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May 26, 2022 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
45:59
Gun Nuts

Richard discusses the recent Texas shooting; the Second Amendment; and America’s “gun culture.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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Hello everyone, this is Richard, and welcome back to my journal.
Today is Wednesday, May 25th.
I'm recording this in the afternoon, and I'll post it shortly after I finish.
Well, another day, another horrifying mass shooting.
I think we've all become inured to these, to a certain degree.
They still shock us.
But they also seem to be a part of American life.
I was born in 1978, and I came of age in the 1990s.
I was in high school.
And at that point, Columbine was a shocking innovation.
And I think it proved prototypical for these types of shootings.
Going forward, you had the black-clad, alienated loner type, radicalized on the internet to some degree, lashing out in the most extreme way possible to classmates and teachers, picking soft targets.
And what we saw yesterday was attack on the softest target possible, children in second and third grade.
It is somewhere beyond horror.
But I think we should talk about it, and I think it's worth talking about gun control, gun culture.
And all that is related to that.
I am rather tired of conservatives demanding that no one politicize this event, which I think is absurd and rather self-serving.
Apparently we're supposed to just gaze at the abyss for a week or so and then just move on.
But I guess we'll come together as a country by gazing into the abyss of an event like this.
Some of them will say that we should look at some deeper, you could say, cultural causes of this.
Social alienation and nihilism.
They don't use that word, but I do.
I agree with that.
They seem to offer the solution of come to God, which was the solution offered by Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter.
She basically just unthinkingly said, gun control won't work.
Well, if it won't work, I don't know why you oppose it.
But anyway, she says gun control won't work.
We have to look at...
The values that led to this, or the loss of values, and we should all come to God.
So it's a kind of solution that we have to convert the entire public into her non-denominational version of Christianity, and then this won't happen.
I don't know the religious background of the shooter.
His name is Salvador Ramos.
Apparently, he was 18. He was Hispanic, living in a community about 75 miles outside of San Antonio in Texas.
He probably had some sort of a Catholic background.
He did come from a broken home of sorts.
He lived with his grandmother.
That might have made him a...
A bit anxious or uncomfortable, but that's reality for millions of people.
He bought a gun legally at the age of 18 in Texas.
But we don't know much more of him than that.
We have an Instagram photo, apparently, of a gaunt figure.
A certain kind of darkness or...
Hollowness is how I would describe my impression of him.
That's all we have.
According to Governor Abbott, he apparently mentioned that he was going to murder his grandmother, which he allegedly did.
And then he might have mentioned on Facebook, I haven't seen evidence of this, but Governor Abbott has claimed this, that He was going to shoot up a school and he went to the adjoining lower school to his high school.
I've also read that even though he was looked at as a rather dark figure, he does fit the stereotype of the alienated loner who engages in this kind of violence.
He also doesn't have a mental...
Now, you could say that that's because our mental health system is underdeveloped and it's not as proactive as it should be.
Maybe that is true in this case.
But there was not some immediate warning sign from what we can tell that he was going to engage in this act.
This kind of attack is, of course, all too common.
There have apparently been 27 school shootings just in 2020 alone.
As I came of age in the 1990s, Columbine, as I mentioned, was an aberration, and I guess looking back, it was an innovation.
It was unimaginable.
There were precedents, of course.
Shooting from the tower at the University of Texas in the 1960s, that was probably the major precedent.
But the notion that this would become a regular occurrence and that it would enter the consciousness of schoolchildren.
Obviously, dying at school is about as likely as getting struck by lightning.
It's not something that...
Any young person should rationally expect, but of course we aren't rational.
And the fact is, this has entered children's consciousness in a way that I don't think I could fully understand.
There's no doubt that all children, even in lower school, are going to become aware of this.
They're going to become aware of this trend.
Certainly middle schoolers and high schoolers.
And it will inflect their lives in ways that I don't think we quite understand.
Many people lament the fact that this young man was able to buy a gun at 18. And in particular, the type of weapon that can be used in brutal massacres like this.
And to be frank, I agree with them.
Genuinely tired of making excuses or apologizing for American gun nuts at this point.
And yes, we should have stricter gun control than we do now.
Now, whenever an event like this happens, there is a predictable outcome.
The conservatives start whining, almost pre-whining, why are you politicizing this?
We should all just gaze at the abyss for a while and then look away and move on.
Liberals, including President Joe Biden, will immediately call for gun reform.
And they will make fairly compelling cases for that.
You know, for God's sake, in the words of President Biden.
There aren't deer out of the forest wearing Kevlar vests.
