Overview
- Bridges the culture war that surrounds firearms, political institutions, framing, and gun policy
- Includes original interviews with activists on both sides of the gun control issue
- Analyzes all gun bills proposed in Congress between 1960 and 2014 for a full historic overview
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
The American gun control debate is best understood as a battle in a war over the influence of individualism on American culture, politics, and policy. This book demonstrates that the gun debate is fundamentally about values. Specifically, it is about what we value most: private rights, or the public good. This helps explain why the technical, empirical, or legalistic arguments we hear aren’t persuasive. A review of scholarly literature on both the politics of gun control and American political culture finds an American bias toward an individualism that embraces personal rights. We argue that this bias stacks the deck against gun control. Interviews we conducted with activists show that support for, or opposition to, gun control is linked to concern for the public, or private, good. Finally, we trace the federal gun control debate in Washington from the 1960s to 2010s to show the ebbs and flows of individualism’s influence.
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Dylan S. McLean, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of West Georgia.
Anthony K. Fleming, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of West Georgia.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Guns and Values
Book Subtitle: Individualism in the American Gun Debate
Authors: Dylan S. McLean, Anthony K. Fleming
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37174-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-37173-8Published: 25 July 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-37176-9Due: 25 August 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-37174-5Published: 24 July 2023
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 231
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Political Science, Terrorism and Political Violence, Public Policy, Political Science