ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to promote empirical and theoretical understandings of how people live with, experience, and think about guns in their day-to-day lives. It discusses the evolution of a gun culture rooted in hunting and target shooting to one focused on self-defensive ‘armed citizenship’. The book also discusses firearms through the lens of social connection. It focuses on how firearms provide a safe means for men to bond with other men in a society that increasingly has vitiated traditional masculine roles while retaining heteronormative strictures on male intimacy. The book explains about the intersection of guns, race, and the state in the context of citizen encounters with law enforcement officers. It considers how citizens, firearms, and the state interact in a non-United States context. The book presents the views of seasoned scholars of gun violence and firearms policy.
