Lionel Shriver and Freddy Gray

Lionel Shriver on mass shootings, gun control and American carnage

Lionel Shriver (Getty)

This is an edited transcript of a conversation between Freddy Gray and Lionel Shriver on The Spectator’s Americano podcast, which you can listen to here.


Freddy Gray: Lionel, I feel a bit guilty asking you to talk about this, because I know you’ve become a kind of go-to person about mass shootings in America because you wrote a very significant novel – We Need to Talk About Kevin. You’ve written before about how awkward it is that every time there’s a mass shooting in America, people ask you to come on and talk about it. But in your book, the killer was using a bow, not a gun. So you don’t really feel well qualified to talk about the gun debate. Am I summing that up right?

Lionel Shriver: I went through a long time of just refusing to participate, because one of the observations that I continually made on these appearances is that it’s our excessive attention to these shootings that helps encourage them because the shooter often wants to publicise himself. For example, these shooters are often driven by a peculiar combination of grandiosity and low self-esteem. They are willing to risk or even lose their lives in order to make a final splash on the way out.

Freddy Gray: That’s very extraordinary, isn’t it? The idea that you would want to be so famous so much that you don’t care if you’re dead.

Lionel Shriver: It’s remarkable. We’ve now had two killings within the last several years that entailed the massacre of very small children. And that is a unique subcategory. The whole thing is baffling, but it takes an extra twist of mind to want to kill little kids. I’m a novelist, so it’s my job to imagine my way into the mind of such a person. And I have difficulty doing it, because I just don’t understand directing your animosity at small children.

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