Latest / Revisionist History / Brian Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell Talk Policing and Guns

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Brian Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell Talk Policing and Guns · Revisionist History

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Speaker 1: Pushkin.
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Speaker 2: Hello, hello, everyone. Malcolm Gladwell here. Greetings from Los Angeles.
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Speaker 2: I'm out on tour for my new book, The American
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Speaker 2: Way of Killing, The Invention of an Epidemic, which is
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Speaker 2: my examination of America's ongoing problem with criminal violence, specifically
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Speaker 2: gun violence. I'm actually recording this from the closet in
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Speaker 2: my hotel room. Last week, we read a chapter from
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Speaker 2: the book, one of my favorite chapters, The Slave Owner's Lament,
0:50
Speaker 2: which you should listen to if you haven't yet, because
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Speaker 2: I'm guessing it's the story you haven't heard about the
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Speaker 2: Second Amendment, and which left me more than a little
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Speaker 2: surprised and angry. Next week, and the week after, we're
1:04
Speaker 2: going to run a two-part series on the fascinating story
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Speaker 2: about what's been happening in Baltimore over the last couple
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Speaker 2: of years, along with, because this is what we do
1:13
Speaker 2: at Revisions History, a little excursion into the world of
1:17
Speaker 2: cardiac bypass surgery. But right now, I want to share
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Speaker 2: with you a really fun and interesting interview I did
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Speaker 2: with Brian Lehrer, who has one of the most popular
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Speaker 2: shows on WNYC, New York City's public radio station. So
1:31
Speaker 2: have a listen. By all means, buy the book if
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Speaker 2: you are interested. And if you want to catch me
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Speaker 2: on the road, all of my book tour dates are
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Speaker 2: up on my website, glabell.com. Thanks for listening, everyone.
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Speaker 3: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.
1:57
Speaker 3: Gun violence in America, not a new conversation or topic
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Speaker 3: by any stretch, right? But there's actually a bit of
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Speaker 3: a pattern. Every time there's a mass shooting, it comes
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Speaker 3: back into the spotlight, into the headlines. Democrats express mounting
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Speaker 3: frustration and not being able to institute much meaningful gun
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Speaker 3: control reform, and then it kind of peters out, right?
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Speaker 3: The news cycle moves on. Well, we're going to talk
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Speaker 3: to Malcolm Gladwell about this because he's got a new
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Speaker 3: book coming out tomorrow, officially, called The American Way of Killing,
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Speaker 3: The Invention of an Epidemic, in which he argues that
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Speaker 3: the conversation around gun violence in the U.S. is misguided,
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Speaker 3: that people focus too much on mass shootings and not
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Speaker 3: enough on the kind of violence, gun violence, that disenfranchised
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Speaker 3: communities see every day. To address that kind of violence,
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Speaker 3: which makes up the vast majority, of gun violence in
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Speaker 3: the United States. He says the country needs more cops
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Speaker 3: and more intervention programs, both of those. By focusing so
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Speaker 3: narrowly on gun control as a prevention strategy, he argues,
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Speaker 3: gun violence activists are losing sight of the big picture.
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Speaker 3: You might know Malcolm Gladwell because, well, he's one of
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Speaker 3: the most popular nonfiction writers of our time. He's written
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Speaker 3: a whole range of bestselling books on social phenomena, including Blink,
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Speaker 3: The Tipping Point, and Outliers. That's the one where he
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Speaker 3: coined the idea that anybody can be an expert at
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Speaker 3: something if they dedicate 10,000 hours of practice to it.
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Speaker 3: You've heard that. That comes from Malcolm Gladwell. He was
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Speaker 3: a New Yorker staff writer for so many years, and
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Speaker 3: he also hosts the podcast Revisionist History. Again, his new book,
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Speaker 3: which comes out tomorrow, is called The American Way of Killing,
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Speaker 3: The Invention of an Epidemic. Malcolm, thanks so much for
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Speaker 3: coming on today. Always interesting to talk to you. Welcome
3:47
Speaker 3: back to WNYC.
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Speaker 2: Thank you, Brian.
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Speaker 3: Well, let's start with the title, The American Way of Killing,
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Speaker 3: The Invention of an Epidemic. Why do you call the
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Speaker 3: gun violence epidemic an invention?
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Speaker 2: Well, I feel like it's not something that's inherent to America.
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Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at our peer countries around
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Speaker 2: the world in Western Europe or our neighbor to the North, Canada,
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Speaker 2: which are in almost every other way very similar to
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Speaker 2: the United States— They have homicide rates that are a
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Speaker 2: fraction of the United States. And so we're clearly doing
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Speaker 2: something peculiar and different that sets us apart from the
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Speaker 2: normal way that developed 21st century Western democracies behave. So
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Speaker 2: it seems like we're inventing something, right? America wasn't born
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Speaker 2: with this problem.
