The gun business is a telltale sign of what’s going on in the American psyche, says a sociologist. And if that’s the case, Americans in 2020 were afraid.
In 2020, the FBI conducted 39.7 million background checks for gun purchases—a 40% increase over 2019’s record totals. January 2021 set a new monthly record, with 4.3 million firearm background checks.
It’s not hard to guess some of the reasons; 2020 was a year of cascading crises that continued into 2021, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial unrest, and political instability.
Jennifer Carlson, associate professor in the School of Sociology in the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, has spent over a decade examining how guns shape American life. Last spring, she received a National Science Foundation grant to chronicle the surge in gun purchases in the US in 2020. From April to August, she interviewed more than 50 gun sellers in Arizona, California, Florida, and Michigan.
In September, Carlson’s newest book, Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race came out (Princeton University Press). For the book, she interviewed more than 80 police chiefs to examine the relationship between gun politics and public law enforcement.
This month, Carlson is gathering gun experts across the county for a free, online “Guns in Crisis” series. In advance of the series, Carlson speaks here about the spike in gun sales in 2020; the complicated relationship among guns, police, and race; and how we can talk about guns in nonpolitical terms:
The post Fear links 2020’s crises and booming gun business appeared first on Futurity.
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