Podcast Summary: "We are (still) broken."

Show: Tangle
Host: Isaac Saul
Date: August 29, 2025
Episode Theme:
A heartfelt, analytical, and non-partisan reflection on America’s recurring mass shooting tragedies, originally written after Uvalde (May 2022) and updated after the 2025 Annunciation Catholic Church shooting in Minnesota. The episode explores societal brokenness, gun culture, legislative responses, and the traumatizing regularity of mass violence, grappling with both grief and potential solutions.

1. Overview

Isaac Saul revisits and republishes his 2022 essay “We Are Broken” to mark the recent mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. He offers both his raw emotional response and systematic analysis, updated to reflect new facts and statistics, mourning two children killed and reiterating that despite different specifics, the national reaction, polarization, and pain remain unchanged.

2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

A. The Uvalde and Minneapolis Shootings as Mirrors (01:20–03:45)

Saul connects the 2022 Robb Elementary tragedy and the 2025 Minneapolis church shooting, emphasizing the persistent “brokenness” of American society.
The recent shooter was a transgender woman and a former student; the attack appears targeted at Catholic school children.
Saul chooses not to name shooters, instead inviting listeners to remember victims’ names:

“Please remember Fletcher for the person that he was and not the act that ended his life.” — Jesse Merkel, father of one victim (02:40)

B. The Emotional Toll and Predictability (03:45–06:00)

Saul describes the end-of-school excitement children should feel, versus the horror visited upon Uvalde and now Minnesota.
The trauma of mass shootings radiates outward, affecting communities far and wide (“We were 2,000 miles from the Texas town where this happened, but the trauma had already spread to us.” [15:50])

C. Stuck in Partisan Mud: The Cycle of Political Discourse (06:00–09:30)

Predictable cycles of thoughts, prayers, fury, accusations, and politicization follow every shooting.
Memorable quote:

“‘There are just parts of our society that are unfathomably broken, and they occasionally intersect in unspeakably awful and evil ways.’”
— Noam Blum (09:40)
The Onion’s satirical “No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” is cited as sadly evergreen (10:00).

D. Uniquely American: The Scope of Gun Violence (09:30–12:45)

Mass shootings (<1% of gun deaths) have outsize impact through societal terror and psychological trauma.
Up-to-date statistics provided:
- “In 2022, we ended up with 643 mass shootings. 660 in 2023. In 2024, the total notably dropped to 503.” (12:10)

E. The “Blame Pyramid” (14:35–16:45)

Saul breaks down responsibility: shooter, failed warning responses, laws and access, toxic online spaces, and the media’s infamy machine.
Adds “gun culture” as a potent societal influencer, lamenting the shift from a culture of responsible reverence to one of aggressive display and identity.

F. Gun Culture, Political Virtue Signaling, and Social Erosion (17:00–22:15)

The shift: from hushed, responsible gun ownership to performative, politicized displays (“seven years ago...Greg Abbott tweeted, ‘I’m embarrassed Texas is number two in the nation for gun purchases, behind California. Let’s pick up the pace Texans.’” [20:00]).
Saul expresses concern about how cultural attitudes shape laws and resistance to regulation:

“If guns make us feel free and strong, then any restriction...makes us feel less free and less strong. So the obvious answer is to resist all restrictions on guns. And the equally obvious result is what we have now.” (21:05)

G. Policy Analysis: Laws, Loopholes, and “Friction” (22:15–26:50)

America’s gun laws are paradoxically loose compared to regulation of cars, boats, alcohol, pesticides, or even protest marches:

“In our society, we regulate the right to own firearms a lot less than we regulate other weighty responsibilities...” (25:40)
“Friction” — the concept that making something harder (longer process, more requirements) reduces incidence. U.S. gun purchases are astonishingly frictionless.
Editor’s notes update specific legislative changes and statistical trends.

