Stephen Gutowski  0:00  
A black ATF agent accuses Biden's director nominee of racism, and a history of dunk carry in America Professor David Yamani that more on this episode of the weekly reload podcast.

Unknown Speaker  0:14  
I gave him poison, just for fun.

Stephen Gutowski  0:16  
Alright, we're back with another episode of the weekly reload podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Gutowski, I'm also the founder of the reload calm. And before we start, actually, let me give you a little bit of a plug here for the reload. If you go over to the reload, calm and you buy a membership, you will actually get this podcast an entire day early. So make sure you head over there and check out some of the options we have. I just brought back the co founders membership, which allows people to provide a bit more support for the site to keep it going to make it sustainable in the long run. We've been here about four months now. And we're gone well, but we got a ways to go to get to, you know, full sustainability and then growth from there so we can cover more topics every day. But, you know, without support of the members, this publication, this podcast would not exist. And you wouldn't get stories like the one we're going to talk about first here today that we broke this week of a black ATF agent, a former agent who accused Biden's ATF director nominee David Shipman, of falsely alleging that he had cheated on a promotion assessment back in 2007.

And the agent claimed that the allegation led to a several year long Office of Inspector General investigation over at the Department of Justice, which eventually cleared his name, but sidelined his career during that time period, and effectively sort of stunted it. Even though he was eventually cleared, the agent says, and he believes that Chipman did this out of a racial animus towards him as black agents. So you know that that's the allegation. That's what the agent is saying.

It's obviously we have not, we can't confirm that he what shipment state of mind was, however, there was a second agent who cooperated the claim that this investigation was undertaken at the time. He the second agent said that he had been told when this happened by the first agent, that there was an investigation going to happen because of the allegations that he had cheated on a promotion assessment. And additionally, the Department of Justice itself did confirm that David Shipman accused an agent in 2007 of cheating on an assessment and then that accusation led to an A YG Office of Inspector General investigation into the incident. However, they didn't release any further details because the report from oaG is still confidential and they would not release that report to the reload either. They did defend Chipman against the allegation that he acted on racial racial bias. They said they referred to a previous story where Chipman had a complaint filed against him in the Equal Employment Opportunity office within the department and that shipment had been

cleared of those complaints that complaint centered around really very similar story to this one where while chitlin was in Detroit In the same year, actually in 2007. He was alleged to have made comments that black too many black agents had passed an assessment for promotion and that they must have cheated. Apparently. The accusation is that black agent heard that and was upset with those comments and filed a complaint against him. Shipman has not reacted to either one of these complaints, other than to say that the the Equal Employment Opportunity complaints filed against him were resolved without any sort of, you know, punishment or reprimand for him. So the White House also has not reacted in any way to either one of these stories. And Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, what were Chapman's nomination remains that at this point after a tie vote back in June. He has not agreed to a second hearing which is what republicans want, based off of these new allegations that are coming out. About Shipman and instead has essentially argued that the sources behind these stories are in fact made up.

essentially saying that the reload is an anti gun safety publication, which is a bizarre

description, of course, I have literally a gun safety certified instructor. But regardless, Dick Durbin says that these stories are made up essentially and that he will not grant a second hearing to get out even though there's obviously no dispute over the existence of both the EEOC complaints or this big report on the allegation against the black former agents made by Chipman. So

right now, Senator Grassley from Iowa, the ranking member of the ranking republican on the committee is asking the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General itself directly to release the report to his office. He has also said that his office has received

coati cooperating whistleblower reports independent of the reloads reporting on this incident. So there there has been more information that the senator's office has received them what apparently has been, you know, reported at the reload. So we'll continue to follow that story, of course, as things unfold there, and we'll see what the Inspector General says in response to the senators letter and how things unfold from here, where you won't see this covered, and who will not be continuing to follow this, it seems at least are the mainstream outlets that exist, Fox News has picked up this story and a number of conservative outlets have covered it as well bearing arms, Town Hall, for example. But nobody at any of the other major outlets, including you know, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post New York Times, none of them have even mentioned the allegations, the latest allegation against Chipman from black former ATF agent, even in passing in any of their stories. So again, without the reload, this story would never likely have seen the light of day, which is exactly why I encourage you all to buy a subscription. If you have not already to keep us going here we are 100% reader funded. There's no funding from anyone else beyond the those who decide to join the reload. And if you do join, you will get my extended thoughts on why it is that there's been silence on this particular story within the media. And why I don't think that that would have been the case. If Chipman was a Trump or bush nominee. I know that that is a common criticism that you hear from people on the right of media. And I think oftentimes it's made in bad faith. But that doesn't mean the media is beyond reproach. And I think in this situation, it's hard to understand any reasonable explanation for why an allegation by of a direct allegation by a black former agent, against the director nominee, who's who's up to head, one of the

