The Invention of an Epidemic
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Why does Malcolm Gladwell say America’s gun violence crisis is a moral dilemma?
Malcolm Gladwell here. My new book, The American Way of Killing, investigates America's gun violence crisis. Why is the richest country in the world plagued by such lethal violence? Through a series of stories, interviews, and archival tape, I confront one of today's most urgent moral dilemmas and examine why the U.S. has never quite understood its own problem and why you can't fix what you refuse to do. To see clearly. Pre order the American way of killing at pushkin dot fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.
Pushkin.
Hello, hello, everyone. It's Malcolm Gladwell. I am here today to bring you something special. A chapter from my new book, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic. It's chapter two, called The Slave Owner's Lament. And it is, to use the word we love here at Revisionist History, the absolutely banana story behind the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the gun rights amendment. With guest appearances by eighteenth century Virginians, a brilliant Australian linguist, the delightfully named historian Carl Bogus, a lot of cranky Supreme Court justices, and most of all, a charismatic African slave named Jemmy. I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book, The American Way of Killing, The Invention of an Epidemic.
Four episodes in all on maybe one of the most complicated and perplexing of American social issues. My new book is coming out September twenty ninth. You can find all of my book tour dates on my website, Glabble dot com. Come and see me. And if you're in the New York area, I'll be at the ninety second street Y in conversation with Katie Tour of NBC News on the evening of september twenty ninth, which should be really fun. Doing this book, open my eyes, and I hope it will do the same for you. You can get the American way of killing at whatever bookstore you frequent or online platform you like. And you can find the audiobook version at pushkin dot fm slash audiobooks or wherever you get audiobooks.
I wanna close my eyes and forgive my sorrows. I don't care if the devil takes tomorrow. Ashes to ashes if I must I won't leave all my troubles dust to dust.
Chapter two The Slave Owners Lament. In the early years of the eighteenth century, in the long stretches of marshland known as the South Carolina Low Country, the local authorities decided they needed to dig a network of canals leading off the Stono River. The Stono is a tidal channel just south and west of Charleston, snaking its way between Johns Island and James Island. In the spring its banks would overflow, flooding roads and homes and farmland, and the idea was to build the equivalent of storm sewers off the river. They were six feet deep and And fifteen to twenty feet wide, so substantial that many are still there today. Digging them out of the heavy mud was a massive undertaking. The historian Peter Charles Hoffer writes, quote, bending over shovels and mattocks in the snake and insect infected waters, the diggers were exposed to the elements, disease, and exhaustion.
He went on. Heat would create terrible thirst. But the brackish water at the digger's feet was filled with deadly bacteria, parasites, and waste. This was not a task the white colonists of South Carolina would ever dream of doing themselves. It was a job for their slaves. Imagine a group of two dozen or so bondsmen, as slaves were often euphemistically called, digging ditches off a Stono River. It's early September seventeen thirty nine. The profits from rice cultivation in that part of South Carolina were so large that it was often cheaper for plantation owners to work their slaves to death and buy replacements and to try and keep their existing slaves alive. So these are men fresh off the boat from Angola and what was then called Congo with a K.
It was a Saturday. They had been out in the hot sun all day and faced the prospect of having to do the same thing the following day because ditch digging was considered so urgent that the normal Sunday day of rest was suspended. They were exhausted.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does Malcolm Gladwell say America’s gun violence crisis is a moral dilemma?
0:00–6:29
2
What was the Stono Rebellion and how did it shape Southern slave patrols?
6:29–13:42
3
How did the colonial militia system evolve into the Second Amendment?
13:42–20:56
4
What grammatical quirks in the Second Amendment make its meaning ambiguous?
20:56–28:31
5
Why did the Supreme Court treat the amendment’s opening clause as merely prefatory?
28:31–34:52
6
How did James Madison craft the Second Amendment to reassure Virginia planters?
34:52–39:58
7
What does the historical analysis reveal about the true purpose of the Second Amendment?
39:58–46:50
8
How does Gladwell connect the Second Amendment’s history to today’s gun‑violence epidemic?
46:50–51:05
Speakers
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