Qual Sociol

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9374-2

Learning to Need a Gun

Harel Shapira 1 & Samantha J. Simon 1

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract Millions of Americans feel the need to carry guns with them everywhere they go.
They feel this need in their minds as well as in their bodies. Cognitively, they feel their lives
are in danger and physically, they feel unease when they are not carrying their guns. In this
article, we demonstrate that the practice of carrying guns is constituted by both cognitive
schemas about risk and safety, as well as sensory and embodied experiences of comfort, and
even pleasure, in holding, shooting, and carrying a gun. As with other social practices, these
cognitive schemas and embodied experiences are not innate, but rather learned. Drawing on
interviews with 46 people who regularly carry guns, as well as fieldwork at firearms training
schools, we examine the process by which people learn the cognitive schemas (how people
think about guns) and embodied experiences (how people physically experience guns) asso-
ciated with the practice of carrying guns.

Keywords Guns . Embodiment . Practice . Socialization

Adam Gonzalez,1 a 45-year-old sales manager for a tech company in Central Texas, never
leaves home without his gun. When explaining his decision to always carry a gun, Adam
points to safety as a primary motivation. BI’m always alone, in a suit, in downtown Dallas and
Houston,^ Adam explains, BI’ve had a few occasions where guys have asked me to use my
phone, and not in a good way.^ In addition to always bringing his gun with him when he
leaves the house, Adam also purposely avoids places that do not allow guns, and sometimes
even carries a gun on his hip while at home.

1
To protect confidentiality, we use pseudonyms to identify all people.

* Harel Shapira
hshapira@austin.utexas.edu

Samantha J. Simon
samanthasimon@utexas.edu

1
Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin, 305 East 23rd Street, A1700, CLA
3.306, Austin, TX 78703, USA
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Adam says that on the rare occasions when he is not carrying his gun, he feels Btotally
naked.^ BIt’s like I’m not wearing pants,^ Adam says, BI get all fidgety, and anxious...I
keep feeling around looking for it.^ A few months ago, Adam took a business trip to
Massachusetts, a state that does not permit him to carry a gun with him wherever he goes.
He explains that not having his gun on him Bwas brutal,^ and recalls, BIt’s like I was going
through withdrawal.^
In the above accounts, Adam points to his sense of having both a mental and physical
need to carry a gun. Not only does Adam think that carrying a gun makes him safer, he also
feels safer when he carries a gun. Indeed, while Adam often talks about his decision to
carry a gun by articulating a set of cognitive schemas about danger and risk in the world,
he also frequently discusses the role of his sensory experiences of carrying, owning,
buying, and shooting guns.
When describing these sensory experiences, Adam uses the language of substance
abuse. For example, Adam refers to his frequent visits to the shooting range as his
B1000–1500 rounds per month habit,^ and he talks about the money he spends on firearms
training classes and his constant desire to purchase new firearms as an Baddiction.^ But
Adam does not believe that his relationship to guns is an Baddiction^ that needs to be
treated or cured. On the contrary, Adam talks about his experiences with guns in a very
positive light, referring to the Bhigh^ he gets from shooting guns, and the feeling of his
Badrenalin pumping^ when he completes timed shooting drills during firearms classes.
Having shot guns with Adam on multiple occasions, we have witnessed such elation first
hand—hearing Adam belt out a BWoo-hoo!^ after successfully hitting the target at the
shooting range, or exclaim BDamn, that felt good!^ after firing a particularly expensive,
well-engineered, or large gun at a gun show.
Adam did not always think about or experience guns in these ways. Adam only started
carrying a gun two and a half years ago, and he developed positive feelings about guns over
time. BI used to think people like Hank [a firearms instructor who carries everyday] were nut
jobs,^ Adam recalls, and adds that not only did he used to have negative feelings about people
who carried guns, he also used to have negative feelings about the physical experience of
carrying a gun. BFor the first two months [I carried], it was so uncomfortable...I was so self-
conscious,^ Adam recalls, BI kept feeling this thing on my hip. I kept thinking that people
could see that I was carrying a gun.^
Like Adam, many people who carry guns on a regular basis describe going through a
process in which they transitioned from being people who did not carry (or in some cases even
own) guns, to becoming people who carry guns regularly. And, like Adam, in their accounts of
the process of becoming people who carry guns, they describe both cognitive and physical
transformations. In Adam’s case, not only does he say he no longer thinks that people who
carry guns are Bnut jobs,^ he also says he no longer feels physically Buncomfortable^ when he
carries a gun. Indeed, Adam now feels uncomfortable when he does not carry a gun.
In this article, we draw on interviews with 46 people who regularly carry a handgun
with them, as well as 33 months of fieldwork at firearms training schools. We attend to
people’s accounts of the process by which they started carrying guns, as well as our own
observations of the training that takes place at firearms schools, to examine the cognitive
schemes and embodied dispositions associated with the practice. In the process of doing
so, we contribute to existing scholarship on gun ownership by analyzing it as an embodied
and learned practice, in which we focus on people’s ideas about, and experiences of,
holding, shooting, and carrying guns.
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The Rise of Concealed Carry

Adam Gonzalez is part of a relatively new and growing population: people who have obtained
a license to carry (LTC)2 and carry their guns with them on a regular basis, specifically for the
purpose of self-defense. Now numbering approximately 14.5 million (Lott 2016), this popu-
lation is part of what David Yamane (2017) has called the Bculture of armed citizenship,^
which has emerged over the past two to three decades in tandem with, and as a result of,
significant attitudinal and regulatory changes.
In terms of attitudes, there has been a dramatic shift away from hunting to self-defense as
the primary motivation for gun ownership. A recent study conducted by the Pew Research
Center documents the enormity of this transformation. In 1999, the primary reason gun owners
gave for owning a gun was hunting (49%), with only a minority (26%) claiming Bprotection^
as their motivation. By 2013, these figures were reversed, with protection becoming the
number one reason (48%), and hunting dropping down to a secondary motivation (32%)
(Pew 2013).
This transformation has been accompanied by important regulatory changes, wherein over
the past two to three decades we have witnessed the dramatic liberalization of gun laws
(Spitzer 2015; Winkler 2011). Such liberalization is evidenced in the rise of BShall-issue^ laws
across the country, which make it much easier for civilians to obtain LTC’s and carry guns with
them in public by removing discretion on the part of the issuing authority (Grossman and Lee
2008). In tandem with this increase in BShall-issue^ laws has been the emergence of state
statutes, known as BStand Your Ground Laws,^ which often expand the scope of conditions
and circumstances under which a person may claim a right to use lethal force in self-defense
beyond those previously outlined in existing federal and state laws (Bobo 2007; Catalfamo
2007; Drake 2008). The rise of LTC represents a change in what gun ownership is—both at the
level of attitudes connected to gun ownership as well as the sets of practices in which gun
owners engage. By enlarging the capacities of people to carry guns in public, and helping
promote a large civilian population that carries their guns every day, the rise of LTC requires
that we consider contemporary gun ownership as an embodied, everyday practice.