You don't need this type of weapon.
And I think it's pretty unreasonable to say you need this type of weapon to protect yourself from a home invasion.
Your home is not going to be invaded by an army.
A handgun will suffice in rural areas.
It's worth mentioning that a handgun is a...
A rather dangerous weapon for a home invasion in urban areas, just because a bullet will pass through walls.
You could definitely shoot your neighbor.
A shotgun is better.
It's a big, wide spread.
And as many people will tell you, if you do suffer a home invasion, oftentimes the criminal will walk away when he hears that pump action of a shotgun.
Because he knows that this might not be worth it.
You know, I'll go burglarize someone else.
But anyway, just some things to consider.
But it is very clear that American gun culture isn't just about protection.
That is, when polled, that is the primary reason why gun owners say they own a gun, for protection.
And fewer say for hunting or sports shooting.
Actually 67%, so some two-thirds say it's for protection, and only 40% say for hunting.
So there's, you can see a couple of things from that.
First off, there is something going wrong with the country at large.
When you have many people who have some kind of weapon and have no intent of using it for hunting or skeet shooting or something like that.
But they live in fear to some degree.
67%.
Beyond that, most people who own a gun own multiple guns.
And I don't need to tell you about a kind of gun culture that...
has infested a great deal of white America.
In particular, rural America.
Some 40% of gun owners live in rural areas.
It's 30% of the suburbs and 19% in urban areas.
I guess that's not too surprising.
But there's a...
Culture of not even doing sporting.
There's also a culture of not just merely engaging in sporting activities like firing at clay targets or doing a pigeon shoot or going duck hunting or quail hunting, something like that,
but of simply buying very high-powered Effectively military-grade, more or less, weaponry, and simply firing it at a target.
I guess that is a sport to some degree, but I'm not sure marksmanship is what most people are going after.
They want to fire this powerful weapon and hit something.
To be frank, the common liberal slur that people who like to fire big guns are a little bit anxious about the size of their manhood, to be frank, I think that probably has more than a kernel of truth to it, does it not?
I mean, you are going to arrange...
Not becoming a skilled marksman, not doing something sporting like firing at clays or something like that, but just simply blasting away.
That's a weird hobby, to be honest.
You're not exactly playing golf or shooting hoops.
There, you know, when I think about gun control, The first thing that comes to mind is my grandfather.
And my maternal grandfather, who lived in relatively rural Louisiana, he was actually a doctor.
And he grew up in an even more rural area in Arkansas.
And for someone, you know...
Being born in the 1920s and so on, and particularly in the South at that point.
From everything I heard, guns were a way of life.
I'm sure he fired a weapon when he was in single digits for the first time.
I'm sure he hunted for his food very often.
He was a bird hunter.
He was not into big game at all.
He was an excellent shot.
He took me hunting many times.
I have many fond memories of him in general and hunting with him as well.
And again, whenever someone just mentions gun culture, I think of my grandfather.
He had the remarkable name of Richard Dickenhorst.
I'm named after him.
And as you can imagine, Yes, it's true.
He actually went by Dick Dickenhorst.
I remember finding that funny when I was a preteen or something, but I guess as I get older, I think it's a pretty cool name.
You gotta own it.
He was definitely comfortable in his own skin.
But...
His gun culture was very different.
First off, he did grow up in a very rural environment.
Even when he was a practicing doctor, he lived in a relatively rural environment, in kind of a suburb slash rural environment, slash small city in Louisiana.
But I could say that his gun culture, and I spent quite a bit of time with him, his gun culture was...
He was a traditionalist on a basic level.
He certainly was safe with his weapons.
Whenever I would do a faux pas or something like that, he would scold me.
He was very serious about gun safety.
He was never involved in any kind of terrible...
He had heard about people who were, and I'm sure had some friend who had some kind of injury.
That's to be expected when doing any sport.
But he was very serious about that.
He collected weapons.
He actually told a story about an Englishman who traveled all the way to Louisiana from England who was selling him a Purdy.
So if you don't know, Purdy's are Maybe the most famous classic gun.
They're all handmade.
You order one and I think he said it took him two years to make it or something.
Very expensive.
And this was a major thing in his life.
And he ultimately didn't like it and sold it.
But he liked Beretta.
So he liked the Italian shotguns.
Those were his favorite.
But he was a very serious collector.
He had a number of beautiful weapons.
Hunting was his hobby, you could say way of life.
It was just something deeply important to him.
And he was very safe with it.
He certainly kept also some handguns in the home for protection.
And again, he was safe with those too.
