Farai interviews senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace, Jennifer Mascia on the recent shootings in California, and what's going wrong with gun regulations in the US. Then, she speaks with the President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Thema Bryant on how to identify individuals who are prone to committing acts of domestic terrorism, as well as how affected communities can heal from gun violence. Content Advisory: Mentions of various types of gun violence and suicide.
Farai Chideya:
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Farai Chideya:
This is our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. Today just an advisory that this show mentions suicide and multiple types of gun violence. California is considered one of the states with the toughest gun control laws, but last month it witnessed multiple mass shootings, two of which were targeted at Asian American Pacific Islander communities in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, just days apart from each other. With each mass shooting, we're left wondering why does this keep happening and how do we change it? To help us understand the crisis of mass shootings, I'm talking with Jennifer Mascia, a Senior News Writer and Founding Staffer at The Trace. Jennifer has spent the past decade covering community gun violence, the growing role of guns in public life, and the intersection of domestic violence and guns. She also leads the Ask The Trace Series tracking news developments on the gun violence speed. Thanks for coming on the show, Jennifer.
Jennifer Mascia:
Thanks or having me.
Farai Chideya:
So there have been nearly 50, 5-0, mass shootings in the first few weeks of 2023. First of all, what makes a shooting a mass shooting?
Jennifer Mascia:
The definition that is most widely accepted now is the definition used by a site I rely on every day called Gun Violence Archive. They're a nonprofit outfit of number crunchers and they track shootings in the news. So what they consider to be a mass shooting is four people shot, whether they're wounded or killed, and the reason they use that definition, and gun rights advocates argue with it a lot, is because medical advancements have made it such that someone shot today might have died 20 or 30 years ago. We have much improved trauma care. We know how to stop the bleed in a lot of communities and we're seeing survivors where years before there might not have been. So four people shot is pretty much the definition. A mass gun murder is four people killed, and that's like what we saw in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.
Farai Chideya:
Why is America such an outlier? I have been blessed and privileged to have family in other countries and to have traveled to about 30 countries. Mass shootings do happen elsewhere, but not with this frequency. What is our situation?
Jennifer Mascia:
Well, I live in New York, so I meet people from all over the world and it's one of the first things they want to know. Why do you have so many shootings here? Because so many people come here for a better life. They're fleeing violence and they come to a country where there's a lot of shootings. It's said California has such strong gun laws, and California does. I grew up in California. I remember a time before the gun laws were as strong, but the truth is globally, if California was a country, it would be the country with the weakest gun laws, because compared to our economic peers, they make it much harder to get a gun. In California, strong gun laws are considered to be universal background checks, so you can't just sell a gun to a neighbor without a background check, considered to be red flag laws and those kind of things.
Jennifer Mascia:
But registering a gun once every five years is not checking in with gun owners to make sure they're still mentally stable. It's not requiring character references and interviewing your next of kin and your partner to see has this person just gone through a divorce? Another destabilizing life event, the kinds that we all go through. Is this person in crisis? That's what other countries do, and they did it, they started doing it, before there were millions and millions of guns in circulation. So they were able to control the flow. We have a situation where we have weakened gun laws overall. From state to state, it can vary, and we have 400 million guns out there. It makes it a very difficult problem to control.
Farai Chideya:
Is there a relationship between a state's gun laws and gun violence stats? I mean, do stricter gun laws prevent deaths?
Jennifer Mascia:
The states with the highest rates of gun death have the loosest gun laws. We see that over and over again. Every year, the CDC publishes firearm mortality statistics in their CDC wonder database, and we see the loosest gun laws is really the Gulf states in the south, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, those have the highest rates of gun death and the lowest, the laxest gun laws. The states with the strongest gun laws statistically have the lowest rates of gun death, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. California is actually... has the eighth lowest rate of gun death in the country, which I know is cold comfort to people who were suffering this week, last week and every day, because California's a state with a massive population. But these are the states, New York, New Jersey, very low gun deaths and it's very hard to get a gun here. I live in New York City. If you want to get a gun, you have to go through a year-long process that costs $500 and involves a lot of paperwork and vetting. It's similar to what other countries have. So we have very low gun deaths here.
