Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture And American Democracy

by Joan Burbick

Overview

On progressive websites and in newspaper columns Gun Show Nation has become part of a lively debate on guns and democracy in America. "Burbick gets it," Buzzflash says, "she cuts through to the heart of the psychology of guns."

Cultural historian, critic, and gun owner Joan Burbick examines the lethal politics of gun ownership, answering that perennial question about America culture: Why are Americans so obsessed with guns? Looking at the nation from the floor of a gun show, Burbick uncovers a powerful conservative ideology that attempts to place gun ownership at the center of our democracy. "Careful in her conclusions, lively in her writing" (Booklist), her analysis takes us from the history of the NRA, through the gun lobby's engagement with domestic politics that reached its high-water mark during the Reagan era, to the movement's contemporary hostility to the United Nations.

The most thorough account yet of the beliefs that millions of ordinary Americans hold about guns, Gun Show Nation delves into the political machinations that have shaped the gun debate in America and draws fascinating conclusions about gun culture and national identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595580870
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	10/01/2006
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Joan Burbick is the author of Rodeo Queens and the American Dream, Healing the Republic, and Thoreau's Alternative History. An award-winning scholar, she is a professor of English and American studies at Washington State University. She lives in eastern Washington.

Editorial Reviews

"A moral, wise, witty, and, dare I say it, disarming book . . . a must-read for anybody who wants to learn more about the dangerous link between nationalism and violence." —Sherman Alexie, author of Indian Killer

"Gun Show Nation provides an indispensable ethnographic guide to America's obsession with guns. Anyone interested in understanding the future of gun control and the remarkable resiliency of gun rights in American culture will need to grapple with Burbick's richly nuanced study of gun shows." —Saul Cornell, author of A Well-Regulated Militia

"A brilliant and insightful reading of America's gun culture. Rooted in the history of social violence, [it] illuminates the conflict between 'gun rights' and civil rights in American democracy." —Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation

From the Publisher

Tenaciously exposing the role guns play for many Americans in their national and political identity, Burbick (Rodeo Queens and the American Dream) talks to gun owners, sellers, lobbyists, grassroots organizers and policy makers as she tours gun shows, gun-rights conventions and National Rifle Association gatherings across the land. Mining the history of gun manufacturing and shooting magazine editorials, she charts how the gun industry has successfully marketed its products using the image of the patriotic, law-abiding civilian shooter. She describes Civil War-era white fears of armed blacks and shows how the Second Amendment rights movement was born of the social unrest of the 1960s. She argues that conservatives responded to blacks' and women's demands for rights by talking about the right to defend oneself with a gun. Burdick also tracks the tactical courtship of the gun lobby by presidents and politicians from Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms to George W. Bush. Burdick highlights the prevalence of white, middle-aged men, misogyny and the paradoxical belief that the gun itself is capable of stopping violence. Noting that an anxious, self-justifying white settler identity underpins the Christian patriotism of the religious right, Burdick catalogues a culture that dwells imaginatively in a mythologized frontier past. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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