Last year I decided to experiment with hosting an online book club to discuss recent books about guns and gun culture. It was a great success.
We read four books in 2024 (see below), and plan to read four more in 2025 — two during the spring semester and two during the fall semester.
Our second book of the fall is Alexandra Filindra’s Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2023).
Registration link for the Zoom Webinar is: https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U7TGf1yuRFK4GYtd6ymnRQ
RACE, RIGHTS, AND RIFLES
We will meet on three Thursdays from 6:00 to 7:00 pm Eastern time and discuss the book.
- Thursday, November 13: Read Part One: Historical Foundations (pp. 1-98)
- Thursday, December 4: Read Part Two: The Origins and Worldview of the NRA (pp. 101-233)
- Thursday, December 18: Read Part Three: Ascriptive Republicanism in Contemporary White Public Opinion (pp. 237-293)
Participate
The Light Over Heat Virtual Book Club runs as a Zoom webinar in which 12 panelists have full speaking privileges to discuss the book. Other registrants participate as viewers with written chat capability. The chat has been extremely active and informative in previous sessions. (To encourage candor, meetings are not recorded except the Q&A with the author with permission.)
If you’re interested in attending the Light Over Heat Virtual Book Club as a viewer, please Register for the Zoom Webinar discussion: https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U7TGf1yuRFK4GYtd6ymnRQ
Only registered attendees can join the meeting.
Buy the Book
The book is available in hardcopy, e-book, and audio editions through all major retail channels. You can help support the cost of my work and/or local bookstores by using the following affiliate links to buy the book. If you want to support local bookstores, here’s a 20% code to use on Bookshop.org.
About the Book
From the publisher’s description:
An eye-opening examination of the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today.
One-third of American adults—approximately 86 million people—own firearms. This is not just for protection or hunting. Although many associate gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that it rests on an equally old but different foundation. Instead, Alexandra Filindra shows that American gun culture can be traced back to the American Revolution when republican notions of civic duty were fused with a belief in white male supremacy and a commitment to maintaining racial and gender hierarchies.
Drawing on wide-ranging historical and contemporary evidence, Race, Rights, and Rifles traces how this ideology emerged during the Revolution and became embedded in America’s institutions, from state militias to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Utilizing original survey data, Filindra reveals how many White Americans —including those outside of the NRA’s direct orbit—embrace these beliefs, and as a result, they are more likely than other Americans to value gun rights over voting rights, embrace antidemocratic norms, and justify political violence.
Previous Books: 2025
Previous Books: 2024
