Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement, and the Politics of Race

by Jennifer Carlson

Overview

An urgent look at the relationship between guns, the police, and race

The United States is steeped in guns, gun violence—and gun debates. As arguments rage on, one issue has largely been overlooked—Americans who support gun control turn to the police as enforcers of their preferred policies, but the police themselves disproportionately support gun rights over gun control. Yet who do the police believe should get gun access? When do they pursue aggressive enforcement of gun laws? And what part does race play in all of this? Policing the Second Amendment unravels the complex relationship between the police, gun violence, and race. Rethinking the terms of the gun debate, Jennifer Carlson shows how the politics of guns cannot be understood—or changed—without considering how the racial politics of crime affect police attitudes about guns.

Drawing on local and national newspapers, interviews with close to eighty police chiefs, and a rare look at gun licensing processes, Carlson explores the ways police talk about guns, and how firearms are regulated in different parts of the country. Examining how organizations such as the National Rifle Association have influenced police perspectives, she describes a troubling paradox of guns today—while color-blind laws grant civilians unprecedented rights to own, carry, and use guns, people of color face an all-too-visible system of gun criminalization. This racialized framework—undergirding who is “a good guy with a gun” versus “a bad guy with a gun”—informs and justifies how police understand and pursue public safety.

Policing the Second Amendment demonstrates that the terrain of gun politics must be reevaluated if there is to be any hope of mitigating further tragedies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691212814
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/21/2022
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	1,050,795
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Carlson is professor of sociology at Arizona State University. She is the author of Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy (Princeton) and Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline. Her writing has appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.

Table of Contents

A Note to Readers ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction An Armed Society Is a Policed Society 1

Chapter 1 Gun Politics in Blue 24

Chapter 2 The War on Guns 57

Chapter 3 Never Off Duty 86

Chapter 4 When the Government Doesn't Come Knocking 106

Chapter 5 Legally Armed but Presumed Dangerous 143

Conclusion Our Gun Talk 171

Appendix A Methodological Approach 182

On Gun Militarism: Discarded Lives 197

On Gun Populism: Shame on Us 199

On Reform: At the Pinnacle of Privilege 201

Appendix B Procedures for Protecting Research Subjects 204

Appendix C Interview Guide 205

Notes 209

Bibliography 237

Index 263

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An incisive and meticulous book that upends the age-old gun control debates. By shifting focus from firearms to the people holding and policing them, Carlson reveals the troubling racial politics that animate gun laws and legitimize lethal state violence."—Forrest Stuart, author of Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy

"This compelling, provocative book balances ideas about the legitimate use of state force with the history of race and policing, as well as with police chiefs’ thinking about the role of guns in policing and society. A pleasure to read, exceptionally well written, and, at times, downright poetic, Policing the Second Amendment contributes to our understanding of policing and gun debates and our thinking about state-sanctioned violence."—Valerie Jenness, University of California, Irvine

"Timely and necessary, Policing the Second Amendment promises to significantly advance our understanding of the interrelated issues of race, policing, and firearms in the United States. This is an important book."—Michael Sierra-Arévalo, Rutgers School of Criminal Justice

Editorial Reviews

Co-Winner of the Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association

From the Publisher

2020-06-02
A professor of sociology and government offers a study of gun laws and their racial implications in three states.

Though sometimes overly academic, Carlson’s account points to an important social problem: The Second Amendment right to carry a firearm is unequally applied to members of different ethnic groups. In particular, African Americans, such as Philando Castile, may be authorized to carry concealed weapons, but that fact did not keep a white police officer from gunning him down at a traffic stop. “The proliferation of guns,” writes the author, “disproportionately harms African Americans who are feloniously killed, injured, and traumatized by them at rates that exceed manyfold those of other racial groups in the United States”—and that especially includes state harassment, usually by police. Carlson demonstrates in an argument that centers on Arizona, California, and Michigan that police officers and leaders tend to support gun rights, and far more so than the public; in particular, they oppose widespread bans. This seems a curious stance given that an armed society is certainly more lethal than an unarmed one, “but police nevertheless appear willing to live with the consequences of a widely armed society.” This is generally as true in “gun-restrictive” California as it is in “gun-lax” Arizona. In the West, Carlson ventures, a tradition of law enforcement being used in the service of ethnic oppression—mostly of Hispanics and Native Americans—has translated into oppression of all minorities. This has not lessened in the least with the arrival of Donald Trump, since he “represented the populist stitching together of hard-knuckled policing with gun rights patriotism,” earning the support of the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Rifle Association. Ultimately, Carlson writes, “structural racism intersects with gun policy to aggravate, rather than ameliorate, vulnerabilities facing communities of color.”

No one who reads this will doubt that the Second Amendment has particularly deadly dimensions in minority communities.

Kirkus Reviews