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Abstract
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Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline, by Jennifer Carlson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 248 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199347551.
It is easier for an average citizen in Dodge City or Tombstone to carry a concealed firearm in public today than it was in the nineteenth century, the heyday of the "Wild West." The expansion of "shall issue" concealed carry laws in the United States over the past three decades represents the greatest liberalization of gun laws in the nation's history. Consequently, many more ordinary citizens are legally permitted to carry firearms for self-defense in public. Reasonable estimates suggest 8 to 12 million Americans have permits to carry concealed weapons nationally, with over 10 percent of the population licensed to carry in some states.
Jennifer Carlson calls this a "gun carry revolution," and she is right. And yet sociologists have been oddly silent about it. Carlson steps into this void with a case study of individuals who legally carry guns, either openly or concealed, in southeastern Michigan. In addition to interviews with 60 mostly white, middle-aged male gun carriers, Carlson did 150 hours of participant observation at shooting ranges, activist events, and gun training classes. In the process she also obtained a concealed carry license, carried a gun during her fieldwork, and became a National Rifle Association (NRA) certified firearms instructor. In the best tradition of ethnography, Carlson is a critical observer analyzing this aspect of American gun culture from the inside out.
Carlson begins Citizen-Protectors with the stories of two individuals that illustrate the complex race, class, gender, and other social dynamics that influence gun carry. The first involves Corey, a white clerk at a corner store in Flint, who shoots and kills a black man in self-defense during …
Language: en |