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Speaker 3: In the book, you say the conversation that the country
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Speaker 3: tends to have around gun violence is dishonest. That's a
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Speaker 3: strong accusation as opposed to kind of well-intentioned but misguided
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Speaker 3: or something like that. Why dishonest?
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Speaker 2: Well, I use a dishonest very broadly. And what I
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Speaker 2: mean by that is that we focus on things that
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Speaker 2: we pretend certain things are serious problems when they're not.
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Speaker 2: And other things we focus on We pretend certain ideas
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Speaker 2: are solutions when they're actually not really a solution. We
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Speaker 2: avoid conclusions when they're too difficult. I mean, each chapter
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Speaker 2: of the book takes a different aspect of the problem
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Speaker 2: and shows how we've been fooling ourselves. I have two
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Speaker 2: chapters on the Supreme Court and the kind of absurd
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Speaker 2: way that the Supreme Court passes down gun rights rulings.
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Speaker 2: Or you mentioned in your intro, one of the arguments
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Speaker 2: of the book is that We have too few police
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Speaker 2: in America. And the reason I say that is very simple.
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Speaker 2: If you could just compare North American cities with European counterparts,
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Speaker 2: I'll use LA as an example. LA and Berlin are
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Speaker 2: exactly the same size. Los Angeles has 8,500 police officers.
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Speaker 2: Berlin has 18,000. And that's typical of the difference between
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Speaker 2: American cities and European cities. If you talk to any
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Speaker 2: American police chief, they will tell you they have, they are,
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Speaker 2: they are radically understaffed compared to their peers across the ocean.
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Speaker 2: Americans think the opposite. We think we're over-policed. Nothing could
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Speaker 2: be further from the truth. That's a, to my mind,
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Speaker 2: there's a level of dishonesty involved in that, an unwillingness
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Speaker 2: to kind of just look at the facts and draw
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Speaker 2: reasonable conclusions. Instead, we have a, a kind of a
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Speaker 2: conversation that's burdened with all kinds of fantasies about what
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Speaker 2: we're doing.
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Speaker 3: Well, that's probably the most controversial part of your book. Uh,
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Speaker 3: I'll read an excerpt of your words. In 2020, an
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Speaker 3: African-American man in Minneapolis named George Floyd was killed by
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Speaker 3: a rogue police officer, setting off an extraordinary wave of
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Speaker 3: protests around the country over police brutality. The motto of
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Speaker 3: the protesters was defund the police. If police were badly behaved,
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Speaker 3: the thinking went it was because there were too many
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Speaker 3: of them, unquote, from your book. So there's a lot
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Speaker 3: to unpack there. For one thing, You know, many people
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Speaker 3: would argue, no, this was not a rogue police officer.
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Speaker 3: Police officers are not maybe doing things every day like
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Speaker 3: that officer did or those officers did to George Floyd.
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Speaker 3: But they're a function of something systemic, the way policing
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Speaker 3: is done. Do you disagree with that?
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Speaker 2: I don't. In fact, I think that's spot on. However,
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Speaker 2: the conclusion from that observation is wrong. It is absolutely
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Speaker 2: the case that American police as a group use more
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Speaker 2: force and are more violent and kill more civilians than
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Speaker 2: most other Western police forces around the world. We conclude
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Speaker 2: from that that we have too many police. The exact
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Speaker 2: opposite is true. Police, when you do an international comparison,
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Speaker 2: you find that the most violent and repressive police forces
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Speaker 2: in the world are in countries where the police are
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Speaker 2: the least numerous in Police violence is a response to
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Speaker 2: being overwhelmed. If you feel like you're trying to police
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Speaker 2: a large area with a limited number of people, you're
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Speaker 2: only at one, not your only option, but one option
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Speaker 2: is to project force, is to behave in an overly
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Speaker 2: aggressive manner, is to try and demonstrate that you're bigger
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Speaker 2: and tougher than you actually are. If you have police
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Speaker 2: in sufficient numbers, you don't have to behave that way.
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Speaker 2: And that's what we see when you do a There's
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Speaker 2: two really, really, really wonderful sociologists at Harvard did this
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Speaker 2: international comparison where they showed this, that the most violent
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Speaker 2: police forces in the country, in the world, are in
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Speaker 2: countries where they have the fewest police and the best
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Speaker 2: behaved are in the countries that have the most police.
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Speaker 2: And this is their argument that police violence is a
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Speaker 2: response to being overwhelmed.
