The American Way of Violence: Mike McIntire on Guns, Greed, and a Daily Trickle of Bloodshed

**Mike McIntire** (0:00)
Hello.

**Andrew Keen** (0:01)
My name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. Is there an American Way of Violence? Earlier this month, early in July, we had the great film critic David Thomson on the show, Thomson Without The P, his new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light, A Revisionist History of Movies is quite self-critical. He acknowledges that maybe he was wrong about the movies, that they brought out America's most violent side, the model he uses, or the exhibit A for his argument in A Sudden Flicker of Light is The Godfather, which in his view glorifies violence, though it's not just The Godfather. He traces a lot of this cult of violence to the raised fist photographs of Donald Trump, his famous Fight Fight photographs, and response after he was shot at back in 2024 Anyway, this idea of an American Way of Violence is also the subject of our conversation today with New York Times investigative journalist. He's won Pulitzer Prize three times, three different teams. He has a new book out on gun culture. It's called Ricochet, Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence. Mike McIntire, the book is out this week. Mike McIntire is joining us from his home in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Mike, before we start talking about the arguments that you have in Ricochet, do you think that David Thomson has a point? I'm not sure if you've had a chance to look at his new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light. He thinks, I mean, he doesn't blame everything on Hollywood. He's a much more sophisticated writer than that. But he is deeply fearful of the way in which Hollywood has glorified violence in America.

**Mike McIntire** (2:23)
Well, thanks for having me, Andrew. It's an interesting debate. I mean, what is at the roots of our, in this particular case, our gun violence problem, which is the subject of my book. There's plenty of room for debate about the role of guns themselves, or mental health, violent video games, movies, toxic social media.
One of the things that I get at in my book is that, if you look around the developed world, almost every country has some degree of the same problem, right? So every country has this issue with crime, with-

**Andrew Keen** (2:57)
Even Norway had a mass shooting a few years ago. So if the Norwegians can do it, anyone can.

**Mike McIntire** (3:03)
Yeah. And all of these issues that other countries might have, that's similar to ours in terms of violent movies, violent video games, mental health issues.
The one thing they don't have, Reggie, even the exception of your example you just cited, notwithstanding, is a repetitive, constant problem with school children, grocery shoppers, churchgoers being massacred on a regular basis. There are certainly outliers that happen occasionally. The United States is far and away, way out in front on that kind of ignominious mile marker. So I think that raises a question, what is it that's different about the United States and its relationship to violence than compared to other countries? One of the things certainly is the easy availability, prevalence, and at times arguably, irresponsible marketing of guns. You just don't have that outside the United States.
I think once you understand that, it helped explain why we have up to 40,000 people a year, half of them suicides, dying from guns, and why guns are responsible for 75 to 80 percent of all homicides. So these are uniquely dangerous things, and yet we treat them in the United States almost as any other consumer good, to be bought and sold and marketed and kept around a house, around your person almost like an iPhone or a wallet. So these are things which I think contribute to America's unique relationship to violence in a way that other countries don't experience it. So I think the issue of Hollywood and video games and mental health are all certainly valid points of debate. But I think you have to get at this one issue which is different from what other countries experience that it really is the gun itself.

**Andrew Keen** (4:54)
The gun itself, I mean, we all know the terrible tragedies at Sandy Hook and Parkland every year or two there seems to be a new kind of outrage. Mike, you mentioned the numbers. Perhaps you might tell us, should we be more concerned with individual deaths, suicides, domestic flare ups, more than these headline making events like Parkland and Sandy Hook, which are obviously catastrophic for those involved, but may not tell the whole story?

**Mike McIntire** (5:29)
I think that's a really good point. It is something I do discuss in the book. There is a daily trickle of bloodshed that I think doesn't get the attention that these terrible one-time tragedies do. There's an analogy here which I think is useful. I mean, if you have a plane crash, God forbid, in which 200 people die, you're going to have a massive media and government response. But when 200 people die in random isolated shootings in 50 states, in a similar period of time, you just don't get the same kind of attention. There may be a local news story and then that's it.