Understanding Gun Ownership as an Embodied Practice

Scholarship on gun ownership has focused primarily on understanding who owns guns and
why they do so. A range of important attitudinal variables has been connected to gun
ownership, including: political ideology (Celinksa 2007; Thompson and Stidham 2010); racial
attitudes (Filindra and Kaplan 2016); attitudes toward violence (Dixon and Lizotte 1987;
Felson and Pare 2010) and attitudes about crime and safety (Hemenway et al. 1995; Stroebe
et al. 2017). These attitudinal factors have been further analyzed by looking at how demo-
graphic and regional variables may influence people’s ideas about guns and likelihood of
ownership, including: regional crime rates (Carter and Binder 2016), levels of social cohesion
(Gau 2008), gender (Young 1986), age (Pederson et al. 2015), race (Johnson 2014), and region
of residence (Bankston et al. 1990; Dixon and Lizotte 1987). Scholars have expanded upon
these studies in recent ethnographic research that explores people’s decisions to own and carry

2
While states use different terms for licenses or permits to carry a concealed firearm, we use License to Carry
(LTC) to refer to all such policies that allow gun owners to carry concealed handguns in public.
 Qual Sociol

guns by examining the symbolic meaning that guns have for people, and situating those
meanings within a broader economic and cultural context in which gun carrying is tied to
assertions of masculinity (Carlson 2015; Stroud 2016).
While the above studies contribute to our understanding of gun ownership by examining
the meaning that people attach to owning and carrying guns, they tend to reduce guns to
symbolic objects and gun ownership to a symbolic identity. Although we recognize the
importance of these symbolic dimensions, in this article, we build on this research by
providing an analysis of the actual practice of owning and carrying a gun as an embodied,
everyday activity in which holding, shooting, and most importantly, having a gun on your
body, becomes a key aspect of one’s identity. Much as West and Zimmerman (1987)
conceptualize gender as an interactional accomplishment constituted by rituals and practices,
we seek to expand existing accounts of gun ownership by considering the identity not as just
being connected to political attitudes or cultural narratives, but as being literally constituted by
a set of embodied practices that people who carry guns undertake.
Heuristically, our analysis of gun ownership as an embodied practice is based on examining
both people’s accounts of the process by which they develop the cognitive schemes and
embodied dispositions associated with carrying guns, as well as the training of minds and
bodies that we observed and experienced at firearms schools. In doing so, we further contribute
to scholarship on gun ownership, by approaching it as a learned, embodied behavior connected
to a socialization process. Although our research cannot account for the myriad of ways and
institutions through which people are socialized into gun ownership—including media, family,
military—firearms schools represent one increasingly significant institution. While firearms
training schools have existed for a long time, their significance and popularity has grown with
the rise of concealed carry. This is in part due to the fact that most states require some form of
training with a certified instructor before they can obtain their LTC, and also because of the
emergence of a gun culture organized increasingly around self-defense and tactical training
(Yamane 2017). These firearms schools and instructors have not been given adequate atten-
tion, and—while they do not represent the entirety of how people learn to hold, shoot, and
carry guns—studying them allows us to capture elements of the broader socialization process.
While we are unable to determine whether the learned cognitive schemes and embodied
dispositions described by our respondents are what drive their decisions to own and carry
guns, our data reveal that, at least in their accounts, there is a strong connection between the
development of these schemes and dispositions, and their engagement in this social practice.
Specifically, our data show a strong connection between a person thinking that they need guns,
that guns are safe, and that killing another human being is a moral action, and their partici-
pation in the practice of gun carrying. While the people we interviewed reported that these
cognitive schemas are connected with their decision to carry a gun, they also pointed towards
the importance of developing physical comfort (and even pleasure) with the experience of
holding, shooting, and carrying guns. In the process of analyzing the connections between the
development of these two dimensions—the ways of thinking about guns and physically
experiencing guns—which our respondents say are associated with gun carrying, we draw
on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and analyze the Bgun carriers’ habitus^ (1990a).
In Bourdieu’s formulation, the habitus is best understood as an acquired scheme of both
cognitive and physical dispositions that influence how people navigate and act in the social
world—Bsystems of durable and transposable dispositions...which generate and organize
practices and representations^ (1990a, 53). Although these dispositions are learned, they
become so deeply embedded and embodied, that Bourdieu says they have a pre-discursive
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and unconscious character, illustrated through a hard-to-articulate Bfeel for the game,^ which
social actors have when they carry out practices (1990b, 63). In this article, we build on a
growing body of work (Garcia and Spencer 2013; Tarr 2008; Wacquant 2004) that seeks to
empirically show what Bourdieu left unexamined, which is the process of habitus formation,
and in particular, the learned, and yet pre-discursive, nature of the habitus. We contribute to
this field of scholarship by attending to the role of both mental and physical training in the
constitution of habitus, and furthermore, in showing how people’s embodied experiences of
guns transform from being experienced as a self-conscious and reflexive activity, to one that is
seemingly pre-reflexive and unconscious. Using our respondents’ accounts of the process by
which they started carrying guns, as well as our own experiences taking firearms classes, we
reveal how the cognitive schemas (how people think about guns and gun carrying) and
embodied experiences (how people physically experience guns and gun carrying) which make
up the practice are co-constitutive, so that the cognitive schemas enable and are simultaneously
enabled by a set of embodied experiences, and vice-versa.

Data and Methods

This article draws on a combination of ethnographic and interview data collected over the
course of 33 months, starting in May 2014. Although the study is principally focused on
central Texas, six of the interviews, as well as approximately 20% of the fieldwork, were
conducted in Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. We
spent a cumulative total of 152 hours in firearms training classes as participant observers,
taking a range of classes, both individually, as well as together, and in both a group setting as
well as private one-on-one instruction.3 We participated in beginner’s classes, concealed carry
licensing classes, and advanced tactical classes. One of the co-authors focused a significant
part of their ethnographic data collection on participant observation with a national women’s
gun organization headquartered in central Texas. We also conducted participant observation at
shooting ranges (where we also often see training taking place informally), shooting compe-
titions, gun shows, and organizational meetings. We spent a little over 300 hours within these
other settings.
Beyond the ethnographic data, the analysis presented here draws on 46 semi-structured
interviews we conducted with people who have concealed carry licenses. With the exception
of one interview that involved taking down notes during the course of the interview, all of the
interviews were recorded and later transcribed. The interviews lasted between 45 min and 2
hours, and followed a semi-structured format, in which open-ended questions were asked
about the interviewee’s background, experiences with firearms and firearms training, and
decisions to purchase, as well carry, firearms. The demographic distribution of our sample
of 46 interviewees [white n = 36; Black n = 8; Hispanic n = 4; men n = 31; women n = 12]
comes close to replicating what we know about the demographic distribution of LTC holders
in the United States (Shapira et al. 2017).
Our research sample consists of a sub-set of gun owners: those who own guns for self-
defense, have LTC’s, and moreover, carry their guns with them on a regular basis. Recent