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Speaker 3: So you argue we need more cops, but also that
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Speaker 3: people need to trust them more and work with them
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Speaker 3: more in order to be safer. But there's such a
9:21
Speaker 3: long history of people not only being let down by
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Speaker 3: cops when, you know, maybe they are under enforcing in
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Speaker 3: some ways in high crime areas, but actually being brutalized
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Speaker 3: by cops.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: So how do you think that trust can be rebuilt?
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Speaker 2: I think I had a really fascinating discussion when I
9:40
Speaker 2: was doing my book with a guy named Daniel Oates.
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Speaker 2: who is one of the most progressive, thoughtful police chiefs,
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Speaker 2: big city police chiefs in this country. And we were
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Speaker 2: talking about this. He used to be the police chief
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Speaker 2: in Aurora, Colorado, among other places. And he was, you know,
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Speaker 2: when I said to him, do you have too few
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Speaker 2: police officers? He was like so wholeheartedly in agreement. He
10:03
Speaker 2: was like, unbelievable. You don't understand how undermanned we are.
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Speaker 2: He talked about what would happen if he had European
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Speaker 2: levels of police officers. In other words, what would happen
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Speaker 2: if we doubled the size of his police department in Aurora?
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Speaker 2: He was saying that would permit me to get my
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Speaker 2: officers out of the car, to work closely with community leaders,
10:27
Speaker 2: to find out about troubles before they bubble to the surface,
10:31
Speaker 2: to have a much closer feel for what's going on
10:35
Speaker 2: in schools, because that's where juvenile delinquency leads in many
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Speaker 2: cases to more serious crimes down the road. You really
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Speaker 2: want to be intervening and getting to know kids before
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Speaker 2: they get in serious trouble. He went down the list.
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Speaker 2: For 40 minutes, he talked without stopping about all the
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Speaker 2: things he could do if he had more police officers.
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Speaker 2: And he said, when you have too few, as almost
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Speaker 2: every big city police officer, police chief, police department in
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Speaker 2: this country does, you can't get your officers out of
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Speaker 2: the car. What they're doing is they are racing from
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Speaker 2: one emergency to the next and never have the time
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Speaker 2: to build those kinds of ties with the community that
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Speaker 2: are so important. We have so got this backwards in
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Speaker 2: this country and every I could line up every police
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Speaker 2: chief in this country and they would say, oh, you're
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Speaker 2: absolutely right. I can't do what I need to do.
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Speaker 2: They don't want to be, they don't want to have
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Speaker 2: a mistrustful relationship with the general public. They don't want
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Speaker 2: to have people in their force who use excessive violence.
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Speaker 2: They're trapped in this situation because they have half the
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Speaker 2: resources of other countries around the world.
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Speaker 3: But do you also not think that there need to
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Speaker 3: be big reforms? in how the police approach policing. You
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Speaker 3: did a stat, which is part of what you do, right?
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Speaker 3: You look at data and you try to draw conclusions
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Speaker 3: about issues in the world from big data sets. And
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Speaker 3: so you were comparing the high rates of gun violence
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Speaker 3: in the United States with relatively fewer police to.
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Speaker 3: Lower rates of gun violence in cities around the world
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Speaker 3: with more police. But I think a lot of people
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Speaker 3: would argue there are other reasons, at least in addition,
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Speaker 3: for the violence in the United States, including the police
12:27
Speaker 3: violence in the United States, the history of slavery and
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Speaker 3: the role of the police early, early on in enforcing
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Speaker 3: that being among them.
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Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
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Speaker 2: I mean, this is, Brian, I was just talking about
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Speaker 2: one chapter in a book with many chapters. You're absolutely right.
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Speaker 3: I understand.
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Speaker 2: I don't mean to suggest, and I don't argue, that
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Speaker 2: this is a problem solely about the police. The police,
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Speaker 2: the under-resourced nature of police departments in the U.S. is
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Speaker 2: one factor of many that account for this ongoing American crisis.
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Speaker 2: And I kind of walk through, you mentioned, for example,
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Speaker 2: the legacy of slavery. And I have a whole chapter
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Speaker 2: called The Slave Owner's Lament, which talks about how our
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Speaker 2: notion of gun rights in America arises out of our
13:14
Speaker 2: experience with slavery. The reason the Second Amendment exists is
13:18
Speaker 2: that plantation owners in the 18th century, in places like
13:23
Speaker 2: Virginia and South Carolina, were very anxious when the Constitution
13:29
Speaker 2: was first proposed that they would lose the right to
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Speaker 2: have militias, slave patrols. The armed groups of men who
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Speaker 2: went around making sure that the slaves were under direct control,
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Speaker 2: weren't rising up and protesting or trying to overthrow their overseers.
