I am in the final stages of completing a book manuscript that I began conducting research for in 2012. After some trouble, I have a contract with Exposit Books/McFarland & Co. Publishers for Gun Curious (subtitle TBD). I created a schedule to complete the manuscript by November 1st for the book to be available on an expedited schedule about 6 months later, but I’ve had to push submission back until November 8th.

Part of the hold-up and a source of considerable stress in bringing this project to a conclusion is my hope/expectation that the book is significant. Perhaps I am just getting high on my own supply, to quote Elvira Hancock in Scarface and N.W.A. in “Dopeman.” But I honestly do not believe anyone is writing about American gun culture in the way I do, and I want people who are gun enthusiasts, gun skeptics, and gun curious to find something of value in the book.

I believe the spirit of “light over heat” animates this work and is badly needed in today’s culture war over guns. So, I don’t want to make any stupid mistakes that could discredit what I have to say.

My consigliere Randy Miyan tried to talk me down from the stressful heights of perfectionism with the following advice: “My experience with finishing drywall joints with joint compound. Do enough of it and you realize there is a magic place to stop. If you keep fucking with it, to try to gain something closer to perfect, you make it worse and then create way more work for yourself.”

This is great advice that I am trying to heed despite having my Japanese father’s perfectionism deeply ingrained in my mind, heart, and soul.

Where I am coming from is that I started building a house from scratch in 2012. I was two-thirds done in 2018 and decided to tear that house down and rebuild a different house from the ground up. I’m on the brink of finishing the house in a matter of days and am putting it on the market in early summer 2024. My concern is not whether the drywall joints are smooth or if the curtains complement the paint well. I worry that I forgot to put in the kitchen or wired the electrical incorrectly.

I routinely see discrediting errors in publications by people who are at the top of their fields. Recently I was asked to review a book by two scholars, Anthony Braga and Philip Cook, who have a combined 75 years of experience researching gun violence prevention. And still I come across a passage like that pictured below. Can you identify the errors? This is what happens when you want to make an argument so badly that you can’t see an obvious error. I don’t want to do this.

Or how about this reporting published in one of the most prominent newspapers in the US, the Washington Post, about the Louisville bank mass murderer? He “faced no barriers to entry as a gun owner.” Except the very next sentence suggests he would have had to pass a criminal background check, which is widely sold as a barrier to entry as a gun owner that should be universal. This is what happens when you want to make an argument so badly that you can’t see an obvious error. I don’t want to do this either.

I have published seven previous books, either as author, co-author, or editor. Some of these were pretty high-stakes personally because they were published before I came up for tenure, which is the biggest decision point in a college professor’s career. But finishing this book seems more stressful than finishing all of those other ones combined.

The gun issue is fraught, emotional, and divisive. I am trying to avoid being drawn into that divisiveness, to resist being pushed to one side or the other of the cultural divide. It’s so hard.

Thankfully, a longstanding friend and fellow sociologist, Black Hawk Hancock, gave me some advice yesterday that is helping me push through to the finish line: “With this book, you do NOT have to SOLVE the problem.”

I’ve taped this advice to my computer monitor and hopefully one week from today, I will be hitting send on delivering my manuscript to the publisher, at which point, it will be up to others to decide whether to love it or list it.

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