Good Guys with Guns by Angela Stroud

Author:Angela Stroud [Stroud, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Discrimination, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781469627908
Google: n803CwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 27110832
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2016-06-01T03:14:49+00:00

Race, Class, and the Good Guy

One of the main points that the CHL instructors I interviewed emphasized is that license holders constitute a special class of citizen. This claim is tied to the licensing process, which, at least in Texas, is expensive and proves that license holders do not have a criminal record. Susan explained, “The point of the concealed carry is you’re having more people going through stringent background checks, knowing that they’re out there carrying legally. These are the cream of the crop of our community. It should make you feel better. Because then the bad guys know that there’s more of the good guys carrying that know better, that know the law, that are stand-up people that aren’t gonna tolerate ill behavior.” David, a sixty-six-year-old CHL instructor, stated many times during our interview that he “puts a lot of faith” in the background check because it ensures that applicants will be denied a license if they have ever committed a felony, if they have committed a class A or B misdemeanor in the previous five years, or if they have ever been convicted of disorderly conduct or domestic violence. Jack, a forty-six-year-old CHL instructor with advanced firearm training, who blamed Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans for what he perceives to be a steady increase in violent crime in Texas, said, “That’s always a point that I make with my clients, is that we’re the good guys.”

In addition to the legal restrictions that prevent people with a criminal history from obtaining a CHL, it is a costly endeavor. Some respondents in this study mentioned that they put off getting a CHL until they could afford one. In Texas CHL courses typically cost between $60 and $100, and the state fee is $140. Though he does not directly connect this to the cost of the course, David celebrates the fact that most of his students are college-educated professionals: “Fortunately I don’t see too many, what you might consider bubba types coming to class. Yesterday I taught a class, I had five. I had one pastor. The other four were high-tech individuals.… Everybody’s college-educated.” When I asked David to elaborate on what he means by “bubba types” he said, “If it’s somebody that shows me … they have a lot of racial prejudice … or … if something in our conversation would lead you to believe that maybe they have the mind-set that they need to go form a militia.” In using such constructs David is distancing himself and his students from poor whites, people onto whom he can displace racial prejudice and antisocial behavior. His class bias was evident when he suggested that his students are good candidates to carry a gun in public in part because they are professionals and college-educated. David uses “bubba types” to construct a preferred middle-class whiteness by marking “failed whiteness” (Hartigan 2005), a framing intended to legitimize CHLs as a whole.

John said, “What I expect you’re gonna find is a recurring theme that our behavior patterns are different from the criminal class.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.