biggest federal law enforcement agencies in existence, has not received any coverage, even though the Department of Justice itself has confirmed parts or details of this story. So it's very difficult to understand that. Perhaps there will be more coverage coming down the line. We'll see. I'm not holding my breath is at this point. But if you go to the reload, and you join, you will get my analysis on why this is happening, why other major outlets are not covering this story. But with that aside, there's been obviously there talked a lot about Shipman, the last couple episodes. It's it's one of the biggest things happening right now in guns. But it's not the only thing going on. And so I wanted to have someone on this week to talk about his book that he put out is very short book, but it's very concise and very informative, I think, called concealed carry revolution. And it's David Yamani. He's a professor, who's written extensively on the topic. I have his book here, if you want to take a look. Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. He's one of the top names, I think in the academic world when it comes to studying guns outside of the criminal use of firearms, which is fairly rare. So I thought he would be a good guest to bring on. And I think he gives quite a lot of insight in our interview. So make sure you stay tuned here. We're gonna head over there now to hear from David. So take it away. me in the future. All right, we're here with David Yamani of Wake Forest University's professor of sociology over there, David, once you give us a little introduction, for anyone who might not have heard of you before, who's listening to the podcast?

David Yamane  10:44  
Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. For one, I think it's a great initiative, and I love what you're doing with the reload. And I'm happy to be a supporter of that. myself. I'm, as you said, the professor of sociology at Wake Forest University, I have been a gun owner for about 10 years. And for that same period of time, I've also been studying American gun culture. So started with a fairly discreet take, I was just going to look at concealed carry, per se. And then as I got into that topic, I realized that it was part of a much broader cultural movement within guns, that I stoled the concept of gun culture 2.0, from Michael Bain, with his after the fact blessing. And so, you know, I've been kind of journeying personally and professionally through the world of gun culture 2.0 for the past 10 years and trying to, to understand it better.

Stephen Gutowski  11:43  
Right, and when you say gun culture 2.0 because I use that term a lot as well in my writing, and while I talk about guns, and sort of the way that gun culture has changed over the last several decades, but I I'd love to hear what you mean by gun culture. Two point what what does that term, encapsulate for you?

David Yamane  12:05  
Yeah, so for me, gun culture. 2.0 is the new version of gun culture, which is centered on armed self defense. So gun culture 1.0, the preceding culture really was more centered on hunting and recreational target shooting. And, you know, beginning around the 1960s, and certainly into the 70s and 80s, the the center of mass of gun culture began to shift much more toward self defense orientation, which it's important to recognize that, of course, self defense has been part of gun culture from the beginning. And of course, hunting and recreational shooting continues to be part of gun culture. So we're really talking about where the, the major emphasis of gun culture lies. And there's some things that also kind of revolve around that, which is, as the gun culture shifted toward a more defensive orientation, the sort of face of gun culture also shifted. So we see self defense being a more universal concern and interest than hunting and recreation. So, you know, we see that traditional face of gun culture becoming more diverse, racially, geographically, ethnically, terms of gender and sexual orientation. So I think that's an important analog to that shift toward a defensive orientation. And, you know, I think the third part of that is really changing the nature of shooting and training, you know, so, obviously, you know, learning how to hunt, learning how to target shoot, you know, something that has always been around, but as defense has become more important than defensive gun training has, has also become more important.

Stephen Gutowski  13:50  
Right, right. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that nails, the definition of it perfectly. And obviously, I think there's been a lot of emphasis on the latter part of the change in demographics, right, that, that gun ownership has gotten younger, more and more diverse over the last several decades here, and that we've only seen that really accelerate in recent years, especially last year, in 2020, with the surge in new gun owners. And I mean, there isn't. It's still early, obviously from especially from an academic point of view, I'm sure. But what we do know at this point is that, you know, more minority minorities made up a larger percentage of of new gun owners than they had in previous generations. And you saw that in the National Shooting Sports Foundation survey of dealers, where the I believe the fastest growing group was, was African Americans in that survey, and then that was also backed up, I believe, to some degree in university of california study on new gun in California. Yeah, that's, you know, a little bit of insight into this. Yeah, absolutely

David Yamane  15:07  
Harvard,

in northeastern have fielded a new version of their National Firearms survey, which they did last, I think in 2015. So in the spring of this year, they pulled about 19,000 people and asked them about their gun buying practices. And if you take for 2020 people who were new gun buyers, about 6.5% of all Americans bought a gun. Last year, this is from Harvard is saying this. So, you know, they're not going to overestimate that. And about 1.5% of new people were new gun owners. So you know, about a fifth of everybody who bought a gun last year was a new gun owner. And if you just look at that 20% 50% of those were women, 25%, African American, 25% Latino. So those early numbers that the nssf was getting from gun store owners, you know, is not not necessarily mirrored, but very closely replicated by this more general survey that Harvard and northeastern have done. mean 50% of new gun buyers last year women and 25% African American 25% Latino those, it's like you said it's not a new trend. It's an acceleration of an existing trend, but it's pretty remarkable. Yeah, certainly.

