The HBS hosts try to figure out why there are 150 guns for every 100 Americans.

In the midst of a pandemic, as COVID-related deaths creep closer towards 1 million, it’s easy to forget the other public health epidemic plaguing the United States, namely, gun violence. Nearly 10,000 people had already been killed by gun violence by June of 2021, with no sign of slowing numbers. Schoolchildren regularly practice “active shooter” drills and, in states like Tennessee, gun-control laws have been relaxed so much that they are practically non-existent. A study published earlier this year shows that gun suicides are rising steeply in 2021, including among teenagers and children.

Between January 1 and August 31 of 2021, there were 242 days. A mass shooting occurred in the United States on all but 44 of those days.

How did we get here and who have we become? Who is suffering the most from gun violence in our country, and who is most guilty for gun deaths? Is the Second Amendment’s guarantee that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” been interpreted too loosely? Should the Second Amendment be repealed? In this episode, we take a close look at all of those questions, as well as Dr. Carol Anderson’s new book The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

Check out the links below for references mentioned in Episode 25:

• Guns ownership by state in America (Word Population Review, 2021)
• Gun Law (by state) Scorecard (Giffords Law Center, 2021)
• “Concealed carry” laws, explained
• “Stand your ground” laws, explained
• “Castle doctrine” laws, explained
• “A brief history of the National Rifle Association” (by the National Rifle Association)
• Reis Thebault, Joe Fox, and Andrew Ba Than, “2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades. So far, 2021 is worse.” (The Washington Post, 2021)
• Mass shootings in the U.S.
• George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin (2012)
• Police killing of Tamir Rice (2014)
• Police killing of Philando Castille (2016)
• “Gunfire on School Grounds in the United States” (Everytown for Gun Safety, 2021)
• “Myth vs. Fact: Debunking the Gun Lobby’s Favorite Talking Points” (Center for American Progress, 2017)
• District of Columbia v. Heller
• 1984 New York subway shooting by Bernie Goetz
• Viktor Retlaitis, “These lawmakers receive the most money from gun-rights backers like the NRA” (MarketWatch, 2019)
• Elizabeth McBride, “America’s Gun Business is $28B” (Forbes, 2018)
• The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Carol Anderson, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (2021)
• Dahlia Lithwick’s interview with Carol Anderson about The Second (Amicus podcast, 2021)
• Lois Klarevas, Andrew Conner, and David Hemmenway, “The Effect of Large-Capacity Magazine Bans on High-Fatality Mass Shootings, 1990-2017” (American Journal of Public Health, 2019)
• 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban
• James Fallows, “Why the AR-15 is So Lethal” (The Atlantic, 2017)
• Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012)
• “FACT SHEET: The Biden-Harris Administration Announces Initial Actions to Address the Gun Violence Public Health Epidemic” (The White House, 2021)
• David T. Konig, “The Case for Repealing the Second Amendment” (The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2021)
• Frantz Fanon, “Concerning Violence” from The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Joshua Manson, “When the Black Panthers Carried Guns, the NRA Supported Gun Control” (Buzzfeed News, 2019)
• Elwood Watson, “Deacons for Defense and Justice” (Blackpast, 2007)
• Robert F. Williams, “Negroes With Guns” Chapters 3-5 (1962)
• Nicholas Johnson, “Negroes and the Gun: A Winchester Rifle in Every Black Home” (The Washington Post, 2014)
• David Walker’s “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” (1829)
• German Lopez, “These horrifying new numbers show how America’s lax gun laws hurt black Americans” (Vox, 2016)
• Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population by Race/Ethnicity (Center for Disease Control, 2019)
• John Gramlich, “What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.” (Pew Research Center, 2019)
• Mary Frances Berry, Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America (1995)