MaverickNH
NES Member
There's a lot about masculinity, whiteness and guns in the liberal media, trying to *understand* or *explain* the deficiencies of old, white males in their predilection towards gun ownership. Somehow we're reacting to our lost status with guns, shooting, self-defense and NRA.
I wrote the author below to suggest she overlooked the perspective that, while some males may have abdicated traditional roles and responsibilities as a Citizen, that doesn't mean those that have maintained these virtues are attempting to compensate with the guns we've always had, used and enjoyed. No response, of course.
Why Research on Guns Needs Sociologists. And Vice-Versa
"My book, Citizen-Protectors,3 aimed to provide just such a sociological intervention: to tease apart why Americans—particularly American men—carry guns and how their carried guns transform themselves and the social worlds around them. Interviewing, and carrying alongside, men gun carriers in Michigan, I learned about how socioeconomic decline shaped how men understood themselves, and found their footing as men, through guns; how race shaped the meanings that men attached to their guns, especially with regard to public law enforcement; and how NRA-certified gun training transformed gun carry from a mere practice to a civic duty, one that gun carriers affirmed by virtue of their decision to be armed.
...this book develops the term “citizen-protector” to capture how men use guns to assert their authority, dignity, and relevance to their families, and even their broader communities, by embracing a duty to protect—up to and including the willingness to kill. This is intimately related to the erosion of a core pillar of masculinity—breadwinning—due to a neoliberal shift away from manufacturing. Guns provide an alternative basis through which to recuperate one’s dignity as a man: one that does not revolve around the precarious capacity to provide but around the concrete right to protect."
Learning from Gun Owners and Users
I wrote the author below to suggest she overlooked the perspective that, while some males may have abdicated traditional roles and responsibilities as a Citizen, that doesn't mean those that have maintained these virtues are attempting to compensate with the guns we've always had, used and enjoyed. No response, of course.
Why Research on Guns Needs Sociologists. And Vice-Versa
"My book, Citizen-Protectors,3 aimed to provide just such a sociological intervention: to tease apart why Americans—particularly American men—carry guns and how their carried guns transform themselves and the social worlds around them. Interviewing, and carrying alongside, men gun carriers in Michigan, I learned about how socioeconomic decline shaped how men understood themselves, and found their footing as men, through guns; how race shaped the meanings that men attached to their guns, especially with regard to public law enforcement; and how NRA-certified gun training transformed gun carry from a mere practice to a civic duty, one that gun carriers affirmed by virtue of their decision to be armed.
...this book develops the term “citizen-protector” to capture how men use guns to assert their authority, dignity, and relevance to their families, and even their broader communities, by embracing a duty to protect—up to and including the willingness to kill. This is intimately related to the erosion of a core pillar of masculinity—breadwinning—due to a neoliberal shift away from manufacturing. Guns provide an alternative basis through which to recuperate one’s dignity as a man: one that does not revolve around the precarious capacity to provide but around the concrete right to protect."
Learning from Gun Owners and Users