H. Flawed Solutions and Political Cynicism (26:50–31:25)

The “Arm the Teachers” argument (Ken Paxton) is critiqued as lacking evidence and logical consistency:

“There were armed officers at Parkland. In fact, there were armed school resource officers at Uvalde Elementary School. … They still could not stop him from entering the building.” (28:45)
Mental health “solutions” are often proposed as alternatives to gun regulations — but Saul points out underfunding and lack of solid Republican legislative action even as they cite a “mental health crisis”.
Updates cite the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (2022): combines mental health crisis funding with some firearm regulations (30:20).
Democratic ideas like “assault weapon bans” and universal background checks are assessed as politically popular but of limited proven effect.

I. Toward Real Solutions: Licensing, Training, and Responsibility (31:25–34:00)

Saul advocates for a “driving model” for gun ownership: permitting/licensing, mandatory training, regular testing. Research shows permit-to-purchase laws lower homicide and suicide rates.
Anticipates common objections (Second Amendment, comparison to driving), but counters that licensing doesn’t meaningfully restrict freedom — and that common sense and research back up the policy.
Envisions a society that does not simply accept mass violence as inevitable.

“This is not about one issue, and this is not a problem we simply can’t prevent… The least we can do for the kids of Uvalde and the shoppers in Buffalo and now the kids in Minnesota...is have some hope and join together in refusing to accept this as normal.” (33:40)

3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On systemic brokenness:

“Nothing is monocausal. There are just parts of our society that are unfathomably broken, and they occasionally intersect in unspeakably awful and evil ways.”
— Noam Blum, 09:40
On American exceptionalism in gun violence:

“No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens.”
— The Onion, 10:00
On trauma’s ripple effect:

“The trauma had already spread to us.”
— Saul, 15:50
On performative gun culture:

“The bragging, flaunting and intentionally provocative behavior around gun ownership today associates it with a false sense of strength and power and liberty.”
— Saul, 20:40
On regulation and friction:

“In our society, we regulate the right to own firearms a lot less than we regulate other weighty responsibilities, especially those where safety, life or death are at hand.”
— Saul, 25:40
On moving past fatalism:

“The least we can do for the kids of Uvalde and the shoppers in Buffalo and now the kids in Minnesota and all the victims before them is have some hope and join together in refusing to accept this as normal.”
— Saul, 33:40

4. Important Timestamps

01:20 – Introduction; context of rerunning “We Are Broken”
03:45 – Reflection on school year’s end & emotional toll of shootings
06:00 – Description of partisan reactions and regularity of mass shootings
09:40 – Cited quotes from Noam Blum and The Onion
12:10 – Current and recent statistics on shootings
14:35 – The “blame pyramid”
17:00–22:15 – Cultural shifts: gun culture, political displays, virtue signaling
22:15–26:50 – Laws, loopholes, “friction,” and societal comparison
26:50–31:25 – Critique of policy solutions from both right and left
31:25–34:00 – Saul’s own policy proposal
33:40 – Final, hopeful plea

5. Tone and Language

Saul’s style is emotional, earnest, and analytical, oscillating between grief, frustration, and a search for hope.
While advocating reforms, he is critical of partisan “talking points,” instead urging honesty and empathy.
He explicitly addresses listeners' suspicion of his own biases, affirming his commitment to non-partisanship but also honesty about his evolving views.

6. Concluding Takeaways

America’s gun violence epidemic results from a web of cultural, legal, and political failures; no single fix suffices.
Emotional and social trauma from these events is profound and far-reaching.
Performative gun culture and frictionless access are both symptoms and drivers of the problem.
Proposed solutions (from both sides) often lack effectiveness or sincere political will.
Saul’s plea: acknowledge complexity, create genuine friction to access, license and train, enforce existing laws, and refuse to see this as normal—“We are broken, but I hope that we are not so broken we can’t do that.” (33:50)

For further context and similar discussions, see: Tangle newsletter

Transcript

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B (1:20)

