Guns and abortion rights were once again very much in the news across
the country this week to explore that and more, let's turn to the
analysis of Brooks and K part
That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart,
associate editor for the Washington Post. Hello to both of you on
this Friday night. Thank you for being here. I wish the news were
more uplifting as we were just
Talking about David, you know, with the assassination today of the
former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo, I'll be in a country where
there's so few. I mean, almost vanishingly few
Instances of gun violence and then the contrast our country where
I looked it up again over 300 mass shootings already this year in
the United States and then punctuated by
The July 4th, Uh, massacre of seven people and many more wounded
in in the Chicago suburb were
It reminds us where we are as a country. Doesn't it
have spent the week researching the question? Why is it that we seem
to have an endless supply of young men who think it's heroic to shoot
innocent people?
And I learned of several things. One is a lot of us think it's mental
health problems, But that's kind of misleading because the vast majority
of the young men who do this do not have mental health problems.
It's their circumstances, not any illness.
They share frequently some abuse in their past. They often share
the idea that they were invisible at school. No one knew them. They
felt like they had no friends. Extreme social, social, like light
isolation, extreme inwardness.
And then they go through a suicidal and I'm struck by how the experts
say this mass killing is in a weird way akin to suicide, so they
want to end their lives, But they want to do it in a way that will
get them recognized known. And then guns play a role in their psychology.
I think the act of being photographed with guns.
You know it. Suddenly they feel powerful, and they feel they've set
a plan in motion. They tell themselves the historia heroic story
about themselves. They're defending something.
But the most poignant thing I learned this week was from a very fine
article by Tom Gino, The magazine writer and S Square from 2014.
He interviewed a guy who was set out to kill on a mass scale and
was caught.
And at the end years later, he told, you know, you know, even as
I was doing it. I didn't want to do it. If somebody just pulled me
aside and said, you're accepted your accepted, I would have broken
down and given it up.
And so with these young shooters, they often put out a cry for help.
But it's just the psychosis in our society that seems to produce
a lot of these guys who commit these evil acts. What is all this
say about us?
In some ways, Judy, I think it says were broken.
Um, It also says that we have way too many guns.
More than 400 million guns. That's a gun.
Or more per per American.
Um, if we didn't have the access to guns that we have, would we be
seeing these mass shootings with these? These disaffected young men,
Um, be taking these drastic actions.
Um, I sometimes worry whether we will grow numb to the fact that
seemingly every week we will see a mass shooting mass shooting defined
as 33 killed
Um, in an incident I grow. I worry that we as we grow numb to these
mass shootings, we grow even more numb to the daily gun violence
that happens in other places in Chicago proper that same weekend.
More people were killed during during July 4th then in Highland Park
alone.
And one thing you said David, I'm so glad I was so glad to hear you
say this that you can't just paint it on mental illness because I
think that's become a crutch. Not everyone who slaughters people.
Is suffering from a mental illness. Some are doing it for the reasons
that, David said, But we just have to come to terms with the fact
that actually there are evil people out there who are who are bent
on destruction.
And we can't excuse everything as a Senate minority leader did after
Highland Park, saying it's mental illness. We've had now had several
people David on this program, asked about this, saying there are
other countries with young people who are emotional or mental.
Problems, but they don't have as many guns as we have the country
clear part of it. If they didn't have guns, they wouldn't be doing
it. That's for sure. But I do think it's also true that other countries
do not have as many people caught in the circumstances that these
young men could find themselves.
We've had a frame social fabric playing social capital 54% of Americans
say no one knows them. Well, the number of people who say they have
no close friends has quadrupled. Nevertheless, several decades
There's something going on in the society, which is a relational
breakdown and the guns. I don't want to minimize the importance of
having 400 million
guns in this country, but and also what I want to minimize the fact.
That at some deep level, we have a society that is extremely cruel
on young people. The National Institute of Mental Health had a study
that came out maybe two months ago. They said to high school students
do feel persistently hopeless and depressed.
It was 26% like 20 years ago. It was 36 before Covid is 45. Now now
depressed. People don't go out and shoot people by and large, but
it's a sign of some sort of relational breakdown.
That I confess. I don't understand. I don't think social media plays
a role. Social media is not the main thing going on. Something else
is going on. That makes us
Produce a lot of not even disaffected young men. People who feel
the world is attacking them.
