What Can We Do to Stop the Shootings?
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Description
Inaction in the face of gun violence is deadly. So what can we do? This week, we meet the gun violence prevention activists who believe real change is within reach and that we can sell it to the majority of Americans – even if it means playing hardball with the politicians and corporations in power.
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. Andi Kristinsdottir is our audio engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our story consultant is Kaya Henderson. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. This season of Last Day is created in partnership with the Kendeda Fund, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss & Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
Igor Volsky, Gabby Giffords, Joe Capella, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Peter Ambler
Gabby Giffords
I’ve known the darkest of days, days of pain and uncertain of recovery. But confronted by despair, I’ve summons hope. Confronted by paralysis, Anastasia, I responded with grit and determination.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Gabby Giffords. She’s a former congresswoman from Arizona, and a pretty big deal when it comes to the conversation around guns in America. For her, this issue is deeply personal. Because in 2011, while meeting with constituents outside a Safeway grocery store, Representative Giffords was shot in the head.
Gabby Giffords
January 8th 2011, changed my life forever.
Gabby Giffords
I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t talk.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
But slowly, deliberately, and over time, she began to recover.
Gabby Giffords
I put one foot in front of the other. I’ve found one word, and then I found another. My recovery is a daily bite, but fighting makes me stronger. Words once came easily, today, I struggled to speak. But I have not lost my voice. I’m also in a second fight, the fight to stop gun violence, American needs, all of us do speak out, even when you have to fight to buying the words.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Representative Giffords knows two things very well. One, that firearms can cause horrific and permanent damage. And two, that inaction is deadly. I mean, look all around us. Look at the news right now. We are swimming in the consequences of inaction, the heartbreak, the grief, the horror that we’re seeing and feeling right now. All of this is preventable. It’s like, we’re trapped in a dirt ranged deja vu cycle. Look, you’ve lived the same nightmare again and again and again, only it’s real life and not a trick of the mind. It’s this constant tension between this is totally normal. And this is absolutely unfathomable. And living with both of these conflicting realities, at the same time, makes you feel crazy, and helpless and hopeless. And that is immobilizing, which might be intentional, actually. And these moments, I see this wave of impotent rage, where everyone is so angry, and so stuck. And while we’re screaming at each other on the internet, a lot of people with a lot more power than those of us on Twitter are let off the hook. And then we’re just sitting ducks. Because, you know, it’s just a matter of time until it happens again. I dropped my eight year old off at school, the morning after 19 elementary school children were slaughtered in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas. I gave her a big hug. I told her I loved her. I assured her she had nothing to worry about. She was going to be safe, and I’d see her later. But you know what? It’s a lie. I can’t really promise her any of that. And it’s not the school’s fault. And it’s not my fault. It is the fault of the people in charge who are choosing inaction again and again and again. Who are choosing to say ah, this is tragic, but there’s nothing we could have done to prevent it. Respectfully, that is fucking bullshit. There is plenty we can do. And that is what we’re talking about this week. Solutions. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs and this is LAST DAY.
Igor Volsky
If we believe the science on this stuff, which is so straightforward that we’re Are there are fewer guns, there are fewer instances of gun violence, then we simply have to abandon all of this political baggage and framework that is rooted in the notion that maybe I can find common ground and we can make progress together. I think the last four or five, whatever decades has proved that, that is a pure fantasy.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Igor Volsky, the co-founder and executive director of a nonprofit called guns down America. So far this season, we have worked hard to try and find the common ground that he’s referring to. But as a fewer guns activist Eagles approach is a little different.
Igor Volsky
The other side has no interest in meeting you, you know, even a fourth of the way much less in the middle. And so what we have to do is boldly ask for what we want, which we know is fewer guns, because again, where there are fewer guns, there are fewer gun deaths.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Playing nice is an Igor’s game. In fact, he’s made a name for himself by taking the gloves off and going straight for the jugular. I didn’t realize you were when I read your book. You were the Twitter guy who shamed everyone. And I was like, fuck, yes. I loved those tweets. They were amazing. Innovative, groundbreaking. Nowadays, it’s pretty standard to shame lawmakers online. But back in 2015, it felt novel to see someone finally putting words to hypocrisy. Following a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, Igor took to Twitter to call out politicians who were sending out thoughts and prayers to survivors families, while also accepting big donations from the NRA. One of his tweets read, quote, NRA dumped $922,000 into McConnell’s election bid. So when it comes to preventing gun violence, all you get is this tweet, unquote. Here’s another one. Rep. Mike Pompeo got $9,450 from NRA to tweet his hashtag thoughts and prayers during moments like this, and do nothing at all.