Stephen Gutowski  16:27  
And obviously, it's created a lot of new developments in gun politics. And it's certainly that's what your book is, in part going to be about? I'm sure. But and then you bought Yeah, I think there's also been evidence as well of the first part that you talked about, of this shift towards the priority being on self defense, although obviously, you know, like, like you mentioned, it's not like the other priorities have gone away. It's just the primary focus of gun ownership has has morphed a bit over the years. And I think you've seen this, even in Nick's data, the National instant criminal background check system that the FBI runs, where I believe is the for the first time ever. Last year, the NICS system, processed more background checks on handguns, over long guns, which indicates obviously, shift towards self defense, because people tend to buy handguns for self defense, more than they buy long guns for self defense, obviously, again, you can use both for either but either self defense or hunting, but obviously, the primary use of handguns is self defense, and the primary use of a lot of most long guns is hunting or target shooting, or sport shooting, things like that. Obviously, you can use both or either one, but but that sort of gives you actual hard data, that that backs up this concept of priority shifting among American gun owners.

David Yamane  18:04  
Yeah. And if you you know, we can break down the data and look in a national survey at people who only own handguns and people who only own handguns, you know, are definitely much more diverse, in all the ways we've been talking about than people who own both handguns or long guns or only long gun. So that, as you said that the shift in emphasis from long guns to handguns in terms of overall purchasing is indicative of gun culture. 2.0.

Stephen Gutowski  18:34  
Right, certainly. And I think another thing that you can point to, in this change in attitudes, or the shift in priorities is concealed carry, which has become far more popular over the last several decades. And actually something that you just recently put out a short book on the concealed carry revolution, which people can buy on on Amazon, correct that Yeah, that's right. And this is where you discuss in a pretty, pretty concise and easily digestible way, the evolution of concealed carry in America from really from the before the founding, or the founding era, at least, and and sort of some of the philosophical underpinnings of the founding era and some of the laws that go back beyond the birth of the United States. All the way up till today, and what we've seen in the shift towards permitless carry and and how we've moved in, sort of evolved nationally over the past several 100 years, is really, although the focus I think starts in the 19th you know, the the 19th century is when you really start to see some of these early gun carry laws, and how strict they were compared to what we have today. I think you start off the book, talk Talking about tombstone and Dodge City, right in the differences between, you know, the time period where the famous shootout at the OK Corral happened. And today where the laws are wildly different? Can you give us a little bit more just about that introduction cuz I think that kind of sums up a lot of what's what's happened how things have progressed over the last 100 plus years and and some of the misconceptions about it,

David Yamane  20:30  
right? Yeah, just by way of background, you know this this was not an independent project I had intended to do when I first started studying concealed carry. I didn't know what the laws were, I didn't know what the history was. And I wanted to find a good, reliable, short source that I could turn to to say, you know, what's the status of these laws historically, and today, and it didn't exist. So I started to write that as a chapter of my bigger book. And it just kind of grew and grew outgrew that book, the book kind of shifted emphasis. And so I was left with 1000s of words, you know, explaining the history and I thought, well, I'll just put it out in the world. And so that's the background to this book, I should say that I submitted the book to the publisher at the beginning of 2021. And by the time it was actually printed, five more states had gone permitless carry in the Supreme Court had taken the correlate case. And so you know, it was out of date by the time that it was released. And so I'm actually putting pushing out an updated version of it, it should be out sometime in the next few weeks, that really becomes much more up to date. In terms of

Stephen Gutowski  21:43  
those that are in correlate, that gives us a good indication of just how quickly things are evolving on on in concealed carry across the country. I mean, it's constitutional carry or permitless carry or Vermont carry or whatever, whatever people prefer to call it. That has really become the the fastest growing gun policy the last 20 years. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that the only state that had constitutional carry or permanent carry or Vermont carry was Vermont, which has had it since you know, the founding of the country. But then, in extremely quick succession after 2010, you now have 21 states as of today that have this policy. But back, let me answer your question, because there was a fair question. I want to go back to the tombstone.