I feel we are having these conversations Jonathan over and over again,
trying to get at
Whatever it is, Congress passed, the president signed a bill. Congress
finally passed a bill or did pass a bill related to guns with just
a couple of weeks ago, it was signed.
People you look at. It wouldn't have had any bearing apparently on
what happened in Illinois, right? That's because Congress just they
pick the low hanging fruit.
The hard stuff they won't do because there aren't votes. The president's
doing an event. I believe on Monday more formal ceremony,
acknowledging his signature of that gun of that gun law.
Um, but we
Mhm. More serious action needs to be taken, but it can. It won't
be taken until Congress is in a position where there are more people
who want to do something. I'm specifically thinking of an assault
weapons ban.
And some other, stronger things that could be done. But the current
configuration of Congress that that's not going to happen, and I
think when it comes to guns, given the Supreme Court decision with
with New York that completely annihilated
New York's gun gun licensing law. The action now is in the states.
It is now with with with governors who now the onus is on them to
do something to protect their citizens, whether it's with guns or
whether it's abortion rights, abortion access because of what the
court did.
You agree that the likelihood of there being any more fruit
Federal action on guns is very unlikely remote. I've never understood
why in Australian style gun buyback is an affront to anybody. It's
a open choice. You can sell your gun or not.
But if we're going to reduce 400 million guns, it would take something
like that. Not not even just banning future purchases. I mean, we've
got 400 million there. You mentioned abortion access. President Biden
did sign this executive order today. We had Laura
Verone Lopez reporting on that a minute ago, Jonathan is this the
kind of thing that's that's going to
Make a difference, frankly.
No. And I say that not denigrating what the president. Excuse me
What the president and the administration did today. In order to
blunt the impact of what the Supreme Court did you need a federal
law?
And that's why I think the president was so emphatic today was so
emphatic that day that the court decision came down was so emphatic
when he was at the G seven on foreign soil. Talking about what? How
extreme the Supreme Court
Decision is why voting is so imperative. If you want to codify row.
The only way that's going to happen is if Democrats maintain control
in the House and Democrats in control in the Senate with 22 more
seats in order for something to get past and to get to get on his
desk.
And a lot of the ideas that the activists are saying that are wildly
impractical. You, you codify row. You solve that problem, But the
immediate thing is
This is not easy. Anyone who tells you that there is a simple solution
to this protecting reproductive rights is not being honest with the
American people. And it's not certainly being honest with themselves
because the Supreme Court has spoken, right. David in from the standpoint
of this is now something that the states it's now in the hands of
the states.
Does that mean Washington? Pretty much you know, doesn't have a
Is it doesn't have a significant role that it can play it could,
the court said. One is settled in a Legislature Whether it's a state
legislature. It's a federal legislature that the court said settled
legislatively. I've had a very interesting circumstance over the
last couple of weeks, so I've asked a lot of people.
On the pro choice side and on the pro life side, And the question
is, Would you take Europe Would you allow European style abortion
laws just exist here, and they tend to be between They make abortion
legal between 12 and 18 Weeks.
But then they surround the moms and the families with all sorts of
social supports.
And I've been struck by how many people on right and left. Not everybody,
but said Yeah, let's just end this and let's settle on that.
And that strikes me the way France does it the way Germany does it
a little more conservative, though, Sweden does it a little blue,
sir.
They would just It's like a consensus of where the American people
would be. But we can't actually get there because no politician could
be in the middle on this issue because they're activists on either
side. Would would, you know, really go after them? And so it's just
yet another issue where there's a potential middle ground.
But because of the way our politics are structured, we can't get
to it.
Impossible to to deal with this waiting for the state waiting for
the election in November. I mean, thankfully, the election is in
November. It's this year. It's just it's just a few months away,
and that's why I wrote the column that I wrote Vote Dang it! This
is your one superpower.
You're one superpower here in our democracy is the vote. If you want
to codify row if you want to do something about gun safety, If you
want to do something about voting rights, then you must go into the
voting booth and make your voice heard.
And given the way midterm elections work, Democratic voters stay
home more more often than Republican voters. But if Democratic voters
come out at presidential level presidential voting levels
They will win.
Just Democratic voters need to show up little dubious. Look, look,
You know, I think this is going to be an economic selection unless
suddenly inflation goes down and the jobs stay, But then we could
go to a social issues, but I'm a little skeptical.
And then we meanwhile, we all watched to see about voter access.
Which is another issue. This David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart. Thank