But you can see that connection with rural life.
We actually have a number of paintings that I inherited from them.
They're probably not worth a whole lot.
They mostly have sentimental value.
But there is a beautiful painting that my mother has.
And it is of an older man and a younger man.
And the older man is teaching the younger man how to load a shotgun.
And there are two bird dogs.
At their feet.
It is very touching.
And I think does express a kind of traditional culture.
One that was more connected to the land.
One that was about values and respect and so on.
So if anyone's predisposed to liking guns, it's me.
As you can tell by this digression, I have a great deal of sentimentality about it.
But I have to say, when I look at the current gun culture of the United States, I have very different feelings.
And you could say that I'm snobby.
Or something like this.
That I'm looking down on people, including some representatives in Congress, who issue Christmas cards that feature them around a Christmas tree, and every member of their family, including some quite young members of their family, holding a semi-automatic firearm.
You can tell in these kinds of things, first off, it is this weird showing off, tasteless.
But also, there is no way that you are going to use a weapon like that in any sort of traditionalist hunting lifestyle.
And I guess you could use that for home defense.
If, you know, an entire Mexican drug cartel decides to take over your house and you just blow them away.
But no, it's a kind of gun fetishism.
So it is not about having a beautiful classic item that is part of the manly sport of hunting.
No, it's about a fetish of a big gun, one that is either going to be used in a military situation or one that could be used in a massacre at a school.
I find it sick.
I think there's probably some truth to the liberal slander about people who...
Take photos of themselves with giant firearms.
I can't conclude otherwise.
There is nothing traditionalist about it.
It actually reeks of suburban consumerism.
You know, look at my new jet ski.
Look at my semi-automatic weapon.
I'm a real badass.
It is just tasteless and gross and stupid.
And I think that, I mean, I think we would probably all agree that, I mean, we would all agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene to some extent that any type of shooting like this does come from a very dark place and one which meaning is lost.
And the shooter seeks some kind of false, horrible authenticity by engaging in this violent lashing out at soft targets.
So it does come from a nihilistic place.
But so does gun culture.
Again, it's not rooted in the land.
There is no animal that you hunt with these weapons.
And instead, it becomes this false showing off of either your big dick or just how conservative you are, just how much of a Rambo badass you are.
It's childish, silly, bizarre, and needless to say, expresses an extremely bad taste.
I think one could say that the gun control legislation that would have prevented a shooting like this is unlikely to happen due to this disconnect we have between gun owners and gun control advocates.
And I think it's even more of a disconnect between Rural Americans and urban Americans.
They have two different senses of what the gun is.
So someone who lives in rural Texas might very well have a conception of the gun that's similar to my grandfather's.
It's about hunting with his grandfather.
He might also be one of these loons who is a part of gun culture as well.
And he just can't imagine not spending a Saturday afternoon...
On the other hand, gun control advocates don't see the gun in the same way.
It doesn't mean the same thing for them.
When they think of the gun, they think of urban crime.
And if we're brutally honest, they probably think of...
Black gang crime.
They think of living in a big city and there was a gangland shootout near their condominium.
Why, from their perspective, would they not support some kind of gun control?
And I don't think many of those types of urban liberals...
Want to eliminate skeet shooting or duck hunting.
I don't think they...
Maybe a very small percentage of them do, but the brunt of them probably think that that type of thing is okay, and maybe even they participated in it themselves.
I don't think they are abolitionists in that sense.
But...
When they think of the gun, they think specifically of urban crime, and why not?
Why can't we reduce crime in this way?
And I think the just absurdity of the conservative argument that more guns equals less crime really is an absurd argument that they would make about no other subject.
Obviously, removing guns, a massive buyback of handguns and semi-automatic weapons, would reduce gun crime.
It would reduce violence.
The notion that we just need more guns and that there wouldn't be serious violent urban crime...
If everyone had a right to carry permit is simply absurd.
And you see them do this.
Their answer to any kind of tragedy like what we saw, or really any kind of social ill, is just this escalation.
So there's actually a Texas official who's saying, well, we might want to consider arming teachers.
I mean, are you going to arm students?
I mean, where does that end?
It's just an insane escalation where once we just get everyone armed, everyone will be so terrified that they won't engage in this.
It is absurd.
And it does not represent the kind of world that most normal people want to live in.
But back to the disconnect, there is this profound disconnect between the rural Americans' conception of the gun and the urban Americans' conception of the gun.
And so they, in a way, can't talk to one another.
It's incommiserable.
And that, more than anything, is why gun control just seems to be...
Unsolvable issue.