David Yamane  22:40  
So you know, today, if you look at Kansas in Arizona, they are permitless carry states i following friend Matthew Carberry call it Alaska carry is distinct from Vermont carry because these are states that issue permits, but don't require permits, right. Whereas Vermont, you can't even get a permit. So that's actually even a different that's maybe true constitutional carry. You know, so I think, you know, 20 states with Alaska carry plus Vermont, including Kansas and Arizona, which is a dramatic contrast to 19th century, Arizona and Kansas, where, you know, it was prohibited to carry a concealed weapon as it was in many states, starting in the south and then radiating out from the south. So, you know, we picture you know, Dodge City and tombstone as being kind of wild west places where there are a lot of shootouts, and there were a lot of, you know, shoot outs, relatively speaking, but it wasn't, you know, because people were promiscuously toting firearms around, you know, was for the same reasons, we see people shooting each other today, you know, it's not legal concealed carriers, it's people who are sort of engaging in criminal activity. So the, the shift from, from the tombstone and Dodge City of old to permitless, carry in tombstone and Dodge City today, really represents that entire arc that my try to cover in the book, which is, you know, the institution of carry bands, and then permitting under a may issue system, and then permitting under a shall issue system, and now perhaps permitless carry being the dominant model, although, you know, I think you've made some good points about whether permitless carry has reached its political limit in terms of, you know, being passed in those triple red states, as you call them. stealing your ideas on your own podcast now, but, you know, yeah, I

Stephen Gutowski  24:44  
mean, I think that there's certainly it's interesting to look at how the policy is has evolved and how it mirrors polarization in the United States. That and I, you know, in, in the piece you're referencing, I also talk about red flag laws, right? Because it's it's similar there. First of all, those are the two most popular state level policies regard, you know, related to guns over the last decade in terms of popularity is not I don't mean by polling I mean by adoption. Right. Those are the two most quickly adopted policies of the last decade. And broadly, but but they're adopted in very different places. Right. You don't have a lot of states that have both of them. I think there's, in fact, only one, I think Vermont is the only one. And you know, the this incredible winning streak for constitutional carry advocates over the last decade, probably is coming to a close relatively soon, there's still a few states that are triple red, right that have, you know, both both bodies of the legislature, controlled by Republicans and the governorship. But just look at Louisiana for how hard it is to get constitutional carry passed in a place that doesn't have those things. I think Maine is the only mean in Vermont, and the only ones where that's happened. And Maine did it when two of the three were red. And now in Louisiana, you got the legislature's completely controlled by Republicans in the governor's a Democrat, he, you know, the legislature passed the bill, the governor vetoed it. The legislation passed with veto proof majorities, but when they want to override the veto, as often happens in practice, politics, is not generally that simple, as the math might imply, and so they failed. In Louisiana, now, maybe they'll get it next session. You know, it's hard to say, obviously, exactly how things will go, maybe the policy will become more popular among, you know, purple or states eventually, as you know, if there aren't negative consequences from the adoption of the policy, which there really, I mean, haven't seemed it's, it's somewhat ironic, because you start the book with the, the comparison to the Wild West, right, the difference in gun laws between tombstone during the OK Corral shootout. And today, and the ironic thing is that, whenever one of these policies is put up, for for consideration, generally, the opposition to them is to say that they'll turn, you know, the state Into the Wild West, when Ironically, the Wild West had much stricter gun laws at the top, then what these proposals are pushing. So it's sort of funny in that way, and you haven't necessarily, you know, I'm not aware of any study that's looked at the consequences of constitutional carry benefit being enacted in these different states. But, you know, I'm also not aware at all of, you know, exploding crime rates, in the immediate aftermath of their adoption. I mean, really, because while they really do is say that, so long as you're legally allowed to possess a firearm, so if you're not already prohibited from doing that, then you can carry it and you don't need any any sort of special permit or training requirements. And we'll talk a little bit about that, that part as well, as you go over in the book, The differences and training requirements, and, and so, I want to talk to you a little bit about that. But But you know, the policies, aren't they usually, the kind of crimes that they wipe off the books are generally possession crimes, right? carrying a gun without a license is not a violent crime. Now, you might get tacked on if you commit a violent crime, but, you know, while you're illegally carrying a gun, but most of the crimes that that go away because of this, these kinds of laws are possession crimes, so it's hard to i think it's it's a harder asked to prove that those the lack of those possession crimes is directly leads to violent crimes. And we have a go, I just am not personally convinced that we've seen a big increase in crime in places like Arizona, or Alaska or right or Kansas, where they've approved these these sorts of policies. But

David Yamane  29:35  
I think at each stage of liberalisation, you know, whether you go from May issue to shall issue or shall issue to permitless or, you know, any kind of modification in a shall issue law like North Carolina, you didn't originally you couldn't carry in a bar. Now you can carry in a bar, you still can't drink at all, whether you're in the bar or not while you're carrying, but you know, at every stage of liberalisation

There's been concerns about blood running in the streets, because more and more people carrying firearms out in public. And, you know, with you, I, I haven't seen direct evidence of that. And you know that if someone who is permitless carrying a gun and did something stupid, it would be on the news, you know, the, it's not like that's gonna get buried in somewhere like, you know, the the guy, you know, who shot the kid in the gas station in Florida, right end up going to jail for murder. But everyone made a big deal because he was a licensed carrier.

