I may be referring more in the future to the bane of my existence as someone trying to offer a more complex view of guns and gun culture in America:
“Liberal cultured despisers of guns”
Even worse, gatekeeping liberal cultured despisers of guns.
So just a word about the origin of this language in case you see me using it and wonder where it comes from.
Before my academic midlife crisis drew me into the field of gun studies, I studied the sociology of religion for about 20 years. Both of my mentors, Robert Bellah and Richard Schoenherr, emphasized understandings of religion that take as central the enduring direct human experience of the supernatural. This experience-centered understanding of religion can be traced in Western thought back to the work of theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, as I noted in my first-ever scholarly publication.
Schleiermacher’s experience-centered understanding of religion was connected to his desire to defend religion against its “cultured despisers” — a term I loved then and now.
Religion’s cultured despisers, according to Schleiermacher, were not just people who had negative views of religion. They were people who, owing to their Enlightenment rationalism and civilization, saw themselves as above religion.
There are many parallels in the field of gun studies, from progenitors like Richard Hofstadter to contemporary flag bearers like Andrew McKevitt, just to name two.
Schleiermacher’s response to these cultured despisers of religion was to challenge their preconceptions and offer a more nuanced understanding that highlighted the centrality of religion to human life.
Here again I see a parallel in the field of gun studies in my own work.
Gun Culture 2.0 
How do you plan on getting any of this across to the people for whom “I’m better than you and your [ownership of guns/belief in God] is proof of this,” is central to their view of themselves?
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I wanted to give you a “like” but for some reason, WordPress won’t let me.
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2 years of trying to get GUN CURIOUS published plus 4 months of having it out in the world leads me to conclude that I cannot get this across to liberal cultured despisers of guns – hence my lobbing this small grenade in their direction. I expect it will also be ignored but felt good to get off my chest.
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I see this as expanding into a longer essay. look forward to it.
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Not sure it is worth the time.
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“How a Liberal joined Gun Culture 2.0 and Discovered They Were Right About Us All Along.”
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Can add the caveat that I do think progress can be made among the rank-and-file. It’s the elite cultural gatekeepers I’m targeting here.
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Broken link on doi-org above…
https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-abstract/55/1/1/1641419?redirectedFrom=fulltext
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Thanks for the heads up. I think I have it corrected now!
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[…] Although I am tragically optimistic enough to think I may ultimately be proven wrong, for now, I have to conclude that most bookstores are run by gatekeeping liberal cultured despisers of guns. […]
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