ask him that question.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
My heart broke for Nancy when she said this, because I have all people understand what it’s like to know more now than I did back then. And to dwell on what I could have done differently.
Nancy Yates
I didn’t have known how to even use those words 10 years ago, and I’m a nurse for crying out loud. And I did pediatric nursing for 15 years, you know, taking care of kiddos and we had kids come in with overdoses and that sort of thing. But we were never, we never were trained on any of that.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 34:10
You don’t know what you don’t know. After the break, I asked Nancy the question that was weighing on me the whole time we were together. So the whole time I was talking to Nancy, one question was at the top of my mind. And to be honest, I was pretty scared to ask it. Do you think that the story would have ended differently if there hadn’t been a gun in the house that day?
Nancy Yates 36:17
Yes. Would he have found another way potentially? Yeah, because he tried other ways before. But that was what he had. So he, you know, he knew like..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This will be it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It’s an efficient way.
Nancy Yates 36:33
Yeah, I know, I’m going to end it.
Dr. Emmy
Firearms are very lethal when they’re supposed to be, so something like 90% of people who attempt suicide with a gun will die.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s Dr. Emmy. She’s a physician and professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado.
Dr. Emmy
There’s no chance to call 911 There’s no chance for an ER doctor like me to kind of fix him up.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Emmy’s research focuses on the intersection between guns and suicide.
Dr. Emmy
And so we know from lots and lots of studies that you know, when there are more guns or when there’s access to guns, suicide rates are higher. The vast majority of people who survive an attempt don’t die by suicide, meaning they don’t just substitute another method. Even if they substituted another method, though, they’re less likely to die if it’s not a gun. So you know, if the gun is locked up, and the teenager reaches for pills, instead, they’re probably going to make it to the ER, they’re probably going to be fine. There might even be treatments if it’s a toxic medication.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Zach previously attempted with pills, but he survived. That’s the point. The gun didn’t offer him a chance at survival. You’ll hear suicide prevention advocates say it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. So often people are seeking these solutions in a moment of crisis. And the thing about moments is that by nature, they’re fleeting.
Nancy Yates
So that cause and effect and impulsive, like, do this. But then what do you have that same button five minutes? I don’t know. But I would think probably not.
Dr. Emmy 38:09
The time from deciding to take action to actually taking action can be in the space of minutes to hours. And we know that from research. If you or someone else is going through a period where you might be at risk of suicide, it’s a good idea to lock up the guns, at least you know, until you’re feeling better. And it’s not about having to get rid of them forever or changing kind of your identity. It’s just like how you wouldn’t drive if you were drunk.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Now that Nancy is an advocate herself, she knows that addressing the lethal list of means head on is the way to go.
Nancy Yates
You know, Wayne and I’ve talked about it like we should have said, We’re gonna keep this at our house. And when you want to go shoot it. Fine. But we’re concerned enough about you that we want to keep it at our house. We don’t want to take it away from you. But we just feel distance between you and that as a lethal means is important. But I don’t even know how to have that conversation..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
How would you? Again, I empathize with Nancy. It sucks to look back and see every decision you could have made differently along the way. But even with all the lessons she’s learned, one thing remains the same. Was there a moment where you were mad at the guns?
Becca
No.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
By the way, that’s Becca saying no. Over and over again alongside her mom.
Becca
No, because, it’s tool. It could have been could have been literally anything.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
A gun is a tool. The sounds a lot like Wayne.
Wayne Yates
There’s no reason to be scared of a tool. Are you scared of a hammer? Same thing.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I’m not scared of a hammer because my dad had a hammer in his toolbox growing up and I’ve used one many times, but I’ve never been exposed to guns. I didn’t go out as a kid and shoot for fun. Like most of the folks we talked to in Montana. My feelings on guns come from the way I was raised. I’m like, Hey, let’s take all the guns, melt them down and make sculptures out of them. And then the whole world could have more art. But that probably sounds ridiculous to someone who was raised around guns. And that is something I thought I understood going into this. But meeting Wayne gave me a whole new concept of what it means to be raised around guns. For example, while we were packing up, he told me the story about Becca’s son, Hayden, the nine-year-old who lives in the house.
Wayne Yates 40:39
I did a little test with Hayden a while back a couple summers ago because he came over his, teacher says he […]. I said, okay, so we took this. Took this put it on bipod. We set it right there on the floor.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This Wayne is talking about is a big ass gun. When I held it up, it was almost as tall as I am. And for context on thigh feet, not big for human, but pretty fucking huge for a gun.
