Debate

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which American gun owners deploy a particular ethical system in their responses to instances of mass gun violence. I argue that anthropology is uniquely situated to provide a better understanding of how this ethical system is produced, thereby allowing us to move beyond the falsely dichotomous terms of the gun control debate. Recently returned from a period of fieldwork with a gun rights activist community in San Diego, California, I use ethnographic data to show that owning a firearm brings with it an ethical system that makes the prospect of giving up guns in the aftermath of a mass shooting even less attractive to my informants. Furthermore, this article focuses on what has been called "the problem of evil" by demonstrating how my informants order the world into "good guys" and "bad guys. " This opposition becomes personified into a more general notion of good versus evil, thereby placing particular people in the category of the human and others in the category of the inhuman, or monstrous.

More than the Second Amendment: Liberal gun owners, citizenship, and emancipatory democracy in the United States

“…Four hundred million is a significant figure. However, public media represents "responsible" gun owners as monolithic in ideology and practice and its culture as dominated by norms of masculinity, conservatism, and neoliberal perspectives on citizenship and social well-being that prioritize small government and individualistic solutions to national problems (Anderson et al 2017;Hofstadter 1970;Joslyn 2020). The NRA shapes much of this discourse (Melzer 2009).…”

Anthropology and complicated people

“…Collaboration requires an “ethics of engagement,” but some interlocutors prefer a stance of “detachment and disconnection” (Trundle, 2018, p. 92). A “collaboration” with a perpetrator of violence raises other issues, such as “dealing with the enemy” (Anderson et al., 2017, p. 40) or becoming “seduced” by their account of events (Kovats‐Bernat, 2002, p. 212).…”

Potentiating Death and Governing Uncertain Futures: Guns, Assisted Dying and the Production of Sovereign Subjects

“…Whereas gun owners perceive the uncertain future as a potential moment of senseless violence that needs to be stopped, right-to-die activists understand the future as something inevitable that must be confronted. Rightto-die activists do not have a collective reference point to build and juxtapose their ethical selves against -the kind of "bad guy" gun owners see looming in unruly future moments (Anderson 2017). No similar sense of "evil" exists in their world view; the "perpetrator" is an indifferent universe that gives rise to suffering and disease.…”