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Basic Pistol

Living and Dying by the Gun in America
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Basic Pistol

By: Harel Shapira
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Pre-order for $18.05

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About this listen

This eye-opening deep dive into American gun culture reveals how people are training their minds and bodies to use guns to devastating effect.

All across the country, everyday Americans are taking classes in how to use a gun. Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas, has spent ten years immersed in the world of gun-training. Who are the instructors? What are people learning from them? And how does it explain the gun violence that’s now playing out on a daily basis?

Shapira reveals that far from simply teaching the mechanics of gun safety these schools are teaching a way of living in the world that is rooted in racist fears, aggressive masculinity and an entitlement to violence. In storytelling that will take your breath away, we discover that the risk of widespread gun ownership is not simply the possibility of more gun violence and mass shootings. The risk is to the very foundations of democracy itself.

Critic Reviews

At once page-turning and deeply disquieting . . . a must read for anyone who wants to understand not just why gun violence is so devastatingly prevalent in the US, but also, and as importantly, how gun ownership has become so normalized, so passionately defended, and so much a part of how countless people now measure their sense of safety as well as connect to their community. (Heather Ann Thompson, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Blood in the Water )
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