Conspirituality Episode 275: It’s Never the Guns

Date: September 18, 2025
Hosts: Derek Barris, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Overview

In this episode, the Conspirituality team dissects the persistent US gun violence crisis, focusing on the conspiratorial and deflective narratives that sidestep the role of firearms and instead blame factors like antidepressants or mental illness. Using recent high-profile shootings—including the assassination of Charlie Kirk—as a springboard, the hosts analyze where these narratives originate, their intersection with conspiritualist thinking and wellness influencers, and the failure of both right-wing and centrist discourse to address the core problem: widespread access to guns.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Recent Mass Shootings and the Political Response

• Julian outlines a harrowing timeline of recent shootings and the customary deflection from gun access to scapegoats like "violent rhetoric," trans people, and antidepressants.
  • Notable Data:
    • 2020 saw over 21 million legal gun purchases—a 64% spike from the previous year.
    • The US leads high-income countries in gun deaths by a factor of 10; child gun deaths are up to 80 times higher.
    • Since the conservative Supreme Court supermajority and Project 2025 implementation, gun control is weakening: more states allow permitless concealed carry (29 in 2025, up from just 4 in 2013) and bump stocks have returned.
    • States with weaker gun laws have higher gun deaths (e.g., Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama lead; MA, NJ, NY lowest).
    • [03:17] Julian: “The largest single variable in our normalized crisis of gun violence is simply access to guns.”

2. Guns as an Intractable American Crisis

• Matthew: Uses a Buddhist metaphor to describe America's gun issue as a compounded, almost unremovable social problem. Argues that with 300 million guns in circulation, meaningful reform feels almost impossible—"the window for amnesties or buybacks ... is closing or closed."

  • [06:46] Matthew: “It sort of compounds over time…with 300 million guns in the country…the window for amnesties and buybacks…is closing or closed.”

• Julian: Emphasizes that while gun erasure is unrealistic, gun control laws do mitigate fatalities. The American gun fetishization amplifies the crisis, especially among shooters idolizing militarized weapons.

• Derek: Notes NRA’s unwavering stance (“guns are for everyone”) even when the right briefly suggested restricting trans people’s access to guns.

3. Cultural Contradictions & Personal Reflections

• Matthew: Reflects on growing up as a dual US-Canadian citizen, feeling the “crazy-making” contradiction of American culture—especially its normalization of war, violence, and gun ownership.
  • Recounts his Canadian mother’s decision to leave the US, partly due to gun prevalence:
    • [09:04] Matthew: “She could not comprehend a country where ... so many people have guns.”
    • Recalls a neighbor shooting at their barking dog, underlining gun saturation in rural life.

4. Mental Health as a GOP Deflection

• Julian: Critiques how Republicans invoke mental health after shootings but consistently underfund and stigmatize it.

• Cites key research:

  • The Violence Project: (Paul Densley/Gillian Peterson)—Four recurring shooter traits: early trauma, crisis/suicidality, validation via studying other shootings, and gun access. Shooters often "leak" intentions beforehand—an unmet "cry for help."
  • Mechanisms of Radicalization: (McCauley et al.)—Lone attackers, assassins, and school shooters often share personal/political grievances, loss of supportive routine (“unfreezing”), sometimes aided by connection to violent groups through friends or family.
    • [13:37] Julian: "Unfreezing refers to the loss of ... everyday reassurance of relationships and routines."

• Matthew: Ponders the use of “unfreezing” as a term, suggesting it as a metaphor for losing the normative forces that inhibit violence.

• Another Study: (Corner/Gill, 2015) shows lone actor terrorists are more likely to have mental illness than group actors—advocating nuanced, integrated approaches rather than false dichotomies.

5. The Antidepressant Blame Game: RFK Jr. and SSRIs

• Julian: Introduces RFK Jr.’s claim (echoed after Annunciation Catholic School shooting) that contemporary gun violence wasn’t a problem “when kids brought guns to school”—implying overmedication is to blame.

  • [18:30] Julian (quoting RFK Jr.): “Kids brought guns to school and … nobody was walking into school and just shooting people.”

• Derek: Deconstructs the history and science of antidepressants:

  • Pharmacological treatments for depression are rooted in 19th/20th-century chemistry, much of which had serendipitous or industrial origins (e.g., methylene blue, textile dyes).
  • Many original psychiatric drugs were discovered incidentally while searching for remedies to other illnesses.
  • The journey from tranquilizers through MAOIs and TCAs to the widespread use of SSRIs like Prozac is winding, complex, and riddled with side effects and public skepticism.
  • The serotonin hypothesis of depression is highly contested; SSRIs help many, but are not a miracle cure and do have documented risks.
  • [30:48] Derek: “This is also a class of drugs that were developed from Ehrlich’s research. ... It was the first blockbuster drug, with over a billion pills produced in 1957.”

6. The Wellness World, Natural Fallacies, and Chemical Purity

• Matthew & Julian: Discuss why wellness and conspirituality cultures are so susceptible to anti-pharmaceutical rhetoric:

  • Language barrier: Intimidation from multisyllabic chemical names—Kennedy using this as a rhetorical weapon.
  • Targeted effect vs. holistic healing: Western medicine’s “targeted” interventions (with side effects) clash with holistic traditions’ expectations of systemic, ‘natural’ cures.
    • [32:02] Derek: “They all want to be shamans… the idea that you could just travel somewhere and fix somebody whole cloth is very seductive … to a mind that… doesn’t really understand how the scientific process works.”

