Description
Guns have never been as prevalent in American culture as they are at this moment. Most contemporary conversations on guns either highlight the gun as just a tool used in mass killings or a right to be fiercely defended; eventually, whatever progress these debates foster in the public conversation tend to halt altogether once the old cliché, "guns don't kill people; people kill people" is trotted out. These gun control and gun violence discussions take the gun as passive object, ignoring the changing effects, and the very agency, that guns may deploy as politicized objects. What happens if we reset the conversation and admit that guns, and not the people behind them, kill people?The Lives of Guns offers a new and compelling way of thinking about the role of the gun in our social and political lives. In gathering ideas from law, science studies, sociology, and politics, each chapter turns the stale, standard gun conversations around by investigating the gun as an object with agency. In approaching guns from a technological perspective, down to the very science of how they are created and how they fire, The Lives of Guns takes up a number of questions, such as: How does the presence of these objects shape civic ideology? What does it mean to develop and care for gun and gun accessories technology? What do guns mean to those who build them versus those who fight for-and against-them? What could happen when drone technology meets gun technology? In bringing together fresh perspectives from leading lawyers, political scientists, and historians, The Lives of Guns promises to move the gun debate forward by opening up new ways of thinking about these issues and broadening the scope of these perennial debates.
Table of Contents
The Lives of Guns: An IntroductionJonathan Obert, Andrew Poe, Austin SaratSection I: The Political Life of GunsChapter I: Mobile Sovereigns: Agency Panic and Gun OwnershipElizabeth AnkerChapter II: Radical Printings: Future Gunsmithing and the Politics of Self-Manufacturing FirearmsAndrew PoeChapter III: Counting Up AR-15s: The Subject of Assault Rifles and the Assault Rifle as SubjectTimothy LukeSection II: The Social Life of GunsChapter IV: The Thriving Life of Racialized Weaponry: Violence and Sonic Capacities from the Drone to the GunHeather HayesChapter V: Dum-Dum Bullets: Constructing and Deconstructing 'The Human'Joanna BourkeChapter VI: The Death of the Unarmed Assailant: On Racial Fears, Ambiguous Movement, and the Vulnerability of Armed PoliceFranklin ZimringSection II: The Private Life of GunsChapter VII: The First Rule of Gunfighting is Have a Gun: Technologies of Concealed Carry in Gun Culture 2.0David YanameChapter VIII: How to Use the Bathroom with a Gun and Other Techniques of the Armed BodyHarel Shapira
