THE CONCEALED CARRY REVOLUTION
We continue again with the first part of James Wright’s fourth observation in his 1995 essay, “Ten Essential Observations on Guns in America”:
Observation 4: Many guns are also owned for self-defense against crime.
Central to the rise of Gun Culture 2.0 is a revolution in concealed carry permitting beginning in the final quarter of the 20th century and continuing to today. We consider this revolution in this module.
CORE RESOURCES
*Syllabi for DC v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. Chicago (2010), and NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022). These give a brief overview of the Supreme Court’s current position on the Second Amendment.
*David Yamane, Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America, Updated Edition (Shades Creek Press, 2021). This is a link to download the ePub version of the book via Dropbox. You can read the ePub in free software like Adobe Digital Editions or Freda (what I use).
SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES
*David Yamane, “The First Rule of Gunfighting is Have a Gun: Technologies of Concealed Carry in Gun Culture 2.0,” in The Lives of Guns (2019). Study of the material culture of defensive gun ownership based on my field research.
*Lawrence Northwood, et al., “Law-abiding One-Man Armies,” Society (1978). As far as I can tell, this is the first ever study of concealed carry permit applicants/holders, using data from Seattle in 1972. Read my thoughts on the study here.
*Malone, Chad A., and Trent Steidley. “Determinants of Variation in State Concealed Carry Laws, 1970–2016.” Sociological Forum (2019). Although my mini-book looks at the rise of shall issue (and now permitless) concealed carry regimes, it does not systematically explain them. This article begins to do so.
*Harel Shapira and Samantha Simon, “Learning to Need a Gun,” Qualitative Sociology (2018). Still one of the only studies of gun owners that focus on social practices and embodied experiences. Don’t agree entirely with their analysis and conclusions, but it is a unique study worthy of consideration.
*Barnhart, Michelle, Aimee Dinnin Huff, Brandon McAlexander, and James H. McAlexander. “Preparing for the Attack: Mitigating Risk through Routines in Armed Self-Defense.” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research (2018). I have required this article the past few years because it is one of the only existing studies that covers gun training.
SUPPORT
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