This essay offers a pragma-dialectic analysis of recurring arguments proffered in response to gun control legislation. While these arguments do not appear to be persuasive enough to win many new ad...

Tropes in the Rhetoric of Gun Rights: A Pragma-Dialectic Analysis

In the midst of public attention to the question of racial gun violence both at the hands of vigilantes and police, this essay draws from anthropological theory on object–human relationships to reframe our understanding of racial gun violence. Following Appadurai’s (1986, 2015) attention to the “social lives” of objects and the way that objects function as both “median and materiality,” this essay argues that the demand for self-defense has altered the meaning of firearms and produced a system in which racial gun violence is normalized. Formed in three parts, the first develops a theoretical framework for thinking about the role of objects, in this case guns, in the production of social relationships. Doing so, this essay argues, allows us to take objects seriously as actors that work to produce moments of racial gun violence, as well as understand how these patterns of gun violence are the result of the mass production, distribution, and racialized marketing of the gun for the purpose of self-defense. In the second section, I utilize this framework to trace the legal, marketing, and engineering shifts that have resulted in the expansion of concealed carry laws, the development of a highly racialized marketing strategy that ties gun ownership to self-defense, and the production of smaller and more powerful pistols which now dominate the gun market. This new era of guns in American life builds from a longer history in which the gun remains central to the maintenance of the American racial order. Yet, the gun in this sense is not simply a signifier of race, but as this essay maintains, is both a material component shaping the bodily practices and cognitive capacities of gunowners, and a billion-dollar industry that has lobbied successfully to make guns more accessible and to make their use, for whites, less accountable under the law. In the final section, I undertake a rereading of the murder of Trayvon Martin, focusing on George Zimmerman’s murder weapon and the role it played both in the killing of Martin, and in sparing Zimmerman from conviction. By focusing on the role guns play in instances of racial violence and inequality, this essay demonstrates how new materialist scholarship can chart new pathways for understanding this important and timely issue.

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The possessive investment in guns: towards a material, social, and racial analysis of guns

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The National Rifle Association and the White Male Identity

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Armed and Dangerous: The Ascendance of the National Rifle Association

I. INTRODUCTION: ARMING THE IRRATIONAL Many Americans responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by purchasing firearms. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that it conducted 455,000 more background checks on gun buyers during the six-month period following 9-11 than during the same period the year before.' Although a handgun is unlikely to effectively defend against a suicide attack with an airplane, an anthrax letter, or a car bomb, owning a deadly weapon made many people feel safer. One gun retailer reported, "My handgun [sales] have gone crazy. It seemed like immediately [after September 11] it was real, real crazy, people walking in right after each other wanting a gun."2 Numerous studies show that the presence of a firearm in the home increases the likelihood of violence against family members.3 Despite this, gun ownership is widespread in the United States - estimates indicate that there may be as many as 200 million privately owned guns in the country, and almost one third of households own at least one firearm.4 Although close to 30,000 Americans are killed by gunfire every year,5 the firearm industry is one of the least regulated in the nation.6 This is in large part due to the efforts of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a leading opponent of gun control legislation. This paper argues that a large part of the NRA's success is due to its ability to manipulate existing irrationalities-things that make people go "real, real crazy"-among its supporters to intensify and mobilize opposition to gun control. The first section will briefly describe the legislative power of the NRA. The second section will review the existing literature on irrationality and risk. The final section will demonstrate how the NRA exploits these irrationalities more successfully than the interest groups that favor gun control. II. THE POWER OF THE NRA Polling data consistently shows that the positions taken by the NRA are not the positions favored by the American public.7 The NRA is opposed to any new gun control legislation, no matter how sensible. The NRA has opposed bans on guns with plastic components (which can pass through metal detectors) and armor piercing "cop killer" bullets.8 It favored allowing the federal ban on military-style assault weapons to expire in 2004.9 It opposed limited measures that reduce illegal gun trafficking, such as "one gun a month" laws.10 Moreover, the NRA has lobbied against every federal firearms regulation-from the 1934 National Firearms Act, which banned machine guns, to the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which required background checks on gun purchasers.11 The NRA dominates the debate on gun control. Political scientist Robert Spitzer describes the NRA as "the fierce three-headed watchdog from Greek mythology, Cerberus, ... [dominating] and [defining] gun politics for most of the twentieth century."12 Fortune Magazine declared that the NRA was the most powerful lobby group in Washington in 2001,13 and observers of American politics have speculated that the NRA has surpassed the religious right as the most important constituency of the Republican Party.14 Many frequently cite the NRA as the paradigmatic example of an effective interest group, especially in the context of its demonstrated ability to trump public opinion that might favor stricter gun control.15 There is also a strong perception that the NRA has the ability to swing elections. Many Democrats believe the NRA and the gun control issue cost Al Gore the White House in 2000.16 Others argue that the assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill were responsible for the Republican take-over of Congress in 1994.17 Supporters of the NRA are likely to be single-issue voters-they will cast their ballot based solely on a candidate's position on gun control.18 Representative Peter Smith (R-NH) sponsored a bill to ban assault weapons in 1989 after promising the NRA he would oppose all gun control. …

Scott Medlock

Papers

NRA = No Rational Argument? How the National Rifle Association Exploits Public Irrationality