America’s Half a Billion Guns: Jonathan Metzl

April 25, 2024

April 25th, 2024

”Gun politics are deeply seated in identity.”

Jonathan M. Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and the Director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book is What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms. We discuss lax gun laws and gun ownership as an identity.

The public health narrative is about how guns pose a health risk, a threat to mortality to our bodies. Those who vote based on guns see guns as symbols of power or protection. In fact, many people in the South own guns because they’re afraid of government tyranny. Unfortunately, gun laws have become more and more lax in a country that has almost 500 million civilian-owned firearms. Metzl shares that “We've had a dramatic erosion in the ability of states and towns and the country itself to limit who can own and carry a firearm.”

See this content in the original post

Follow Jonathan on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/JonathanMetzl

Follow Mila on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/milaatmos

Sponsor:

Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight! Sign up for a $1/month trial at shopify.com/hopeful.

Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/

Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!

http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&ver=standard

Take the Democracy Group’s Listener Survey!