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Speaker 2: And the Second Amendment was an attempt by James Madison
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Speaker 2: to mollify the plantation owners of Virginia and South Carolina,
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Speaker 2: whose votes were essential for the ratification of the Constitution.
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Speaker 2: So when the Second Amendment says, because a militia is
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Speaker 2: so central to a safe and secure country, we need
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Speaker 2: the right to bear arms. What he's doing is he's
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Speaker 2: saying to the slave owners, we're giving you this so
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Speaker 2: you can continue to keep your slaves under control.
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Speaker 3: And yet, and maybe ironically, you also have in the
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Speaker 3: book this bit about the Wild West, but a lot
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Speaker 3: of it is in the South. which of course was
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Speaker 3: the slaveholding part of the country, that when pistols came
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Speaker 3: onto the market in the first half of the 19th century,
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Speaker 3: gun violence became a huge issue. And then a lot
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Speaker 3: of places that were dealing with this violence, like Texas,
14:51
Speaker 3: which we might not guess, and Arkansas, which we might
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Speaker 3: not guess, actually instituted pretty strict Gun laws, much stricter
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Speaker 3: than they have today. Give us a little of that history.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a fascinating kind of deja vu moment
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Speaker 2: in American history. The exact same argument that we have
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Speaker 2: today about gun violence was happening in America in the
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Speaker 2: mid-19th century because the arrival of the revolver dramatically changed
15:21
Speaker 2: the scale of violence that people were seeing, particularly in
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Speaker 2: the frontier West, that all of a sudden, Pistols were cheap.
15:29
Speaker 2: They were efficient. You didn't have to reload. You could
15:36
Speaker 2: fire six shots at one time. And this created a
15:40
Speaker 2: huge spike in the level and the concern over gun
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Speaker 2: violence in the United States. In response to that, one
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Speaker 2: town after another, and the list of cities and towns
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Speaker 2: that enacted very, very strict gun control laws, ordinances in
15:54
Speaker 2: response to the rise of the revolver is, I mean,
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Speaker 2: it's as long as my arm. It's like all around
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Speaker 2: the country, particularly in the South and the West. City
16:02
Speaker 2: after city passed laws that said things like, if you
16:06
Speaker 2: enter our town, you have to give up your gun,
16:09
Speaker 2: or you have to pay a massive tax if you
16:11
Speaker 2: want to buy a gun, or you have to, you know,
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Speaker 2: register your gun with the local authorities, or, I mean,
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Speaker 2: the kinds of things that we think of as unthinkable
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Speaker 2: today were a a matter where commonplace, particularly in the
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Speaker 2: so-called Wild West, I have a whole chapter about the
16:31
Speaker 2: myth of the Wild West. The Wild West is a incredibly,
16:35
Speaker 2: the notion of this kind of violent period on the
16:37
Speaker 2: American frontier was incredibly brief because one town after another
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Speaker 2: on the frontier enacted these incredibly strict gun control ordinances
16:47
Speaker 2: to make sure that when young men came into town,
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Speaker 2: armed young men came into town and started drinking in
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Speaker 2: the local bars, they had to give up the guns first.
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Speaker 2: It's a funny kind of version of American history.
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Speaker 3: So how did it flip?
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Speaker 2: How did it flip? It flipped because our conversation about
17:10
Speaker 2: gun violence became dishonest. If you talk to people, if
17:13
Speaker 2: you look at the way the public discussion about gun
17:21
Speaker 2: violence happened in the mid-19th century, what you see is
17:26
Speaker 2: a very kind of honest understanding about what the problem was.
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Speaker 2: The problem was young men were getting drunk and were
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Speaker 2: settling arguments with pistols, with pistols that were very deadly,
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Speaker 2: and that that was causing a spike in homicides, and
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Speaker 2: that the quickest way to get control over this problem
17:42
Speaker 2: was to take away the pistols. So they settled their
17:46
Speaker 2: arguments with fists and knives instead of a more lethal weapon, right?
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Speaker 2: People weren't pretending. They weren't pretending the problem was something
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Speaker 2: other than it was. And they weren't erecting some kind
17:58
Speaker 2: of ideological barrier to taking that kind of action. It
18:02
Speaker 2: was felt that if you were in some, you know,
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Speaker 2: roaring frontier town where things were veering out of control,
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Speaker 2: there was some common sense steps you could take to
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Speaker 2: bring them back under control, right? And it wasn't progressives
18:15
Speaker 2: and bleeding heart liberals making this argument. It was the
18:18
Speaker 2: town father's who were tired of seeing young men being
18:21
Speaker 2: killed on Friday and Saturday nights in their city. So
18:27
Speaker 2: what has happened, I think, is that we've allowed politics
18:31
Speaker 2: and ideology to kind of permeate every aspect of this discussion.