Now, there is another reason.
And that, of course, is the Constitution of the United States and the Second Amendment in particular.
I think it's worthwhile looking at the Second Amendment and taking it seriously.
Obviously, the founding fathers and Madison, who was the author of these amendments, never could have imagined the type of violence that we experience today.
I don't think they could possibly imagine a teenager taking a semi-automatic weapon and attacking lower schoolers.
That is just...
Beyond comprehension.
I also don't think they could have imagined a completely disarmed society, particularly when America was predominantly rural.
The notion that a homesteader wouldn't carry around a rifle or have a rifle at hand was also unimaginable.
So I simply think they lived in a very different age, and to expect them to offer guidance on this issue is simply asking too much.
It's not reasonable.
It's not something they could conceivably talk about.
Now, it's worthwhile looking at that amendment itself, and I will read it.
1791, of course.
A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Now, There was a Heller decision.
I think it was the District of Columbia v.
Heller from 2008.
There was a Heller decision in which the gun rights advocates prevailed.
And in a very similar way to the more liberal courts discovering a right to privacy and thus a right to abortion in the 14th Amendment, Scalia and company Discovered an individual right to bear arms.
They did accept that these could be regulated to some degree, but there was an individual right within the text of the Constitution.
And that we shouldn't look too hard at the...
First predicate of that sentence, the preface to that sentence, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms.
It's the right of the people that is significant, and that is an individual right to bear arms.
Now, none of these rights are absolute, of course.
That is, you don't have the right to a rocket launcher, and if you are a violent criminal, your right to bear arms can be taken away, much as your right to vote and your...
To do all sorts of things can be taken away, but they did see that within the text.
It is interesting to look at some earlier drafts of the amendment, as well as some contemporaneous second amendments, quote-unquote, that were occurring at the time.
This was actually an original draft.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
A well-armed and well-regulated militia being the best security to a free country.
But no person, religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.
So, Madison here, as well as in the final...
Draft of the Second Amendment was making compromises.
So the no person religiously scrupulous to bearing arms was a nod to the Quakers of Pennsylvania, basically saying you won't need to be a part of a militia.
But it's also interesting that he mentions here in this draft...
A well-armed and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country.
Now, in Europe, and I think in political theory in general, most people will speak of a state and a nation, i.e.
the nation-state.
So there's the nation, it's the people, the state is the government and the army and everything that goes with it.
United States, we will often use different words.
We will refer to a country as the federal government or the whole thing.
And then a state is actually referring to one of these states, Massachusetts, Texas, Montana, etc.
One of these provincial entities within the government.
It's very similar to how the word federal and federalized almost mean the opposite thing in the United States and Europe.
But anyway, don't need to go into that.
Liberal also has different meanings, different places, but don't need to go into that.
So the idea at the time was that a well-armed militia could be accessed by the federal government.
So when they refer to militias, they're not really referring to these, you know, like private groups that people might be a part of.
They're effectively referring to the National Guard.
And these militias had many duties.
They were policing duties of sorts.
They also had duties similar to the National Guard that we know today.
That is a kind of semi-professional volunteer army that many people take part in that is not a standing army, and I think that's the key.
So the Founding Fathers were liberals to the extent that they...
They did want to divide power and have a strong but divided and kind of checked federal government.
And they did not want standing armies.
They felt like that was a, you know, understandably, they felt that that was a threat to liberty that could lead to, you know, who knows?
A dictatorship a la Napoleon or something like that.
They wanted to avoid such a situation.
And they had the imperial experience of the British army that they were opposed to.
They didn't want any of this.
And so they had a kind of National Guard-like system.
And they never wanted to take away the...
They never wanted to confiscate guns.
First off, I don't think they would have done that anyway, but nevertheless, they never would have confiscated guns for the reason that they wanted a well-regulated militia.
Now, there was also these kind of provincial disputes, you could say, particularly with regards to slavery, where many who were more...
Inclined decentralization imagined that these militia, these National Guard organizations, could be centralized or used by the central government to fight off an invasion, to do something else.
Other people, particularly the southern landowners, I mean Madison was a landowner and a slave owner, Patrick Henry as well, were more concerned.
About the policing action of the militia, so that these would be needed here in the States.
They'd be needed to police the populace, but also, and particularly with regards to slavery, and we can't just send these militia away on some adventure in Mexico or something, or Canada probably, more likely.
So we need to actually keep these at the state.
And so you see that in the final draft of the Second Amendment, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.
So that is very strong decentralization language.
But the fact is, Madison and company were dealing with the politics of their time that was very tricky.
