Although the rate of gun ownership in U.S. households has declined from an estimated 50 percent in 1970 to approximately 32 percent today, Americans' propensity for carrying concealed firearms has risen sharply in recent years. Today, more than 11 million Americans hold concealed handgun licenses, an increase from 4.5 million in 2007. Yet, despite increasing numbers of firearms and expanding opportunities for gun owners to carry concealed firearms in public places, we know little about the reasons for obtaining a concealed carry permit or what a publicly armed citizenry means for society. Angela Stroud draws on in-depth interviews with permit holders and on field observations at licensing courses to understand how social and cultural factors shape the practice of obtaining a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Stroud's subjects usually first insist that a gun is simply a tool for protection, but she shows how much more the license represents: possessing a concealed firearm is a practice shaped by race, class, gender, and cultural definitions that separate "good guys" from those who represent threats. Stroud's work goes beyond the existing literature on guns in American culture, most of which concentrates on the effects of the gun lobby on public policy and perception. Focusing on how respondents view the world around them, this book demonstrates that the value gun owners place on their firearms is an expression of their sense of self and how they see their social environment.

Good Guys with Guns highlights self-defense stories where people used a firearm to defend themselves and others from violent criminals and the impact it had on their lives. The book also discusses the debate over the right to keep and bear arms.

"Drawing from 30 years of experience in the gun industry, Mike the Gun Guy will give you the whole story about gun violence--the one based on facts, not on any political agenda. With writing that is often provocative, sometimes hilarious and always informative, Mike breaks down how the gun industry works, and what both sides get right (very little) and wrong (almost everything) about how Americans think about, purchase, and use guns."--back cover.

"A funny, raucous, eye-opening, wholly non-partisan trip in search of Americans who love their guns"--

"It rips to shreds every argument of the anti-gun crowd and has opened my eyes to the mentality of those people." Jan Morgan, FOX News Analyst/Certified NRA Instructor Go behind the lies of the Anti-Gun Radicals. Find out what they hoped you would never know. Dan Wos explains the tactics and strategies of Anti-2nd Amendment Radicals and uncovers the motivation behind their mission to vilify guns and gun owners. Understand the psychology behind those who want to see an unarmed and helpless America. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. FEAR OF GUNS 2. FALSE NARRATIVE 3. RECRUITING THEIR MINIONS 4. SIT AT THE POPULAR TABLE 5. IGNORANCE IS BLISS 6. GUN FREE ZONES 7. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF FREEDOM 8. LIES, LIES AND MORE LIES 9. I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG 10. BUILDING UTOPIA 11. THE TRUTH ABOUT GUNS

A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.

Given unprecedented access to those participating in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a journalist reveals how politics and uncompromising religious belief divided communities.