NOTE: I recently unpacked my hodgepodge of notebooks about gun culture to begin thinking about writing another book in 2025. Seeing John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa in a local bookstore inspired me to empty those notebooks here. Be advised: These are truly notes and not composed ideas.

By early 2023, I had received a couple dozen rejections of the proposal for Gun Curious, enough that I began making alternative plans. While in Chicago for a meeting with the Lutheran Ethicist Network in January, I brainstormed 5 possible paths forward with my friend and fellow sociologist Black Hawk Hancock. Here’s the list from my notes:

(1) Try to publish this version of the book with a university press rather than a trade publisher.

(2) Publish Gun Culture 2.0 as an academic book first, then re-try publishing Gun Curious.

(3) Re-orient Gun Curious to a new framework — but how?

(4) Self-publish Gun Curious.

(5) Say “fuck it” and scrap the project entirely.

Thoughts in retrospect: #1 and #3 were not really options. #2 brings me back to the reality that I should not have pivoted to trying to write a trade book in 2017. I could have finished the academic Gun Culture 2.0 book in a few years and then used that as a platform to sell the trade book. I did things out of order, not for the first time in my scholarly career. But I was just tired of writing for a small community of scholars and thought I had something to say on the issue of guns to a broader audience.

I was seriously contemplating #4, though not looking forward to it because you have to do or pay for so many things in the self-publishing route that I did not want to do or pay for. The financial returns could have been better, but I’ve always cared more about speaking to a broad public about the issue of guns than about the money. I’ve certainly spent more on this work than I will ever make back.

Since 2023, I have routinely considered option #5. Obviously I have not been able to pull that trigger — yet!