I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991, earning my B.A. in Sociology with Highest Honors and High Distinction in General Scholarship. My first book, Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), was based on my Senior Thesis. My graduate studies in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.S., 1994, Ph.D., 1998), then the top graduate program in the field, were supported by an American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship.
As an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame (1998-2004) and Fellow at the Center for Religion and Democracy at the University of Virginia (2002-2003), I developed my doctoral dissertation on religious lobbying into a national study of the role of Conferences of Catholic Bishops in state politics. This research was published as The Catholic Church in State Politics: Negotiating Prophetic Demands and Political Realities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). While at Notre Dame, I also conducted research on conversion to Roman Catholicism that was the basis of one book for practitioners, Real Stories of Christian Initiation: Lessons For and From the RCIA (Liturgical Press, 2006), and one for scholars, Becoming Catholic: Finding Rome in the American Religious Landscape (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Before turning to the study of guns just over a decade ago, I had established myself as a leading scholar in the sociological study of American religion. I served as Editor and Associate Editor of the two most important scholarly journals in the field (Sociology of Religion from 2007 to 2010 and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion from 2012 to 2015), edited the Handbook of Religion and Society (Springer, 2016), and continue to co-author the best-selling textbook in the field, Religion in Sociological Perspective (7th edition, Sage Publications, 2020).
Even while keeping a hand in the sociology of religion, I have focused my scholarly attention on the sociology of guns for the past decade. In that time, I have become a significant and unique voice, beginning with my programmatic statement, “The Sociology of U.S. Gun Culture,” published in 2017. In this piece, I argued that there is no true sociology of guns, just a criminology and epidemiology of gun violence. I called for greater attention to the lawful use of firearms by legal gun owners. An updated and expanded version of this argument was recently published, “Gun Culture 2.0: Evolution and Contours of Defensive Gun Ownership in America.”
Since then, there has been a renaissance of interest in the academic study of guns. I have contributed to every significant special issue and edited volume published during this time. This includes chapters in Guns: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics, Policy, and Practice (Routledge, 2019), The Lives of Guns (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Understanding America’s Gun Culture (Lexington Books, 2021), and articles in special issues of Palgrave Communications (edited by Jonathan Metzl in 2019) and Sociological Inquiry (in 2021). I also co-edited a special issue of Sociological Perspectives on “A Sociology of Firearms for the 21st Century” (February 2022).
My professional transition from the sociology of religion to the sociology of guns coincided with my personal conversion into a gun owner. My journey into the heart of America’s evolving gun culture began in 2011 when, as a 42-year-old, I shot a real gun for the first time. I had never touched a gun before then. My transformation was fast and dramatic. I got into guns immediately after shooting that first time. In short order, I owned a veritable arsenal of shotguns, rifles, and handguns, and my local sheriff issued me a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.
As a sociologist, I realized that broader social and cultural forces facilitated my becoming a gun owner. This realization prompted me to begin my academic research on American gun culture. It also gives me the unique perspective of an active participant and sociological observer from which I wrote my book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture (forthcoming from Exposit Books in June 2024).
When I am not in the classroom teaching my popular “Sociology of Guns” seminar or at the gun range honing my shooting skills, you can find me practicing my craft as a Master Racquet Technician. This hobby-gone-mad has allowed me to string rackets at every level of competitive tennis, including for the 2018 NCAA Division I National Champion Wake Forest Demon Deacons and at the U.S. and French Opens. I enjoy spending my spare time at home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with my wife and two cats, surrounded by music, books, and whiskey.