How can it be that vast majorities of Americans, including gun owners, favor stricter background checks, and yet there’s not the political will to pass them? One reason is that theoretical support for checks is different than trust the Obama administration to institute them.
.. Any attempt to reform gun laws will have to grapple with this fear of government.
Have Guns, Will Liberate: Inside the civic theology of arms-bearing
Carlson notes, however, that the NRA also imposes rather striking topical limits on its training programs. Its concealed carry sessions, for instance, feature virtually no instruction on assessing genuine threats, maintaining self-awareness as a gun carrier in volatile situations, and avoiding racist stereotypes. Nor is there any serious attention devoted to more practical matters, such as how to shoot accurately in a crowded room or how to draw your weapon from a banquette or barstool
.. at a time when declining male earning power as a share of household income has left many men looking for new ways to assert their authority and demonstrate their usefulness. Against this backdrop, guns offer a path to what Carlson, borrowing the term from gender scholar Iris Marion Young, calls “masculinist protection.” And given the society-wide rise in single mothers and divorced dads, carrying a gun also doubles as a way for many men to play the cherished role of strict father without taking regular care of kids.
.. For most of the country, the past quarter century has brought plummeting crime rates along with stagnating incomes. Americans have felt more secure in matters of personal safety while at the same time experiencing unprecedented economic insecurity.
.. Stand Your Ground defense claims held up about two-thirds of the time, even though in 57 percent of the cases the assailant could have retreated. The law frequently shielded people who already had records of violent crime; one-third of the legally authorized killers had been caught illegally carrying guns or threatening others with a gun, and around the same number had been charged with assault, battery, or other violent crimes—as George Zimmerman had prior to Trayvon Martin’s killing. In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person killed was unarmed.
.. with cases of whites killing blacks more than twice as likely to be found legally defensible than cases of whites killing whites.
.. But it seems clear that many more of Carlson’s subjects aren’t anti-cop—rather, they are wannabe cops.
.. Consider the Oath Keepers, a nationwide group of current and retired military and law enforcement personnel that sent a detachment of members to monitor the anti-police protests in Ferguson this past summer. As protests over the police killing of Michael Brown mounted, many Oath Keepers took to the roofs of buildings downtown with rifles ready to shoot looters—all in the name of community service and protection of property and order.
.. it’s hard not to compare this group to the Freikorps militias that patrolled Germany in the chaotic interwar years, most of whom were not fervent Nazi ideologues but just zealous defenders of a conservative vision of public order.
.. Carlson’s study shows, economic insecurity has bred compensatory performances of armed, masculinist protection, even amid record-low violent crime rates. It is unlikely that government’s attitude toward punitive violence can be productively overhauled without a corresponding shift in the civil society that functions outside (if also in tandem with) the state.
Australian comedian perfectly sums up why other countries think US gun laws are crazy
Australian comedian Jim Jefferies was the victim of a home invasion once. He was tied up and beaten, and his girlfriend was threatened with rape. So you might think he’d sympathize with the idea that Americans want guns to protect their families. Quite the opposite — he does an excellent job of summing up why so many foreigners are baffled by America’s gun culture: (lots of swearing)