• Julian: Points out that even natural psychedelics have side effects (e.g., vomiting on ayahuasca), though they're recast as “purging,” not adverse reactions.

• Derek: Notes that pharmacology’s evolution is defined by trial and error—and constant risk/benefit recalibration. Side effects are real, but so too are the life-saving benefits. Nuance is lost in influencer discourse.

7. Data: SSRIs & Violent Events

• All hosts criticize RFK Jr.'s deterministic blame of antidepressants.
  • Data Points:
    • About 4% of mass shooters had ever used SSRIs—less than the baseline population of children prescribed them.
    • [48:59] Matthew: “Only about 4% of mass shooters over the past several decades had taken antidepressants, including SSRIs ... That’s way lower than the baseline rates … by orders of magnitude there are more kids using SSRIs than kids … doing mass shootings.”
    • Raises the logical possibility that SSRIs may have a net preventative effect on violence.
  • The capacity for SSRIs to contribute to violence is statistically minor—nuance gets lost in deterministic, conspiratorial public rhetoric.

8. The Real Causes Overlooked: Material and Social Factors

• Matthew: Argues that both right-wing conspiratorial and centrist “hand-wringing” about "our boys" avoid root causes:

  • Relationship issues, isolation, economic stress, volatile online cultures.
  • Radicalization of shooters increasingly flows through online subcultures like 4chan/“groypers,” which older generations (and policymakers) fail to comprehend.
  • [51:23] Matthew: “At the center of these overlapping panics… is the specter of the young depressed or anxious or immiserated man or boy. ... Is he evil? … Is he poisoned by vaccines or SSRIs? Is he under the spell of Andrew Tate or wokeness …?”

• Julian: Explains that scapegoating SSRIs or mental health both aligns with chemical purity narratives (“bad parent if you use drugs”) and with centrist perfectionism (“bad parent if you coddle or accommodate”). Both fail to address economic precarity or provide real support structures.

• Matthew: “What the MAHA to centrists share … is a conspicuous silence on material support, universal healthcare, free education, college debt cancellation, maybe even a public works employment guarantee.” [59:10]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Julian Walker [03:17]:
  “The largest single variable in our normalized crisis of gun violence is simply access to guns.”

• Matthew Remski [06:46]:
  “With 300 million guns … the window for amnesties or buybacks or legislative sort of initiatives is closing or closed.”

• Matthew Remski [09:18]:
  "My Canadian mother said, this country is insane and we're getting out of here.”

• Julian Walker [13:37]:
  “Unfreezing refers to the loss of the everyday reassurance of relationships and routines.”

• Julian Walker (quoting RFK Jr.) [18:30]:
  “Kids brought guns to school and … nobody was walking into school and just shooting people.”

• Derek Barris [30:48]:
  “It became the world's first blockbuster drug, with over a billion pills produced in 1957.”

• Derek Barris [32:02]:
  “They all want to be shamans, or a lot of them do. And this idea that you could just travel somewhere and fix somebody whole cloth is very seductive to a mind that … doesn’t really understand how the scientific process works.”

• Matthew Remski [48:59]:
  “Only about 4% of mass shooters over the past several decades had taken antidepressants, including SSRIs... That’s way lower than the baseline rates of antidepressant use in the general population.”

• Matthew Remski [59:10]:
  “What the maha to centrists share is a conspicuous silence on material support, universal healthcare, free education, college debt cancellation, maybe even a public works employment guarantee. ... I think it's easier to catastrophize about boys needing Prozac and blaming parents if they use it than it is to imagine building a better world for them.”

Key Timestamps

• [01:44] — Recap of recent shootings and rhetorical deflections
• [03:17] — Data on US gun sales, laws, and fatalities
• [06:46] — America’s entrenched gun problem metaphor
• [10:54] — Mental health as a policy-deflecting scapegoat
• [13:37] — Radicalization mechanisms and the peril of “unfreezing”
• [18:30] — RFK Jr. on the “good old days” and SSRIs
• [30:48] — The history of psychiatric medication and tranquilizers
• [32:02] — Holistic vs. targeted pharma, “shaman” complex
• [39:33] — Antidepressants and gun violence: data, myths, and nuance
• [48:59] — Mass shooter mental health statistics
• [51:23] — The “mystery menacing boy” as cultural scapegoat
• [59:10] — The core axiom: diversion from material solutions

Summary

This episode of Conspirituality exposes the recurrent American pattern of denying the central variable in gun violence—gun access—by scapegoating extraneous factors, especially antidepressants (SSRIs) and supposed mental health crises. The hosts methodically debunk both the conspiratorial anti-pharma narrative popularized by figures like RFK Jr. and the broader culture’s failure to address root causes such as poverty, social atomization, and political inaction. They call attention to the data: mental illness and antidepressant prescriptions are weak predictors of mass violence compared to sheer gun availability. Throughout, the hosts maintain their critical, dryly humorous tone, urging Americans, especially in wellness and centrist spaces, to confront uncomfortable realities and push for real systemic change rather than magical thinking or scapegoating.