The Second Amendment has a hidden origin story

our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed Author Malcolm Gladwell explores the fallacies behind the Second Amendment in conversation with Jonny Thomson. Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. His newest book, Talking to Strangers[…] Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath.

His newest book, Talking to Strangers[…] The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood Richard Kelly on 25 years of Donnie Darko, the true origin of the bunny mask, and The Philosophy of Time Travel, and his new novel. The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood Malcolm Gladwell argues that almost everything most people believe about the Second Amendment is wrong. Guns weren't widely owned in 18th-century America.

The militias didn't win the Revolutionary War. And the amendment that guaranteed their survival was written to protect one thing in particular: the armed slave patrols that Southern plantation owners depended on. In conversation with Jonny Thomson, Gladwell traces that history into the present — why originalism gave the right a blank cheque, why most lethal violence looks nothing like the murders in detective fiction, why America's falling homicide rate may say more about its trauma surgeons than its streets, and why the country's problem may be too few police rather than too many.

If you would like to join the studio audience for our next live conversation, become a Big Think Member and register here. MALCOLM GLADWELL: THE SECOND AMENDMENT WAS NEVER ABOUT FREEDOM Malcolm Gladwell's new book, The American Way of Killing, argues that almost everything most people believe about the origins of the Second Amendment is wrong — and that the consequences of that misunderstanding run through American policing, politics and psychology to this day. He spoke to Jonny Thomson about slave patrols, originalism, the two kinds of killing, why a falling homicide rate may say more about trauma surgeons than about violence, and why he thinks America has too few police rather than too many.

Jonny Thomson: Well, hello everybody, and hello Malcolm, and welcome to Malcolm Gladwell, a hugely popular and successful writer, author, thinker, who's best known for books like Outliers and The Tipping Point. But he's here today to talk about his new book, The American Way of Killing. Jonny Thomson: I thought we could divide the conversation into three acts.

The first would be about the more philosophical and historical implications of the book. And the second would be about the more modern and practical implications, and then the third we'd open up to questions from the studio audience. And I encourage people to just tap away at some questions and I'll read them out at the end.