This is In Conversation from Apple News.
I'm David Greene, in for Shumi Basu.
Today, the surprising origins of US gun laws.
The United States saw another mass shooting last weekend at a Seattle food festival,
where as of this recording, officials believe multiple shooters killed three people and injured at least four.
It's one of hundreds of mass shootings that have happened in the country this year.
Firearm violence causes over 40,000 deaths per year in the United States
and is the number one cause of death for children and teens.
And polling shows that most Americans support gun violence prevention policies, regardless of their gun ownership status.
But the problem has come to feel unchangeable.
Both sides tend to be caricatured by the other as extremists,
either pro-gun with no compromises or anti-gun with no compromises.
That is Mike McIntire.
He's an investigative reporter for The New York Times
and the author of Ricochet: Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence.
His book dives into our deep history with guns,
how exactly they became woven into the fabric of our country,
and how reckoning with the past can provide the tools needed to address gun violence.
I try to bring my experience as a journalist and also a gun owner myself
to try to figure out how we got to a place where there are more guns than people,