You know, we never heard the end of that one. So, you know, there have been some studies that have looked at different states regimes and crime rates in relation to that. But, you know, they have no way of systematically Connect making a causal connection between more people legally carrying guns, and more negative criminal outcomes. Because of that, and right, because it's hard to constantly connect those two things.

Stephen Gutowski  31:01  
Right. And, you know, you do see, I think it's every town has a tracker of, I think that their their title for it is like licensed killers or something, something along those lines where they track people with concealed carry licenses who've committed, you know, violent crimes. And I think that they focus a lot on the anecdotal, obviously, because the data we do have, and some states put out their data on, you know, how many people with concealed carry licenses commit crimes, Florida does it Texas does it. Obviously, Texas just went to permitless. Carry. So you know, maybe they maybe that'll change in the future. But although they're keeping their their current permitting system as well. So presumably, people will still have permits, because permits give you the reason that you made that distinction with Alaska and Vermont before, the reason that a lot of these states keep their permitting systems when they go to a permitless. Law is so that people can carry in other states, because most states will require you to have a permit that they recognize in order to carry if you're not a resident. And so that's why a lot of these states still keep their their all permit systems when they go to permitless. But that aside, you see in the data that people who have these permits, are tend to actually be the least likely to commit crimes, even less so than police officers. So the data we do have suggests that these people who are willing to go out and get a permit to go through the process are very law abiding, generally speaking, obviously, you will, that doesn't mean that you're the best person. Just because you have a history of being law abiding doesn't mean that you're always going to see that everyone will never commit a crime after that point. Of course, that's gonna go against human nature, but but generally speaking, the data shows that people who get permits to carry guns are really the least likely to become violent criminals themselves. So

David Yamane  33:25  
and even if you know, that's, there's the counterfactual, right, that, that that violence Policy Center work, assumes that if the person didn't have the permit, that they wouldn't have ended up killing somebody. Right? It's like, you know, so. So it's not exactly a controlled scientific methodology.

Stephen Gutowski  33:45  
Yeah. And I think that too, that a lot of focus on permitless, carry get, like permitless carry is for people who have permits to get like to make their lives less difficult, but really permitless carry again, like, the person that actually affects or the people who never got a permit, who are carrying a gun illegally. Most likely, because they are, at least in some circumstances, because they didn't understand what the rules were, which is, frankly, as somebody who is a certified firearms instructor in Virginia, and can teach the course which we can get, we'll get into just a moment here about the training aspect of all this, but I know a lot of people who don't understand completely the rules when they own this why I tell everyone in Virginia that I know who owns a handgun that you ought to get the permit to carry. Even if you don't actually ever want to carry a gun on your person. You don't want to get a holster and put it on your body and carry it around because the problem is that you don't have to be you don't have to have a gun holstered on you to break the concealed carry laws in Virginia it's not, there's, there's a lot more that goes into it than that, like you can, if you just transport your gun incorrectly, that can be a huge problem. I mean, there was actually the case of there was a black soldier in in Virginia, this is a famous viral case where he got pulled over and pepper wanted to get the police wanted him to get in the car, and there was computation, and they tased him. He was in uniform. And one of the things that people use to justify that was that he had a gun in the car. Now, it turned out later that he had a permit anyway. But there was, you know, there was all this second guessing, based on the concept that he just had a gun in his car in like a compartment in his car. Because while in Virginia, you know, there was a Attorney General ruling from 2010. That said, you can have a loaded gun in in your center console or in a compartment in the car, without violating the state's carry law, you know, carry laws, but you can't, if it was in an open container, like in a, in a just pocket next to his door that, you know, the little area in the door on most cars that if you had it in there, that would be illegal. You know, there's a lot of things where there's technicalities that go into whether or not you're committing a felony or doing something perfectly legal, that a lot of people just don't even understand. And you know, that this is one of the issues that a lot of people have with permit systems is that they can make somebody who has done nothing else wrong. a felon over something that is to a lot of people would be a technicality, a possession. technicality. And so that's how I look at it with with these sorts of laws personally, because I don't see that they've driven up crimes in any noticeable way across the states that have adopted them. And really, they do more to protect people who just don't understand that they're even breaking the law than they do to anything else I get. A lot of a lot of these kinds of crimes, these possession crimes are used as like ways to try and get it criminals who you can't get because you don't have the evidence that they've committed more serious crimes.