Hey everybody. Today's podcast is something a little bit different. After the 2022 shooting at the Rob Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, I publish a piece titled We Are Broken. I'm republishing that piece today in light of the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which killed two children, an 8 year old and a 10 year old, and injured 18 others. The details of the two shootings differ. In some places, the attack from this week appears to be a targeted crime against Catholic school children. The shooter in this case was reportedly a transgender woman and former student at the school in question. There are fewer open questions related to the law enforcement response in the shooting in Minnesota than there were in the Uvalde, Texas shooting. Still, the heart of the stories is the same A young person with multiple guns shot more than a dozen children. Many of the responses were also similar. The statistics have not changed. The discussion of possible solutions is stuck in the same partisan mud. And accordingly, since this story evokes the same pain and anguish and and because my response and proposed solutions still feel relevant, we decided to rerun this piece today in places where I thought it was useful. I've added a few editor's notes to pull in more recent data, context or updates. Relatedly, I would like to remind listeners about our editorial policy not to name mass shooters due to the well documented contagion effect. Instead, I ask you to consider the names Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moisky, 10, two of the children killed in the Minnesota shooting. Fletcher loved his family, friends, fishing, cooking and any sport that he was allowed to play, jesse Merkel, his father, told the press yesterday. Please remember Fletcher for the person that he was and not the act that ended his life. Give your kids an extra hug and kiss today. Given that we are republishing a piece from over three years ago, we've opted to make today's podcast available for all of our audiences, despite the fact that typically these podcasts are members only. That being said, if you like the work that we produce today, you can always go to readtangle.com membership and get future episodes like this one, though obviously this one's particularly hard. So with that I am going to read the piece We Are Broken that I published in May of 2022 with some slight updates Thursday was going to be the last day of class at Rob Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. I can still remember what that time of year felt like as a kid, the anxiety for the week to end so summer could start, the week where nobody did any real work, where the teachers were suddenly happy no matter what. A shrill excitement permeated every conversation. School projects were somehow fun. The weather for recess was always perfect and the air conditioners, if you were lucky, would be blasting inside when recess was over. And then we'd tumble in, sweaty and dirty and covered in stories to share with friends. All the talk was about the pool, manhunt, beach camp vacation and all the video games you were going to play and ice cream you were going to eat and fun you were going to have instead of that summer bliss. On Tuesday, the kids in Uvalde were exposed to something else, something much worse, something horrifying at the intersection of all the things we do wrong and as a society here in the United States, some manifestation of our brokenness. An 18 year old walked into the school and, well, forget it. You already know the story. The thing that should probably stick with you is that the parents were sent to a civic center as the reunification point to find their kids. They sat outside in little groups as police and doctors and school officials tried to help them locate their children. Because of the nature of the crime and the weapons involved in the size of the victims, the identification was not easy. Reporters witnessed audible screams and eruptions of sobs as DNA matches and descriptions of children were confirmed. It was good news if you found your child was in the hospital, still clinging to life. 19 children are dead, 19 elementary school kids, babies. Two adults too, both teachers. We're less than 24 hours out from the shooting, so the shooter's motives are still unclear. On the surface, it appears different from the Buffalo shooting, which was a crime motivated by racial animosity. This was a Hispanic teenager in a predominantly Hispanic town in Texas killing mostly Hispanic elementary school students. Unlike the Buffalo shooter, he did not survive. He was killed by law enforcement, a Border Patrol agent who responded to the shooting and thankfully entered the school without waiting for backup. Somehow the horror could have been worse. If such a thing can even be comprehended, you know what happened next, too. Everyone expressed shock and grief and horror. People use words like unthinkable and unimaginable and nightmare, though none of those words really fit. This isn't really unthinkable or unimaginable. It is predictable. It feels nearly guaranteed, like the sun rising and setting. There will be another one. Hopefully not today or tomorrow or next week, but I guarantee you it will happen again. Many on the right expressed heartache and grief. Some vaguely called for gun reform or for us to address our mental health crisis. Many gun reform proponents on the left responded in fury, frustrated to watch this cycle run again when the solution seems so obvious to them. Make it harder to get a gun. Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut whose state was home to the Sandy hook shooting in 2012, literally begged for a different reaction. One House representative from Texas accused his Republican colleagues of being baby killers. And then the right responded in kind. It briefly became an argument about abortion and the media. And then the right's most prominent voices accused the left of politicizing the tragedy. And then, in a moment, in a flash, it became just another example of partisan warfare. Everyone, get to your sides. Arm yourself with stats and talking points and animosity for the opposition. The dead fade into the background, the partisan warriors move to the front lines, and the discourse gets swallowed whole by the monster our modern day politics have become. In this moment of madness, I saw two reactions to the news that struck me as wholly true and worth sharing with our readers. One was a new reaction, and another was a classic sentiment worth reiterating until it really hits home. The first came from conservative columnist Noam Blum, who said pointedly and concisely something I believe with all my heart, quote, nothing is monocausal. There are just parts of our society that are unfathomably broken, and they occasionally intersect in unspeakably awful and evil ways, end quote. The other is from the Onion, the satirical website whose famous headline was rightly being shared again yesterday. Quote, no way to prevent this says Only nation where this regularly happens, End quote. I am drawn to these two ideas because even though they are seemingly contradictory, I subscribe to them both. First, fixing only one thing will not fix the problem of mass shootings and gun violence in America. Second, the regularity of this type of violence, especially mass shootings, is unique to our country. By now, many of you know the data. Over half of all gun deaths in the US Are suicides. And most gun violence in the United States is committed with handguns. And though they dominate the headlines, mass shootings account for less than 1% of all gun deaths in the United States. But mass shootings, defined as incidents where four or more people are shot, are still shockingly common here. There have already been 213 mass shootings in the United States this year. There have already been 27 school shootings in which at least one person was injured or killed. There were, and things seem to be headed in the wrong direction. There were 417 mass shootings in 2019. 611 in 2020. 693 in 2021, nearly two a day. @ our current pace, we'll have far more this year than we did in 2019, but fewer than we did in 2021. We typically expect more violence in the summer, so it's likely the next few months will be worse. An editor's note here that in 2022, the year this piece was written, we ended up with 643 mass shootings. 660 were committed in 2023, and in 2024, the total notably dropped to 503. I'd like to reject from the outset the notion that these mass shootings are somehow less damaging or less salient because they kill fewer than 1% of all the people who die in gun violence. This seems to be a talking point many people lean on when proposals to address mass shootings are suggested. But it disregards the ripple effect of these tragedies. Mass shootings have an impact on the psyche of our society writ large that a lot of other gun violence does not. They are, in simple terms, effective acts of terrorism. They terrorize. When you report on these shootings, something quickly becomes very obvious. They don't just irreparably damage the lives of the victims, their families, and their friends. They also traumatize witnesses, responding law enforcement officers, doctors, nurses, treating the injured, and the community as a whole. And that trauma spreads outward like a wave. Last night I came home to my apartment blissfully unaware of what had happened. I was at a physical therapy appointment when the news broke and I was absorbed in a podcast on the drive home, so I had not checked my phone for texts and news alerts. When I walked into my house, my wife was in front of her computer, glossy eyed and somber, a heartbroken look on her face. I braced myself and asked, what's wrong? What happened? They were babies, she said. They were just babies. I had to ask a few follow up questions to understand that one of the worst mass shootings in American history had just taken place. We were 2,000 miles from the Texas town where this happened, but the trauma had already spread to us. When I wrote about the buffalo shooting, I was careful in how I constructed the quote unquote blame pyramid of what had happened. First was the shooter himself who made the decision to inflict this horror on a community. Second were the family, friends and law enforcement who failed to properly act on the warning signs. In that case, the shooter told an entire classroom he planned to commit a murder suicide. Third were the gun laws and gun accessibility that allowed the shooter to so easily act on all the failures that preceded his decision to go on a killing spree. Fourth were the racist online spaces and other mass shooters through which and whom he justified his attack. And last was the media, which turns shooters into celebrities and spreads their pathological ideologies far and wide. This is part of our brokenness. Somewhere in that pyramid, though I'm not sure where, should be another issue. Our gun culture. I was 13 the first time I ever shot a gun. I was, coincidentally, in Texas. I