Igor Volsky
In that moment, when you have folks who go out of their way to lie about gun reform, and then following a tragedy, pretend that they care about the victims at the other end of that gun. That, to me is the ultimate hypocrisy and so is out of anger that, you know, I decided to do what I could, which is just kind of jam on my keyboard basically, for hours.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This was essentially the start of his career as a self-described fewer guns activist.
Igor Volsky
To me, fewer guns means really three things. The first is really cracking down on the firearm industry, ensuring that it is truly regulated that the products that the firearm industry produces have consumer safety standards attached to them.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
In other words, he wants firearms to be treated like almost every other consumer facing product that could potentially be dangerous or deadly. From prescription drugs to airplanes to seafood.
Igor Volsky
I think the second important piece is raising the standard for firearm ownership. So if you choose to own a gun in the United States, you should obtain a license, you should register that firearm, you should probably get that weapon insured. And by God you should have necessary training and storage requirements to ensure you both know how to use and where to place that weapon.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
license insurance registration. Sounds like something we’ve talked about before, it’s right on the tip of my tongue. Ah, cars, yes, cars, those very heavy, fast, potentially deadly metal containers that are baked into every aspect of American life for which we accept rules and restrictions every day.
Igor Volsky
And the third piece to me in terms of fewer guns really means tackling the underlying causes of gun violence, particularly interpersonal gun violence that we see in so many of our cities.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That last part of the fewer guns plan focuses on all the systemic issues we talked about earlier this season. Address the inequity, take away the need for violence.
Igor Volsky
If you look at all of the research when it comes to well, how do we reduce gun violence in our country as so many of our peer nations have done successfully? They’ve simply found ways to make firearms harder to get, and as a result, have reduced the number of guns in circulation.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
For instance, England and Japan both have very strict regulations and very low gun ownership. And when you know it, they also have very few firearm homicides per capita. On the flip side, Canada and Switzerland both have pretty lacks gun laws. And this has resulted in many more firearm homicides per capita. So why can’t we model ourselves off of our neighbors abroad who are getting it right? I feel like I have definitely voted for people who vowed to do just that.
Igor Volsky
Because we’ve seen time and time and time again, especially when it comes to gun violence prevention. You have candidates running for office, promising you the moon, and then getting into office and explaining to you that Oh, no, no, no, you don’t understand the complex politics going on here. This just isn’t the time for us to pursue gun reform. There’s just there’s just not, you know, not the capital to do it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And you know, what, both sides of the political spectrum, do some version of this, look at where we are right now, in the wake of yet another horrible tragedy. The left is shouting now is the time for action. And the right says now is not an appropriate time to politicize things. But once things calm down, Neither side seems to be doing much. I mean, there is always some reason why the timing isn’t right. This is a theme for so much right now. Like, we’re gonna say that we’re mad, and we’re not going to do a fucking thing about it. And it is it is like, it’s like living in a state of constant gaslighting or something like, what do we do?
Igor Volsky
Yeah, well, look, that’s the big question, right? Because we have some real systemic challenges, right, the fact that you need 60 votes in order to move legislation in the Senate is a systemic problem, which, as you point out, you know, impacts issues across the board. And so I don’t mean to suggest that this is easy or simple. But what I like to think about is, given the system that we’re in, there are things we can’t change, but yet there are things we can change. Right. So the things that are kind of off the table right now are probably getting rid of the filibuster, right? It feels like that’s not happening anytime soon. So we probably have to look away from a congressional path towards strengthening our gun laws.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
But if we can’t get help from Congress, where can we turn?
