Armed Citizens and the Stories They Tell The National Rifle Association's Achievement of Terror and Masculinity, Kevin Lewis O'Neill, Stanford University, Men and Masculinities April 2007 vol. 9 no. 4 457-475
Abstract
Since 1926, the National Rifle Association's
(NRA) flagship publication has without pause featured “The Armed
Citizen,” a
column that reports instances in which
law-abiding citizens have successfully defended their property, person,
and/or family
with firearms. These reports are brief (100 to
200 words) and have remained remarkably untouched over the past 80 years
with
regard to style, diction, and narrative
structure. Their rhetorical effect, however, has not. In 1977, the year
the NRA became
a social movement, these narratives began to
contribute to the production of a terror-filled, deeply masculine (and
surprisingly
biblical) NRA discourse that led (and continues
to lead) to the mobilization of its members to defend the right to keep
and
bear arms in the face of extraordinary public
opposition: to perpetuate what has come to be known as the “gun-control
paradox.”
Articles citing this article
Good Guys With Guns: Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed Handguns Gender & Society April 1, 2012 26: 216-238
Abstract
In most states in the U.S. it is legal to
carry a concealed handgun in public, but little is known about why
people want to
do this. While the existing literature argues that
guns symbolize masculinity, most research on the actual use of guns has
focused on marginalized men. The issue of concealed
handguns is interesting because they must remain concealed and because
relatively privileged men are most likely to have a
license to carry one. Using in-depth interviews with 20 men, this
article
explores how they draw on discourses of masculinity
to explain their use of concealed handguns. These men claim that they
are motivated by a desire to protect their wives
and children, to compensate for lost strength as they age, and to defend
themselves against people and places they perceive
as dangerous, especially those involving racial/ethnic minority men.
These
findings suggest that part of the appeal of
carrying a concealed firearm is that it allows men to identify with
hegemonic
masculinity through fantasies of violence and
self-defense.