3
Beyond being places where students take the mandatory class required to obtain an LTC, gun schools are places
where people take a broad array of classes, from those meant for beginners, to more advanced tactical self-
defense training.
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research has found that one in four handgun owners report carrying a loaded handgun outside
of the home in the past 30 days, and that among those, one out of three report doing so every
day (Azrael et al. 2017). Our sample consists of this latter sub-group of gun owners who
regularly carry loaded guns. Relatedly, we sampled heavily on gun owners who were actively
engaged in gun culture—regularly going to firing ranges, attending organizational meetings, or
taking firearms training classes—as opposed to those who may have guns, but for whom gun
carrying and gun ownership may not be central aspects of their daily lives. Consequentially,
our findings are limited to this sub-set of the gun-owning population.
The people who take classes at gun schools are not all the same. Certainly, there is a strong
homogeneity: they are mostly white men. But, they arrive to classes with varying degrees of
previous socialization into guns. Some, like the instructors who teach the classes, arrive
already firmly socialized into the gun carrier’s habitus. They are already carrying guns with
them nearly everywhere they go, and they already have embraced the various ways of
understanding the world that gun schools promote. That said, even in these cases, gun schools
play an important role in reaffirming these attitudes and beliefs, as well as continuing the
development of the various physical and cognitive aspects involved in tactical training for self-
defense. As the gun instructors like to say, certainly with a nod towards marketing, BYou can
never be over-prepared for a gun fight.^ In other words, we argue that even among the more
experienced and already-socialized gun owners, those who may have served in the military, or
grew up in households with guns, gun schools have a socializing effect. Perhaps they do not
make people suddenly purchase a gun for the first time, but they might, as we show, make
someone purchase a second, third, or, for some members of our sample, a thirtieth, gun.
Indeed, part of what we seek to accomplish in this article is to shift the focus away from
thinking of gun ownership and gun carry as a single moment at which one purchases a gun or
decides to carry a gun, to thinking of it as an ongoing, iterative process in which one is
continuously being and becoming a gun owner by engaging in certain practices.
There is a final limitation in our sample that is important to point out. Gun ownership is
stratified by race, class, and gender, and while our sample includes people of different races
and genders, as well as with different class backgrounds, we do not explore these specifically
within this article. We speculate, based on our limited data, that every gun owner, regardless of
race, class, or gender, must go through the process of becoming a gun owner that we detail in
this article. However, we recognize that our respondents’ pathways to gun ownership and the
meanings attached to their identities as gun owners, both for themselves and from others’
perspectives, is importantly shaped by race, class, and gender, among other social identities.

Learning to Think You Need a Gun

Ben Novick, a 40-year-old software engineer from a wealthy suburb outside of Austin, never
leaves home without his gun. Beyond this, Ben has equipped his family’s home with a security
system that costs about $40/month, as well as a special dead bolt lock on the front door, which
is normally reserved for use in commercial properties. The neighborhood where Ben and his
family live is ranked as the safest neighborhood in what is an already-safe suburb; the overall
crime rate of 1.5 per 1000 residents is less than half the national average (U.S. Department of
Justice 2016).
Ben knows that he lives in a safe neighborhood, Ba benign environment^ as he calls it. Ben
even goes out of his way to note that he works in a secure office, where only those who have
Qual Sociol

company-issued swipe cards have access to the building. Not one to think his chances of being
a victim of a crime are higher than they really are, Ben openly affirms that, Bmy risk profile is
really pretty low,^ and furthermore, that Bthe chances of something bad actually happening to
me are extremely low.^
But when Ben talks about how safe he is, about how unlikely it is that he will be the victim of
a crime, he does so with a gun holstered on his belt. How does Ben account for this? How does
Ben account for his decision to carry a gun every day to protect himself against victimization,
even though he says that his risk of victimization is markedly low? The answer begins to
emerge as Ben continues speaking. Immediately after saying that his chances of being the
victim of a crime are very slim, Ben further explains that such statistics are meaningless when it
comes to his decision to carry a gun: BIt’s not the odds,^ Ben says, echoing an oft-repeated
phrase among gun carriers, Bit’s the consequences.^ By Bconsequences,^ Ben envisions a brutal
outcome for either himself or one of his family members if he does not carry his gun with him.
A potential brutality, expressed time and again among the gun owners with whom we spoke,
that includes death, rape, or having your child kidnapped.4 BThe stakes,^ as Ben tells us, Bare
too high. I can’t afford the price of not being prepared.^
The gun owners we met during fieldwork explicitly talked about Bneeding^ their guns. We
use Bneed^ here in the logical and cognitive sense of a person thinking that without a gun, her
or his life is in danger. According to Ben, and our other respondents, the development of this
need did not emerge from a specific experience of victimization, but rather from learning how
to think about risk and danger in the world. We witnessed this learning process first-hand at
gun schools, where instructors encourage participants to think of the world as a dangerous
place and of themselves as vulnerable without a gun. The gun owners we spoke with describe
a feeling of intense vulnerability, while at the same time expressing knowledge of their low
likelihood of victimization. They do not, however, understand these two life conditions to be at
odds with one another. Rather, while people who carry guns for self-defense describe an
increased sense of danger in the world, they learn to define potential risks in terms of
Bconsequences,^ rather than Bprobability,^ so that ideas about needing to carry a gun are not
constrained by a low likelihood of victimization.
Only two of our sample of 46 respondents purchased a firearm or obtained their LTC as a
result of being the victim of a crime. And even in both of these instances, in which each of the
respondents described being mugged, the respondents did not immediately purchase a gun or
start carrying, but rather talked about the event as a Bcatalyst^ which led them to talk to friends
who owned guns and start reading about both armed and unarmed self-defense classes. It was
following conversations with friends, as well a period of time in which they say they Bbegan
learning^ about guns and self-defense, that they ended up purchasing a firearm. Furthermore,
while another four of our respondents had been the victims of crimes in the past, none of them
acquired their guns or LTC’s in the aftermath of those events. The causal arrow, at least
according to our sample, does not point from experience of victimization to owning or carrying
a gun. Rather, as we show in this section of the article, both the initial decision to have and
carry a gun, and more importantly, the continued iteration of that decision on a daily basis, is
connected to ideas about crime and safety.
Every one of our respondents said that they carried guns for self-defense. When asked to
elaborate, they repeatedly invoked stories circulating in the news or on gun forums about