Igor Volsky
So then the question becomes, what are other power centers in, in our society and in our culture that can help us move the ball down the court and make progress on this issue? And in this moment, I see two, one is the administration right? This administration does not as I speak to you have a single person who is wholly dedicated to gun violence prevention.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I gotta say this was shocking to learn, especially considering all the offices of gun violence prevention that are popping up across the country. Governors and mayors are taking it upon themselves to tackle this issue in their communities. But the President who campaigned on gun reform, has absolutely no one running the show on the federal level. Yeesh. I mean, look, President Biden should be commended for making progress on ghost guns, and shifting resources to community based programs.
Igor Volsky
Overall, his lack of focus on this issue during a period, by the way, when gun homicides are on the rise, when suicides are likely on the rise, when mass shootings are on the rise is shameful. And I think it’s up to all of us to make sure he does better and make sure we hold him accountable.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
When these mass shootings happen, we are reminded of and disgusted by the inaction. But the truth is, people are losing their lives to guns every single day in homicides by suicide, and it feels like we are not doing nearly enough to address it. So Igor is applying pressure outside of politics.
Igor Volsky
I do a lot of work pushing corporate America to play their part in keeping us safer. And we do that because when we look at progressive movements that are more successful than ours, right? You think about the movement for marriage equality, you think about the climate movement, both of those movements understood early on the importance of energizing business voices.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Bringing corporate America into the fold can help us target new audiences. But it helps these companies out too. Because guess what? Gun violence and great for business.
Igor Volsky
So wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the CEO of say McDonald’s begin to really educate, not only the general public, but also members of Congress when they’re on Capitol Hill, about the cost that a gun violence incident has in the company, what it means in terms of customer retention, what it means in terms of employee retention, these are stores where they have high rates of gun violence in the community. It what it means for insurance costs and other kinds of business costs, right? That all adds up.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I mean, if loss of life isn’t breaking through, maybe loss of money will. And sure it can sometimes ring hollow when these tweets out a rainbow flag on Pride Week. But just look at the progress proponents of marriage equality were able to make in such a short time, same sex marriage went from being widely regarded as taboo to a fixture on primetime network sitcoms.
Igor Volsky
I believe that business leaders nonpolitical voices have a real ability to shift our cultural understanding of certain issues. And that’s the other reason why I we work so hard to get them involved in in addressing this crisis.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
They’ve actually had some success in this arena. In May 2020, disturbing photos emerged of heavily armed, open carry protesters eating lunch at Subway. Eagles organization responded by calling for subway to ban open carry in their restaurants, 43,000 signatures and 3000 letters to Subway executives later, the company changed their policy, even in states where open carry is legal.
Igor Volsky
And so to me, bringing in business bringing in different parts of our society into this conversation is absolutely essential. Because at the end of the day, we are in a culture war.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And that is a tough place to be because fewer guns demands more people fighting toward a common goal. And even though Igor isn’t super interested in finding common ground, it turns out there are a shocking number of people who actually agree on a path forward. More on them after the break. So to recap, fewer guns, fewer gun deaths. Easy peasy. The only problem pretty much everything we discussed last week, all the folks from the gun industry and the NRA pumping fear and racism into the American people in manufacturing the commonly held belief that having a gun makes you safer.
Peter Ambler
They’re not just selling guns, they’re selling hopelessness.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Peter Ambler, Executive Director of Giffords, a nonprofit and SuperPAC dedicated to making us safer from gun violence. It was started by you guessed it, Gabby Giffords, who you heard up top and her husband, Senator Mark Kelly. According to Peter, the NRA has a very clear strategy to keep business booming.
Peter Ambler
They want to convince Americans that you know gun violence is an inevitable product of human nature of the freedom that we enjoy here in this country of so many things other than of course, you know, the availability of firearms and the lack of gun laws. They list everything. But guns and gun laws, right? It’s bad parenting, it’s social media, Facebook, video games, the movies, etc, etc, etc. They want you to believe that gun violence is as inevitable as a hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It is true that guns aren’t solely responsible for gun violence. We’ve talked at length this season about all the systemic and societal failures that perpetuate gun violence in America. But while we can’t legislate our way out of an earthquake If we can put laws in place that reduce unrestricted access to firearms, because right now, it’s basically a free for all. How easy is it to buy a gun?
Igor Volsky
Well, depends where you are. But for the most part, it’s incredibly easy. You can either waltz into a gun store and pass a two minute background check and buy in many places, as much guns and ammunition as your heart desires, or particularly in states that don’t have universal background checks, you could simply go online, find the kind of gun that you want, and then meet somebody in a parking lot and buy that firearm, no questions asked.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That sounds pretty fucking easy. And the easier it is to buy a gun, the easier it is for tragedy to strike.
