Andrew C. McKevitt, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" (UNC Press, 2023)
b'The United States has more guns than people \\u2013 a condition that is \\u201cunprecedented in world history.\\u201d Scholars often focus on gun culture, the Second Amendment, or the history of gun safety, duties, and rights. Often, people assume that the number of guns is a natural state \\u2013 the guns were always there. But were the guns always there? What caused the drastic boom in firearms, and when did it happen?\\nIn\\xa0Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America\\xa0(UNC Press, 2023), Dr. Andrew McKevitt investigates how and when the guns arrived \\u2013 and why so many people bought them. McKevitt argues that what Americans refer to as \\u201cgun culture\\u201d in the 21st century \\u201cemerged out of the intersections of the Cold War and consumer capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s.\\u201d A booming consumer market following World War II coupled with a surplus of cheap firearms readily available for American entrepreneurs to resell to citizens laid the groundwork for rampant firearm distribution in the country. War made the United States into a \\u201cgun country\\u201d but US gun politics \\u2013 \\u201cinterwoven with struggles over race and gender\\u201d cannot be detached from\\xa0consumer\\xa0politics. Gun safety and gun rights organizations\\xa0both\\xa0demand consumer regulation and protection.\\nDr.\\xa0Andrew C. McKevitt\\xa0is the John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University. His previous book,\\xa0Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America\\xa0(2017) was published by the University of North Carolina Press and he received the Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.\\nGeorge Lobis served as the editorial assistant for this podcast.\\nSusan Liebell\\xa0is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph\\u2019s University in Philadelphia.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law'