4
Women expressed a fear of being raped, while men expressed a fear of having their wives and daughters being
raped.
 Qual Sociol

crime. Many spoke of a general deterioration of morality and increase in violence in society.
Frank Romanelli, a white firearms instructor in his late 60’s, provides a typical account of this
supposed shift when talking about his decision to carry his gun with him regularly: BThings
have gotten worse [since I was in college]...now you see people robbing and killing when
there is no need.^ Frank tells us, BIt’s sorta like 9/11. Up until then, if someone hijacked an
airplane, it was usually to go to Cuba or to leave Cuba. And the goal was not to kill other
people. So, I think my attitude has changed, too.^ In talking about how his Battitude has
changed,^ Frank says that it’s not necessarily that crime has gone up since his days in college,
but rather that the nature of crime has become more violent. He points to the terrorist attacks of
9/11 as the epitome of this supposed transformation, situating the attacks in opposition to an
older version of airplane hijackings, which he recalls were focused on less violent intentions
and outcomes.
We found these themes expressed repeatedly in firearms training classes, where gun
instructors emphasized not only that the world is dangerous, but also that the kind of
danger present in the world today is more brutal than ever before. For example, in all of the
LTC licensing classes we attended, the instructors showed videos depicting people being
violently attacked. In his class, Mike Keller, a retired white police officer and current
firearms instructor in his 60's, showed a video of a woman being attacked at a gas station
by two Black men and proceeded to tug on his cheeks and tell the class that human beings
are Bsoft, delicate creatures, who are easily destroyed.^5 While most people already arrive
at these LTC classes with a sense of danger in the world, that sense of danger is reaffirmed
and magnified within these classes. Kurt, a student in his 40’s, offers a typical account
following an LTC class, BI knew the world was dangerous, but this was a wake up call.^
Indeed, our research suggests that one of the ironies of firearms training classes is that in
learning self-defense, something that ostensibly gives you confidence, one ends up feeling
more vulnerable than before.
The gun owners we met during fieldwork talked about guns, specifically, as being the most
effective way to prevent these imagined catastrophic consequences from occurring. Consider,
for example, Brad O’Brien, a white man in his 40’s who carries a gun with him everywhere he
goes, as he describes how he came to believe that guns are effective in protecting him. A few
years ago, Brad had befriended an avid gun collector, and while Brad says that he himself
wasn’t particularly Banti-gun,^ he explains that at the time, he could not ever imagine owning a
gun. BFor a year [my friend] was trying to convince me that I needed to get a gun,^ Brad says,
Band I was like ‘No, no, no. I really don’t need it.’^ And then, Brad describes starting to feel
like he needed a gun. It’s not that anything specific changed in Brad’s life; he was not the
victim of a crime, he did not move to a dangerous neighborhood, he did not get a new job, or
get married. Rather, he says his conception of danger, and hence need, began to change.
Brad remembers his gun-owning friend asking him what he would do if someone broke
into his house at three in the morning. Brad recounts, in a tone that mocks the ostensible
naiveté of his former self, telling his friend that he would hit the intruder on the head with a
large flashlight. B[My friend] looks me square in the eye,^ Brad recalls, Band says, ‘I don't
know about you, but I really don't want to engage in hand-to-hand combat with some meth-
head that just broke into my house during the middle of the night.’^ The next day, Brad bought

5
Repeatedly, the sense of danger was gendered and racialized (with women usually being the ones needing
protection, and black and brown men usually being the ones they need protection from). We address this in a
working paper, BThe Role of Race and Gender in How Gun Owners Perceive Risk.^
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a shotgun. A decade, and about thirty firearm purchases later, Brad explains, BAs remote as the
possibility is, I mean...it’s not like Fallujah or anything, but...should that ever happen, to be
unprepared in that environment, to have your family lose their lives because I didn't take
responsibility, I can't deal with that.^
When Brad’s gun-owning friend writes off his plan to fend off a fictional burglar with a
flashlight (BI really don't want to engage in hand-to-hand combat with some meth- head that
just broke into my house during the middle of the night^), he simultaneously frames the gun as
the only viable form of defense. The gun is defined not simply as an important thing to have
and carry, but in fact, as a necessity. The Bbad outcome^ is ultimately framed as connected not
just to the actions of the Bcriminal,^ but the inaction of you, the "victim.^ Brad says he decides
to carry a gun with him in part because he comes to believe that doing so can prevent
something Bbad from happening,^ and as such, not carrying a gun would indicate a lack of
Bresponsibility.^ From Brad’s point of view, to not carry a gun becomes tantamount to being
responsible for either your own death, or, particularly for the men we talked to, the death of a
wife or child.
Another idea often expressed by the people we met is that one cannot rely on others for
their own safety. Tommy Fletcher offers an illustrative account of this point by discussing his
views on the role of police in society: BThe police officers are a reactionary force...They're
going to be the last ones on the scene. The damage has been done when the peace officer
arrives.^ Repeatedly, the people we spoke with framed the police as a Breactionary force,^ that
is, that they could not be counted on to prevent one from being victimized, but rather, at best,
the police could apprehend the Bcriminal^ after the Bbad outcome^ had already happened. To
come back to Brad O’Brien, guns are not just seen as one form of protection, but as the only
way to prevent victimization.6

Learning to Think that Guns are Safe

Kim Levinson, a white LTC holder in her early 50’s, told us that the first time she shot a gun,
she swore she would never touch one again:

My father took my brother and I to a range. [I was] probably about 10 or 11...And I

remember them handing me a .357 revolver. Putting me on a milk crate because I was
too short. I fired that thing. I flew off the milk crate from the kick of it. And when I—my
father caught me. The firearm was pointing back at me and I put it down and I didn't
touch firearms...That was it, I didn't want to have anything to do with them.
Although young at the time, the impression stayed with Kim for a long time. Kim went on
to experience multiple moments of victimization in her life that could have prompted her to
acquire firearms. While a college student living in one of the highest crime areas of Boston,
Kim was robbed at gun point; her home was once broken into while she was home alone, and

