Why do I find myself reaching for songs about gun control so often when I'm selecting this newsletter's music of the day, and why does it seem so hard to find them? This is not a rant about protest music. As I've written before, we are surrounded by protest music nearly everywhere we turn, everywhere we dance, everywhere we bang our heads. Pop and hip-hop and jazz and rock are all doing their part, in ways both subtle and not so subtle, coded and not coded. But in the particular subgenre of songs about the proliferation of guns that take a direct stance in opposition to that proliferation, the popular music literature is surprisingly thin. In SONG OF A GUN, the finale of this year's second season of KCRW's LOST NOTES podcast, host JESSICA HOPPER asks around to try to figure out why this is. And she discovers that not a lot of people want to talk about it. "Trying to get anyone to talk—artists, managers, even other journalists—was hard," she says. "Managers and publicists would tell me how important they thought this conversation was and thank me for bringing it up, but would continually decline on behalf of the artists they represented." She dutifully takes note of the artists who *have* taken their gun-control politics into the studio over the years, including several rappers from her hometown, Chicago, and she tells the story of a couple important (and long ago) crusades: The KRS-ONE–led STOP THE VIOLENCE song and campaign, and ROLLING STONE publisher JANN WENNER's gun-control activism in the 1980s. She notes the various other ways guns have been depicted in music over the past 100 years—often as instruments of power, for both better and worse. She hears from experts like music historian ELIJAH WALD, who points out, "The basic role of guns in American popular music is just like the basic role of guns in American popular movies: they're exciting," and from young fans who wish their favorite artists would say something but who realize it might not be on brand. She wonders if it would matter even if more artists did put it into song. She talks to publicist and manager DANA MEYERSON, who says there's a line of thinking that "there's money to be made and we don't wanna freak people out [or make people] afraid. And it's, like, they should be afraid." Artists, one hopes, are not afraid or making people afraid. As art can sometimes do... GILLES PETERSON pays radio tribute to RAS G. And FLYING LOTUS pays tribute in song... M-M-M-Moscow Mitch... RIP D.A. PENNEBAKER—chronicler of DYLAN, MONTEREY POP and so much more—and IAN GIBBONS.