An Asian American and lifelong liberal from the San Francisco Bay Area, I became a first-time gun owner as a 42-year-old in 2011. I began a now 14-year journey into an unfamiliar and complex world of firearms. In my work, I draw on both my personal experiences and sociological observations to understand the long-standing presence of a robust legal gun culture in America.
In contrast to the dominant scholarly approaches, which focus on gun deviance and harm, I find there is more to firearms than criminal violence, injury and death; more to gun owners than straight white men; and more to gun culture than democracy-destroying right-wing politics.