David Yamane  37:31  
Yeah. And to your point, there's, there was a study that came out of Loyola, Chicago recently looking at gun crimes in Cook County, and they found an extremely high percentage of all the the gun crimes that were were prosecuted in Cook County were possession crimes, illegal possession crimes, and so the person who I saw tweeting about it was kind of saying like, Well, you know, permitless carry in Illinois, this guy's definitely not pro gun at all. But he's saying like permitless carry, could create some more racial equity in the criminal justice system, because, you know, of those 75% of illegal carry cases in Cook County, a huge percentage of them were African Americans. Now, you know, obviously, some of them were probably not there were prohibited persons or under age or something. So they, you know, would have been convicted, even under permitless carry for those people who want to carry a gun but can't go through the process to get an Illinois permit, which as I say, in my book is one of the most stringent systems, you know, that you have 16 hours of class four hours on the range. If you live in the city of Chicago, there's no range in the city of Chicago for you to, to take that part of the course. I mean, it's a huge burden on people to carry under even a shall issue regime, right. So we say, shall issue like, you know, that's great. And, uh, compared to may issue, it is great, but there are still many financial and practical hurdles that are put in people's way to get a permit. In some Shall I mean, some shell issue states are very easy, but there's the devil is in the details, you know,

Stephen Gutowski  39:16  
yeah. And that's certainly the exact same thing in Washington DC as well right across the river from where I live, where it's the same same idea, the extremely high bar for what training is required. And obviously some people you know, this is a controversial topic to because, because certainly the ideal is that you should not carry a gun if you are not trained to carry a gun. I think everyone would agree with that, that you have a responsibility to get trained if you want to carry a firearm, on your person where you go, or if you want to handle a firearm at all, frankly, but you should take an extra level of training if you want to carry it around in public, but the problem is when people use that, or politicians use that concept, that responsibility and turn it into something that makes it effectively impossible for most people to actually obtain the necessary training for a permit. And then they're stripped of that right, effectively or stripped of their ability to, because you talk about rights versus, you know, permits. And and I think that's an interesting, you know, debate, obviously, that whether or not carrying a gun in public is a right. Certainly I personally believe the segment covers that, but, but there's plenty of people who who don't believe that even other gun owners necessarily, don't necessarily believe that. But, you know, when, especially in places like Chicago and DC, like, when you do that you're going to have disproportionate impact on minorities, because that's where a lot of minorities live. You know, and it's the same odd thing that always comes up with guns and race. I think when you when you discuss gun laws and race, because oftentimes the people who are concerned about disproportionate impact, and how that's a sign of racism, they just don't talk about all of the disproportionate impact that gun laws have, and have had, historically, especially since a lot of gun control laws came explicitly from racist motivations, like they were created explicitly to restrict the rights of minorities, especially African Americans in the United States. So obviously, not everyone who supports gun control laws today are racists, I wouldn't make that argument. But there's sort of this missing component when we talk about the effect of of gun laws, effective laws generally on and how some of them have a disproportionate impact on certain communities. And that means there's a systemic problem, right? This is a common argument, you hear about a lot of kinds of laws. But that doesn't really, at least not the same level, from the same people get applied to gun laws.

David Yamane  42:30  
This is, you know, the person I was, you know, debating or talking to you on Twitter was experiencing a very profound sort of division, because he recognized that permitless carry could would would very likely have a positive effect on racial inequality. At the same time, he was did not want permitless carry, he didn't doesn't like the idea of people carrying guns around. And so he's trying to figure out, you know, how do I how do I manage that sort of distinction or that division? And, you know, I think that a lot of people when the Bronx defenders filed the abacus brief in the, in the correlate case, you know, and, you know, people were like, Who are these people, these public defenders who represent, you know, poor racial minority clients, arguing that people should have a right to carry guns if people have a really hard time getting their minds around that, but it's worth, you know, thinking about and pondering.

