Merchants of the Right
eBook - ePub

Merchants of the Right

Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy

  1. 288 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Merchants of the Right

Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy

About this book

An eye-opening portrait of the gun sellers who navigated the social turmoil leading up to the January 6 Capitol attack

Gun sellers sell more than just guns. They also sell politics. Merchants of the Right sheds light on the unparalleled surge in gun purchasing during one of the most dire moments in American history, revealing how conservative political culture was galvanized amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, racial unrest, and a U.S. presidential election that rocked the foundations of American democracy.

Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with gun sellers across the United States, Jennifer Carlson takes readers to the front lines of the culture war over gun rights. Even though the majority of gun owners are conservative, new gun buyers are more likely to be liberal than existing gun owners. This posed a dilemma to gun sellers in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election: embrace these liberal customers as part of a new, perhaps post-partisan chapter in the American gun saga or double down on gun politics as conservative terrain. Carlson describes how gun sellers mobilized mainstays of modern conservative culture—armed individualism, conspiracism, and partisanship—as they navigated the uncertainty and chaos unfolding around them, asserting gun politics as conservative politics and reworking and even rejecting liberal democracy in the process.

Merchants of the Right offers crucial lessons about the dilemmas confronting us today, arguing that we must reckon with the everyday politics that divide us if we ever hope to restore American democracy to health.

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Yes, you can access Merchants of the Right by Jennifer Carlson in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & American Government. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Introduction: Democracy Disarmed
  8. Armed Individualism
  9. Chapter 1: Viral Gun Rights
  10. Conspiracism
  11. Chapter 2: Conspiracism for the People
  12. Partisanship
  13. Chapter 3: America Unmasked
  14. Democracy
  15. Chapter 4: At the Edge of Democracy
  16. Conclusion: The Democracy We Deserve
  17. Epilogue
  18. Acknowledgments
  19. Reflections on Methodology
  20. Notes
  21. Bibliography
  22. Index