This week’s “Light Over Heat” video discusses gaps between scholarly portrayals of people and people’s own experiences and understandings. It was occasioned by the feedback I received from people about sociologist Harel Shapira’s depiction of defensive gun training courses in a New York Times opinion essay and Jennifer Carlson’s depiction of gun sellers in her book Merchants of the Right.
Although phased differently by different people, many people basically said to me: “I don’t see myself in that work.”
“I don’t see myself” is important information for scholars to consider, but it alone does not mean that the work is wrong. To illustrate, I discuss an experience I had in my own work on Catholic parishes back in the day, Real Stories of Christian Initiation, that highlights this complexity.
Gun Culture 2.0 
I went back and looked at the email I wrote to Jenny Carlson after finishing her book, Merchants. I suppose like anyone wanting to think harder, I should read it a second time. But anyway….
Dear Jennifer
Just finished the main text. Given I am a sorta kinda academic, I have to dive into the methodology notes but not tonight–my ancient eyes are falling out of my head after hammering through the last forty or so pages. I saw your somewhat exasperated tweet this week, and thought I should email you.
It is a really good book and I thank you for what must have been a heavy lift in writing it. It was difficult reading at times because there were pages where the hair on the back of my neck was starting to stand up as I asked myself “are gun sellers and we gun people really this hopelessly out in right field?” But to be honest, I see the polarization, the conspiracy thinking, and to some large degree, the positive feedback loop between the left and the right on this. Hell, every day I seem to get a Tweet from Joe Biden with big block letters BAN ASSAULT RIFLES and I take a deep breath and know that just triggers a lot of gun owners. It is a two way street. In the local gun shops, the folks who speak sotto voce are the folks to the left of center.
Your closing chapter gives me hope not only for gun culture, but for democratic processes. The few centrists in the room who you interviewed seem to get it that nothing is simple or all black and all white. And like your dad leaving that light on in the room for your relationship, you do your best to encourage us all to keep that light on in the room of our political process: equanimity, grace, and vulnerability. Or maybe Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Sorry. I don’t mean to sound literary. Its just that I recently took a short class on T.S. Eliot and it seemed to fit.
I do think constructive change has to come from the bottom up. I think attempts at big top-down solutions may backfire. Yes, getting rid of Citizens United might help but all of these high level things come with a lot of low level baggage. Also, in a nation that I think has undergone a post-industrialization paradigm shift as well as a tough civil rights awakening, I’m not sure we have an easy path ahead.
Speaking of bottom up work, Meena and I have a very good friend, …., a retired Navy SEAL who was in combat during the Vietnam War. Very conservative, FAUX News kinda guy. But we always talk politics anyway. He and his wife recently moved to … into a condo association that is quite liberal. He volunteered to join their political discussion group and says it has been good for him and for all dem liberals in the room. We need more of that.
Thank you for writing the book. Now that I finished Ryan’s book and Merchants, do you have any suggestions, other than I close my eyes and get some sleep?
Shantih, shantih, shantih
Khal Spencer
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I guess I should have prefaced that comment by stating that I don’t think I necessarily need to see myself in Shapira or Carlson’s works. I ask whether there is an obvious bias in the writer who is searching for confirmation, if it is credible that the people being written about are actually out there, and if we really know if Person Type A or Person Type B is some sort of “vast majority”. I’ve been in so few gun shops that I don’t have a clue as to what the prevailing political outlook of a gun shop is. My hypothesis, given the attacks on gun ownership and gun rights from the Left, is that it would not surprise me if it resulted in gun shop and gun owner alienation to the left. It certainly strains my relationship with other left of center folks and the D party in particular.
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