Malcolm Gladwell on “The American Way of Killing”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

David Remnick interviews Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, 'The American Way of $ ext{Killing}$,' which examines the complexities of gun

Key takeaways

• Medical advancements have increased survival rates for gunshot victims, potentially making the US appear less violent by lowering homicide counts while the actual number of shootings remains high.
• The Second Amendment's militia clause was historically tied to the needs of Southern states like Virginia to control slave populations through armed militias.

Main topics

• Gun violence statistics
• Second Amendment history

Notable quotes

The level and quality of medical attention that's being given to gunshot victims has gotten so much better that we have become blind to the extent of our violence.

Conclusion

The episode offers a provocative re-examination of gun violence, sugge

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Speaker 5 (0:08) Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Speaker 5 (0:12) I'm kind of shocked to say it, but Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for 30 years. We got here at just about the same time. And in his reporting for us and in a shelf of bestselling books, Gladwell takes ideas from the social sciences and other fields and applies them to topics that most of us had never really thought about. You could almost call Malcolm Gladwell a genre unto himself. But we don't often think of Malcolm Gladwell tackling the news, writing about what's in the headlines every day. And that's exactly what he does in his new book. And I'll tell you, it's not easy to read. The book is called The American Way of Killing. And Malcolm's subject is gun violence. He looks at the mass shootings, suicides, and vast numbers of deaths and injuries in this country. And I could rattle off the statistics, but by now, you know them only too well. One unbelievable data point. Firearms have been the leading cause of death among American children since 2020. We don't lead the world in gun deaths, but among the wealthy nations, we're an outlier, and to a stunning degree. Malcolm Gladwell tries to understand why that is in his newest book. We spoke this week. It's good to see you again, David. It's been way too long. Your new book is about guns, gun control, or the lack of it, and so on. Speaker 4 (1:36) What are Speaker 5 (1:37) the origins of your interest? I always have suspected that some of Speaker 4 (1:40) it is the fact that you're Canadian and come from Speaker 5 (1:42) a place. that doesn't have this madness. I Speaker 4 (1:45) think the longer I stay in America, the more baffled I am in some ways by it. I mean, a lot of this book is concerned with the question that the conversation about guns in this country is dishonest. And I use that word, I pick that word with great deliberation. What do you mean? What I mean is that it's not that it's wrong, it's that people aren't arguing about the things they should be arguing about. But I'll give you one that I spend a lot of time on in the book, and that is, this country is obsessed with homicide rates, and I have all chapter pointing out that that's the wrong thing to be obsessed with. It didn't tell you anything. Why? Because a homicide is a function of two things. It's how lethal your wounds were, and also how quickly you got to the hospital. If you were to shoot me here in the heart, I'd be at that hospital three blocks away in five minutes. I'm going to make it. If you do the exact same thing to me in the Hudson Valley where I live, I'm dead. Right. Right. The level of violence is the same in those first two instances. But in one case, I'm a homicide. In one case, I'm not. And that has to do with my access to health care and a skilled doctor and such. And one of the things that has happened in America in the last 40 years is the level and quality of medical attention that's being given to gunshot. victims has gotten so much better that we have become blind to the extent of our violence. If we held the level of healthcare constant from 1960 on, we'd have 75,000 homicides a year in this country. We have like 20,000 now, whatever it is. It's still Speaker 5 (3:25) an enormous amount. Speaker 4 (3:26) It's still an enormous amount, but what you need to talk about is how many times do people shoot each other? That's what you should be talking about. Don't talk about homicide. Let's start with the beginning. The Second Speaker 5 (3:34) Amendment is one single sentence. A well-regulated militia, comma, Speaker 4 (3:39) being Speaker 5 (3:40) necessary to the security of a free state, comma, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, comma, shall not be infringed. Period. Period. Why is it written like that? What was its original meaning? And why are we so... Speaker 5 (3:59) fatalistically attached to it. Speaker 4 (4:01) Yeah. That sentence is written in a time closer to Shakespeare's time than our own. We don't write sentences like that anymore. At what point historically does the intent Speaker 5 (4:12) change? The Speaker 4 (4:13) key guy here is this guy named Carl Bogus. He's a fantastic legal historian. Speaker 5 (4:17) Again, Speaker 4 (4:17) a Speaker 5 (4:17) Gladwellian name, if I've ever heard one. Carl Bogus, a real person? Speaker 4 (4:21) If my name was Carl Bogus, I would be so happy. The brilliantly named Carl Bogus. And he does what apparently no one has ever before him, no serious historian had ever done. When the Constitution is drafted, it has to be ratified by the states. And the key state is Virginia, right? Virginia is one of the largest states in the Union. All those old guys are from Virginia. Like, Virginia needs to sign on. They had someone transcribe their entire, the entire debate they have in Richmond about whether they're going to ratify the Constitution. And what do you discover when you read these debates? That they are obsessed with the Second Amendment and they're obsessed with that militia clause. Why? Because militias are the means by which they keep their slaves in check. Most of these people live in communities where the slaves outnumber white people 10 to 1. In some cases, 20 to 1. You can't police this. So they have, from time to time, there are these slave uprisings and they're terrifying to the planters. So they institute this system of militias. which go around the South and patrol the South. And everyone volunteers for the militia. So the Constitution comes along, and these northern states are threatening to take away, to nationalize the militia. And they're like, no, this is terrifying. How are we going to stay safe otherwise? So they're desperate for the Second Amendment to reflect the fact that they continue to have a right to have armed militias to keep their slaves in check. Speaker 5 (5:46) That's what it is. It's not a kind of... uniquely American culture that has to do with the frontier and the wilderness. No, no. And it's not Speaker 4 (5:56) the Revolutionary War. The militias fought so badly in the Revolutionary War that Washington all but gave up on them. The idea that