Gun Studies Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics, Policy, and Practice

As cultural, social, political, and historical objects, guns are rich with complex and contested significance. What guns mean, why they matter, and what policies should be undertaken to regulate guns remain issues of vigorous scholarly and public debate.

Gun Studies offers fresh research and original perspectives on the contentious issue of firearms in public life. Comprising global, interdisciplinary contributions, this insightful volume examines difficult and timely questions through the lens of:

• Social practice



• Marketing and commerce



• Critical theory



• Political conflict



• Public policy



• Criminology

Questions explored include the evolution of American gun culture from recreation to self-protection; the changing dynamics of the pro-gun and pro-regulation movements; the deeply personal role of guns as sources of both injury and security; and the relationship between gun-wielding individuals, the state, and social order in the United States and abroad. In addition to introducing new research, Gun Studies presents reflections by senior scholars on what has been learned over the decades and how gun-related research has influenced public policy and everyday conversations.

Offering provocative and often intimate perspectives on how guns influence individuals, social structures, and the state in both dramatic and nuanced ways, Gun Studies will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology, political science, legal history, criminology, criminal justice, social policy, armaments industries, and violent crime. It will also appeal to policy makers and all others interested in and concerned about the use of guns.

1. The Rise of Self-Defense in Gun Advertising: The American Rifleman, 1918-2017

David Yamane, Sebastian L. Ivory, and Paul Yamane

2. Semi-Automatics for the People? The Marketing of a New Kind of Man

Peter Squires

3. The Gun Industry Wants to Sell Your Kid an AR-15

Laura Browder

4. Understanding the Illicit Gun Market in Los Angeles: A Review of the Empirical Evidence"

George E. Tita and Melissa Barragan

5. Consumers, Culture, Marketing Strategy, and Market Systems: Integrating Marketing Research and Firearms Studies

Aimee Dinnin Huff and Michelle Barnhart

6. Fighting the Left and Leading the Right: NRA Politics and Power through the 2016 Elections.

Scott Melzer

7. Whatever Happened to the ‘Missing Movement’? Gun Control Politics Over Two Decades of Change

Kristin A. Goss

8. What If We Talked About Gun Control Differently? A Framing Experiment

Sierra Smucker

9. Gun Control: An Australian Perspective

Rick Sarre

10. Prosthetic Gods: On the Semiotic and Affective Landscape of Firearms in American Politics

Patrick Blanchfield

11.The Life and Times of Scarfo

Jooyoung Lee

12. Guns, Intimacy, and the Limits of Militarized Masculinity

Michael Messner

13. "The Worst That Humanity Has to Offer": Looters and Law-Abiding Citizens in a

State of Emergency

Caroline Light

14. Lawfully Armed Citizens and Police: A Proposal for Reducing Armed Encounters with Agents of the State

Nicholas Johnson

15. Gun Violence and Defensive Firearm Use in the Governance of Security of Latin America

Diego Sanjurjo

16. Firearms and Violence

Franklin Zimring

(reprinted by permission from Reforming Criminal Justice, Vol. I, Erik Luna, ed. Phoenix: Arizona State University School of Law & Academy for Justice, 2017: 167-186)

17. The Effect of Firearms on Suicide

Gary Kleck

18. Gun Policy Research: Personal Reflections on Public Questions

Philip J. Cook, David B. Kopel, and Robert J. Spitzer

Index

Jennifer Carlson is an assistant professor at the School of Sociology and School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, USA.

Kristin A. Goss is an associate professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, USA.

Harel Shapira is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.