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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Jacobin Show. I'm Jen Pan. Very happy to be back. I was off for the last two weeks.

First because I was sick, then because I was on vacation. But the Jacobin Channel aired a series on European social democracy in my absence.

So hopefully you caught that. It's all there on the channel. If you missed it, take a look.

I'm excited for today's show because number one, I'm talking to Catherine Liu, a fan favorite, a favorite of me, of course.

We're going to be talking about the problem with California, specifically why a deep blue incredibly diverse state has soaring levels of poverty, income inequality and

just rising rates of crime and homelessness. Catherine, true to her form, has some interesting answers.

So we're going to have a conversation about that. I'm also talking to Danny Bessner about NATO and specifically Finland and Sweden's recent applications to join NATO.

And what that means for the future of NATO Russian conflict and how the left should be thinking about these developments.

And first I am talking to none other than producer Kale Brooks about the ongoing problem of guns in the US and gun reform and why it's so difficult to achieve that.

So let's dive into it.

All right. So I am now here with Kale to talk about guns and gun reform in the US or lack thereof, obviously in light of the recent tragic mass shooting in Evalde, Texas.

I think that, you know, there's obviously been a lot of commentary going on about why we can't pass meaningful gun reform in the US.

So I think I want to start with that question. Kale, I know you have some thoughts and comments about that.

And I just want to say from my perspective, it seems like the two dominant strains of commentary when it comes to this question of why we can't pass meaningful gun reform in the US sort of sent one sort of centers on the culture of guns in the US and then the other centers on the

our political system. And I don't think that the two are necessarily hugely exclusive.

But I want to start with the kind of cultural, the cultural narrative because, you know, that's the one that quite honestly I find a little less convincing.

And I don't think that it's completely wrong. I do think that there are some components of culture that play into this problem and we can get into that.

But probably speaking, the cultural narrative around why we can't pass gun reform is basically that we are in a sick society that is so saturated by love of guns and worship of guns that we collectively are unable to generate the political will to pass gun reform.

And just, you know, a lot of people, I think in the days after Evaldi have been kind of, you know, taking this line, like what is wrong with our culture, why can't we collectively pass gun reform.

And I just want to read a quote quickly from the New Yorkers, Jillani Cobb, he's calmness there and he wrote an article that came out pretty recently of the gun problem. He writes, some of this is on second amendment fundamentalists and the politicians who translate their zealotry into law.

The rest is on everyone of us who has yet to find the courage, the creativity, or the resolve to stop it.

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