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Clinging to Their Guns? the New Politics of Gun Carry in Everyday Life

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Clinging to Their Guns? the New Politics of Gun Carry in Everyday Life UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Clinging to their Guns? The New Politics of Gun Carry in Everyday Life Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0nx042hb Author Carlson, Jennifer Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Clinging to their Guns? The New Politics of Gun Carry in Everyday Life By Jennifer D. Carlson A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Raka Ray, Chair Professor Ann Swidler Professor Loïc Wacquant Professor Jonathan Simon Professor Brian Delay Fall 2013 Abstract Clinging to their Guns? The New Politics of Gun Carry in Everyday Life by Jennifer D. Carlson Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Raka Ray, Chair Alongside a series of high-profile massacres over the past decade, Americans continue to turn to guns as the solution to, rather than the cause of, violent crime. Since the 1970s, most US states have significantly loosened restrictions on gun carrying for self-defense, and today, over 8 million Americans hold permits to carry guns concealed. Contrary to popular images of gun culture, this is not a white-only affair: in Michigan, whites and African Americans are licensed to carry guns at roughly the same rate. And while women are licensed at rates far lower than men, their numbers are increasing. This dissertation presents an in- depth analysis of the new politics of concealed carry and asks: Why do Americans not just own guns but also carry them? What role does the NRA play in enabling people to carry guns? And finally, how do different kinds of gun carriers enact the model of citizenship advocated by the NRA? Through intensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with gun carriers and pro-gun advocates in the Metro Detroit area, it shows how suspicion of the state’s power to police, combined with the embodied practice of gun carry, sustains a new politics of policing, crime and insecurity. Situating the appeal of guns in contexts of neoliberal decline facing Michigan, this book analyzes how, with the help of required NRA training, gun carry becomes an embodied, everyday practice through which gun carriers embrace a moral duty to protect not only oneself but also others (usually family, but sometimes strangers). I show how this moral duty is enacted differently by different groups of gun carriers: while all of the gun carriers I interviewed turned to guns to supplement what they viewed as inadequate police protection, gun carriers of color also mobilized gun rights as a way to defend against police abuse and assert their political rights, echoing the anti-statist position of groups such as the Black Panthers. Meanwhile, male gun carriers embraced their duty to protect self and others as a way to assert their social relevance as male protectors amid their declining status as breadwinners, while female gun carriers tended to emphasize their individual right to self-defense as an act of empowerment. Overall, this dissertation argues that for pro-gun Americans, the carrying of guns is a means of practicing good citizenship amid perceptions of social disorder. This understanding of American gun politics helps to clarify both why 1 Americans so vociferously 'cling to their guns' as practical and symbolical tools of policing, and it also sheds light on the NRA's hidden power as the primary organization that trains and certifies Americans to carry guns. 2 Table of Contents Introduction: Clinging to their guns? 1 Chapter 1: Criminal Insecurities 45 Chapter 2: Producing the Citizen-Protector: NRA Training and the Everyday Politics of Gun Carry 67 Chapter 3: From Protection to Policing: Embracing the Citizen-Protector 83 Chapter 4: The Citizen-Vigilante: Mistakes, Misunderstandings and Misuses of Guns 99 Chapter 5: Supplementing the Police: Enacting the Citizen-Protector 119 Chapter 6: Supplanting the Police: Radicalizing the Citizen-Protector 135 Chapter 7: The Softer Face of Gun Carry: Citizen-Protectors or Citizen-Defenders? 151 Conclusion: Fear of an Armed Nation 167 Bibliography 179 Appendix A: Population versus Concealed Pistol License Holders in Michigan 192 Appendix B: Interviewee Demographics 194 i Preface This book is about the complex ways in which guns come to figure as solutions to multiple insecurities (economic, social, physical) by making a statement about the failure of the state’s power to police – and how ideals of citizenship are remade in the process. It focuses on gun carriers in Michigan: As the most economically depressed state in the U.S., Michigan is the site of especially exacerbated socio-economic insecurities as compared to the rest of the country. This book aims to raise questions about how, as political objects, guns work to address (real