When they're handled responsibly, moments like this are burned into your memory like a first kiss or a first beer or the first time you drive a car by yourself. My cousin had taken out a.22 rifle and I sat quietly as I watched him load it. We were sitting atop a hill on his 10 acre tract of land, staring down at a set of hanging spoons about 35 yards away. Before he taught me to aim and shoot, he taught me to always keep the gun pointed at the ground under all circumstances, whether I thought it was loaded or not, and no matter how many times I had checked, he taught me to hold it safely with my finger far from the trigger, and he made it as clear as humanly possible that if I ever went near it without him around, the repercussions would be an order of magnitude worse than any momentary fun I might have without him. There was a reverence in the moment, a solemn rite of passage that accompanied this chance to learn to shoot. It wasn't about letting me run wild or flexing my manhood. It was a test of my responsibility, of my maturity. How would I react? How would I comport myself? Was I old and mature enough to handle, literally handle, something that could take a life? I do not know what our national gun culture is now, but it isn't that. It isn't what I knew growing up. A world where you often didn't know if someone was a gun owner because they had no interest in advertising it to you. It is unrecognizable to me now. Today we have politicians who take arm family photos in front of Christmas trees. Seven years ago now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted, quote, I'm embarrassed. Texas is number two in the nation for gun purchases, behind California. Let's pick up the pace, Texans. This morning, self described disaffected liberal Tim Pool tweeted, I'm going to buy more guns today. Editor's NOTE Poole's tweet has since been deleted. I don't know Tim, and I don't know whether he was trying to be funny or trolling somebody or being intentionally provocative or is really delusional enough to think that having more guns than he already has will somehow make him s safer. But I do know this. The attitude represented in that tweet, even if it is meant to be a joke, is far too common. It is a kind of virtue, signaling but with guns, the same kind Governor Abbott and Representative Lauren Boebert and others seem to act on daily I have guns and will buy more guns and thus I am free. I am free and armed and thus I am strong. You need to be free and strong too. So go buy more guns. The bragging, flaunting and intentionally provocative behavior around gun ownership today associates it with a false sense of strength and power and liberty. This new culture so obviously stems from and feeds into the kind of commonplace gun violence we witness day in and day out that we should be better able to address it by now. And this is part of our brokenness. As much as I have expressed the fear about the erosion of free speech culture in America and the inevitability that losing this culture will lead to more restrictive laws on speech, I also fear this shift in our gun culture, I fear it because I know that culture drives attitudes which in turn drive our laws. If guns make us feel free and strong, then any restriction on the sale or distribution or ownership of those guns makes us feel less free and less strong. So the obvious answer is to resist all restrictions on guns. And the equally obvious result is what we have now. Americans make up about 4.4% of the global population, but we own 42% of the world's guns. From 1966 to 2012, 31% of mass shooters globally were Americans. When you adjust for population and include only countries with more than 10 million citizens, only one country in the world had a higher rate of mass shootings during that time than US Yemen. Yemen also had the second highest rate of gun ownership after the United states. As of 2017, we had more guns 393 million than people, 326 million in the United States in the last four years. Gun ownership and manufacturing have continued to skyrocket. This summer, the Supreme Court appears poised to further loosen gun restrictions in New York and across the country, making it harder for legislators to limit when and where someone can carry a concealed handgun in public. In short, the United States is already flooded with guns and you can expect sales and ownership to increase in the coming years. In Texas specifically, gun laws have recently become much less restrictive. In September, the unlicensed carry law went to place, allowing anyone 21 or older to carry a handgun without a permit or training. In most places. Some private businesses, schools and colleges still require permits. That does not mean these laws allowed the shooting to happen. Details are still emerging, but it is quite clear that laws were broken left and right. You cannot carry a gun onto school grounds or into a school zone, usually about a thousand feet around a school in Texas. You cannot carry a handgun in Texas when you are younger than 21, as the alleged shooter was. However, you can legally and easily own a long gun, which he reportedly had, and it is not hard to buy body armor or other tactical gear, which he also reportedly donned. More fundamental than any specific law or regulation, though, is the basic concept of accessibility. There are nearly 400 million guns in the United States and you cannot simply wave that off as unrelated to our unsurpassed rates of gun violence and mass shooting shootings. To drive this point home, I'd like to