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Speaker 2: And in my book, I try and stay completely out
18:41
Speaker 2: of politics entirely. There is no ideology here. in the
18:46
Speaker 2: American way of killing. I'm not making a Democratic argument
18:48
Speaker 2: or a Republican argument. In fact, I place the blame
18:51
Speaker 2: equally on both sides. This should not, there is no
18:54
Speaker 2: reason that this argument, this discussion should be partisan. The
18:58
Speaker 2: minute you make it partisan, you lose track, lose contact
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Speaker 2: with reality.
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Speaker 3: What's the part that you blame on Democrats?
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Speaker 2: I think that Democrats have people, that there's a certain
19:11
Speaker 2: kind of gun control fetishism that has taken over a
19:14
Speaker 2: lot of the progressive response to gun violence. And I
19:17
Speaker 2: have no problem in theory with that. Like I've just said,
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Speaker 2: I think that this is an important piece of the puzzle.
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Speaker 2: But it can't be the only thing you're doing. Realistically,
19:31
Speaker 2: how quickly could we get meaningful gun control in this country?
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Speaker 2: The court has been leading, both Congress and the courts
19:38
Speaker 2: have been leading the country in the opposite direction for
19:40
Speaker 2: a generation. This is, even if it works... This is
19:45
Speaker 2: a battle that's gonna be 25 or 30 years in
19:47
Speaker 2: the making, right? So what do you do in the interim?
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Speaker 2: If you put all your eggs in that basket, you've
19:52
Speaker 2: got nothing to help people right now. And when I
19:55
Speaker 2: went in for this book and talked to people who
19:56
Speaker 2: are doing homicide prevention on the front lines, they don't
19:59
Speaker 2: even mention gun control. Not because they aren't in favor
20:02
Speaker 2: of it. They are. But just because it doesn't help
20:04
Speaker 2: them right now. With the last two major Supreme Court
20:08
Speaker 2: rulings on gun violence, the Bruin case and the Heller case,
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Speaker 2: the court is making it harder and harder and harder
20:15
Speaker 2: to pass meaningful gun control in this country. The The
20:18
Speaker 2: Bruin case took away New York State's handgun law, which
20:23
Speaker 2: had been in place for 100 years, in which there
20:26
Speaker 2: was clear evidence that it reduced suicides by gun in
20:31
Speaker 2: New York State, dramatically reduced suicides by gun in the
20:34
Speaker 2: United States. The court took that away. That's where we're
20:36
Speaker 2: going with gun control. We're not winning right now. So
20:40
Speaker 2: the question is, we should continue to fight the good fight,
20:43
Speaker 2: but that can't be the only thing you talk about, right?
20:46
Speaker 2: You've got to You have to broaden your response. And
20:49
Speaker 2: I feel like even in doing interviews for this book,
20:54
Speaker 2: I find that my interviewers, they just want to talk
20:56
Speaker 2: about guns all the time. You can't just talk about guns.
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Speaker 3: All the time. Malcolm Gladwell. is my guest with his
21:13
Speaker 3: new book about gun violence in the United States called
21:16
Speaker 3: The American Way of Killing, The Invention of an Epidemic.
21:20
Speaker 3: And Carolyn in St.
21:21
Speaker 2: Louis.
21:21
Speaker 3: You're on WNYC with Malcolm Gladwell. Hi, Carolyn. Thank you
21:24
Speaker 3: for calling in.
21:25
Speaker 4: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this discussion.
21:31
Speaker 4: And my husband and I believe that part of the
21:37
Speaker 4: problem is what your guest is talking about the police
21:42
Speaker 4: in other countries, their philosophy is that they're to remind
21:48
Speaker 4: the people of the law. But in the U.S., our
21:53
Speaker 4: police have the philosophy that they are the law. And
21:58
Speaker 4: I think if we could just define those two differences
22:03
Speaker 4: and take a look at how we might start to
22:06
Speaker 4: change people's minds here in the United States, That might
22:10
Speaker 4: be an approach. I don't know.
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Speaker 3: What do you mean by are the law? Do you
22:15
Speaker 3: want to expand on that a little bit and get
22:17
Speaker 3: a little specific, Carolyn?