6
In firearms classes, students are encouraged to not only carry guns, but also engage in a range of behaviors
meant to make them safer. This includes, most importantly, what is called Bsituational awareness,^ in which
people are taught to become cognizant of their surroundings and avoid Bdangerous situations.^ However,
ultimately, our research shows that firearms instructors and people who carry guns believe, and teach people
to believe, that they need guns and that if they are not carrying a gun at all times, they are not as safe, even if they
engage in the other sets of behaviors (such as carrying pepper spray or having situational awareness).
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the police failed to respond, even though she called 911. A number of her family members
were also victims of crime. But after all of this, when her husband expressed an interest in
buying a gun, Kim was adamantly opposed, telling him, BGuns kill. I don’t want it. We have
two little kids in the house. I’m not doing this.^
In retelling this story, Kim expresses two significant apprehensions she used to have about
guns. First, when discussing her experience as a child and noting concern at the fact that the
Bfirearm was pointing back at me,^ Kim is implying that the gun has intentionality. That is, the
gun has a capacity to cause her harm. Second, when she rejects her husband’s initial desire to
purchase a gun, she conceptualizes guns as violent objects—Bguns kill^—and moreover, that
bringing a gun into the home would cause harm to her kids, BWe have two little kids in the
house. I’m not doing this.^ In the process of becoming a gun owner, Kim learned to
conceptualize guns in new ways, ways that reject these initial understandings she held. An
important part of this process had to do with learning to define guns as Btools.^
At the insistence of Kim’s husband, the two of them went to a firearms class that involved
shooting at a gun range. This time, unlike her experience as a child, Kim enjoyed firing a gun.
Around this time, Kim had to stop working as a podiatrist due to medical complications, and
when she explains what she enjoyed about shooting a gun, she points to how the experience
provided her with memories of her work life, BBeing a podiatrist...you're concentrated on a
very small object all the time. I think that I enjoyed that [firing a gun] gave me the
concentration that I used to have. So concentrating on a small target and having that eye-
hand coordination just brought me back.^
But this gratification, this capacity to enjoy shooting guns, was connected to developing a
new way of thinking about guns, one that she learned through taking classes at gun schools
and through her immersion in gun culture. As Kim became more and more entrenched in the
gun community, she describes taking the autonomy and intentionality away from guns and
assigning it to individual people. Now the owner of multiple firearms and a firearms instructor
herself, Kim talks about Bunsafe^ students who are Bnot holding it [right],^ Bpointing it in an
unsafe direction^ or Bnot gripping it the way I’m telling them to grip it.^ For Kim, the gun no
longer points at someone, a person points a gun at someone. Kim explains that her training and
exposure to other gun owners taught her not only how to use a gun, but also how to think and
feel about guns. In this particular case, she learned to transfer the intentionality from guns
themselves to the people wielding guns. This allows her to understand gun ownership as a safe
practice as long as she is responsible and careful. Now the owner of multiple firearms, one of
which she almost always carries on her, Kim says she could not be happier or feel safer.
Talking about her job at a gun range, Kim says, BIn my opinion, a range is probably one of the
safest places...Because everyone is carrying.^
While our respondents described learning to think that the world was dangerous and that
carrying a gun would protect them from those dangers, they also talked about learning to think
that guns were not dangerous. Many of the people we spoke with described feeling afraid of
guns the first time they shot them, and discussed the process by which they overcame their
initial fears. Just like Kim, our other respondents explain that overcoming a fear of guns
requires the development of an interpretative framework whereby guns are redefined from
being dangerous to being safe. The gun owners we met accomplish this redefinition of guns as
safe objects by learning to define their guns as Btools,^ thereby normalizing guns by con-
structing them as innocuous objects.
Over and over again, the people we interviewed and met in the field referred to guns as
Btools.^ They used the word Btool^ as a replacement for Bfirearm^ or Bgun^ in many different
Qual Sociol

contexts, but this trend was especially apparent when they explained why they believe guns are
not dangerous or scary. Charlie Jones, a 44-year-old Black LTC holder, told us, BTo me...it’s
just a tool. That’s what I look at it like. Okay, you got this, you got that, but I also got that just
in case somebody...wants to act a fool. So I look at it, it’s just like a tool. It’s just like another
tool.^
When gun owners recognize guns as Btools,^ they remove the lethal potential from the gun
itself, and place it on people operating guns. This understanding is an important way in which
guns become normalized for those who are new to them, and constitutes a key part of the
socialization process that occurs within gun schools. Ben Novick, the white 40-year-old
firearms instructor introduced in the previous section, explains that getting people to conceive
of guns as tools is a key part of what he teaches to beginners:

So much of the fear that new students have when they come in is unfamiliarity. They just
don't know how the tool works. And so I always draw this analogy with new students,
especially the ones that are afraid. But look, let's say I'm sitting here and I've got this
Glock 17 here, and I pull out a chainsaw and I set that chainsaw on the table. Which
one's more dangerous? Well the chainsaw would cut your arm off in a heartbeat. They're
both equally as dangerous, but if you learn how to operate that chainsaw, you cut down
trees all day, safe as can be. A firearm's no different...And so I take it apart, I show them
exactly how the machine works just to demystify it, and that usually ratchets down the
stress level enormously...And so that segment is designed for familiarity. Hey, this is just
a tool; that's all it is, is a tool. (emphasis added)
In his classes, Ben emphasizes to new students that guns are just tools, no different from
chainsaws in their capacity for harm. Other interviewees used similar analogies, comparing
guns to cars, hammers, and even ballpoint pens. The clear differentiator here is the intended
function of each of these items—unlike any of these other Btools,^ the primary function of a
gun in the context of self-defense is to kill or injure another person. The gun owners we met,
however, do not focus on this difference, because to do so would mean conceptualizing guns
as dangerous and violent objects. By constantly constructing guns as just Btools,^ our
respondents talk about gun carrying as a normal and routine activity.
There is perhaps no clearer indication of the significance of the discursive framing of guns
as Btools^ and the work it accomplishes in promoting gun ownership and gun carry than in the
NRA’s guidelines that its instructors never use the word Bweapon^ in their classes. The
majority of instructors we met did just that, almost never referring to the gun as a weapon,
instead calling it a Bfirearm,^ or, as mentioned above, a Btool.^ An instructor made this
decision and its logic particularly clear in one class, explaining, while pointing at the gun
holstered on his hip, BThis is not a weapon,^ and then adding, while pointing to his head,
Bthis, is the weapon. The mind, is a weapon. This,^ he said, again pointing to his gun, Bis just
a tool.^ The instructor went on to elaborate his point, explaining that ultimately what matters is
if the person Bholding the tool^ is a Bgood guy or a bad guy.^ He further explained, BYou
could use a pen to kill someone by jabbing it in their neck...but we don’t call these weapons.
They are tools. A tool is a weapon when it’s in the wrong hands.^ This last statement not only
reaffirms the centrality of the discourse of guns as tools, and the way in which it shifts the
focus away from the gun and onto the individual, but also opens up the third and final part of
the process of becoming a gun owner, which is making the distinction between Bgood guys^
and Bbad guys.^
 Qual Sociol

Learning to Think of Killing Another Human Being as a Moral Action

When CJ Davis goes to church every Sunday, he has an emergency exit plan. He drops his
kids off in the church nursery before services, and places a lanyard with a Bpanic button^
around each of their necks that, if pressed, will set off a pager on his hip. CJ takes his seat
in the main sanctuary after the services start so that he can Bpay attention to people coming
in^ and always sits in the same place so that the doors are within his line of sight. During
the service, CJ walks around Bthe entire church,^ including the parking lots, looking for
anything or anyone that he thinks might pose a threat.
A few years ago, CJ Davis became the co-owner of Sharpshooter Gun Range. CJ
worked as a police officer for almost thirty years before he began teaching LTC classes and
other firearms instruction at Sharpshooter’s. When CJ teaches his classes, he encourages
students to Bthink about scenarios^ in which they would use their firearms and to always
practice Bsituational awareness.^ CJ advises, BYou must just continually look at people.
It's not paranoia. It's just simply being prepared. So looking at people, understanding, ‘Are
they are a threat? Could they be a threat?’^
Part of what makes CJ’s own practices and his teaching strategies possible is his
construction of the Bbad guy^ who wants to harm Bgood^ people. As CJ tells his students:

If you are ever involved in a shooting incident, there is no way to come out of that
without it affecting you greatly because our minds are such as that is going to affect
us. People that it doesn't affect are the abnormal—the dirt bags, the criminals...If you
can only remember one thing out of the class, remember this: They brought it to you.
You did not get up that morning, brush your teeth, comb your hair, look in the
mirror, put a gun on your hip, and say, BI hope I get to kill somebody today.^ Had
they not did what they did, you would have never had to use the force to stop them.
CJ creates a binary between bad guys, dirt bags, and criminals who are bloodthirsty,
violent, and immoral, and Bus,^ the good guys who carry guns not because we want to kill
someone, but because we may have to. Your hand was forced, he says, by the bad guy. By
creating this binary and constructing an abstract other who is only and entirely Bbad,^ CJ
makes the action of shooting, and potentially killing, another person a morally virtuous
one.
In addition to learning to understand guns as safe objects, in the process of becoming a
gun carrier, our respondents learned to think of the potential act of killing another human
being as a legitimate, and indeed moral and necessary, action.7 The gun owners we met
learned to do this by learning to create a binary between Bgood guys^ and Bbad guys.^
Within this binary, gun owners are defined as morally virtuous (good guys) and their
potential target is defined as so utterly immoral and violent (bad guys) that the very act of
killing them is conceptualized not as killing, but as saving a life. Indeed, a part of the
practice of gun carrying involves denying the very violence contained within the act of
shooting someone.

