Jonathan M. Metzl

Media Appearances

• When TV united America: Friday marks the day nearly half of USA watched the same show

  Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, noted the starkly contrasting reactions to the halftime show featuring rap star Kendrick Lamar, many of them colorfully expressed on social media. Metzl saw a similar pattern while researching his latest book, “What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.’’ He said half the country reacted to mass shootings by calling for tighter gun laws, and the other half by saying more firearms are needed.

  February 28th, 2025

• Murder As An Act Of Terrorism, Fed's Rate Cut Decision, Female Mass Shooters

  Another expert I talked to is Jonathan Metzl. He studies gun violence at Vanderbilt University. He said the shooter's gender is not the most salient fact in this circumstance. "It's not surprising to me that - given the increasing availability of guns and the fact that we have so many mass shootings in this country, that we're, I think, going to increasingly see different kinds of people commit these kinds of shootings and other shootings."

  December 18th, 2024

• Psychiatrist advocates for reforming U.S. approach to gun safety

  Already this year, there have been more than 3,000 firearm deaths in the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive. Dr. Jonathan Metzl, director of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University and author of the new book, “What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms,” joins William Brangham to discuss how America tackles gun violence.

  January 29th, 2024

• What are the chances the parents of the Highland Park shooter will face prosecution?

  "If anything comes out of this, just based on the history of these kind of complaints, I would bet that it would be a civil case, not a criminal case," Jonathan Metzl, a professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University who studies gun violence, said of the likelihood of legal troubles for Bobby Crimo's parents.

  July 12th, 2022

• They survived the parade shooting. What do they tell their kids now?

  Dr. Jonathan Metzl, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, has been studying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mass shootings and gun violence in America for 20 years.

  July 7th, 2022

• Supreme Court strikes down NY State Concealed Gun law

  Jonathan Metzl and Rep. Ritchie Torres join MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart to discuss how the Supreme Court made it harder for states to regulate guns by overruling a century-old New York law that limited licenses to carry firearms.

  June 26th, 2022

• Young men, guns and the prefrontal cortex

  When Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl learned that the perpetrator of the Uvalde, Tex., school massacre was a young man barely out of adolescence, it was hard not to think about the peculiarities of the maturing male brain.

  June 3rd, 2022

• Activist Investing Has Come for Fossil Fuels. What About Guns?

  “It’s kind of a Hail Mary,” said Dr. Jonathan Metzl, the director of the Department of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, whose research focuses on guns in America. Shareholder resolutions are weak, Dr. Metzl said, because they can only influence one company at a time and, without broader, more coordinated pressure, individual gun makers have no incentive to act.

  May 28th, 2022

• As Texas school shooting confounds the world, CBS News looks at other countries' reactions to their own massacres

  "We've got a gun lobby, a corporate gun lobby that has its tentacles so deeply into our political process," said Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a sociologist who told CBS News he's witnessed the gun lobby pressure American politicians into withholding support for new laws by threatening to withdraw campaign finance.

  May 26th, 2022

• Dying of Whiteness

  Professor and author Jonathan Metzl joins Bill to discuss how the politics of racial resentment is killing America's heartland.

  May 17th, 2019