Binge and learn: A podcast connecting Pop-Tarts, mockingbirds, and American gun violence
All episodes of Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust are now available, wherever you get your podcasts.
When Long Lead began developing the most recent season of Long Shadow, we had a theory. The demand for a season-long look at the American gun violence epidemic would be… small. I mean, in a world of audio where you can listen to everything from Julia Louis-Dreyfus extracting the genius from Carol Burnett to Joe Rogan saying whatever it is that Joe Rogan says, why would folks choose to learn about guns and mass shootings?
But we made Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust anyway, and here’s why: Because no one else would. Podcasting, as a business, is not particularly lucrative. Great shows are expensive to produce, and while tons of people make podcasts, advertisers aren’t necessarily flocking to support them. And a show about the explosion of guns across the U.S. and the trail of carnage that it’s produced? Well, no one wants to sell a mattress, email newsletter service, or vitamin supplement opposite that content.
Still, Long Shadow host Garrett Graff paired up with nonprofit gun violence newsroom The Trace to assemble a wild, compelling, and fascinating tour of how guns became so prevalent in 2024 America. And against the odds, listeners have gotten hooked on it. “One of the most important podcasts,” writes a recent reviewer on Apple Podcasts. “Season 3 of Long Shadow achieves the same magic as the prior two,” writes another. “It should be required listening in history classes,” writes a third.
It’s a funny thing about that last one: Earlier this week a history professor at a major university wrote to us and said she was requiring it for her class next semester. She also asked if we had transcripts available because one of her students is deaf. I pointed her to Long Shadow’s new website, where you can listen to the episodes, keep up with the show, and find full transcripts.
The votes are in — and Long Lead wins!
Two Long Lead features won Webby Awards earlier this month — and Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right earned a nomination — which is quite the feat. Our mission is to produce the highest quality journalism, without compromise. Help us raise the bar in news — read and share our award-worthy productions, today:
The Catch: Best Individual Editorial Feature
Lifting Ukraine: Best Use of Photography
Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right, Best Limited Series Podcast, News & Politics (nomination)
Personally, I learned so much about America’s gun violence epidemic while producing this season — and the lessons weren’t always about firearms. Here are six surprising things I learned while listening:
An NRA bigwig put out a hit on a bird.
The state bird of Florida, the Northern Mockingbird, has been the same since 1927. In the 1990s, the Florida Audubon Society started drumming up support for a new candidate: the Florida scrub jay, which was teetering close to extinction. “Then out of nowhere, Marion showed up,” Mike Spies of The Trace says in episode two, “Shall Not Be Infringed.”NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer had had no interest in a break with tradition. “Scrub jays are lazy and scurrilous,” she says on tape on the podcast. “They eat the eggs and nestlings of other birds. To me, that's robbery and murder, and it's not good family values.” The Northern Mockingbird remains Florida’s state bird today because Hammer wanted it that way. Why? Listen and find out. (The short answer is “guns.”)The “good guy with a gun” is pure marketing.
We’ve all heard the phrase “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But that wasn’t just a catchy phrase or a bit of (flawed) logic, says Jennifer Mascia of The Trace in episode five, “A Good Guy With a Gun.” The NRA president Wayne LaPierre was talking about it in 2005, and the organization started focus grouping it in public interviews in 2007, she says. Then in 2012, it reached its apex. “No matter what, they will always hew to this argument because it is the most successful argument for selling guns in America.”On the gun rights side, “compromiser” is a dirty word.
Former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman did a lot to propel the issues important to gun rights folks, and he stands by his work — including collaborating with the Clinton administration to ensure child safety locks were sold with all guns. Used correctly, the devices would stop an unauthorized user from being able to fire the gun. At the time, Feldman was working with gun manufacturers, and the White House enlisted his help getting the initiative in place. In episode three, “The Right to Bear AR-15s,” he recounts telling the manufacturers, “We have an opportunity to be on the right side of this one. It's nothing we oppose. We're all for firearm safety.” He was fired two years later, in part, he says, because of the trigger lock deal — but he doesn't regret any of it. Feldman had been deemed a traitor for compromising. “The worst thing you can say to a gun rights person is ‘He's a compromiser.’ Well, what's wrong with that? We sometimes have to give an inch, but giving an inch here can mean gaining a couple of yards there.”A Florida law guarantees the right to chew a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun.
In 2013, in Maryland, a child was suspended from school for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun and pretending to shoot other kids with it. When Hammer heard about this, Spies says in episode three, “The Hardliners,” “she was outraged and decided that it was necessary to get a law passed in the state of Florida that would provide legal protections to children who not only chewed pastries into the shapes of guns, but also like any number of other things that involved like pretend shooting.”Every day, Columbine’s former principal recites the names of the 13 people murdered at his school in 1999.
“Before my feet hit the ground, I recite the names of my beloved 13, and they give me the reason to do what I’m doing today,” Frank DeAngelis tells Graff in episode one, “A Uniquely American Problem.” DeAngelis stayed in his role as Columbine’s principal until 2014, fulfilling a promise to stay long enough to graduate every student in the community who was touched by the massacre. After retirement, working with other survivors became his main focus. DeAngelis co-founded the Principal Recovery Network in 2019.Campaigning on gun regulation is now a winning political strategy.
We’ve all seen The Onion’s joke headline that circulates after every mass shooting: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” But Senator Chris Murphy isn’t laughing, and he’s not convinced it’s true. A member of Congress representing Newtown, Conn., the site of the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting, Murphy has dedicated his public service to addressing the gun violence epidemic. And he’s seen a corner turned: “Once Democrats started really leading on the issue of guns,” he says in episode six, “Generation Lockdown,” “we started winning all sorts of unexpected races.... What I learned was that the conventional wisdom on guns had just been wrong.” This is a new trend in America, he says. “I’m fascinated by how quickly that conventional wisdom has changed.”
In the final episode, Graff notes, “At long last, it seemed the nation’s sense of what was ‘reasonable’ when it came to gun rights was changing.” Despite the decades of pain and suffering, he reports that there’s legitimate reason for hope that the U.S. can resolve its intractable gun problem. “After decades of watching the Second Amendment move to the fore of American life… as the country weighed questions of individual rights and community safety, perhaps America didn’t have to live like this forever,” he notes.
It’s a tough listen, to be sure, but this season of Long Shadow ends on a hopeful note. Give it a listen, and let us know if you walk away with hope, yourself.
So long for now,
John Patrick Pullen
Founding Editor, Long Lead
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