About

Brief Biography

David Yamane is a sociology professor at Wake Forest University. He is an internationally recognized authority on guns in America and a calming voice in our divisive national argument on the issue. His book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture, was published in June 2024.

A brief summary of his perspective on guns was published in The Conversation under the title, “Guns in America: A Liberal Gun-Owning Sociologist Offers 5 Observations to Understand America’s Culture of Firearms.” He also brings together the various strands of his work in a public address given in California in June 2025, “Guns in America: A Civil Conversation in Uncivil Times.”

Committed to informing public debate and enriching everyday conversations about guns, Professor Yamane shares his thoughts on his Light Over Heat Substack, and on BlueSky and X at @davidyamane. In 2022, he launched a YouTube channel, “Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane,” on which he posts short videos and interviews about issues related to his scholarship.

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Resources

Curriculum Vitae (October 2025, PDF document)

Click Here to download a Word document containing 25, 50, 75, 100, and 200 word biographical entries.

Access my full third-person narrative biography (800 words, online)

Access my full first-person narrative biography (800 words, online)

Name pronunciation audio file (MPEG format)

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Publicity Photos

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Full Biography

David Yamane is a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He earned his BA (’91) in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and his MS (’94) and PhD (’98) in sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. After teaching at the University of Notre Dame and holding a post-doc at the University of Virginia’s Center on Religion and Democracy, he joined the faculty at Wake Forest in 2005.

For the first 20 years of his academic career, Professor Yamane specialized in the sociology of religion, a field in which he authored, co-authored, or edited 6 books and 2 major scholarly journals.

Since 2011, Professor Yamane has become an internationally recognized scholarly authority on guns and a calming voice in our divisive national argument on the issue. An Asian American and lifelong liberal from the San Francisco Bay Area, Yamane became a first-time gun owner as a 42-year-old and began a 12-year journey into the complex world of firearms in America. Having one foot outside and one inside gun culture allows him to speak with compassion across our paralyzing differences. Yamane’s timely and original book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture, was published by Exposit Books in June 2024.

A brief summary of his perspective on guns was published in The Conversation under the title, “Guns in America: A Liberal Gun-Owning Sociologist Offers 5 Observations to Understand America’s Culture of Firearms.” He also brings together the various strands of his work in a public address given in California in June 2025, “Guns in America: A Civil Conversation in Uncivil Times.”

Other recent publications include “How I Fell for Guns,” “Gun Culture 2.0: Evolution and Contours of Defensive Gun Ownership in America,”  “Understanding and Misunderstanding American Gun Culture and Violence,” and Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America.

Committed to informing public debate and enriching everyday conversations about guns, Professor Yamane shares his thoughts on his Light Over Heat Substack, and on BlueSky and X at @davidyamane. In 2022, he launched a YouTube channel, “Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane,” on which he posts short videos and interviews about issues related to his scholarship.

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