But a Democrat, John Dingell, was absolutely central in everything you're talking about.

Yes.

On this particular story of the radicalization of the NRA, he definitely was.

And yes, he was a liberal Democrat.

He was a liberal warrior on issues like healthcare and labor, education, environment.

But on this one thing, he was very much out of step with the rest of his party most of the time.

By the time you reach the end of the 1960s, you've got a real important moment in the evolution of gun rights, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and that was largely in response to the political violence, assassinations, and street crime happening in the '60s fueled by cheap revolvers called Saturday Night Specials.

Hmm.

But a Democrat, John Dingell, was absolutely central in everything you're talking about.

Yes.

On this particular story of the radicalization of the NRA, he definitely was.

And yes, he was a liberal Democrat.

He was a liberal warrior on issues like healthcare and labor, education, environment.

But on this one thing, he was very much out of step with the rest of his party most of the time.

By the time you reach the end of the 1960s, you've got a real important moment in the evolution of gun rights, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and that was largely in response to the political violence, assassinations, and street crime happening in the '60s fueled by cheap revolvers called Saturday Night Specials.

Hmm.

Tell us something that you learned that really surprised you and educated you.

One thing that stood out to me in these documents was the effort by the NRA to really focus on cultivating children as the next generation of gun owners.

And there were some interesting papers from the early 1980s where they were basically word for word transcripts of meetings amongst the NRA leadership talking about the need, the really urgent need to get more kids involved with guns.

And it was not just because they wanted to ensure the continued membership of the NRA, but they also kind of wanted to win the bigger argument of just, you know, imbuing the culture with a sense of gun ownership, and they thought that getting kids involved in this would be a way to do that.

And th- in some sense it's similar to the tobacco industry, right? You know, that, that had for years had, you know, tried to appeal to children, get them, get them hooked on smoking with the whole Joe Camel cartoon and all that kind of thing.

Um, there's a little bit of that going on here, too.

But what struck me was what specifically they wanted to do as it was laid out in these documents was get basically, you know, shooting programs, marksmanship programs, rifle training integrated into public school phys ed curriculums.

What was the gun culture that surrounded you?

Do people shoot and kill each other differently in America, or is it just the guns? the prevalence of guns, the ubiquity of guns, which accounts for what you call this daily trickle of bloodshed.

I think there are a lot of unique aspects to the American relationship with violence.

And I want to say, first of all, this is not intended to be some sort of screed about America being a violent country.

I mean, every country has its own history of violence to one degree or another.

And it's unique to that country, and it is for America as well.

I think the best way to answer that question is just point to one particular legal concept which has taken root in the United States.

And you don't find it elsewhere around the world oftentimes.

that as you say the nra uses it many advocates of gun rights suggest that it's written into the constitution when um when i asked you about this american way of violence you didn't talk about the second amendment you didn't mention it

So, so take me through, uh, what goes on and why, despite the fact that 70, 80% of our fellow Americans want this to end, why we can't get it to end.

I think it boils down to largely two words, Second Amendment.

Um, the Supreme Court, uh, has really kind of adopted the gun lobby's long-term effort to reframe our understanding of what the Second Amendment was intended for or what it should do.

Um, you know, we're talking a minute ago about the history of, of the country and gun violence.

The Second Amendment, you know, I think in its plain reading, was intended to preserve the right of people to come together collectively as a militia in defense of the state.

Um, and that was pretty much the interpretation that the courts had for the better part of two centuries, uh, when it even rarely ever came up before the Supreme Court.

Um, until you reach the latter part of the 20th century and the gun lobby, largely the National Rifle Association, really launched a concerted effort to sort of remake our understanding of the Second Amendment and expand gun rights, um, in a, in a, in a huge way by basically, and reinterpreting it to mean that the Second Amendment preserved an individual right to own a gun for any lawful purpose, not just collectively for a militia, which that idea is pretty much defunct and obsolete.

Let's light up and smoke in the first grade." So tell us, uh, in your own words, why was that such an important part of the story, the influence, uh, that the community has, the gun community has on getting the children into the gun ideology?