tell you a secret about your money. One of the most important things in sales is called friction. A huge part of my job at Tangle is trying to think of ways to reduce friction and make it easier for you, the listener, to become a subscriber. For instance, I could tell you to subscribe to Tangle by clicking on a link in our episode description and you'll be taken to a membership page where you read about our plans, you pick which one you want, you enter your email and you click subscribe. Then go to a new page where you enter your name, credit card address and then check out. That's a lot of friction. So instead sometimes I tell people to click on a link to subscribe and when you click the link, it actually takes you directly to a checkout page on the payment platform stripe. Your credit card may auto fill depending on your computer settings. Your plan is already chosen for you. I've eliminated some friction. The richest, wealthiest companies in the world also focus on eliminating friction to get your money. It's why Apple has Apple pay and face or fingerprint recognition to use your credit card. It's why Amazon has a Buy now button to automatically purchase a product in our country, we experience very little friction in the process of buying guns. Waiting periods are rare, even though we know they reduce handgun deaths. Red flag laws exist, but are mostly inadequate or ineffectively enforced. See Buffalo and Uvalde. To use a gun, you usually do not need to pass a test like you do to legally drive a car. In most states. Under most circumstances, buying a gun requires identification, cash and a background check. Though the efficacy of our background check system is up for debate, editors note it's not just cars either. To rent a boat in Pennsylvania, you have to pass an exam that takes several days to complete. Restaurants who give patrons alcohol have to operate a liquor license, and in many states, servers must undergo training. Someone who handles pesticides needs to undergo state training and exams and must comply with strict transportation and documentation regulations. Even exercising other basic rights comes with administrative guardrails, like obtaining permits to organize a march or protest, registration to vote, or a license for marriage. Simply put, in our society, we regulate the right to own firearms a lot less than we regulate other weighty responsibilities, especially those where safety, life or death are at hand. And this is part of our brokenness. In response to this particular shooting, a few solutions besides creating more friction have been brought forward. The one that got a lot of attention came from Ken Paxton, Texas's attorney general and a man with a lot of power to enact reforms to address gun violence. He suggested arming school teachers. We can't stop bad people from doing bad things, he said. We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer. A lot about this answer frustrates me. We can't stop bad people from doing bad things is an argument you can make for not having any laws at all. Why have laws to regulate murder, robbery or rape. If there's simply nothing we can do to stop bad people from doing bad things, we punish crimes like these to deter people from committing them. Perhaps Paxton believes that arming teachers who can respond quickly will deter future attempts to but there isn't much evidence for this. Indeed, arming teachers is a solution we've tried, and it has so far provided no indication it's working. Schools have been increasingly armed and fortified in the last decade, and yet school shootings are happening more frequently. There was an armed security guard at the Buffalo grocery store. There were armed officers at Parkland. In fact, there were armed school resource officers at Uvalde Elementary School. We still don't know how the shooter got into the school, but we do know he drove a pickup truck into the barrier of the south entrance of the school and got out of his car car. Then two police officers and an armed school resource officer fired at him but could not stop him from entering the building. Finally, Paxton's response is frustrating because he is part of a group of conservatives who have warned about the threat of public school teachers across the country. He has, for example, accused school districts of indoctrinating students with gender ideology and insisted teachers have less discretion about what they can teach and discuss in the classroom. Yet he is also suggesting those same teachers, the ones not worthy of our trust, should be armed in classrooms. It is hard to square that circle. Another common proposed solution has been to address mental health issues. There is no doubt this solution has merit at the root of much of our gun violence, especially mass shootings and suicide. Are people in crisis? Our country is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, and stress. I'm always grateful to hear people talk about addressing the mental health issues related to this violence, or calls to address the loneliest epidemic or to expand offerings for people in crisis. Yet this approach is often suggested in place of gun control rather than in concert with it, which is frustrating. Worse, many conservatives who are keen to point to mental health as the root cause of gun violence in mass shootings don't appear to be doing much about it. Democrats in Congress regularly push for measures like expanding Medicare or funding for mental health services, but have not found support from the right. We've been having