Stephen Gutowski  43:30  
And there's a lot there's a lot of nuance here, too, because obviously, polling indicates that most African Americans are not supportive of, of liberalizing gun laws, or that they tend to support more gun control. So, you know, it's not it's not it's as simple as I think a lot of people like to make it out to be but But clearly, there's a conversation that's not generally had about this, that really baffles me personally as to, you know, the, the intellectual rigor of some of these people, like just ignore that these these facts. I mean, you can, there's, there's all sorts of data that that shows this, and we have a long history of racial, you know, racist use of gun control bars that go back to the founding era. And so it's, I just think it's something that deserves a lot more attention discussion, because yeah, like a lot of these gun laws, one they get used against people who haven't done anything other than have a gun in the wrong under the wrong circumstances. Maybe that's appropriate. If you've got a history that, you know, like, violent felony, something along those lines. You know, you've been adjudicated mentally there's some there's some due process that you've gone through, that shows that you're not society deems that you're not eligible based on what your actual personal actions have been. to own firearms, that that's one thing. You know, there's obviously debate there about violent felonies versus non violent felonies, of course, too. But a lot of times, it's just, you catagen. And you carried it the wrong way, you transported it the wrong way. And that got you arrested and changed your life forever. It's, it's, it's like used as a sort of shortcut to get it what police think are bad people. We can't prove that this person did the violent thing. But we can prove that they transported a gun the wrong way. So

David Yamane  45:38  
yeah, and I was just on a race and guns panel with Nicholas Johnson, the Fordham law professor who's written about the black tradition of arms, as he says, and he brings up this issue that you do with judges, you know, how do you how does that that the tradition of Black Arms interface with what he calls the modern orthodoxy today, which is a sort of strong pro gun control stance that African Americans take. And, you know, probably, for understandable reasons, given the amount of violence that people in African American communities are subjected to. And so he might be an interesting guest for you to really engage that issue, since he knows the history of the bad uses to which gun control laws have been put then, you know, as a really, sort of staunch advocate for, you know, African American gun ownership.

Stephen Gutowski  46:33  
Yeah. And I mean, I've heard African American gun owners explain some of the some of what's at play here with why why that that sort of attitude exists, which oftentimes, I think boils down to that in certain communities. I mean, it's hard to talk about African Americans is because I don't want to, I don't want to like you can't generalize too much. Just like any other group of people, if they aren't all the same. Obviously, they're not a monolith, right? It's not, you can't just say all black people had this experience, or all black people think this thing that's not it's not true, obviously. But for at least some what I've heard from people like maj Turay, who's a black gun rights advocate, and a number of other others, they said, you know, in some communities that experienced high violence levels, some African American communities, inner city communities, guns come to be used by either the police or the criminals. And there aren't really positive associations with either of those groups. So people tend to look at guns through that prism in some of these communities. But obviously, I don't want to speak too much for any black person, because I don't I haven't lived that experience. I don't know, I've, obviously we've had Tiffany Johnson on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and I plan to have more African American gun owners, Asian American, all sorts of different people. Because one of the things that I want to do with this podcast, and this is where I think that what you're, you're doing with academia or in academia and gun scholarship, is sort of similar, is I want to try and, and look at stories and groups of people that don't get a lot of attention inside of the gun owning community. You know, I want to bring people on who have interesting stories that are different from my own, and different from what maybe some of my listeners have experienced. And I want to tell stories that aren't told in most of the rest of media, because most of the media focuses on almost exclusively the criminal use of firearms, right, that that's really all you get in terms of coverage. Outside of a few standout examples like this. It's Time magazine issue that I was part of, a couple years ago that for those watching on YouTube, you can see that's what that's why there's a time magazine poster on my, the backdrop here, I'm actually on this cover because they looked at, you know, several 100 people and their experience with the firearms on both sides of the political issue of guns. But, you know, I just think that there's not much coverage of, you know, things like the gun makers match that I went and covered for, you know, early on with the reload. The Asian American Governors Association, or Asian, Asian American Pacific Islander gun owners AAPI go, you know, that group forming or the guns out guys, that's to African American hosts of a show. They started up a show about guns. And they've had a lot of success with it. And I've profiled them but there's Yeah, there's all these stories of people in different groups, liberal gun clubs, and other one That you that just don't get told out elsewhere and get kind of ignored in favor of just talking about really basically just mass shootings is the only topic that you ever really hear about when it comes to guns and in media. So they know that that's what I tried to focus on with the reload and with this podcast and sort of expanding the universe of stories about firearms in America. And I, you know, I know that's something that you've also faced with gun scholarship is that it's sort of limited to one particular Avenue and you you tried to take a more broad approach. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah.