Farai Chideya:
I was just thinking about open carry, concealed carry, all of the issues that this brings up for our society that's already heavily armed and frankly in a deep mental health crisis. Someone I know who's an investigative reporter had a family member who saw a guy in full paramilitary gear with an AR-15 walk into her apartment building and called the police, and the police were like, "It's an open carry state, lady. He can dress however he wants and he can carry whatever he wants." Is that just something that we have to put up with now?
Jennifer Mascia:
Unfortunately, yes, and in some states that allow that, and the line is very thin between someone expressing their Second Amendment right and somebody launching a public armed attack. In Colorado Springs a few years ago, I think it was 2015, there was a man walking around the neighborhood in full regalia and somebody complained, and the police said, "It's his right," and he later opened fire.
Farai Chideya:
Oh wow.
Jennifer Mascia:
This is something that law enforcement is forced to grapple with. As gun laws are being weakened across the country, really is impingent upon them to decide is this person about to launch an attack or are they just expressing their Second Amendment right in a Walmart? And this is something that varies again from state to state.
Farai Chideya:
So last November you wrote about two families in their fight for gun control in 1992 after the killing of Yoshihiro Hattori, a 16-year-old Japanese high school exchange student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Can you tell us a little bit about that case?
Jennifer Mascia:
What was absolutely stunning to me was that I was in high school when this happened, and I don't remember it. And these kids were my age. So Yoshihiro Hattori was a Japanese exchange student who came to Louisiana to stay with a host family, and he was universally beloved in the community. Everybody embraced him. 16 years old, he's here a couple months, he and his host brother are on their way to a Halloween party that is thrown by another Japanese exchange student, and they knock on the wrong door. And this is something that you can almost imagine happening now, and does happen now. The person whose door they knocked on took one look at him and they were very confused, and the families believed that racism played a role, and the homeowner opened fire and killed this young student.
Jennifer Mascia:
And it was a tragedy. And the reason I'm shocked I didn't remember it, is because it made international news. Now this was 1992. We didn't even have 400 million guns out there yet, and this shocked the world. What is going on in America that you can't even knock on someone's door and make it out alive? And people who want to come here, they see this and they're starting to think twice, like some of the people who were killed in Half Moon Bay had come to this country from Mexico and South American countries just to be killed by a bullet, by the very violent lifestyle they're fleeing. It's really tragic when people come from countries that have no gun violence just to die here from a bullet.
Farai Chideya:
I've done some reporting on the US Mexico border over different decades and it just strikes me how important it is, and most people don't know this, that we are this net exporter of guns to Mexico and we get drugs. It's like our drug habits help fuel the narco trafficking, and we somehow sit on a high horse here in this country about crime in Mexico and it's like we are, frankly the cause of a lot of the crime.
Jennifer Mascia:
It's really staggering when you think that people are fleeing violence that's caused by American guns and the guns are smuggled across the border from those border states that have relatively weak gun laws. Texas, Arizona, and the Mexican government, as you know, tried to sue over this and got their lawsuit tossed. They're suing again. They're suing specific gun makers in those border states, because I think they narrowed it down to a few bad apple gun dealers are fueling this problem. Guns don't make it to the black market straight from the Ruger factory. They come from unscrupulous gun dealers, legal gun owners who don't lock their guns up, and people who sell their guns in the private market, unregulated sales. So these are supposed to be law abiding gun dealers and gun owners, and the problem is coming from them.
Farai Chideya:
So we had on recently Dr. Erroll Southers who's a counterterrorism expert, and he talked about how the use of open carry by Black Panthers in California ended up changing the gun laws in California under Ronald Reagan. Basically, they were like, "Oh, we can't have Black people open carrying rifles to question the police about traffic stops." And so it was this very weird mix of race and politics, like so many mixes of race and politics, but these happened in California, which has some of these strict gun laws. What's happening in a state like California?
Jennifer Mascia:
So early American gun control is all racist. If you look back, the earliest gun control laws were to make sure that people of color and Indigenous people could not get guns. It was really used as a way to prop up white supremacy, a white supremacist hierarchy where white people are armed and people of color have no recourse. Gun ownership has changed. It's much more racially diverse now. A lot more women own guns, a lot more people of color, but we have 400 million guns and very few checks on who gets them. So gun control laws, and also criminal penalties for gun possession, always full hardest on people of color. This is a problem that always comes back most disproportionately to people of color, which is one of the reasons a lot of pro-gun lawmakers can use as an excuse to just ignore the problem, "Look, it's happening over there. Don't worry about it."