22:20
Speaker 4: Well, you know, as we see it, there are so
22:24
Speaker 4: many situations where there are definitely not enough people to
22:31
Speaker 4: help with those that have mental illness. and things that
22:37
Speaker 4: the police are just not trained to deal with. But
22:43
Speaker 4: like George Floyd, I mean, if you look at situations
22:47
Speaker 4: around the country, it's just that we, our police, think
22:55
Speaker 4: that they are the law. And I think that that's
22:59
Speaker 4: coming down from the top, not just the top of
23:03
Speaker 4: the police, department, but I think from the very top
23:06
Speaker 4: of the administration. And we've got to remind people that
23:11
Speaker 4: the police, I think, and I'd like to know what
23:15
Speaker 4: your guest thinks, that the police are here to remind
23:20
Speaker 4: people of what the law is.
23:22
Speaker 3: Carolyn, thank you very much. Malcolm?
23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think she's, I think Carolyn is raising
23:30
Speaker 2: an important point, which is, if you go back to
23:33
Speaker 2: the The father of modern policing was Sir Robert Peel,
23:37
Speaker 2: who was the Englishman who founded the Metropolitan Police in
23:40
Speaker 2: London in the late 18th century. And he has a
23:44
Speaker 2: famous set of 10 principles of policing, which are as
23:48
Speaker 2: relevant today as they were back then. And one of
23:50
Speaker 2: his principles, the one I love the most, is the
23:54
Speaker 2: police are the people and the people are the police,
23:57
Speaker 2: which I think is what Carolyn was talking about, that
24:00
Speaker 2: his idea from the very beginning was that the police
24:03
Speaker 2: are one of us and there ought not to be
24:07
Speaker 2: a clear line between the ordinary citizens and the people
24:11
Speaker 2: who are charged with reminding us about what the law is.
24:15
Speaker 2: And that principle is not lost in America. There are many, many,
24:18
Speaker 2: many wonderful police officers and police chiefs in this country.
24:23
Speaker 2: But we have these really troubling edge cases like George Floyd,
24:28
Speaker 2: which cause an enormous amount of mistrust between the general
24:31
Speaker 2: public and the police. And we need, I think, to recapture.
24:35
Speaker 2: If you just look at something as simple as what
24:38
Speaker 2: they call clearance rates, what percentage of crimes are solved
24:41
Speaker 2: by the police? In Europe, clearance rates are often for
24:45
Speaker 2: a homicide. These sort of 85% to 90% of homicides
24:48
Speaker 2: are solved by the police. In many American big cities,
24:55
Speaker 2: that number is well below 50%. And why is that?
24:58
Speaker 2: Because people don't trust the police, right? The only way
25:01
Speaker 2: you can solve a homicide is if people come forward,
25:04
Speaker 2: people from the community. So we need, I think that
25:08
Speaker 2: part of the thing that needs to be restored is
25:11
Speaker 2: that notion that the people are the police and the
25:13
Speaker 2: police are the people. And I think one of the
25:15
Speaker 2: ways you get there is by thinking much more seriously
25:18
Speaker 2: about how you spend your resources on public safety.
25:22
Speaker 3: In the book, You spend some time drawing a distinction
25:26
Speaker 3: between what you call instrumental violence and expressive violence. Instrumental
25:31
Speaker 3: violence and expressive violence. What is that distinction and why
25:35
Speaker 3: do you think it's important?
25:37
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a crucially important one. And this is another
25:39
Speaker 2: area where the conversation we have about gun violence is misguided.
25:46
Speaker 2: Instrumental violence is a crime committed in the course of
25:51
Speaker 2: some large irrational end. I'm robbing a bank. The guard
25:55
Speaker 2: gets in the way. I shoot the guard, right, in
25:58
Speaker 2: order to rob the bank. That's instrumental violence. It's planned.
26:01
Speaker 2: It's executed. There's a rational goal. If you look at
26:05
Speaker 2: the way we discuss homicide in popular culture, it's almost
26:08
Speaker 2: all instrumental. I do an analysis of a season of
26:12
Speaker 2: Law & Order. which is probably watched by more people
26:15
Speaker 2: know about homicide from law and order than probably anything else.
26:18
Speaker 2: It's all instrumental crimes. People have a clear motive. They
26:21
Speaker 2: got some goal. They commit the murder in order to
26:23
Speaker 2: get something else. Expressive violence is violence committed in the
26:28
Speaker 2: heat of emotion. Where the violence is the point. You
26:33
Speaker 2: killed my brother. So I'm coming after you and I
26:36
Speaker 2: see you in a bar and I pull a gun
26:37
Speaker 2: and I shoot you. That's expressive violence, right? It's emotional violence.