7
While shooting someone does not necessarily have to result in death, firearms schools train specifically to not
just injure but to kill. Indeed, instructors make a concerted effort to teach students that injuring someone does not
guarantee your safety because that individual can Bcontinue to fight.^
Qual Sociol

Dan Braden, a 52-year-old white man who works in IT, tells us multiple times that he is not
a violent person. When we ask about his motivations for getting his LTC a few years ago, Dan
insists, BI’ve got no power trip, I don’t want to ever hurt anybody, that’s the last thing on my
mind.^ Later in the interview, when talking about his willingness to kill someone, Dan
explains:

I made up my mind a long time ago that if I’m presented with a bad person who is
going to attempt to do me harm and I have no choice, and the means to go home that
day, I’m going home. Saying that you’re willing to kill somebody, it just doesn’t
sound right. It almost sounds blood thirsty...If I was presented with having to protect
myself by shooting somebody could I do it? The answer is yes. Will I like it?
Probably not.
Importantly, Dan explains that the person he may Bhave no choice^ but to kill will be a
Bbad person^ who tries to Bharm^ him. After saying this, though, Dan manages his own
self-image by recognizing that it Bdoesn’t sound right^ to admit his willingness to kill
someone, and explains that although he could do it, he would not like it. By stressing that
he would not Blike^ killing someone, he places himself on one side of a binary, with
violent criminals who Blike^ to hurt people on the other.
In the process of transferring responsibility for killing someone away from the shooter
(Bgood guy^) and on to the person killed (Bbad guy^), the gun owners we spoke with are
reframing the very act of killing someone – indeed, denying its very status as Bkilling.^
Consider for example the following exchange we had with Hank Crawford, the former
police officer and current firearms instructor mentioned earlier in this article:

Interviewer: One of the things I have thought about over the past year...is when I
would ever make the decision to shoot and kill someone.
Hank: Well, you are never making the decision to kill. You are making the decision to
stop the threat. Your intent is not to kill, your intent is to stop the threat...You need to
understand your morality is not to kill somebody. The moral purpose is to stop that
threat.
As we continue to engage Hank and we push back at his account, he tells us that we have a
faulty understanding of the Bbad guy^ and are providing him with too much moral concern.
Hank explains:

You are treating the bad guy as if they were a normal person. But they aren’t.
They are abnormal. They are sick. And so all these questions about what you
should do, you can’t be thinking about them. There’s normal people and there’s
abnormal people in this world, and that person trying to hurt you or your family
is abnormal.
Gun owners use the good guy vs. bad guy binary to justify owning and carrying a gun.
They understand the Bbad guy^ to be malicious and violent, which makes the potential act
of killing them not only necessary in order to protect themselves, but also moral so that
they can protect innocent others. This binary also allows people who carry guns for self-
defense to understand themselves as always being subjects, not agents of, violence.
 Qual Sociol

BI Just Stopped Thinking About it^: Training the Gun Owner’s Body

We met Katie Murphy, a white 30-year-old woman, just over a year ago at an LTC licensing
class. It was the first time Katie had ever shot a gun, and she was visibly terrified: flinching,
shaking, and repeatedly commenting that she was unnerved. When we saw her a year later at a
firing range, Katie seemed completely comfortable around guns, firing off round after round
with total calmness.
Katie says that the first time she shot a gun, she was so uncomfortable, she couldn’t even
pay attention to the instructor, BI just kept thinking, oh my god, oh my god, I’ve got a fucking
gun in my hand. This thing that kills people.^ But these days, Katie says she feels completely
comfortable with a gun in her hand and goes to the firing range at least twice a week. BI’ve
gotten hooked,^ she tells us. In fact, a couple of months before, she had competed in her first
competitive shooting match.
When we ask her what changed, Katie says it was the repetition. BI don't know, I kept doing
it, and it just got easier with each shot. I guess I just stopped thinking about it.^ Indeed, it’s not
that Katie Bstopped thinking about it,^ but rather, she describes learning a new way to think
about, and experience, guns. In our conversation, she constantly throws out the standard
clichés of the NRA—about how guns save lives, about how concealed carry holders are the
most responsible citizens. She says she has become a huge supporter of the Second
Amendment. And importantly, she says, BI realize now that it’s just a tool. A tool like a
hammer, or rake. It's a tool for keeping me safe.^ As Katie gained exposure to these new
interpretive frames about guns, and continued to shoot guns, she became ideologically and
physically comfortable using and carrying guns.
Thus far, we have focused primarily on the process of becoming a person who carries guns
by examining the ways that our respondents described the cognitive shifts they experienced.
While thinking about guns in particular ways is important, it does not, in itself, translate into
being able to hold, shoot, or carry a gun. While cognitive comfort with guns enables physical
comfort, it does not, in itself, produce that comfort. Like Katie, the gun owners we met talked
about the importance of having positive embodied experiences of guns in order to carry guns
regularly. Having positive experiences with guns requires overcoming the physical discomfort
of holding, shooting, and carrying a gun, which demands not just mental, but also physical,
training.
What Katie’s story helps underscore is that while guns are mechanically simple objects to
use, what takes effort is coming to think about and experience guns in unquestionably positive
ways. Why is Katie, like so many others we met, initially reluctant to shoot a gun? What is it
that she was afraid of? In large part, Katie says her initial reluctance is connected to the way
that she thinks about guns as instruments of violence. The gun owners we met repeatedly
underscored the importance of not thinking about guns as violent objects, which is precisely
what the framing of guns as Btools^ accomplishes. However, Katie’s account also reveals that
learning how to think differently about guns does not, in and of itself, make someone
comfortable holding, shooting, or carrying guns. Through the repetition of shooting guns,
Katie also comes to experience guns differently. As Katie says, although the first time she held
a gun, she kept thinking, BOh my god, oh my god, I’ve got a fucking gun in my hand. This
thing that kills people,^ as she continued shooting guns, she says Bit got easier with each shot.^
When Katie talks about how Bit^ got easier, she is not referring to technical aspects of
shooting, but rather the negative emotional and physical experience she had shooting a gun,
which was connected her understanding of guns as violent objects. In Katie’s account, she
Qual Sociol