Wayne Yates
We put two full magazines lay on the floor next to it. We walked away. And we came back that night. And I said, did it kill anybody? No. So why didn’t kill anybody? Because there’s no bullets in it. And somebody didn’t pull the trigger. He came up with that. I said, so do guns kill people. No, people kill people.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
To me, if I’m being honest, these sound like talking points pulled directly from the NRA playbook. To Wayne, this is an important life lesson that he is passing down to his grandson. But it’s complicated because of this family’s history. Here’s Becca, again.
Becca 42:00
Wayne is you know; he has his business. And he is an advocate. And he’s, you know, for guns and everything. And I want Hayden to be comfortable around them. But Hayden’s like I don’t want to I think he’s scared because of what happened with Zach. And at nine years old. I’m like, man, he shouldn’t have to feel or worry. But I’m glad that he does. I’m glad that he’s scared a little bit. I want him to have that a little bit so that he knows the dangers of them. So he can be safe with them. And be comfortable and know, as he gets older, that if he is struggling to say something and to put it away to give it to his papa and say I can’t have this right now. Like, I don’t know, it’s complicated.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It is insanely complicated, especially when you’re in Montana.
Wayne Yates
Should I tell her? Everyone out here is armed. Everyone. You’d be hard found somebody out here that’s not armed. Everyone’s armed.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And why is everybody armed?
Wayne Yates
Everybody hunts, everybody shoots.
Nancy Yates
The way people live. It’s just the way people live.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It’s like Carl said up top. It’s a cultural issue. The guns serve several purposes.
Wayne Yates
There’s three uses for gun in my view, theirs sport, there’s feeding your family, and there’s self-defense.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
The self-defense part is particularly important to Wayne.
Wayne Yates
There’s quite a few self-defense weapons around this house, that you have no idea where they’re at. I know some people would love to come to this place. But they know what would happen if they came here. And they’re probably not going to feel very good on their way out. They’re probably going to have some holes in them. What am I gonna do throw a hammer at them? No. They’re gonna come in here and try to do anything here. I want the upper hand, not the lower hand.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 44:12
This is where things get a little convoluted. Wayne says a gun is a tool no different than a hammer. But he also acknowledges that if he wants to do real harm to someone, a hammer ain’t gonna cut it. Regardless, I believe that Wayne’s top priority is keeping his family safe. But he also told us that his self-defense weapon sits unlocked on his bedside table at night. He wants it as accessible as possible in the event that he needs to use it to protect his family. But according to the data, that same weapon also puts them at risk.
Dr. Emmy
I would argue a family who has a handgun for self-protection. That’s not something as a physician or public health person I advocate because I believe in this statistic showing that a gun in the home triples the risk of suicide by anyone in that home. We know that when people are going through a tough time and are at risk of suicide, if they have access to a firearm, they’re far more likely to die.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
But Wayne isn’t worried about these risks, because he knows his stuff.
Wayne Yates
My word for the whole thing is proficiency.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
In Wayne’s eyes, the more you know about guns the last year at risk.
Wayne Yates
You know, I have to know how to use it. If you go out and shoot a few times, that doesn’t mean you’re proficient. Or I went to a training course, that doesn’t make you proficient, stay proficient and just expect the unexpected kinda..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Proficiency and safety were at the core of Wayne’s firearm philosophy. He meticulously walked us through at least two or three different safety demonstrations before we headed out to shoot because we were not proficient.
Wayne Yates
That’s the safe, safe is on. Safe is off and the safeties on the trigger won’t work. When the safeties off, it’s just a mechanical..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 46:13
It’s jarring. Guns are innately scary to me. The look, the feel the sounds, all of it. But they actually seem to soothe Wayne. Like, not only are they fun, they make them feel safe. Maybe because he knows what can happen when you’re caught off guard.
Wayne Yates
So here’s one for you. You ready for this one? So, in 1991, I’m in the Navy in San Diego and I get a call from my little brother. Mom’s been shot. So my mother was murdered in the middle of Safeway, in Aurora, Colorado. Just this guy walked up behind her. Boom. She had a gun in her purse that I had given her just for this guy. He had a problem. Cops couldn’t do anything about this guy. He followed her in a safe way. Not anymore. Yeah, they knew each other. They both worked at Safeway. And yeah, that kind of sucked. I mean, I was 27. She was only 49 years old. I’m older than her now.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So it turns out, Wayne has been personally impacted by the two most common forms of gun violence in America, homicide and suicide. And yet, he remains the most adamant gun supporter I have ever met.