26:42
Speaker 2: it's spontaneous, it's unplanned, it's often regretted after the fact,
26:45
Speaker 2: and the violence is, I'm trying to settle some, to
26:48
Speaker 2: enact some kind of rough justice. Most of the homicide
26:52
Speaker 2: that we see in the United States is expressive. And
26:55
Speaker 2: once you understand, it's young men settling arguments with guns.
26:59
Speaker 2: That's what homicide is, right? And any solution which fails
27:03
Speaker 2: to have that notion at its core is not a solution.
27:08
Speaker 2: So if I say, I want to curb violence, gun
27:11
Speaker 2: violence by doubling the length of sentences for shootings. That's
27:15
Speaker 2: not going to solve our problem. Because the young man
27:18
Speaker 2: who is really, really upset and maybe drunk or high
27:20
Speaker 2: and sees his enemy in a bar and pulls a gun,
27:23
Speaker 2: he's not thinking about the long-term consequences of his actions.
27:27
Speaker 2: He's not thinking, oh, I shouldn't do this because I'm
27:30
Speaker 2: looking at 40 years instead of 20, right? That whole
27:34
Speaker 2: idea that you could affect the behavior of someone just
27:38
Speaker 2: by tinkering with the length of a sentence is When
27:40
Speaker 2: the behavior itself is impulsive and emotional and being done
27:45
Speaker 2: by an 18-year-old who has very, very poor conflict management skills,
27:52
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just absurd.
27:53
Speaker 3: And so you're right a lot about social programs designed
27:58
Speaker 3: to help curb gun violence through training school-age students to
28:03
Speaker 3: maintain their emotions and avoid resorting. to violence like the
28:07
Speaker 3: kind you were just describing. Some form of this already
28:10
Speaker 3: exists in a lot of places where we see the
28:12
Speaker 3: most gun violence, New York and elsewhere. So are they
28:16
Speaker 3: doing it wrong? Or what would you say about that effort?
28:21
Speaker 2: That effort is, when it has been tried properly, has
28:24
Speaker 2: been extraordinarily successful. I've just done two episodes of my
28:27
Speaker 2: podcast on Baltimore and what's going on in Baltimore, where
28:30
Speaker 2: they've seen unbelievable drops in homicides in the last couple
28:33
Speaker 2: of years under the Brandon Scott administration. They've gone from
28:38
Speaker 2: 350 homicides a year and they make it under 100
28:40
Speaker 2: this year, and that's in three years. I mean, it's
28:43
Speaker 2: a kind of unprecedented decline. And what they're doing there
28:47
Speaker 2: is exactly a form of what I'm talking about. They
28:49
Speaker 2: are essentially intervening on a personal, individualized basis in any
28:55
Speaker 2: social situation that they think might lead to a homicide.
28:59
Speaker 2: So you shoot my brother, right? And so the police...
29:06
Speaker 2: come to me and they say, Malcolm, I know you
29:08
Speaker 2: just lost your brother and you're angry and you're upset.
29:10
Speaker 2: And I know that you just posted on social media
29:13
Speaker 2: that you're going after Brian. Don't do it. Let us
29:17
Speaker 2: help you. Let's talk you through this. And then you,
29:19
Speaker 2: you know, you, that kind of, you bring in my
29:22
Speaker 2: father or my pastor or somebody to talk to me
29:25
Speaker 2: and talk me down off the ledge. You offer me
29:27
Speaker 2: support services to make sure I don't retaliate. It's that
29:30
Speaker 2: kind of, that has proven to be extraordinarily effective. It
29:35
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with arresting people, nothing to do
29:37
Speaker 2: with threatening them with prison, nothing to do with carrying
29:40
Speaker 2: a gun and going in and waving it around. It
29:43
Speaker 2: has to do with meeting people where they are and
29:45
Speaker 2: understanding that the roots of criminal violence are in emotions.
29:50
Speaker 2: and in broken relationships and in fractured social circumstances and
29:54
Speaker 2: in unforgiving environments. That's the approach that we need if
29:58
Speaker 2: we want to take this problem seriously.
30:01
Speaker 3: So if we look, for example, at the New York
30:03
Speaker 3: City stat that a disproportionate amount of gun violence is
30:09
Speaker 3: perpetrated in very few neighborhoods.
30:12
Speaker 2: Exactly. That is exactly.
30:13
Speaker 3: Would you say that kind of training needs to be, what,
30:19
Speaker 3: just multiplied in terms of the amount of it or
30:22
Speaker 3: changed in terms of the approach of it in those
30:24
Speaker 3: particular neighborhoods? Like if Mayor Mamdani were to be listening in.
30:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, New York has been exceedingly successful in recent years.