stopped thinking about guns as violent objects, and of shooting a gun as a violent act. But, it
was not only her mind, but also her body, that was doing this work. It was both the framing of
the gun as a tool, and the repeated act of shooting, that Katie describes as making her feel
comfortable with guns.
In this section, we show that while the aforementioned interpretative frameworks are
necessary in order to have positive embodied experiences of guns, such embodied experiences
require physical training. Specifically, gun owners train their bodies to feel comfortable with
guns through habit formation, which comes to make the experience of holding, shooting and
carrying a gun normal, and even pleasurable. The learned interpretive frames and the embod-
ied pleasures that gun owners experience with guns are co-constitutive, so that the interpretive
frames enable, and are simultaneously enabled by, a set of embodied experiences, and vice-
versa.
From our interviews and our fieldwork, we found that it takes effort to feel comfortable
shooting a gun. For starters, shooting a gun is not a physically comfortable experience. Gunfire
is extremely loud and pulling a trigger and absorbing the recoil of a shot requires hand
strength. When speaking to our respondents about their initial experiences around guns, many
describe being unnerved by the sound of gun fire or the experience of shooting, and needing to
Bget over it.^ Such accounts were confirmed in our fieldwork, where we came to observe that
one way of determining if someone was a novice gun owner or carrier was watching their
physical reactions to firing a gun or being around active gun fire. While people new to guns
would frequently flinch at the sound of gunfire or physically tremble while shooting, those
who already carried guns, or shot guns on a regular basis, would have little reaction.
Both authors were inexperienced shooters when this fieldwork began, and we often
received reassurance from participants and instructors that we would get Bused to^ the sound
of gunfire, and that the nervousness we felt while shooting would dissipate over time. As the
following field note demonstrates, just as many of our interviewees described, our bodies were
not initially accustomed to the intensely loud and physically jolting experience of shooting:

Kim [the instructor] gives me the OK to shoot so I go for it...My shoulders tense up and
my entire body jolts at the sound of the gun firing. Kim says I still have a little bit of
Bmuscle jump^ but that I’m shooting well. I tell her I’m still trying to get used to the
sound and she says eventually it just becomes second nature.
Throughout our time in the field, instructors repeatedly referred to Bmuscle jump^ as being
a typical reaction for new shooters. They explained that over time, with practice, we would
Bget used to it^ and no longer tense up, stop breathing, jump, tremble, or close our eyes when
we pulled the trigger. As Kim says, the loud pop of guns firing all around us would become
Bsecond nature.^ And indeed, as the following field note shows, we found ourselves becoming
less aware of the sound of gunfire as we spent more time in the field:

I just parked my car outside of TK Training and I walked up to the shooting range
feeling totally comfortable. It’s like I could’ve just parked at work. It took me a second
to even be aware of all the gunfire. Remember how when you first started you would
literally jump when you opened your door? What a change.
As documented in the above field note, an important aspect of the transformation in
people’s experiences with the sound of gunfire comes from a process of de-sensitization
 Qual Sociol

through repeated exposure. As with our own experience, many gun carriers talked about how,
Bafter a while^ they became Baccustomed^ to the sound of gunfire and the physical experience
of shooting. Some even talked about transitioning from being Bafraid of [gunfire]^ to
Benjoying the sound of [gunfire].^
Repeated exposure to guns de-sensitizes one not just to the noise of gunfire but to the
violence associated with it, making it physically comfortable to hear and shoot them. Our
interviewees described, and our fieldwork confirmed, that one’s first exposure to guns can be
physically stressful. Because one must enjoy guns in order to be and remain a person who
carries guns, the body must be trained against these initial physiological reactions through
repeated exposure to guns. In this vein, many of our respondents stressed the importance of
developing Bgood muscle memory^ through repetition. During one training session with Brad,
he explained that we needed to develop Bgood muscle memory^ because in a Breal defense
situation,^ our fine motor skills will Bgo out the window^ and we will need to depend on the
muscle memory that we have built. As a warning, he added, BBad muscle memory will get you
killed.^ Indeed, instructors like Brad tell their students that it’s important to become so
habituated to holding, shooting, and carrying a gun that the physical actions can be carried
out without any thoughts or reflection because, as Brad puts it, using an oft-repeated phrase,
BIf you need to think, it’ll be too late.^ Brad instructs us to use our bodies in specific ways in
order to control our nerves and improve our aim. As he encouraged us to lower our shoulders,
raise our arms slowly as we fully exhaled, and then to pull the trigger, he explained, BThe brain
thinks its scary even though we know its safe.^ In these ways, Brad very clearly articulates the
importance of training the body in becoming a gun owner—the ways of thinking about and
experiencing guns must both align.
As with the first time they shot a gun, many of our respondents described their discomfort
the first time they carried a gun and the steps they took to feel comfortable. Just as with
shooting, this sense of comfort was both cognitive and physical, and thus, incorporated both
physical and mental training. Consider the following exchange with Paul Cranston, a 71-year-
old white gun carrier who received his LTC just months before we met him:

Interviewer: So did you carry immediately the day after you got your license? I mean
once the paperwork came through and everything, did you immediately carry or did it
take you a bit of time to make that decision?
Paul: No, in fact I cheated a little bit....I kept saying, BAm I being paranoid, schizo-
phrenic, or am I being stupid?^ And so actually I went online and found a little cheap
ankle holster. I knew I was going to do an ankle holster but I went a couple of places
before I even got the license just to see what it felt like, whether I was comfortable,
whether I thought this was something I really, really, really wanted to do. And so I was
kind of cheating a little bit before. I mean I'd just walk in and walk out. I went to HEB
[grocery store] one time to pick up some stuff and I came back out and I thought, BWell I
don't feel stupid.^
Interviewer: Can you tell me more about that? What kinds of things you were sort of
concerned about or you were trying to test out when you were first trying to see if it was
what you want to do?
Paul: Well I just kept asking myself, BIs this something a responsible, intelligent, semi-
educated adult really wants to do? Should I be—am I just—have I got too much time on
my hands and am I spending too much time on the internet?^ But the more I got into it
Qual Sociol

and the more I tried it myself and I just thought, BYou know what, there is a real
problem, there is an extremely dangerous trend going on in our culture,^ and, and we
definitely need to take more responsibility for protecting ourselves. And the more I did
it, the more I realized, BNo, this is really what you should be doing.^
Like many of our respondents, Paul describes a process of becoming comfortable with
carrying a gun. On the one hand, this comfort has to do with physical aspects, which require
finding a proper holster, clothing, and generally learning how to carry yourself (including
sitting and walking) in a way that reduces the physical toll of the gun. But, more significantly,
this notion of comfort has to do with becoming comfortable with the idea of carrying a gun.
And, like Paul, many of our respondents spoke about Btesting^ out the practice of gun carry, or
Bbuilding up^ to it by trying it out for a short period of time.
One way many of our respondents say that they Bbuilt up^ to carrying daily was through a
ritual known colloquially as the BWally Walk,^ which refers to walking through a Wal-Mart
while carrying a gun for the first time. Many spoke of their initial apprehensions during the
BWally Walk,^ while simultaneously talking about it as an important rite of passage through
which they transitioned into feeling more comfortable carrying a gun. Consider Jake, a 58-
year-old white LTC holder, as he recalls his BWally Walk^:

I sat in the car for like 30 minutes before going in...I kept worrying BWhat if someone
can see it? What if something happens?^...I mean I’ve got this deadly thing on my hip...I
went in and I was so nervous I remember walking really quickly at first and looking at
everyone to see if they were looking at me...I kept feeling this bulge on my hip...in the
end nothing happened...I kinda realized, no one cares, you can do this.
Like Jake, when discussing the Wally-Walks, our respondents point not only to apprehen-
sions about how others may act towards them, but also how they may act towards others who
know that they have a gun. And like Jake, they point to the initial experience of carrying gun
as a key moment in training both their minds and bodies to carry guns.
Along with developing a physical and ideological comfort with guns, the gun owners we
met during fieldwork also described the joys they experienced from owning, shooting, and
carrying guns. Consider Katie again, who explains that she has come to enjoy hearing the
sound of bullets hitting steel targets, saying that it feels Bso satisfying.^ Many of the gun
owners we met expressed similar accounts of finding pleasure in shooting guns, and often
connected this pleasure with the intense concentration required to develop good marksman-
ship, and the sense of achievement in successfully hitting a target. As Tom Krone, a white
firearms instructor in his early 60’s, explains, BI became obsessed with getting better and
better.^ Such sentiments highlight the dual process of rational calculation and embodied
experience in the practice of carrying guns, whereby the Bneed^ to have and carry a gun is
experienced not simply cognitively, but also physically.

Conclusion: Gun Ownership as a Social Practice

This article examined a relatively new and growing population: people who have obtained
concealed handgun licenses and carry their guns with them on a regular basis. Drawing on our
respondents’ accounts of the process by which they started to carry guns, as well as our own
 Qual Sociol

observations and experiences at firearms training schools, we described the sets of interpreta-
tive schemes and embodied dispositions associated with the practice of gun carrying. Our data
revealed that the practice of gun carrying is connected to: (1) thinking that guns are needed for
one’s safety; (2) thinking that guns are safe objects; (3) thinking that killing someone else is
sometimes a necessary and moral action; and lastly, (4) developing physical comfort with
holding, carrying, and shooting guns. We showed that these schemes and dispositions are
learned, and that the cognitive schemes (how people think about guns and gun carrying) and
embodied experiences (how people physically experience guns and gun carrying) of gun
carrying appear to be co-constitutive.
In the process of undertaking this analysis, we have built on existing scholarship on gun
ownership by attending to it as an embodied and learned practice, while also contributing to
Bourdieusian practice theory by examining how mental and physical training complement
each other in the process of habitus formation. We conclude by highlighting these
contributions.
While the existing body of research on gun ownership and gun carrying has documented
the sets of attitudes associated with the identity (Celinksa 2007; O’Brien et al. 2013; Dixon and
Lizotte 1987; Hemenway et al. 1995; Carter and Binder 2016), the meanings that people attach
to guns (Carlson 2015; Harcourt 2006; Stroud 2016), as well as the structural conditions that
may foster those attitudes and meanings (Carlson 2015; Bankston et al. 1990; Dixon and
Lizotte 1987), these accounts provide a limited understanding of the identity because they do
not adequately examine the embodied practices associated with it. Our analysis, by contrast,
focuses on gun ownership as an identity rooted not just in ideology, but also in practice,
whereby the experiences of shooting, holding, and carrying guns constitute the identity.
Relatedly, we use our respondents’ accounts, as well as our own observations and experi-
ences at firearms training schools, to examine gun ownership as a learned behavior connected
to socialization. Although our study only focused on a sub-sample of gun owners (those who
regularly carry guns for self-defense), and only one site (firearms schools) at which people are
socialized, this population of gun owners and these schools are increasingly important given
the growth of concealed carry (which usually requires taking a firearms training course) and
the carrying of firearms for self-defense (which is connected to an interest in tactical self-
defense training). Furthermore, while we consider firearms schools to be important sites of
socialization, our argument is not that people who attend these schools automatically start
owning or carrying guns. Rather, we use the accounts of our informants in order to describe the
process by which they came to undertake the practices associated with carrying guns, not to
argue that attending these schools is what caused them to do so.
The second major body of scholarship our article contributes to is Bourdieusian studies of
social practice. Our analysis of the interpretative schemes and embodied dispositions associ-
ated with gun carrying outlines what can be called the gun carriers’ habitus. Responding to
calls made in recent scholarship (Garcia and Spencer 2013; Wacquant 2014) for empirical
research on the mental and physical training connected to habitus formation, we show that
becoming a person who carries guns for self-defense involves both the mind and body
becoming comfortable with, and needing, guns.
Importantly, our respondents’ accounts suggest that how they thought about guns influ-
enced how they physically experienced guns. That is, the aforementioned cognitive frames
influenced not only the gun owner’s mind, but also their body, and enabled them to have
positive embodied experiences when holding, shooting, or carrying a gun. At the same time,
however, our respondents pointed out that their physical experiences of guns were not directly
Qual Sociol

produced by the cognitive frames, but rather required a separate physical training. Lastly, our
interviews and observations indicated that positive physical experience of guns also supported
and reinforced the cognitive frames that gun carriers held about guns.
While Bourdieu argues that the habitus is powerfully sedimented and difficult to change, he
also suggests that it is open to some transformation:
Habitus change constantly as a function of new experiences. Dispositions are subject to
a sort of permanent revision, but none that is never radical, given that it operates on the
basis of premises instituted in the previous state. They are characterized by a combina-
tion of constancy and variation that fluctuates according to the individual and her degree
of rigidity or flexibility. (2000/1997, 161)
Many of our respondents’ accounts suggest that the process of becoming people who carry
guns involved a process of habitus transformation. To be clear, we do not suppose that this was
a radical change and that their minds and bodies were not already, in some ways, disposed to
owning and carrying guns. Rather, we believe that our respondents’ accounts and experiences
offer us empirical evidence of what Wacquant has called the Bmalleability^ of the habitus
(2014, 8).
Finally, our respondents’ accounts offer us insight into the process by which undertaking
practices can shift from being something a person is highly cognizant and reflective about, to
one in which the practice becomes seemingly automatic and habituated. As many of our
respondents indicated, while their initial experiences of holding, shooting, and carrying guns
involved a sense of reflection and interpretation regarding the practice, with time and with
repeated experiences, they spoke of these practices as becoming second nature.

Acknowledgments We thank Shamus Khan, Christine Williams, and David Yamane for feedback they gave us
on earlier versions of this article. We are also particularly grateful for the insights and encouragements provided
by David Smilde throughout the editorial process. This publication was made possible in part by a grant from
Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the
authors.

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Harel Shapira is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.