Wayne Yates
To me, it wasn’t the guns fault. It was that guy’s fault. He’s the one that pulled the trigger, not the gun. I mean, everybody thinks I should have been a gun hater by then. You know, after that, well, I just couldn’t do it because the gun didn’t do it. He did. A sneaky bastard snuck up behind her and shot her behind the ear. With a gun in her purse.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 48:32
It’s stories like this, that make me question the logic behind self-defense. His mom had a gun in her purse, it did not make a difference. And I’m not sure about proficiency either. Every story we heard in Montana, about someone who died by suicide, had been shooting guns for years, in many cases, decades. They all went through hunters training, including Zach. But their expertise didn’t protect them in their own moment of crisis. And according to the stats, the rate of home invasions are not particularly high. We’re weighing lives. In fact, they’re much lower than the national average. He’s not ever had to shoot someone while protecting his home. But he’s lost a mother and the love of his life has lost a son. And according to the stats, his experience is the norm. But this is actually where I really relate to Wayne, hear me out. We were doing this season with the backdrop of COVID. In fact, the night before we were supposed to leave for Atlanta, I backed out because the news had just broken that vaccinated people could still transmit Delta. And I had two young kids at home who are vulnerable and keeping my family safe is the most important thing to me. Even in the face of statistics that a three-year-old and a seven-year-old getting seriously ill from COVID is very unlikely I’m still going to take that minimal risk really fucking seriously. When it comes to protecting your family, you’re not thinking about facts. You’re coming from a place of fear. And there are a lot of things to be afraid of in this world. Our entire show like, is about harm reduction. That’s why we do it. We’re like, how do we keep people safe in a world that has drugs in it? How do we keep people safe in a world that sucks and you feel like shit and you want to die? How do you protect people in a world that has all sorts of dangerous things?
Wayne Yates 50:30
You can’t.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
But is there a way to keep people safer in a world with deadly weapons?
Wayne Yates
Everything’s a deadly weapon. This mic stand, that cup, everything is. I mean, you can’t do that. There’s just no way. It’s all about the individual’s choices. What if, we could be hit by a meteor in the next 10 seconds? Boom, we’re gone. You can’t protect from that.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s where I get stuck is that you’re right, you’re right. Anybody, anytime could fall down, crack their head open. Whatever. But that guy wanted to kill your mom, and found a really efficient way to do it. Yeah, Zach wanted to die. And he had a really efficient way to do it. And that’s, that’s the part where it’s like, I get so torn. So we asked Wayne, straight up if Zach’s death changed his perception of guns at all?
Wayne Yates
No, it didn’t. Because I don’t look at him as evil. I just wish he didn’t. I wish he would have talked to me first. That’s my only regret is I wish he would uh, he never called me I wish he would’ve, because I’d have been over there to second. But that’s another what if..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
We were with the Yates family for two days, and they were two of the best days of our trip. There’s a lot of love in that house. Becca, Wayne and Nancy sat in on every interview to be together and support each other. Wayne cook the family dinner at the end of each day, and the whole time we were there. We were sitting next to a big Christmas tree covered in family ornaments with tons of presence underneath. Before we left, we all hugged and took a big group photo. But this was also sort of a house of contradictions. In one breath, Wayne is saying he wished Zach would have opened up to him. But a moment before he was talking about guy stuff and how men don’t make muffins are talking about their feelings. Nancy knows every stat about secure storage, but her husband sleeps with a loaded firearm next to their bed. And everyone in this home knows what it’s like to lose a loved one to a firearm. Yet no one thinks guns are a problem. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around how that’s possible. But it turns out the Yates family is not alone. Almost everyone we talked to in Montana didn’t blame the guns despite losing their loved ones to a firearm. We’ll dig into that next week when we travel from Florence to Drummond, Montana to bawl our eyes out with the Martel’s.
CREDITS
LAST DAY is a production of Lemonada Media. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our producers are Kegan Zema and Giulia Hjort. Hannah Boomershine and Erianna Jiles are our associate producers. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and me Stephanie Wittels Wachs. We are thrilled to partner this season with the Candida Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss and Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety. You can find more mental health and legal arms restrictions resources along with info about some of the voices on the show in the show notes and at lemonadamedia.com/show/lastday. If you want to hear more LAST DAY, we have two whole other seasons. Please go listen to them wherever you’re listening right now. And while you’re there, I implore you to take a moment to rate review and subscribe. It is the number one way that you can help the show. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow LAST DAY listeners at www.facebook.com/groups/lastdaypodcast. You can find us on all social platforms at @LemonadaMedia. And you can find me at @wittelstephanie. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple podcasts. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs. See you next week.