30:32
Speaker 2: I mean, New York is probably the most kind of
30:34
Speaker 2: advanced neighborhood homicide fighting force in the country. That's why
30:40
Speaker 2: our violent crime rates are so incredibly low in this city.
30:44
Speaker 2: And a lot of what I've been talking about is
30:46
Speaker 2: something that has been part of New York City practice
30:49
Speaker 2: for some time now. Ever since the city switched from
30:53
Speaker 2: the in retrospect disastrous policy of mass incarceration during the
30:58
Speaker 2: mass arrests during the Giuliani years to this much more
31:01
Speaker 2: focused policy that we have now. You know, one of
31:05
Speaker 2: the One of the key findings that drives this more
31:08
Speaker 2: enlightened approach to gun violence is at any given time,
31:12
Speaker 2: even in a very large community, the number of people
31:15
Speaker 2: who are engaged or at risk for gun violence is very,
31:18
Speaker 2: very small. In Baltimore's Western District, where they've been doing
31:22
Speaker 2: the bulk of this work, it's an area of 40,000 people.
31:26
Speaker 2: The belief is that we're talking about a couple of
31:29
Speaker 2: hundred young men at any given time who are at
31:33
Speaker 2: risk for shooting someone or being shot. There was a
31:36
Speaker 2: great analysis done in west side of Chicago, 50,000 people
31:39
Speaker 2: in the west side. The gun manager, Papa Christos, did
31:43
Speaker 2: work where he showed that we're probably talking about 400
31:46
Speaker 2: people who are at risk for gun violence. It's very small.
31:50
Speaker 2: That's why you can do individualized attention.
31:54
Speaker 3: We have two minutes left, one more caller, and it
31:58
Speaker 3: won't surprise you that your call earlier in the segment
32:02
Speaker 3: for more police rather than fewer as a way to
32:09
Speaker 3: control gun violence and police violence, is drawing most of
32:13
Speaker 3: the response. Lynn in Portland, Oregon, you're on WNYC with
32:19
Speaker 3: Malcolm Gladwell. We have 30 seconds for you, Lynn. Go
32:21
Speaker 3: for it.
32:23
Speaker 2: Go, Lynn. Oh, boy.
32:24
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks a lot. Yeah, I agree with everything that Mr.
32:28
Speaker 1: Gladwell is saying. I have seen what happened in Portland, Oregon,
32:33
Speaker 1: post-George Floyd. And the population went from really not making
32:39
Speaker 1: the cops a big deal to there's just a real
32:43
Speaker 1: rift between the police and the public. And I was
32:46
Speaker 1: helping a woman try to come down from a bridge
32:49
Speaker 1: where she was attempting to commit suicide. And unbeknownst to me,
32:54
Speaker 1: the police were called. And when they came in, she
32:58
Speaker 1: totally freaked out. She didn't jump, but it became a
33:02
Speaker 1: highly escalated scene. I tried to have the cops understand
33:08
Speaker 1: that this woman is afraid of you. She doesn't want
33:11
Speaker 1: to have you help her. And they told.
33:14
Speaker 3: The screener they were they were dressed in war gear.
33:17
Speaker 3: And that's part of what scared.
33:19
Speaker 1: Her going to World War Three.
33:21
Speaker 3: Then I'm going to leave it there because we have
33:23
Speaker 3: 30 seconds for Malcolm to have the last word. I
33:26
Speaker 3: know you got to go. Malcolm, go for it. Then
33:28
Speaker 3: we're done.
33:29
Speaker 2: No, that's exactly what I'm talking about. That's what you
33:32
Speaker 2: do when there is a rift between you and the community.
33:36
Speaker 2: You dress up like an invading force and you lose
33:39
Speaker 2: your ability to have a real conversation with the people
33:41
Speaker 2: that you're supposed to be helping. And I think that's
33:44
Speaker 2: one of the things we need to address in this country.
33:48
Speaker 3: Malcolm Gladwell. author of many bestselling books, Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers.
33:54
Speaker 3: His new one is called The American Way of Killing,
33:58
Speaker 3: The Invention of an Epidemic. Malcolm, thank you very much.
34:01
Speaker 2: Thank you, Brian.
34:08
Speaker 3: Recorded live on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show. Revisionist History
34:18
Speaker 3: is hosted by Malcolm Gladwell.
34:20
Speaker 1: And produced by me, Nina Bird Lawrence, with Lucy Sullivan
34:23
Speaker 1: and Ben Natafafri. Our editor is Karen Shakurji.
34:27
Speaker 3: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original music by Luis Guerra.
34:32
Speaker 1: Mixing and mastering by Jake Gorski.
34:35
Speaker 3: Special thanks to WNYC, Brian Lehrer, and Lisa Allison.