I’ve got a phone number for them to call – 800 CRY BABY<\/p>\n
To Gun Grabbers\u2019 Horror, 2020 and 2021 Have Been the Perfect Storm of Arguments in Favor of Gun Rights.<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve spent much of the past six months interviewing people across the United States in the leadup to the [New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/a>] case\u2014part of research for a book I\u2019m writing about the cultural and racial effects of U.S. gun\u00a0laws. Although I uncovered a wide range of opinions, these interviews have given me a greater appreciation for the ways that high-level political games become grounded in the ostensibly \u201corganic\u201d political instincts of everyday Americans.<\/em><\/p>\n Among conservative white gun\u00a0owners in the South and Midwest, I found there is often reflexive support for the idea that northern and urban gun-control laws should be overturned. This was true even for many interview subjects who had never been to the cities in question\u2014and particularly so when I explained that the case centers around gun\u00a0laws in New York. \u201cNew York\u2014well that says it all right there,\u201d a Tennessee Uber driver in his fifties told me. \u201cHell yes I would want to carry my guns in New York [should I ever go there],\u201d said a Michigan real estate agent in her forties. For these and other conservative interviewees, gun\u00a0laws in cities like New York represented symbolic northern affront to their notion of uninfringed liberties (\u201cIt\u2019s my constitutional right to carry anywhere I want\u201d)\u2014and in places where they imagine they would need to defend themselves against threats from racial others (\u201cI might get carjacked!\u201d).<\/em><\/p>\n But I also found a surprising current of pro-gun\u00a0sentiment among a not insignificant minority of people who identified as liberal and who lived in the very cities in question\u2014especially among people under forty. \u201cCriminals have guns, so why shouldn\u2019t we?\u201d a thirty-seven-year-old white woman art dealer in Brooklyn told me. \u201cWhy should police have all the guns?\u201d asked a twenty-six-year-old Black male programmer from Manhattan. A thirty-three-year-old white woman realtor from Boston explained that \u201chopefully this will make it easier for my friends and me to take shooting classes.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Gun\u00a0sales then rose by over 300 percent in the aftermath of the May 2020 killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed\u2014both among protesters concerned about police violence and among white people with deep fears of racial protest. Not missing a beat, the NRA ramped up efforts to sell more guns to communities of color. When they stood on their St. Louis lawn waving guns at passing protesters, Mark and Patricia McCloskey became the clown-car villains of the left\u2014but heroes of the castle-doctrine right. All the while, gun\u00a0manufacturers retained unprecedented immunity from lawsuits, and (thanks to the Trump administration) expressly pro-gun\u00a0justices [presided] over ever-more courthouses across the country\u2014including the Supreme Court.<\/em><\/p>\n Evidence suggests that even people from groups that have historically been the strongest supporters of gun\u00a0control began packing heat as a result of these cultural shifts. Ranks of liberal and Democrat gun\u00a0owners\u00a0grew\u00a0exponentially\u00a0in 2020 and 2021.\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0columnist Karen Attiah\u00a0describes\u00a0the \u201callure\u201d of guns and gun\u00a0groups for\u00a0Black women<\/a>\u00a0\u201cfeeling a need to protect ourselves in an anti-Black and misogynistic society.\u201d Armed Black self-defense\u2014the very thought of which was once a rationale for\u00a0white anxiety, Black oppression, and stricter gun\u00a0control\u2014has witnessed a revival as a viable\u00a0movement\u00a0of people who are \u201cBlack and up in arms.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The confluence of these factors has led even many supporters of gun\u00a0regulation to question its utility or, worse, to despair that gun\u00a0control is a \u201clost cause.\u201d \u201cWhat are we even doing? America feels like it\u2019s moved on from this issue,\u201d a GVP organizer and activist in Nashville told me, even as shootings and deaths\u00a0spiked\u00a0in\u00a0the city.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014 Jonathan M. Metzl in\u00a0The Supreme Court Is Poised to Put Politics Ahead of Gun-Violence Prevention<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve got a phone number for them to call – 800 CRY BABY To Gun Grabbers\u2019 Horror, 2020 and 2021 Have Been the Perfect Storm of Arguments in Favor of Gun Rights. I\u2019ve spent much of the past six months interviewing people across the United States in the leadup to the [New York State Rifle … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73506,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73498\/revisions\/73506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}