Mass shootings are an alarming, recurrent feature of gun culture in the United States. Beyond the lives lost, they rob everyday Americans of their quality of life and peace of mind. Most Americans agree that these tragedies demand government attention, yet despite their horrific toll, elected officials remain unwilling or unable to act.
But there are practical, achievable steps we can take to save lives. Gunocracy dissects the problem and outlines solutions-both simple and complicated, easy and hard, mundane and wildly ambitious.
Strain opens with life in the "gunocracy," a term that captures the elevated role of firearms in American society, where they dictate policymaking, influence political discourse, shape public life, determine personal behavior, and preordain interpersonal conflict. As a leading researcher on these issues, Strain offers a new way of understanding firearms as something other than inanimate objects, exploring how they relate to the American Dream, particularly their appeal to those frustrated by traditional pathways to success and wellbeing. Strain enumerates potential solutions and reforms, and leaves the reader with more than just a diagnosis but solutions that extend far beyond firearms themselves.
This book is for all of us-conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and nonowners, Second Amendment supporters and anti-gun activists alike-who want to reduce gun violence in the US. It is not an attack on gun culture or a cry for confiscation, but a call for responsible firearm owners and concerned citizens to come together in finding reasonable measures to prevent mass shootings and save lives. Whether we like it or not, guns are here to stay; Gunocracy equips readers to meet the challenge of tempering their harmful impact on American life.
Christopher Strain is a professor of history and American studies at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. His research interests include civil rights, hate crime, and violence. He is the author of five other books, including Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life (Vanderbilt University Press, 2010).