this conversation in earnest for a decade. If Republicans believe there's a mental health crisis, what is their solution? Where is the legislation or systematic societal plan to address it? One promising development is the recent bipartisan negotiations on mental health legislation. Several Republican and Democratic senators were involved in the talks, which were first reported in February in May. NPR reported that Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican from Louisiana, and Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut, are apparently still making progress on the bill. The details are murky, but this is an opportunity to put some momentum behind actual legislation rather than just issue sympathetic statements and empty tweets. An editor's note here Happily, these negotiations produced the bipartisan Safer Communities act, which landed 15 GOP Senate votes and was signed into law in June of 2022. The bill combined billions of dollars of funding for youth mental health Crisis intervention, the 988 Crisis Response Hotline, and suicide prevention with firearm regulations. Like an expansion of background checks for individuals under the age of 20, the left has its share of obviously flawed or empty solutions too. Banning all assault weapons is a nice talking point, but it's pretty hard to pin down. For starters, assault weapons is a basically made up term that is impossible to clearly define, yet often used by gun control activists. And many legislators who use the term don't seem to be able to define it themselves. We had a 10 year assault weapons ban that started in 1994 whose impact on violent crime was basically non existent, though some researchers contend it reduced the number of fatalities associated with mass shootings. As I mentioned already, a universal background check bill is also very popular and one of the most common solutions suggested by Democrats, yet it is very unclear how effective it would be. According to some popular estimates, about 1 in 5 gun transfers, sales or otherwise happen without a background check, thanks to loopholes for unlicensed dealers who don't have to run back background checks to sell a gun. But research on what happens when we make background check systems universal at the state level has been inconclusive at best. Put differently, the background check system we have now does some good, but a universal background check system probably wouldn't move the needle that much. That so many of the most common suggestions for ending gun violence and mass shootings are not being acted upon might be ineffective or otherwise make the problem worse is a common theme here. This too is part of our brokenness. This should go without saying, but nobody in our country except a very few sick individuals want to see children slaughtered at school or people killed by guns. Republicans are not baby killers and Democrats are not communist authoritarians trying to steal your guns so the government can take over. I'm one person, I do not have all the answers, but given that I just told you about all our brokenness, I ought to tell you what I think would work on an interpersonal level. We all need to have our eyes and ears out for gun violence. This includes everything from suicides to homicides to mass shootings. The buffalo shooter announced his plan to an entire classroom. The Texas shooter reportedly posted his guns and threats on Instagram before his violent act. An editor's note here There were several threatening and disturbing videos on the Minnesota Shooters YouTube channel. They're almost always signs, and in retrospect they are often quite obvious. Looking for these signs among your friends and family to the best of your ability is your responsibility. As a society, we need to care for each other and ensure that people we know and love do not become so isolated and lonely and angry that they commit an act of violence like this. When we do take action, we need a more engaged law enforcement response. We need clear protocols for what local police and the FBI should do, and we need to make those protocols strict. Far too often, in case after case, we learn that the interpersonal box was checked, that someone did try to get an eventual shooter help did flag. Law enforcement did what they were supposed to do, but the institutions fail. Relatedly, the National Rifle association is right about some crucial things here. We need to better enforce the laws we have and better utilize the resources that already exist. The background check system, for instance, is riddled with flaws. Local police, the military, federal and state courts, hospitals and treatment providers regularly fail to send criminal or mental health records to the national Instant Criminal Background Check System, where they are supposed to. In theory, nobody who has been convicted of a crime, committed to a mental institution, gotten a dishonorable discharge, or had a history of drug addiction should be able to buy a gun with ease. But these failures mean licensed gun dealers often run a clean background check on someone who should be caught by the system. Additionally, we do almost nothing about the people who lie on background check forms. There were 112,000 lie and try crimes in 2017 alone. Twelve of them were prosecuted. If there was any semblance of a threat that lying to get a gun could get you in trouble, I'd bet a lot fewer people would do it. Yet it's common knowledge among gun control advocates, the NRA and criminals that lying on a background check form