Igor Volsky
Georgia is very much an example of a place where you can simply waltz in and obtain a firearm, and then do what you will with it. And that’s, of course, what happened with the Atlanta shooting that we saw, in the early part of last year where an individual walked into a gun store, passed a background check, purchased a gun and then went to cause the havoc that he caused.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
What Igor is referring to is the horrific hate crime that took place in March 2021. Were six Asian women were murdered at a local spa while they were at work. Meanwhile, the shooter was described by law enforcement as a sex addict who had a bad day, which, you know, is problematic on a few levels. But okay, let’s just go with that logic for a minute. We’re all human beings, we all have bad days. If that’s true, which it is, wouldn’t we want to put some space between a human a bad day and a deadly weapon.
Igor Volsky
Georgia also, by the way, doesn’t have any kind of cooling off period, which in some states is a requirement of a certain length of time between when you decide to purchase a gun and when you can actually take it home. And those kinds of laws aren’t just helpful in potentially preventing the kind of massacre we saw in Georgia. But it’s also been proven to reduce suicides, because what we know about suicides is that if you could stretch the period of time between when somebody who’s suicidal wants to buy a gun and can actually then get their hands on that gun, that in that period, they literally can call off, change their mind, and not you know, use that firearm against themselves.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Whether a person is considering turning a gun on themselves, or someone else, waiting periods save lives. Some data suggests they reduce homicides by about 17%, which could prevent 1000s of deaths every year. And the interesting thing is, there’s no link between waiting periods and homicides that didn’t involve a gun. Meaning when people have to wait, they don’t pursue alternative ways to commit homicide. But what about the other stuff? Igor talked about background checks and universal background checks the biggest of buzzwords in the great gun debate. The truth is, it’s fairly convoluted and as usual, varies widely state by state. I’ve heard universal background checks just so many times, right? What is it? What does it really mean? What is it really doing? What’s the law? Can you give us an overview of how it work?
Peter Ambler
So you can think of federal gun laws as a three legged stool.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Peter again, giving us a designer furniture based metaphor.
Peter Ambler
There are laws that restrict what types of guns that you can buy.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
These are the laws that say I can’t go out and buy a machine gun or a bazooka and go full Rambo.
Peter Ambler
There are laws that restrict who can purchase or possess guns.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
These are the laws that say for instance, folks with felonies can’t own firearms, Try saying that five times fast.
Peter Ambler
And then in 1984, Congress worked to pass something to enforce the question of who can own a gun who can’t and what was born was the federal background check system.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Okay, that sounds promising, but how does the system work?
Peter Ambler
Essentially what that is, is a series of databases, which is managed by the FBI. And every time there’s a firearms transaction at a licensed gun dealer. You know, you go to the counter, you select which firearm you’d like to buy, and the store is able to tap into the background check system and get 92% of the time and answer whether or not you’re permitted in five minutes or less.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Okay, so they’re efficient, and they cover any retailer that’s licensed to sell weapons by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But we should probably acknowledge that background checks won’t catch everything. It’s not like they’re a lie detector test weeding people out based on their true intentions. People love to point out the fact that most mass shooters buy their guns legally, and easily pass standard background checks. That is true. Measures like permit to carry would be way more effective in those cases. That’s when a person has to apply for a license at a local law enforcement agency in order to buy a gun. It’s like going to the DMV to get a license applications usually include a background check, fingerprinting, safety training, real deterrence if you’re buying a gun to harm someone. But remember, mass shootings are not the most common form of gun violence in America, not even close. So background checks are still an essential part of making guns safer. Well, at least they would be if there weren’t so many ways to work around them.
