The Citizen-Vigilante? On Lethal Mistakes and the Misuses of Guns

• In Event: 041 - Regular Session. Violence

Abstract

Does American gun culture reduce the likelihood of violence, as gun rights advocates maintain, or increase it, as gun control advocates advance? This question has typically been interrogated through the statistical analysis of the effect of gun ownership on violent crime rates. Rather than examining the impact of guns on violence from this macro-level, criminological perspective, this paper focuses on micro-level meanings and practices that shape the use of guns in self-defense contexts. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with gun carriers in Michigan, including an in-depth examination of one gun carrier who was ultimately found guilty of brandishing his firearm and subsequently lost the right to possess and carry guns, this paper dissects the misuses and misunderstandings associated not with criminal guns but with lawfully carried guns. It examines how the situational dynamics of violent encounters, combined with racialized and gendered narratives of self-defense and crime, can facilitate behaviors among gun carriers that put bystanders (and themselves) at risk. While the vast majority of gun carriers do not engage in criminal behaviors with the guns that they don, and many even actively attempt to police themselves and others, the new politics of concealed carry opens up new possibilities for lethal mistakes and misunderstandings among otherwise law-abiding citizens.

Author

• Jennifer Carlson, University of Toronto