is a very low risk activity. And finally, I believe we should create more friction. I know that listeners are always trying to sniff out my political leaning, so I'll say up front that I don't really know where my next proposal puts me on the political spectrum. As a general blanket statement, the vast majority of Americans seem to think it should be harder to get a gun. Many of the gun owners I know agree with what I'm about to say, but as I discussed above, today's gun culture seems totally divorced from what I used to understand it to be. I think many Republican politicians also believe what I'm about to say, but many of those who matter receive millions of dollars from the gun lobby, making me trust their political positions a little less. Nevertheless, here is my proposal. I think we should make gun ownership more like driving a car. This is something I've proposed in past Tangle podcasts. It is a familiar structure, it's intuitive. It is something that we know gets results. And it is a system that I do not believe would infringe on second Amendment rights, which I support. The same research that has shown universal background checks would do little to address gun violence and mass shootings also shows that a licensing system does both of these things rather well. Several big studies have been done on states that added a permit to purchase law for handguns, which usually requires people to obtain a permit from a police department before buying a gun. In states like Connecticut, where the law was implemented, gun homicides and suicides went down. In states like Missouri, where those laws were repealed, gun homicides and suicides went up on top of a permit and licensing system. I believe mandatory classes are or training are practical. I know some Americans and the gun lobby won't go for this, but I honestly believe they do a great deal of good and should be considered. The reasons for this seem obvious. We don't allow a 15 year old to get inside a car and drive without training or a supervisor because we know a car is dangerous and that teenager could kill someone or themselves. We also know people are not born with the ability to drive, so we teach them. The same logic applies to guns. Now I've made this point enough to hear the common refrain we weren't guaranteed a right to drive a car. We were guaranteed a right to bear arms. Yes, it's true that we were not granted the right to drive a car in the Constitution. I suspect that is at least partly because cars didn't exist for another hundred years. However, it should also be noted that our right to drive has been considered considered before the Supreme Court. And we all have and intuit a right to have a freedom of movement. These things are not as far apart as we'd like to believe. Regardless, that counterpoint is mostly moot for another reason. When was the last time you really felt that the government was restricting your ability to drive? The system of permitting driving and requiring classes to do it makes sense to most of us because it is sensible. It is a great way to know that the people understand the machines they are operating, ensure they are responsible enough to use them safely, and reduce the odds they will accidentally or intentionally kill people. Is it foolproof? Of course not. Car accidents are still very common, and sometimes people even use their cars for weapons, like the killer in Waukesha, Wisconsin. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't help the research, and common sense says it would. The least we could do as a collective society is try it. The least our legislators could do is have an honest debate about it. In the end, my most fervent wish is that this moment ends differently than all the others. It is that this shooting and gun violence more generally cease to be as predictable as the sun rising and setting, and that maybe this time we can be shocked into action, into change, into a collective will to better look out for each other and and a collective movement to shore up our laws and follow the research. Am I optimistic? I'm not. But we should all say the obvious out loud. This is not about one issue, and this is not a problem we simply can't prevent. The least we can do for the kids of Uvalde and the shoppers in Buffalo and now the kids in Minnesota and all the victims before them is have some hope and join together in refusing to accept this as normal. I know that we are broken, but I hope that we are not so broken we can't do that. All right, thank you guys for tuning in for today's episode. Once again, this was a piece, a rerun of a Friday podcast episode from May 2022. Still, of course, if you were moved by it, feel free to share it with others by simply sending them this podcast episode. And relatedly, this is a good example of the kinds of content we regularly publish in our members only podcast episodes. So if you'd like to receive those in the future, you can become a member by going to readtangle.com membership. I hope you guys have a great and safe Labor Day weekend and we'll see you next week. Peace Foreign hey, it's Marc Maron from WTF here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And I'm sure the reason you're listening to this podcast right now is because you chose it well. Choose Progressive's Name your price tool and you could find insurance options that fit your budget so you can pick the best one for your situation. Who doesn't like choice? Try it@progressive.com and now some legal info. 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