Peter Ambler
What we also have are really deep loopholes where, you know, oftentimes estimated 20% of firearm transactions actually occur outside of those regulated channels.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Peter used the example of a website called arms list, which is exactly like it sounds. It’s basically Craigslist. But for guns, It even lets you filter your search results to find listings that don’t require a background check. This is exactly what Igor was talking about earlier, when he said that in states without universal background checks, you can simply meet somebody in a parking lot, and they will hand you a gun. So how do we how do we how do we get rid of those loopholes? Well, it’s
Peter Ambler
simple. We pass universal background checks. Yeah, there’s legislation in Congress right now HR8, the bipartisan Background Checks Act, which passed through the House of Representatives on a bipartisan basis. Last year, it’s sitting at the Senate and awaiting action.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Depending on what corner of the internet you live on, you have likely heard a lot about HR8 over the past week, like from warriors Coach Steve Kerr. But if you weren’t familiar with HR eight before the collective outrage, here’s the backstory. Basically, three years ago, the act was brought before Congress by Representative Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California. His idea was to expand background checks to include gun sales made by unlicensed and private parties in order to jam up the loopholes that Peter is talking about. What it means in practice, is that before making a sale at a gun show, or on a website, like arms list, the seller would first have to go to a licensed gun dealer to conduct a background check. Without that initial step, the firearm transfer would be illegal. But what we’ve discovered over the course of the season Is that really your laws are only as strong as your next door neighbors. Because in America, we don’t have borders, you can easily go from one state to another. So the idea behind this law was to make it nationwide or universal. The good news? Yes, sometimes we have that on this show, is that most Americans are actually in favor of universal background checks.
Peter Ambler
This is a policy that has supported roughly 90% of Americans, including the vast majority similar levels of American gun owners. Over the past several years, we’ve passed universal background checks in more than a dozen states, bringing the total number of Americans who are covered by a universal background check requirement to roughly like 50% of the population. And we know that in those states and those states with stronger gun laws, that we have less gun violence. So we see that, just like with all Americans, the universe of American gun owners is diverse and complicated and messy, and contains multitudes and myriad perspectives. But what we’ve shown through our work and what we demonstrated through polling and public opinion research, is that in fact, gun owners are on the side of safer gun laws.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Ok. So if that’s the case, then once again, why is nothing being done?
Peter Ambler
You have a fairly complex but fairly straightforward problem. Americans are killing each other and themselves with firearms. We have solutions that we know work, we have messages that we know are effective at changing attitudes and behaviors. But, you know, politics intervenes, because there are various incentives for folks, you know, be it to sell more guns or to win more votes with a particular group of people in order to prevent us from doing something that, you know, ultimately, is going to be a win for the American people.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Politics, one, overwhelming public support, zero. And when I say politics, what I really mean is the NRA. Here’s Igor again.
Igor Volsky
The NRA decided that there was real utility in using the Second Amendment to build power. And they really changed both our legal understanding of the amendment and of course, the popular conversation about gun ownership.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It is remarkable how much has shifted in just the last couple of decades. For example, today, the idea of self-defense and the Second Amendment feel inextricably linked. But it turns out, that is just the result of a very recent Supreme Court decision. In 2008. There was this case, the District of Columbia versus Heller, and it fundamentally changed the message around guns. It shifted things away from the militias and frame the amendment as the right to personal protection. After that groundbreaking decision, the NRA changed their tactics and spread a new message far and wide. And it worked. It worked beyond their wildest dreams. So the question becomes, if it was possible to radically change the popular conversation around gun ownership in the past, can we do it again? To help us answer that, I called up a super smart expert to hear how America kicked another one of its most deadly habits. More on that after the break. Okay, what in the madmen is going on here with my 2022 colored glasses on it, these cigarette ads are so absurd and eerie and obviously a little funny. But mostly they’re like cracking open a time capsule to the 50s and 60s, when tobacco companies wanting you to know that 9 out of 10 physicians approve of their product. I mean, this is just bananas. And it got me thinking about attitudes and behaviors we’ve modified in the past. Why can’t we do something similar with guns that we did with smoking?
Joe Capella
The changes in smoking behavior have occurred over a very long period of time. And so if you look back something like 60 years, you’ll see you know, sort of slow declines in smoking behavior by young people and by adults.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Dr. Joe Capella, Professor Emeritus of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.
