10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some criticisms are due, March 13, 2009
I have several criticisms of this book.
First, Abigail Kohn's ("AK") sampling approach is not scientific. When one does a study exploring the nature of something like America's gun culture, being objective means you study more than just one sample. Here, AK concentrates on an outlier within an outlier. As she admits in her introduction, San Francisco is not representative of America's culture in general so then why should it be the basis for sampling America's gun culture? And then to compound things, the bulk of her interviews are with members of the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) which itself is an outlier within America's gun culture. It would be very hard to draw an accurate conclusion, indeed to generalize to the rest of gun owning America with this sample. SASS members may like to be called shooters, other gun enthusiasts may not.
Second, the book's subtitle is "Myths and Realities of America's Gun Cultures". What I expected then was a book describing how people that don't own guns view people that do and then the research would either confirm or deny those views. Her book does attempt to do this, but it starts two thirds of the way through and is mostly covered in the Conclusion. Through the first two-thirds of the book she delves into describing how gun owners view themselves and then primarily through the eyes of the SASS. What we get then from her research is that gun owners want to relive the glory days of the cowboy, a conclusion that is pretty much the same as the knee jerk reaction of unarmed America. Really, what did she expect from the SASS?
In praise of the book, AK does have a decent number of quotes from gun owners that should essentially work to achieve a glimpse into at least one sampling of America's "gun culture" (AK's methodology and nearsightedness notwithstanding). Without those quotes in there for the non gun owning reader to get a glimpse of gun owning America, they would be at AK's mercy.
Third, whereas she does a good job of remaining neutral through the first three chapters, AK's objectivity begins to lapse a little in Chapter 4 and then lapses entirely in Chapter 5. Chapter 5 is what I call the straw man chapter. This is where she seems to cherry pick certain statements made by her SASS interviewees and paint a picture of who she thinks gun owners are. A reader might draw a conclusion from AK that gun owners are racist, sexist, misanthropic white males - just the bogeymen anti-gunners would expect. She does not state this directly but instead writes that SASS is mostly white males reliving the good ole cowboy days, which, as she explains, was a time when white men, through violence, dominated women and blacks. At least in this chapter, she does not bother to let the reader know whether she thinks her interviewees themselves are racist or sexist, though on page 162 she tells you that their ideology is bigotted because they don't care to offer solutions for inner-city crime. Beyond this, if you ignore AK's conclusions and read just the quotes (many from minority and female gun owners) you just might conclude something different.
Fourth, she either contradicts or does not support herself in a few places. This leads me to believe some of the work was either rushed or not edited properly. For example, the introduction states that the greatest per capita populations of gun owners are in the rural South which we all know is largely represented by America's lower economic classes. Yet, her chapter entitled, "Cowboy Lawmen" concludes that gun owners are too blind to see that they are really part of the advantaged class (middle class to AK). No big deal, but then in another example she repeats more than a few times that America's gun culture likes "regeneration/change in America through violence". She actually uses the word "violence" several times. So we are to think that gun owners like violence, and yet she does not tell us what violent histories her interviewees have had or do not have? She does not tell us what the crime rate is for gun owners vs. the rest of the population? If she wants to draw a conclusion about gun owners liking violence, shouldn't I see some proof? Did she feel unsafe doing the interviews? Not from what I can tell.
She does not support and accepts as given the conclusion that gun control will decrease violence in the long run (but would increase violence in the short run). She accepts without challenge the anti-gun lobby's assertion that Britian and Australia have lower crime rates than America after instituting gun control. I find it interesting that she did not know that the crime rate in Britain is so bad that British politicians have pushed knife ban legislation in that country; and, on top of that, gun crime itself has not stopped. We get more unsupported claims in her Conclusions chapter discussed below.
To be fair to AK, there are examples of her own text where she seems to understand that gun owners are not the monsters the main stream media portrays them to be. She does have a very good section describing the anti-gun lobby's attempt to co-opt the medical industry into their camp so as to reframe the gun control issue into a health issue. Those few sentences alone deserve a star, but efforts like these are few and far between.
In Chapter 6, "Tough Americans", there is a section subtitled, "Some Traditions Die Hard" where she refers to men's desire to "be good protector(s)" as a "phenomenon" - a word with connotations of the strange. And yet what is so strange about someone wanting to assume responsibility for protecting their own? After reading chapters 4 and 5 and the first few pages of chapter 6 a reader would conclude that AK's own philosophy is somewhat anti-gun, but starting from about the middle of chapter 6 on, her philosophy seems to do an about face when she discusses gun ownership by women (and gays and blacks). Now we see that AK becomes more critical of arguments against gun ownership. I walked away from this chapter thinking: white men own guns - not good; women and minorities own guns - not bad.
Her Conclusions chapter contains more contradictions. Here she basically tells gun owners to lighten up about their gun rights because no one will take their guns away. She states that the 4th Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures will likely allow gun owners to keep their guns even if gun control comes back on the list of high priority political agendas. And yet, on the top of page 162 she writes about registration being a historical precursor to gun confiscation. Governments have used registration lists to track once legal guns after they have been made illegal. Governments then won't need to worry about silly Constitutional encumbrances because they could mandate that gun owners deliver their guns to their local police station. Why worry about searching homes?
