The Gun Without the Silver Bullet: Violence, Masculinity and Individuality in America's Gun Culture 2.0
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2020-05-19
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en
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Abstract
The 21st century has seen an escalating public debate surrounding gun control in the United States.
The regularity of mass shootings and the polarizing views on the topic have intensified the debate.
As the conversation centers around gun violence and -legislation, the role of American gun culture
is often forgotten, causing us to overlook the origin and development of the longstanding American
tradition of gun ownership. This is extremely important, because whilst the debate is taking place,
the composition of American gun culture seems to have changed. According to sociologist David
Yamane, firearms are no longer predominantly used as leisure products, instead they are primarily
bought for self-defense reasons. Little research has been done to find out what has caused such a
change and whether this claim by Yamane is true. As most of the research on gun culture has been
reserved for criminological studies, the debate lacks a multidisciplinary- and broader cultural
approach. Therefore, this thesis takes part in the academic debate whether gun culture is changing
because of alterations in three key American characteristics of gun culture. These characteristics
include violence, masculinity, and the concept of individuality. By researching these
characteristics and their relation to gun culture, this thesis will argue that there is indeed a
transformation in American gun culture and that this is the result of a public sense of decline. It is
this multidisciplinary theory of decline which explains how Americans have developed a gun
culture of armed citizenry in the 21st century.
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