Joe Capella
A lot of my career, especially recently has focused on what I call messaging, and that is the business of designing messages that either go out into the public at large, but usually and more importantly, to targeted subgroups within that public and aimed at trying to achieve a particular kind of behavioral change.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Okay, not to get all conspiracy theory here. But messaging is all around us. I mean, we are influenced by it every single day, every single hour, even if we are completely unaware. Most of the time. It’s some variation of hey, you’re inadequate, buy our product or do our thing and you won’t be the messaging from the firearms industry is crystal clear. The world is dangerous, you’ll be safer with a gun. Big Tobacco had a similar strategy to keep people smoking.
Joe Capella
It became clear that the actions of the tobacco companies were not only in terms of their own self-interest, of advancing, you know, their financial interests and so on, but rather, it was more than it was more than that they were lying. And they were being a blatantly and unequivocally deceptive.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
When you consider the data that more guns equals more gun deaths, I think it’s fair to say that the gun lobby is also blatantly and unequivocally lying to the American people. The difference here is that back in 1964, the public got a strong dose of truth, thanks to a groundbreaking report from the Surgeon General. A very clear message. But look, change didn’t happen overnight. It was a long, long journey from the release of that initial report to the significant decrease in smoking that we see today. And anti-smoking campaigns played a big part
Joe Capella
They have been persistent anti-smoking campaigns, which have worked for a long time to change the behavior of children to reduce the locations within which smoking was acceptable.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
You remember these anti-smoking PSAs from when you were a kid, variations of hate kid smoking isn’t cool. If you smoke, you’re a loser. It literally said this. And this kind of targeted messaging sandwiched between episodes of The Simpsons seem to be pretty effective. Since smoking levels have continued to plummet year after year in America. It also helped that there wasn’t just one message or one intended audience. Some PSAs spoke to kids, others featured emotional stories of people talking from hospital beds, sharing their experience being diagnosed with cancer, emphysema. I mean, there were literal decades of anti-smoking PSAs taking all kinds of approaches.
Joe Capella
That was a long slog that over a very long period of time produced small changes here and small changes there that have eventually turned the tide. So that today, you know the percentage of young people who are smoking is very small.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Of course, the tobacco industry didn’t just go gentle into that good night. They have continued to evolve and adapt and come up with new marketing strategies that target the youngest most impressionable minds. Remember, a few years back when every high school student you encountered was sucking on a jewel. According to Joe, leaders and the public health space, arm’s length with policymakers have to keep up the fight against the tobacco industry, because they’ve got one very clear goal to keep consumption high, and business booming. A similar battle is being waged between organizations like Giffords and guns down America, and the powerful lobbyists and stakeholders in the firearms industry. And while this fight against big tobacco has been going on for decades, public health campaigns centered around firearms are still in their infancy.
Joe Capella
With regard to guns, I mean, there are policy related things that you know, that can be accomplished. And there’s public opinion that actually supports certain kinds of policy changes. And those are the I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s the low hanging fruit, but it’s the place where you have the best chance of making some progress, even if it doesn’t mean convincing everyone about their own behavior or about the legitimacy or the importance of guns and weapons in their lives.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So if we were to craft an effective public safety campaign around guns, we know a relatively neutral place to start could be policy changes that the majority of Americans already support, like universal background checks. But what else is necessary to effectively message here? Well, let’s step out that Marlboro light and buckle up. We’re going to take another look at seatbelts. So I was born in 1981. And don’t really remember a time without seatbelts, but apparently only 14% of Americans buckled up in the 80s and when seatbelt bills started Getting introduced state by state shit hit the fan. civil liberty groups were outraged. One Michigan representative even received hate mail comparing him to Hitler. That is so nuts. But today, a little over 90% of Americans buckle up. Yep, this mindless, easy, uncontroversial thing we do every single day received a tremendous amount of pushback just a few decades ago. So yes, conclusively, changing public opinion and habits dramatically over time is possible. But how?
Joe Capella
So, I mean, there are, there are lots of ways one, of course, is the simple kind of informational approaches which work up to a point as people are informed about the statistical advantages to the safety that you have, when you’re in a crash, and your seatbelt it. And then of course, is ratcheting up that informational base to make clear what the consequences are to the dummies that are tested in automobiles, you know, these old commercials where the dummy is seatbelted and the dummy isn’t seatbelted. And then taking that up one more level if you need to. And if you feel it, you can, your public can tolerate it. And showing that you know what happens to a body to a brain in a crash when in fact, the person is not seatbelt it in the crash and you start to show those disgusting fear arousing images, maybe when the effects of showing the dummy are only go so far.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Sharing stats and info, check, scaring the shit out of people, check. But change can also come from the industry itself.
