PBS NewsHour | New book explores culture surrounding guns in America | Season 2023

GEOFF BENNETT: The mass shooting in Texas this weekend is yet another stark reminder of the pervasiveness of guns in American society.

There are hundreds of millions of firearms in circulation across the U.S. A new book explores some of the forces behind that saturation and the political culture that goes with it.

Here's William Brangham.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Back in 2020, a year of a global pandemic and ongoing social unrest, millions of Americans bought guns, including nearly eight-and-a-half-million who had never purchased a firearm before.

A new book focuses on the people who sold all those weapons and the role that they play in American society and politics.

It's called "Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy."

And it's by University of Arizona sociologist Jennifer Carlson, who we talked with last year for our "NewsHour" documentary "Ricochet."

Dr. Carlson, so good to have you back on the news.

Your book documents this remarkable surge of people who purchased guns during this stretch of 2020.

And before we get to the central point about the gun sellers, can you just tell us a little bit about who was it that was buying all those weapons?

JENNIFER CARLSON, University of Arizona: Thank you so much for having me on the program.

Yes, most definitely, in 2020, there was a massive surge in gun purchasing.

And while there was still the sort of typical gun buyer, in terms of demographic profile of being a white conservative man who is married, owns multiple guns, in fact, what we saw during 2020 and into 2021 was a shift in that -- in that profile.

So, people who had never bought a gun, who had never considered buying a gun were suddenly lining up at gun stores and clearing the shelves.

You had people who were not just first-time gun buyers, but racialized minorities, women, members of the LGBTQ community, and even liberals.

And so all of those groups were sort of coming in to gun stores, trying to figure out, according to the conversations that I was having with gun sellers, what to do in this moment of just profound uncertainty and insecurity.

And so what they came up with was, buy a gun.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One of the most interesting things, I think, in your book is the -- is the reaction of the different gun sellers you spoke with to this sudden new population of gun buyers, people who are not traditionally their customers.

Can you explain a little bit about how they viewed the -- that new customer base?

JENNIFER CARLSON: I think that there was definitely a lot of glee, excitement, enthusiasm about these new gun buyers.

They saw it as a vindication of the appeal of gun rights as a basic human right, as something that transcends demographics, as something that anybody could turn to for safety and security.

Of course, there was a limit to that.

And the limit was the liberal gun buyer.

They would come down and say, yes, but I'm a little bit -- in so many words, I'm concerned about the liberals.

Are they just going to be an irresponsible gun owner?

Are they going to understand the politics that they're signing up for?

And so there was an interesting sort of bait and switch in terms of how they understood these -- these new gun buyers as, you know, very much embracing the diversity, but also really drilling down on the partisanship.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Every one of the gun sellers you spoke to seemed to say that politics was inextricable from their professions, and that you wrote early on in the book that gun sellers sell guns, but they also build political culture.

Can you explain a little bit about that?

JENNIFER CARLSON: So, absolutely, gun sellers use the point of sale as a way to instruct especially first-time gun buyers about what it means to have gun regulations.

So, one of the things that they often brought up, especially the gun sellers in states where there were waiting periods, that people would come in wanting their gun immediately, feeling -- and we can all go back to that sense of urgency, like, I need my toilet paper, I need my -- and gun sellers would say, this is what gun control is.

And so they actually used it as a way to sort of instruct these first-time gun buyers.

There were also very explicit examples that gun sellers told me about where one gun seller actually talked about this.

He described him as a kid, which he obviously wasn't a kid if he was purchasing a gun from a licensed dealer -- came in with a Bernie Sanders shirt.

And this gun seller told me how, basically, he had to politically reeducate this buyer.

So there was definitely this sense that they were not just selling guns, that they were the front line of a particular political culture.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You don't necessarily deal with this in your book, but I wonder, given the ongoing gun tragedies we see of the murder rate with guns, the mass shootings, these shoot-first, ask-questions-later accidents we have been seeing recently, how do you imagine that gun sellers see themselves in the midst of that crisis?

Do they see themselves as a part of that, a cause of that, an antidote to that?

How do they - - how do they wrestle with that?

JENNIFER CARLSON: I think one of the reasons that this has -- is so intractable and that we are in this sort of mutually exclusive debate that doesn't seem to ever go anywhere is because we have actually created a society in which guns are the only answer.

So, when we look back at the decades of defunding of social welfare, when we look at the defunding of the mental health care system, when we look at the recent data that's coming out on mortality rates among Americans, we very clearly can see that there is not a social safety net in this country.

And so when you -- all of those things wither away and fray and you're left with a firearm, it becomes very difficult to imagine things beyond the firearm as solutions.

When I interviewed gun sellers and ask them about gun sales, and who were you selling to, but also, who were you not selling to, gun sellers were pretty inquisitive in terms of, why are you buying this gun?

What do you want to do with it?

What's your level of training?

And so I think that there is a big emphasis on firearm safety and responsibility.

The thing, though, is that it's not something that they want to see involving gun law.

They don't want the government to mandate that.

This is not an anti-gun book.

This is not a book that's -- actually, the conclusions talk a lot about the new gun buyers of 2020 and 2021 and what they might mean in terms of the politics of the U.S.

But what it is, is a book that asks us to think beyond guns as the sole solution to how we think about ourselves as citizens and how we think about ourselves as members of society together.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, the book is "Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy.

Jennifer Carlson, thank you so much for being here.

JENNIFER CARLSON: Thank you for having me.

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