Farai Chideya:
That was Jennifer Mascia, Senior News Writer and Founding Staffer at The Trace. Coming up next, more from my conversation with Jennifer Mascia on gun violence, and after that, did America's insurrection influence Brazil's? We've got foreign policy expert and host of YouTube show Oh my World Hagar Chemali and creator of the What in the World podcast Bunmi Akinnusoto.
Speaker 3:
I do think that America, for better or worse, is like the adult in your life who you admire but also hate, so whatever they do, you kind of do or kind of signals to you that you can do.
Farai Chideya:
That's on Our Body Politic.
Welcome back to Our Body Politic. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Senior News Writer and Founding Staffer at The Trace Jennifer Mascia about the crisis of gun violence across the nation. Let's tick through a bunch of different factors that affect things. One is the courts. We've talked a little bit about state laws, but has the Supreme Court weighed in on gun regulations?
Jennifer Mascia:
Yes. In June, a very pivotal decision came out, New York State Pistol and Rifle Association versus Bruen, and it for the first time established the right to carry a concealed gun in public. In 2008, we had another pivotal decision, that was the precursor to this, that established for the first time the right to keep a gun for self-defense. Our Second Amendment does say well-regulated militia, and until 2008, that's pretty much how the courts had ruled. Now with Bruen, this is throwing the courts into chaos in a lot of ways. If you want to... For federal judges who are trying to decide whether a gun law is constitutional, they have to find an analog in history to prove that it's part of our historical tradition.
Jennifer Mascia:
Judges really need to get creative here. Judges who want to uphold gun safety laws have to get creative. The analogs are there, but they have to dig through history books to find them. One judge actually said, "I need to hire a historian." Judges who want to void gun laws, if they're particularly pro-gun judges, and we've seen this in Texas and other states, they can say, "Well, it didn't exist in 1800s, so it's not going to exist today." Well, universal background checks didn't exist in 1800, assault style rifles didn't exist in 1800, and not to mention, for people who want to look to our past to uphold gun laws, as I mentioned, a lot of our gun laws are very racist. So for any progressive judges who want to uphold gun safety, they're going to have to thumb through some pretty racist laws in order to justify their conclusions. Like I said, this is a quandary and it's thrown the courts in chaos.
Farai Chideya:
Let's switch over to some of the psychographics of gun violence. In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, researchers from the Violence Project outlined several "signs of crisis found in people who commit mass shootings." And so how useful is this kind of post-incident analysis to put a predictive framework or analytical framework around this?
Jennifer Mascia:
I love the work that the Violence Project is doing. I think that Signs of Crisis editorial was extremely effective. One thing that struck me is that a lot of those signs of crisis did not rise to the level of disarming that person through the law. It's a pretty high bar to take a gun from somebody. You need to be someone who has a felony, who has been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. These are very high bars. Some states have other bars like red flag laws, like if somebody is displaying some troubling behavior that indicates they might be a risk to themselves or others, a court can look at that and decide whether there should be a temporary separation from that gun. But most states don't have red flag laws, most states don't have those laws. So yeah, you have a situation where you have these strong laws in progressive states and then weak laws in Republican led states, and so they run the gamut.
Farai Chideya:
Obviously to begin to analyze these hallmarks without stigmatizing people who seek mental health treatment, because that would be the absolute worst if you then put people in a position where they're too afraid to go get help. So having covered gun violence and mass shootings for over a decade, how do you yourself, Jennifer, process the heavy feelings that come from doing this work? How do you take care of yourself as you help the world?
Jennifer Mascia:
Well, I sleep it off on the weekends. That's kind of what I do. I make sure I get rest on the weekends. I make sure that there is a time when I do turn it off. Of course, during catastrophic mass shootings, it's difficult. But there used to be a point in every mass shooting where I would just have a breakdown and just really cry. After a while, you grow a callous that those moments become fewer and farther between. I'm not terribly optimistic and I always have to fight feelings of that variety because look, we're in a country where our strongest gun laws aren't enough to stop mass shootings and mass gun death. But I just let that... I try to channel that into not anger, but let's just say passion. I try to channel that into some kind of purpose because I just keep telling myself, even if this problem is not solved in my lifetime, which I don't think it will be, at least I did something. At least I didn't just do nothing.
Farai Chideya:
Absolutely. With very deep gratitude for all of your wisdom and your service, thank you, Jennifer.