Joe Capella
And also, of course, from the point of view of having the automobile industry out there, encouraging the use of seatbelts and making it easy for people to use their seatbelts. And in the long run. It’s like this argument about tipping points, right? You get enough people and enough people and enough people until it becomes the norm. You know when that point is reached is not clear. But at some point, it’s just what we do.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So what would it take to get to a tipping point with guns? Because I don’t know about you. But I’ve been hearing a lot of talk this week that gun laws won’t change people’s behavior. So let’s not just focus on laws. Let’s go back to Dr. Me that says three E’s, education, engineering, and enforcement. Probably the least pressing reason I wear a seatbelt is because I live in a state where I would get a ticket if I don’t. But you know what really forces my hand, the fact that my car beeps at me aggressively if I don’t buckle up within 10 seconds. Also, my kids have been fully indoctrinated to associate seatbelts with safety. So if my car wasn’t beeping at me, rest assured the two of them would be ruthlessly yelling at me. So there you have it, enforcement, engineering, education. I’m sure everyone has their own pie chart, the stuff that drives their behavior, but the fact that all three E’s are in play when it comes to seatbelts might be part of the reason that they are a totally accepted part of everyday life. And that totally normal thing saves about 15,000 lives every year. Now it’s true people still die in car crashes. But no one is using that fact to justify stripping cars of every safety feature. They can’t save everyone, but they sure do a whole lot of good. So how do we apply this to guns? Well, for starters, it might be a broad understanding that having a gun for self-defense actually puts you and your family at greater risk. Or perhaps a world in which locking up your rifle becomes as reflexive a muscle as putting on a seatbelt. Whatever the approach, there is one critical ingredient when it comes to public messaging.
Joe Capella
If you can’t get the message in front of people go home, you’re done. You can have the best message in the world and the most carefully articulated message, the most well defined campaign. If it’s not in front of the target audience with their attention. You’re nowhere.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
These things take time.
Joe Capella
Even some of the most intransigent of what seemed like intransigent of public opinions change over time, but sometimes over a long period of time.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Yep, here’s the thing. I know the world feels pretty bleak right now. And I’m not sure if this helps or hurts things. But we are just at the beginning of this fight. Like, we keep saying and feeling like nothing changed after Sandy Hook. But that’s not totally true. That unbelievable tragedy activated people. And it led to the founding of countless organizations devoted to activism, and research. And I know that’s not the kind of satisfying immediate action you want in the moment. But it does matter when it comes to building a movement. I keep hearing people quoting data, I’m quoting data that would not have existed 10 years ago, because people just weren’t doing that research. And that stuff matters. Because if you look at the progress made by the far right, it is the result of decades of diligent and strategic efforts. So now, it’s our turn. It is not the time to give up. It is the time to unite, stretch those muscles and prepare for the work ahead. We need to build a coalition of people with a common goal to save lives. We don’t all have to agree on the best way to do that. As long as we’re all actually doing something. You think legislation like background checks and waiting periods is the answer. Great, then act on it, hold your elected officials feet to the fire, block walk, phonebank, march, all of it, you think mental health is the issue, okay? Then get involved in the fight for access and equal coverage. You want to do something to decrease deaths of despair, help set up safe storage options and gunshot projects in your community. We could ban assault rifles, we could pass permit to purchase laws, we could pay everyone a living fucking wage in this country. Any one of these things would make a difference. All of these put together. Can you imagine what that would do to the rate of gun violence in America? Listen, you seem so nice. I am not trying to yell at you from my soapbox. But I do want to offer some light in this very dark time that is determined to consume us all. They want us hopeless. They want us to feel like there is nothing we can do. But that’s not true. There is so much we can do. You just have to figure out where you want to start. And if you’re tired of hearing my voice, take it from Gabby Giffords.
Gabby Giffords
We are at a crossroads. We can let the shooting continue. Or we can act. We can protect our families our future. We can vote. We can be on the right side of history. Please join us in this fight. Vote. Vote. Vote. Thank you very much.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Next week for our season finale, we are talking to survivors, the ones who lived to tell their stories.
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.
