Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tenaciously exposing the role guns play for many Americans in their national and political identity, Burbick (Rodeo Queens and the American Dream) talks to gun owners, sellers, lobbyists, grassroots organizers and policy makers as she tours gun shows, gun-rights conventions and National Rifle Association gatherings across the land. Mining the history of gun manufacturing and shooting magazine editorials, she charts how the gun industry has successfully marketed its products using the image of the patriotic, law-abiding civilian shooter. She describes Civil War–era white fears of armed blacks and shows how the Second Amendment rights movement was born of the social unrest of the 1960s. She argues that conservatives responded to blacks' and women's demands for rights by talking about the right to defend oneself with a gun. Burdick also tracks the tactical courtship of the gun lobby by presidents and politicians from Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms to George W. Bush. Burdick highlights the prevalence of white, middle-aged men, misogyny and the paradoxical belief that the gun itself is capable of stopping violence. Noting that an anxious, self-justifying white settler identity underpins the Christian patriotism of the religious right, Burdick catalogues a culture that dwells imaginatively in a mythologized frontier past. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

To limn the pro-gun demographic, Burbick immersed herself in gun culture, visiting trade shows and conventions and interviewing exhibitors and attendees. She paints the picture of a committed, betimes compulsive community that so reveres the Second Amendment that, for many of its members, gun ownership and culture dominate their political and social views if not quite their entire lives. She opens by considering how the egotistic ballyhoo of Buffalo Bill Cody's biography and his barnstorming Wild West Show fostered popular ideas of the frontier and the "booming cultural industry of Westerns," molding a popular image that animates gun enthusiasts and colors politics to this day. Careful in her conclusions, lively in her writing, she offers great insight into such contemporary political players as the NRA and the sort of Old West vogue that made Reagan a romantic vote getter. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: New Press (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595580875
• ISBN-13: 978-1595580870
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,228,920 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Social bigotry masquerading as academic observation, January 6, 2007

By	donbcivil (Seattle, WA area, United States) - See all my reviews

A friend told me about this book and I checked it out from the library to read it for myself. I'm glad that I did so but I would NOT recommend buying it to anybody. For those interested in an OBJECTIVE look at gun issues, pro and con, I would recommend instead "The Gun Control Debate: You Decide", edited by Lee Nisbet (Amazon.com page http://tinyurl.com/y8p4we).

As for "Gun Show Nation", it's a nasty book: the author spends half her time spewing vitriol regarding white males. While I happen to BE a white male, I in no way believe that we are any better than other segments of our society. However, I also do not think we are any worse and frankly hold people who subscribe to this petty Balkanization in complete contempt.

On to the contents of the book itself. If I may digress, what is the reason that people do not walk around wearing sunglasses all of the time? Because they make everything look dark and deprive the wearer of a high degree of visual sensitivity. Well, this author seems to have taken it upon herself to look at gun owners with dark sunglasses on: she sees only a darkened image of what is there and misses out on a great deal of what makes gun ownership something that gives substantial enjoyment. Take her contemptuous comments regarding Charlton Heston, for example. She seems to have decided that since he was an NRA leader for a number of years that he's some sort of bigoted fool. The fact that he marched on D.C. with Martin Luther King Jr. apparently means nothing to her. He opposed racial segregation AND McCarthyism but since he also chose to support a right she disapproves of, he is a bad guy. The thing is, one of our country's biggest problems is how willing people are to only support rights that they themselves want to exercise and to condemn (and try to ban the exercise of) rights they dislike. We should support the ACLU and NARAL as well as the NRA if we want to make this country healthier.

On to the NRA itself. While Burbick is correct in thinking that the NRA has been predominately white and male in membership, it has at times been way AHEAD of society in the area of promoting equality. For example, Elizabeth Topperwein broke the gender barrier by competing in the National Rifle Match in 1906, winning a medal "to the cheers of the admiring men". Show me any other sport in which women competed with men on an equal footing 100 years ago! Looking back at those same American Rifleman magazines that Burbick finds antiquated, I see plenty of issues from the 1940s and 1950s (before women's liberation had even become a leading viewpoint) lauding female shooting competitors.