Jennifer Mascia:
Thank you so much.
Farai Chideya:
That was Jennifer Mascia, Senior News Writer and Founding Staffer at The Trace. You're listening to Our Body Politic. I'm your host Farai Chideya. We're taking a close look at gun violence, the trauma it leaves in its wake, and what we can do about this crisis. The stress and grief that come from mass shootings plus the seemingly never ending news reports and social media coverage can take a real toll on our mental health and our community. So how do we start to heal?
Farai Chideya:
My next guest is Dr. Thema Bryant, a pioneer in the field of trauma recovery. She's the 2023 President of the American Psychological Association. She's also a Graduate Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University, and author of the book, Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self. She goes by Dr. Thema for short. Welcome Dr. Bryant.
Dr. Thema Bryant:
Thank you so much for having me.
Farai Chideya:
Let me just say on the record, thank you for the work you do. It is not easy and we need it desperately. I'm so excited to dive in here. So after the recent California shootings, the APA released a statement that "the impact of these acts of violence permeates our culture and is especially profound in communities of color." Tell us why the APA released that statement and what is behind that?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
It is so important for us to share psychological science, to help inform people of their own experiences and also to inform our policymakers. Many people are aware of physical health consequences but are not always tuned in to the psychological impact, and a big part of our work at APA is educating the public and informing the public so that we can come with real life solutions that can address our current crises.
Farai Chideya:
So how did you become who you are and get into this work?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
So I am a pastor's daughter. He's now retired, but growing up, particularly in the Black community, many people would go to their minister or pastor before they might go to a mental health provider, and so growing up my dad provided pastoral counseling and I was always hearing people, whether meeting with him at the church or calling our home. I say in my book Homecoming that my first time working a crisis hotline was working the phones at my house growing up, but just recognizing the challenges that our community members face, and then of course as I grew older, learning about other communities as well, and wanting to be of service. And so I have always been a listener and one who feels things deeply, but also wanting to look at systemic change. The ministry that I grew up in would be one that recognizes liberation theology, so utilizing faith to free people, to liberate people and empower people. So it was interesting once I went into psychology, learning about approaches, such as liberation psychology, that really encouraged us to not only look at the individual, but looking at how we can transform systems.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Staying with faith for a second, I grew up Catholic and I no longer am a practicing Catholic, but I am interfaith. I go and worship wherever there is love and respect. And for some people, faith of origin is healing, for some people, their faith of origin is trauma, for some people it's both. But right now, we are killing each other and killing ourselves. Homicide, suicide, whether it's a mass shooting or one person dying at their own hands or one person dying at the hands of a loved one, because so much of violence, including gun violence, is personal in some way. How do you fit into this cycle? What is your role?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
Yes. So as psychologists, it's important for us to be bridge builders and also to be a part of interdisciplinary communities. So some people in the faith community are doing great work. When we think about in the educational system what is being taught both on a primary level but also in higher education. When we consider your role in the media, that when we look at violence and aggression, it really shows up in every area of our lives, and so in order for us to shift that tide, it requires each of us working in the domains or the disciplines in which we are best suited and best informed, but also working together.
Dr. Thema Bryant:
So I'm excited about the work at the American Psychological Association, but also really appreciative of our ability to collaborate with others. When I first started in the field or early on, I was one of APA's representatives to the United Nations, and one of the things I noticed quickly is if we recommended some language and it was only us as an individual organization, it would have much less impact than if we connected with other associations. So that piece of us being in solidarity with each other and working in collaboration is really important.
Farai Chideya:
So the mental health of mass shooters is admittedly complicated, but a study from the violence project reviewed 185 mass shootings from 1966 to 2022, finding that mass killings are a symptom of a deeper societal problem, the continued rise of what's sometimes called deaths of despair. How do you put that puzzle together, and what do you make of it?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
So despair can really capture a piece of the experience, and we want to look at it on multiple levels, so individually, when people feel disconnected, when people feel disempowered, and also when we have pervasive disinformation or misinformation, if you have someone who is already in this space of despair, they can be much more open to the idea of who are my enemies? Who are the people that are ruining my life? And if they weren't here, I could flourish. If it wasn't for them, I would thrive. Then you'll see some of those messages about whether it is immigrants or whether it's about sexual orientation, about women. They become the target of people's outrage as a way of explaining to themselves why my life is in the shape that it's in. It can be important for us to look at that individually when we think about psychology, but then we also want to think about systems, family and community as an important part of that as well.