And they were coming up with compromises and solutions.
So we're going to keep these militias involved in policing the state.
Now, maybe they could be drawn up by the federal government, but maybe not.
And that's why we don't want to infringe on the right to bear arms.
Again, being hundreds of years...
Distance from that, Scalia and company will look at this as implying some kind of individual right to bear arms.
Or, I guess even worse, a certain myth has developed among the gun-nut types that the real reason for the Second Amendment is not hunting.
The real reason is tyranny.
And that is that a well-regulated militia or an individual with a gun cannot be oppressed in the way that a disarmed person would.
If you have paid any attention at all to American politics, you have heard this myth.
This gun's not for hunting, it's for fighting tyrants.
Well, I think it's safe to say that the Founding Fathers Never imagined anything like that.
And as we would see in the Whiskey Rebellion under the George Washington administration, they were perfectly willing to use the U.S. Army, in this case the Revolutionary Army, to suppress any kind of tax revolt or quasi-secessionist rebellion.
This is actually a major event in establishing the United States as a real sovereign entity.
It is mentioned pretty regularly, but it's not mentioned in the way that we talk about the Fourth of July or World War II or something like that.
It might be, maybe I'm overstating matters, but it might be one of the most important events in the creation of the United States.
It was when the U.S. government was willing to suppress rebellion.
So the notion that the Founding Fathers were these Ron Paul types who wanted everyone to have semi-automatic weapons, maybe tanks, so that we could fight off the woke mob from making us de-genderfy bathrooms.
Something like that.
That's just ridiculous.
They didn't think that way.
And it's unreasonable to expect them to have thought that way.
It is simply a gun culture myth.
And it's also a pretty nonsensical myth.
Again, you don't need a semi-automatic weapon to protect you from a home invasion.
And secondly, even if you had a semi-automatic weapon, you're not...
Going to take over the government or stop the government from enforcing its will upon you.
The government has nukes, it has armies, it has...
I mean, are you really want to engage in some kind of long-term bloody guerrilla campaign against the federal?
I mean, these...
Again, the Founding Fathers did not think this way, and these things are these...
These scenarios are so hypothetical that I really can only conclude that it's a kind of virtue signaling from the right.
That is, it's a way, much like issuing a Christmas card with your whole family holding up semi-autos, talking about how this gun's not for hunting, it's for tyranny, is this bullshit virtue and status signal.
Don't tread on me.
It's just nonsense.
And the sooner we call it out for its nonsense, the better.
I think it is worth asking, maybe this time it's different.
Maybe something is going to come of this incident.
And not just say the banning of bum stocks or whatever after the Las Vegas shooting, but maybe this shooting, which is so heinous and comes quickly after the Buffalo massacre.
Maybe this will inspire something.
I tend to think that it won't, for the reasons that I went into.
But...
I wonder if it will.
The arguments from the right on behalf of unfettered gun control are really falling flat at this point.
The notion that we should start arming teachers that The only, you know, a good man with a gun is standing in the way of the bad man with a gun coming to kill innocents or something.
All of this stuff, the sacred Second Amendment right, come to God, then you won't be a spree shooter.
All of these things seem to be really falling flat.
Close to 50% of the public does support tighter gun regulations.
I do think the conservatives are increasingly fighting a losing battle on this one.
But, to their credit, when they say things, when even MTG says things like this is coming from a dark place and no gun control legislation can change that, I do agree with that.
It is hard not to look at...
The culture that created this as anything but deeply sick.
And I guess I'll close on this.
Two-thirds of deaths by guns are not spree shootings or gang violence or hold-ups or anything like that.
They're actually suicides.
Now, on the one hand, it is clear that reasonable gun control would stop a lot of these suicides.
A gun is an equalizer, I would say.
You don't have to be Achilles to fight off Achilles if you have a gun.
It's egalitarian in that way.
A 100-pound, 5 '2 woman can shoot dead a 6 '5 behemoth who might be attacking with her.
It is an equalizer.
It is also a very effective and immediate way of killing yourself.
So there's no doubt that...
Reasonable gun control would lessen the suicide rate.
It's just harder to kill yourself in other ways.
And you might have a dark thought and you pull out a gun and you do it and it's immediate and permanent.
And if you had some time to think about it, you very well might not kill yourself.
That being said, The mere fact that two-thirds of gun violence involves suicide, that suicide seems to be increasing in the United States, whereas it is slowly declining worldwide, that should give you a little taste of much deeper problems of this country that go well beyond any sort of legislation.
Okay, I'll end it there.
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