NRA support for equality went beyond firearms used for "sporting purposes", too. In the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement took off, Robert William (president of a North Carolina NAACP chapter) formed an NRA chapter due to threats from the KKK (many of whom were police officers), to teach black folks in the area how to use firearms for self defense. An article (by David B. Kopel) in the February 2005 issue of Reason magazine (http://www.reason.com/news/show/32889.html) details the long correlation between the restrained capability of self defense with firearms and the social justice community.

In Burdick's book, however, this ability to defend ones self would be viewed with a jaundiced eye, as something that negatively affects society. One would wish that she viewed peace and freedom as something that resulted from a positive interaction between citizens and the government, not something bestowed by government on a helpless citizenry. Owning guns is and should be a right that augments basic police preservation of a peaceable society. Armed individuals have protected other individuals and even police officers from being murdered by criminals. And while government can be a great servant of the people, history shows that circumstances can arise at any time (e.g., Hurricane Katrina) in which the onus is on you to defend yourself for a period of time.

Reading Burbick's book left me with the impression that she would have a problem with the very notion of a private citizen using a firearm to protect another citizen or a police officer. This leaves me wondering whether she would similarly look with disfavor upon people who choose to practice martial arts (who are after all predominately...male), whether she would assume that they want to go around acting violently. In fact, martial arts training includes a strong ethic in which the practitioner is taught to avoid violence, if at all possible. Similarly, gun owners have a strong incentive to avoid violent situations because abusing their right can result in their losing it.

Writing this book would have been a great opportunity to provide insight into the half of the US population who keep and use firearms responsibly. It is too bad that the author chose to support bigoted stereotypes instead.

12 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Alarmist trying to make the 2nd Amendment a partisan issue, May 31, 2007

By	jw (USA) - See all my reviews

The author attempts to frame gun ownership as something only advocated by people on the political far right and Christians. A reading of The Federalist Papers should put that thinking to rest. I am neither a conservative nor a Christian, and I'm aware of a huge, mostly quiet, diverse group who recognize that the 2nd Amendment guarantees rights that our founders considered of utmost importance. In fact, they were clear that we needed to be ready to protect ourselves from aggression (outsiders) and tyranny (our own government). They warned us not to raise permanent armies, in fact, because of the very real threat of tyranny by whomever was in power. Our right to keep and bear arms is the one amendment that ascertains the others will remain intact.

Never mind that firearms are the only reasonable means of personal protection for women, people of short stature, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Or that a 911 call or pepper spray are useless in the middle of a violent assault.

Yes, old white boys are the ones front and center at gun shows, just as they are in government, business, and in all aspects of our society. They held all the power for many years, and power-sharing is not something that happens overnight--culture creeps. And yes, they are mostly the ones who fought in the wars and developed an interest in firearms history. But that's changing. Women are starting to listen to the words of Susan B. Anthony, who advocated for females protecting themselves and not relying on males. More women are studying the Federalist Papers and other documents written by our founders.

Some of the history presented is interesting, and yet the author's bias is obvious throughout. When the Supreme Court reinterpreted the 2nd Amendment, they examined it only out of context. A closer look in context alongside the other amendments clearly shows it guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms.

What I found most troublesome with this book is the author's jumping on the political bandwagon of framing the sales, ownership, and use of firearms as representing something called the "gun culture," as if the 2nd Amendment isn't affirming our right to keep and bear arms for very good reasons with which the founders were intimately familiar. The words of the founders are clear--they were warning that tyranny and aggression happen. They taught us to be armed and ready.

This book is an alarmist opinion piece that contains some interesting--but incomplete--history. In that sense, it's dangerous, because the author presents herself as an expert rather than an ideologue.

13 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A collection of opinions and anecdotes, April 13, 2007

By	Allen Cogbill (Los Alamos, NM) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I got this book from the local library, intrigued by its title. I was amazed at how bad the book is. It is primarily a collection of anecdotes sprinkled liberally with the author's opinions. Although the author claims to be a professor at Washington State University, do not be fooled into thinking that this book is an academic work. It is anything but.