Furthermore, she shows some naivete around the degree to which the anti-gun lobby has been successful pursuing other avenues aside from outright confiscation. The anti-gun lobby is not dumb enough to go for the home run (gun ban) with every swing, so they pursue legislation like taxes on ammunition, lead shot bans, and expansion of gun free zones. They push for high tech sensor requirements and stamping mechanisms that are capital intensive and which gun manufacturers cannot afford. She either ignores or dismisses as weak the many other ways to "get rid of the guns" such as when the anti-gun lobby (and local governments using taxpayer dollars) wanted to bankrupt America's gun manufacturer's with product liability suits. Essentially, the plan was that these manufacturers would be so bogged down with legal fees that they would be forced to close their doors or face bankruptcy. No number of appeals to the 4th Amendment and the Emerson case, as AK does, can stop the creativity of the anti-gun lobby and anti-gun politicians. It is precisely all these anti-gun schemes that necessitate organizations like the NRA; which, by the way, AK likes taking swipes at (I could only presume she thinks this gives her more credibility. The anti-gun lobby, though criticised throughout her book, doesn't get the same contemptuous treatment). Anyway, I found it interesting that she is so flippant about gun owner paranoia when the back cover to her book tells us that AK works in Washington D.C., a city which, up until recently had banned all handguns and had made all long guns practically inoperable and to this date is still skirting its way with legal finaglings to get to the same place they were before the recent Heller decision (and all the while keeping the notorious distinction of murder capital of America).
And...A.K. tells us that there are not a few unscrupulous gun dealers that sell to known straw purchasers. She accepts this without question. I suspect that she does not bother to investigate this allegation because to do so would put her in a position where she might find herself advocating racial profiling. She does not elaborate on just how a gun dealer would know who is or is not a straw purchaser. After all, what does a gun dealer know about any purchaser except the information on their ID card and what they look like? Oh yes, with a background check, he would know that the buyer had no criminal record. I guess gun dealers don't discrimate on the basis of race. Of course indicating as much would conflict with AK's insinuations of gun owner racism throughout the book.
Lastly, all the above would still earn Shooters 3 - 3 ½ stars, for it does have some value (I do not regret buying or reading the book); but then, just a few pages from the end of the book she writes:
"But at the end of the day, a simple glance at statistical tables on who is...
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A round of shooters, May 28, 2010
This review is from: Shooters: Myths and Realities of America's Gun Cultures (Hardcover)
Although Abigail Kohn was raised in a liberal Jewish background, it would be hard to reduce her to a cultural stereotype after reading Shooters: Myths and Realities of America's Gun Culture. The book followed from her UCSF dissertation in anthropology, Shooters: The Moral World of Gun Enthusiasts. In May 2001 she posted an article for Reason Magazine: Their Aim Is True - Taking stock of America's real gun culture, and in May 2005 she participated in a Reason Debate: Straight Shooting on Gun Control.
Her book was published in December 2005, but I only ran across it because some folks were touting More Guns, Less Crime. Based on the Amazon reviews I had a feeling I already knew what Lott's book was going to say, and Shooters was one of their alternate suggestions. I disregarded the peach schnapps jokes that were running through my head and sent for a copy.
Kohn sought to define what owning guns means to American gun owners. Any city would have had quirks, but I have to admit that San Francisco seemed like an outlier of a place for a study of American gun culture. I'm relatively new to guns myself, but in MD and PA I know a lot of guys that hunt and frequent gun ranges, and even some that shoot paintball. But I had no idea that Cowboy Action Shooting and SASS even existed - and I've never met anyone that calls himself, or herself, a shooter. But America is a big place, and she started near her campus at U Cal SF.
As I come away from the book, I feel that I learned some interesting history and was exposed to many new ideas, which reflects well on the book. But I also feel that the book was actually less balanced than the dispassionate anthropological tone would indicate. Kohn immersed herself in gun culture - and liked it. She made friends and though the weapons still scare her a bit, she found the shooting challenging and exciting. Through Kohn, these SF shooters come across as the sort of people you'd want to meet and have fun with on vacation, and in many ways she seems to have become one of them. That isn't a bad thing, but I don't really see her in the white lab coat.
Towards the end, Kohn switched gears fairly quickly from observer to political adviser and peacemaker, and while I think she tried very hard to be practical, it is very, very hard to get past the intractable positions on each side. For example, Gun Control Australia, where Kohn is now researching gun culture, writes, "Kohn is trying to trick the public into believing that American shooters are taking the high moral ground by purchasing, and practicing to use guns. This is a trick and a trick which should be condemned."
But Shooters gets a more positive review at the TotalDrek blog, "What makes the book truly useful, however, are her remarks about her fellow academics, as well as anti-gun liberals generally. Seen through her eyes, many of the arguments these people make seem hysterical and ridiculous, born out of ignorance and a lack of thought. This is not to say that gun owners get a thorough white-washing, but rather only that she uses a book likely to be read primarily by academic audiences to make it clear why those same academics are sometimes seen as irrational lunatics."
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