More Perfect: The Gun Show

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2008, the Supreme Court stepped in to settle our fight over the Second Amendment’s meaning. They did. And they didn’t. Given that we’re all gearing up for the Presidential race, and how gun rights and regulations are almost always centerstage during these times. Today, we’re re-releasing a More Perfect episode that aired just after the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It is an episode that attempts to make sense of our country’s fraught relationship with the Second Amendment. For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn’t happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case. We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's Lutif. So we are coming up on the American presidential election.
0:05.6	The Democrats have picked their choice for VP, Governor Tim Walls, who is an interesting guy for several reasons,
0:11.1	but one of them has to do with guns.
0:14.2	He is a proud gun owner.
0:15.9	He won the congressional sharp shooting contest.
0:19.0	About 15 years ago when he was in Congress, the NRA gave him an A rating as a politician.
0:25.0	They endorsed him as a Democrat over his Republican challenger.
0:30.0	He was even one of Guns and ammo magazines top 20 politicians.
0:36.1	But then he did a complete 180.
0:38.9	He donated all the money he got from the NRA
0:40.9	to veterans charities.
0:42.2	He was one of the co-sponsors of the House Assault Weapons
0:44.8	Ban legislation in 2018. As governor of Minnesota, he passed some of the strictest gun control laws in the entire nation,
0:55.0	leading to the NRA giving him an F because, as they have put it in one of their
1:00.0	publications, quote, he has treated a basic human freedom a right solidified in our
1:05.5	founding document by the Second Amendment as a politically inconvenient position
1:10.8	for him. So Tim Walz's stance on the Second Amendment, not to mention
1:17.0	every other politician running stance on the Second Amendment. If you live in
1:20.5	this country, especially if you live in a swing state, you're just going to keep hearing it over and over and over and over and
1:27.2	given how frequently mass shootings are happening in this country we
1:32.1	figured it was a good time,
1:34.8	maybe a better time than usual,
	...

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