and imagined) social, economic and physical insecurities, and it suggests that what lies at the heart of gun politics is a particular critique of the state’s power to police. Sometimes alarmingly exclusionary, sometimes surprisingly inclusive, gun politics stipulate new moral codes for how a person should behave amid a context perceived to be saturated with insecurity and aggravated by the state’s perceived failure to adequately police. To take seriously the politics of guns and embark in the sustained analysis that this book provides is fraught with political peril; with guns one of the most contentious social issues in the United States (the other is abortion), it is difficult to avoid a value judgment on whether guns represent good or evil. For those looking for a condemnatory analysis of the people who choose to carry guns, this dissertation will probably be a disappointment. That is not because this kind of analysis is not possible or even justified: there are already plenty of books already touting the myriad ways in which Americans have been duped by conservative elites. What this dissertation tries to do is something a little different: it tries to unpack the universe in which guns are a sensible, morally upstanding solution to the problem of crime, a universe in which the NRA is not a hardline lobby peddling myths of heroic masculinity but rather a community service organization, a universe in which guns are beneficial not only for white men but also for racial minorities and women. Make no mistake about it, gun violence is an epidemic in the US: gun deaths are on track to outpace motor vehicle deaths, and in 12 states plus DC, they already do (VPC, 2013a). A recent CDC (Leshner et al., 2013) report on firearms-related violence unpacks the disturbing statistics of the nation’s gun problem: in 2010, there were 31,672 gun deaths and 73,505 non-fatal gun injuries. Most gun deaths are suicides, followed by homicides (only 1% of firearms deaths are unintentional or accidental shootings). In 2010, 19,392 people ended their lives with a gun. Of the 12,664 homicides reported to the FBI in 2011, 8,583 were firearms-related, and of these, gun-involved homicides, 72% were carried out with handguns (this represents just less than 50% of total homicides). Of course, these numbers do not include people who are threatened, but not injured or killed, with guns. Importantly, gun casualties are not equally distributed: the CDC reports that economic conditions and geography shape who is affected by guns and how. White, rural, middle-aged men are most likely to commit suicide; youth of color living in conditions of urban poverty are most likely to be the victims of homicide. African American men are most likely to be killed by guns. These are compelling statistics: no one disagrees about that. The question that the gun debate turns on, is: what should they compel us to think or do? ii Gun policy represents one answer. Gun proponents, of course, maintain that people should have the right to defend themselves against gun violence with equal force: that is, with guns. Whether guns are effective tools of self-defense is widely contested (Kellermann’s reports suggest guns increase risks of homicide, suicide and armed robbery, while Gary Kleck and his colleagues have shown that people who use guns self-defensively have a greater chance of survival during criminal victimization); perhaps this is because their proficient use depends more on the skills, training and know-how of the user rather than the gun itself. As the CDC report notes, even though gun owners report greater feelings of safety, “additional research is needed to weigh the competing risks and protective benefits that may accompany gun ownership in different communities” (CDC, 2013: 41). But many Americans are not waiting for more research to make up their minds about guns: for millions of Americans, they’ve already decided that guns are a protective device against crime, a solution to the problem of violence. What this book does is try to unpack how guns come to be viewed as the solution, and what that means for contemporary notions of Americans citizenship. *** I want to acknowledge the many people who supported me in pursuing this controversial topic. I want to especially thank two groups of people: the people in the pro-gun world who opened their arms to me (even as a “Berkeley” sociologist) and the people in the sociology world who stood behind this project and believed in the importance of analyzing pro-gun America from the ground up. First, I want to thank the gun carriers, instructors, and activists who participated in this study. Whether you shared your time during interviews, your expertise during impromptu firearms training, or your generosity in introducing me to other “gunnies” and inviting me to picnics, potlucks and activist events: this study would not have been possible without you.
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