The rise of the “citizen protector” has reshaped the gun control battle.
By
Jennifer Carlson Updated Mar 24, 2018, 7:43am EDT
Americans
on both sides of the gun debate react viscerally whenever a mass shooting
happens. But what’s distinctive about the American reaction, relative to what
happens in other countries, is that the two sides of the gun debate can look at
the same horrific incident, feel similar feelings of disgust and outrage — and
yet settle on strikingly different interpretations of what those tragedies mean
and how a decent person should respond to them.
Shootings
like those in Parkland, Florida, or Las Vegas lead to public demands for tighter
gun restrictions and marches against gun violence, but they also inspire
Americans to buy guns and join the National Rifle Association. Both sides
subsequently cast aspersions that the other side is not just morally bankrupt
but also factually wrong.
The
facts, both sides insist, are on their side.
Legal
scholars Dan Kahan and Donald Braman have argued that evidence related to the
effects of gun control has almost zero effect on public opinion, or the opinion
of policymakers, when it comes to this subject. A key challenge we face in this
area is that Americans evaluate evidence — and even what counts as evidence —
through the prism of culture.
Do
you focus on the risk of someone obtaining a gun who shouldn’t have one? Or do
you zero in on the risk of needing to defend yourself with a firearm and not
being able to? If you tend to embrace traditional or individualistic values, you
likely think about the latter risk; if you are more communitarian or
egalitarian, you probably think about the former.
In
either case, statistical findings are largely beside the point.
Politicians
and pundits, when they speak of this phenomenon, talk of “identity politics” and
“culture wars,” but these terms tend to evoke personal preferences and
psychological dispositions.
But
something significant has changed in recent years, something that has deepened
the divisions around the social meaning of guns and their proper place in
everyday life. The rise of “gun carry” as a mass phenomenon has changed the way
gun owners think about themselves. Gun carry has simultaneously entrenched and
changed the old culture war differences.
Today,
more than 16 million Americans are licensed to carry a concealed gun, and many
millions more live in states that don’t even require a license if you want to
carry. (There are more than a dozen such states.)
For
these millions of Americans, gun politics is not just something you believe in;
it is something that you do: gun carry is an everyday practice. It’s a way of
moving through the world. Guns have become replete with a prosocial, moral
meaning for the men who carry them (and, yes, gun carriers are
disproportionately men).
Guns
have helped foster a new “citizen protector” ethic, whereby firearms — and the
willingness to use them to defend innocent life — come to represent an
affirmation of life. For many men, guns counteract the increasing precarity of
being a provider for their families, providing a way to be a good man centered
on protection.
With
more than 16 million Americans carrying guns, about a third of American
households owning guns, and an estimated 250 million to 300 million guns in
circulation, American gun culture is a formidable social fact and material
force. Reformers too often equate combating the mammoth problem of American gun
violence with strengthening gun regulations. But American gun culture runs far
deeper than American gun laws — and changing laws won’t matter much (or be
possible) without understanding gun culture.
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