David Yamane  50:43  
So you know, I grew up in political and cultural blue bubble in the San Francisco Bay Area. So I never saw touched or fired a gun until I was 42 years old, living in North Carolina. And you know, moving from that blue bubble into academia, which is an even bluer bubble. And then within academia, sociology is even bluer like that we're talking the pure pure blue, blue is not even blue enough. You know, that, that I understand the default position, which is I have no experience with guns. And so what do I know about guns, I know what I see in the media, which is that guns do bad things. So you know, I sort of bring that baggage with me into North Carolina, where I started talking to people, and it seems that I'm the only person who doesn't have a gun. Like, guys, I play tennis with my fantasy football league, you know, it guys, doctors, like everybody's got a gun that just, you know, kind of rednecks, like driving their trucks around in the countryside. And so, I, when I started studying guns academically, I thought, well, guns are really normal for these people. This is a normal part of life, for lots of different types of people, men, women, races, whatever, social class. And so I started getting into the academic literature, and I realize that nobody writes about the normality of guns, everybody writes about the criminal use of guns and gun injury and death, basically, epidemiology. And, you know, so that, that bias that you see reflected in the media is also reflected in the way that academics have approached guns historically. And so, you know, I've been fighting a small, you know, lonely battle to try to emphasize ways in which guns as I say, guns are normal and normal people use guns, that's, that's my gun culture. 2.0 motto. And, and it's, you know, not easy to, to study that in the sense that in the same way that hey, man carries gun, nobody gets shot. That's not really a news story. Right? No, that's not really an academic story, either, in a sense. And so, you know, I've had to work work hard to try to unearth those aspects of normality, which are worthy of further scholarly attention. And so, you know, that's been been part of my, my project. And, you know, I have enough credibility, I think, I mean, maybe people bash me behind my back. But, you know, I have enough credibility. And, you know, I publish peer reviewed research, I edited a special issue of a journal recently, you know, and so, people, people have to take those ideas seriously, even if it's kind of working around the margins of what people are still largely interested in, which is criminology and epidemiology. Sure, sure.

Stephen Gutowski  53:44  
And once again, author of concealed carry revolution, I really recommend this because it's, it's very succinct. Yeah, it's well sourced. And it really does a good job of explaining how we went from basically, total bans on concealed carry to basically total bans on concealed carry permits, so that he can carry a gun without any sort of government papers. But I think it does a really good job of explaining that history and doing it concisely. And once again, where can people pick this up?

David Yamane  54:25  
So they am working on the updated edition this this first edition is available on Amazon, the publisher I was working with ended up kind of screwing things up and never got a Kindle edition into Amazon. So that's another reason to do the updated edition. So within a couple of weeks, the updated edition will be available in print and electronic addition within Amazon.

Stephen Gutowski  54:52  
Oh wonderful. Well, I will look forward to picking up that copy so I can see what you have to say about well tech, I mean, Texas Big deal, that's the biggest state to do permitless carry thus far. And, of course, the Supreme Court has taken up a case against New York's gun carry law, there may issue law. And so that's obviously a huge deal. And in this topic, so I think the updated version will be really interesting. I think the regular version is still great. For those who want to read it immediately, but I will absolutely look out for the updated version. And I just wanted to thank you for coming on. I know you have a class as well that you teach and, and that you bring your students out to learn. You know, practically about firearms as well. I think maybe we can have you back on. The next time. You're, you're done with that class, just to talk a little bit more about your, your methods and your research and how you teach about guns, because I think it's probably a bit different from, from how a lot of other professors do it. So we'll have to have you on again, once that happens, but really appreciate you coming on. I think you gave us some really insightful information there. And I would encourage people to follow you, where else can they find your work besides this book? Yeah.

David Yamane  56:08  
So I basically have two blogs, I have gun culture 2.0. If you just Google it, you should find my blog there. I've been doing that for eight or nine years now. It got to be a little bit sort of maybe more targeted towards people who are already into guns. So I started a second blog called gun curious, which was kind of designed for people who were trying to find more good, neutral information about guns. And so if you google gun curious, you should find that blog. And you can actually read about the class that I'm teaching on there. I've posted all the modules, the syllabus, and I talked about our gun field trip, but I'd love to come back on on the podcast to talk more about about how that class works.

Stephen Gutowski  56:53  
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we'd love to have you on again. Again, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. And we will see you again soon. Thank you. Thanks. And that's all we've got this week on the weekly reload podcast. Thank you for joining us again, if you want this podcast the day early. This is the only this is the only advertising we do on my show right now. So please bear with me hope it's not too annoying. But go ahead over to the relay comm join today you'll get the podcast early, you'll get access to all kinds of exclusive posts that aren't available for free to everyone else. Including, again, the analysis on why there's been media silence on our latest Chipman exclusive breaking story despite the clear newsworthy nature of it. But that's all we've got now. I'll see you guys again real soon.

Unknown Speaker  57:59  
I gave him poison just for fun. I had one friend. Now there's none. I made the devil broke so many bones. But none of them were ever my own army. I was alone. I broke so many bows.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai