Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy

In the United States, there are 100 million more guns than people, mass shootings occur nearly twice a day on average, and the country has by far the weakest gun laws of any peer country. In attempting to understand these facts, Carlson largely eschews the familiar focus on the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party, and the Supreme Court. Instead, she takes a bottom-up approach by delving into the political and cultural views of gun sellers and gun buyers. She finds that gun ownership has become an increasingly accepted way of dealing with feelings of insecurity in the United States’ volatile democracy. Guns represent an “ethic of security (i.e., guns as a bulwark against victimization)” but also an “understanding of freedom (i.e., guns as a vehicle of individual rights)” and “a particular stance against the state (i.e., guns as a defense against government control and liberal indoctrination).” In this subculture, steeped in conspiracy theories, guns are not simply a means of personal protection but a symbol of political identity and empowerment. If Carlson’s conclusion is correct, it leads to the profoundly depressing notion that reducing gun violence in the United States will depend not merely on finding acceptable legislative formulas for gun control but on the vastly larger task of somehow mending the deadly partisanship and polarization that currently grip the country.