Malcolm Gladwell Wants Us To Have An Honest Conversation About Gun Violence

Sasha-Ann Simons (0:12)

Hey Chicago, I'm Sasha-Ann Simons, and this is In the Loop.

Be sure to listen all the way through the podcast for a breakdown of the day's top local stories. But first, America has more gun violence than any of its peer countries, but authors like Malcolm Gladwell say we're still having the wrong conversations about why.

In Gladwell's latest book, The American Way of Killing, he takes a closer look at what's behind lethal violence. From what happens in a quickly escalated argument to how trauma care can actually cover up the true scale of the violence. In this episode of the pod, we'll dig into the personal stories that Malcolm Gladwell shares throughout the book, from folks who often come in contact with gun violence. And he'll share lessons in how we can all respond to the crisis. Let's hear now from Malcolm Gladwell, journalist and author of eight New York Times bestsellers. Now, when we last talked a couple years ago at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Malcolm and I discovered that we do have something in common. We both grew up in Canada and we have Caribbean roots. That means we had the experience of looking at the US from the outside, before living and working within it. So, I asked Malcolm how that outsider's view shaped how he saw the gun violence problem. Here he is.

Malcolm Gladwell (1:34)

Well, it's funny, you know exactly what I'm about to say.

Canada is in so many ways when you're Canadian, you're struck by the similarities between Canada and the United States.

If you grew up in Toronto, the border is 50 miles away. It's people who are in the same food, watching the same television shows, same movies, but the many you cross the border, the homicide rate triples, or even sometimes it's even more than that. And that's puzzling, right? It requires an explanation. And I grew up, we get Time magazine in the mail every week, and I would read about this strange country named America that I'd never visited, but was so close. And I could never, from the earliest time, I was always struck by this fact, why in this one respect is America so different? And I've been puzzling about that my entire life.

Sasha-Ann Simons (2:31)

Yeah, you talk about in the book, childhood, thinking of America as this big, rich country, this enormous country, but also dangerous, right? And sort of seeing the danger in a different way as a kid versus now as an adult. You also write the epidemic of gun violence, while it's also a reality, we still have to learn the why. So what have you picked up as to why that is? Is it just the availability of guns, or is something deeper?

Malcolm Gladwell (2:58)

It's much more complicated than that. You know, the first part of American Way of Killing is devoted to explaining what I think is the dishonest conversation Americans have about gun violence. I think that fundamentally, we don't understand what our problem is. And the discussion that we have about how to fix it, is as a result, deeply compromised. Because we're very often talking about problems we don't have.

You know, for example, here's a really simple one.

Americans constantly talk about how crime is out of control. If you, you know, many crimes like whether your house is going to be broken into, whether your car is going to be stolen, whether you're going to be mugged on the street, those levels of crime are not higher in US than they are in Western Europe. They're about the same. In some cases, lower. Your car is more likely to be stolen in Montreal than it is in Chicago, right? What's different about America is the level of violence.

Sasha-Ann Simons (3:55)

Yeah. And you make the distinction in the book, crime versus violence.

Malcolm Gladwell (3:58)

They are two very different things. They have different roots. They involve different people. They have different solutions. And, you know, that's a very simple point. But when you muddy those two, you muddy your response, right? And the second thing, I mean, I could go on from there. I have another chapter in the book that I point out that, where I point out that America compared to Western European countries is under policed. You know, we think we're over policed. But if you compare, I compare with Los Angeles and Berlin in the book. They're the same size. They both are these wealthy, sophisticated cities. LA has 8,500 police officers.

Berlin has 18,000.

Right? It's like that's true across the board in Western European countries. And like that, that's not part of the way we discuss our police. We have all kinds of legitimate gripes with our police. But no one ever says, you know, we're trying to govern, to impose law and order in our cities with a fraction of the resources that our counterparts in Western Europe do.