June 29, 2015
EP. 78 — The Gun Show
The recent tragedy in Charleston, SC sparked, among other things, another flurry of debate in what appears to be our new twisted national pastime: arguing about guns. We’ll hear in the media proposed solutions to the problem of gun violence in America, and we’ll also hear the realities of why they wont work. We’ll hear about magazine restrictions and closing the gun show loophole, but we’ll also hear about how gun ownership is a tradition and a hobby across America that would be as easy to prohibit tomorrow as it would be to prohibit driving a car or owning a boat.
The gun debate is a nuanced, complex issue with elaborate roots that stretch back generations. This week on the podcast, Jack O’Brien is joined by editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to discuss both sides of the gun debate, the statistics about gun violence that you almost never hear, how the debate is painted by race, how gun ownership is more deeply rooted in a person’s identity than we think, and how trying to predict the next mass shooter will always be impossible.
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