Dr. Thema Bryant:
One of the pieces that we're looking at is this notion of belonging. Do people feel seen, known, heard, understood, appreciated? And when that is not present, for us to intervene, and I'm going to say across demographics, because what we have sometimes seen in the media, if the person who is committing the action is a white male, then often there are these narratives of sympathy. If this person was lonely and misunderstood, but if that person is Black or brown, often the narrative is just they're monsters, they're thugs, they're criminals. And so I would just offer, when we put the psychological frame on it, it's important that we humanize and look at the psychological frame for all people, and also of course, not overlooking those who have been victimized.
Farai Chideya:
Absolutely. To stay with you for a second, we do a lot of reporting on this show about extremism and how some extremist movements also commit acts of domestic terrorism. And there's a lot of work being done to look into people who view white supremacist movements as that place where they feel safe. That was part of my reporting from the time I was 25 years old interviewing people in the Klan and Aryan Nation who found their sense of identity in these organized white supremacist organizations. So sometimes people seek belonging in scary places. What can one do if you have a friend or relative who's seeking belonging in a place that's not particularly healthy?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
Yes, thank you for raising that because it is true, and often these groups prey on people's desire to be special, to be connected, to be valued. And so we want to be mindful of when my valuing is dependent on the devaluing of another. That what makes me special is because you are so not special or you all are so immoral, it becomes that hierarchy, these hierarchies of oppression. One of the things which we have found beneficial is when we have the testimonials of those who were formally a part of it.
Dr. Thema Bryant:
Because sometimes when you have no exposure or life experience within these particular groups, you are already labeled or seen as suspicious or that you don't know what you're talking about. And so it can be really powerful to hear the various awakenings or people who were part of it, what was the process like? And often there was already an internal tension where something is not sitting right within the group, and knowing that there can be life on the other side of that, other options and ways of living can also be exposure because if that's who you're around all the time, then they seek the same news sources. They confirm each other's biases. It makes a difference to have some other connections with people who have a different way of understanding the world.
Farai Chideya:
And what about people who are suffering from intimate partner violence? If you had someone in your life who you really loved, who you didn't want to end up in the criminal justice system, but who was potentially a threat to you, what should someone do if they have concerns?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
Yes. When someone is enacting violence on the family, they themselves are not doing well. It is not really in their best interest for us to just keep the secret and hope that they're going to change, and it is important for the public to know when it comes to intimate partner violence, mental health professionals are not mandated reporters. If you come and tell a therapist you're in an abusive relationship, they're not going to contact the police unless you would like that or your life is in danger today. When someone is trying to work out what is their plan of action, mental health professionals are there. We would like to be a part of people's process of getting safe, and then of course our healing.
Farai Chideya:
Well, we don't have a lot more time to talk today. These are deep issues that we want to keep revisiting, but what do you do to refill your well when you deal with heavy topics like this?
Dr. Thema Bryant:
I find community to be so important, and so being able to connect with friends, whether it is being able to talk about the news of the day and the stress and strengths of life, or also being able to step outside of that and just enjoy ourselves, whether over a meal or dancing. It's important that we honor our full humanity, and while we need space for our grief and our outrage, we also need space for our joy.
Farai Chideya:
Thank you, Dr. Thema.
Dr. Thema Bryant:
Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
That was Dr. Thema Bryant, President of the American Psychological Association, Graduate Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University, and author of the book Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. This episode, we are trying something new. We are sharing our fan favorite sip in the Political Tea Roundtable as a separate podcast drop, so you get to hear the extended conversation. You can find the episode right after this one in your feed called OBP Extras. I'm joined by foreign policy expert and host of YouTube show Oh My World Hagar Chemali and foreign policy enthusiast and creator of the What in the World podcast Bunmi Akinnusoto. We break down what's happening in Brazil and how extremism in the US is driving populism around the world. Trust me, you are going to want to hear this. That's on Our Body Politic. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Farai Chideya:
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I’m host and executive producer, Farai Chideya. Jonathan Blakely is our executive producer. Nina Spensley is also executive producer.Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booking producer. Steve Lack and Anoa Changa are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. Kelsey Kudak is our fact checker.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Harry Evans, Archie Moore and Mike Gohler.
Farai Chideya:
This program is produced with support from the Luce Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the B-Me Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.