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OverviewJust as World War II transformed the United States into a global military and economic superpower, so too did it forge the gun country America is today. After 1945, war-ravaged European nations possessed large surpluses of mass-produced weapons, and American entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to buy used munitions for pennies on the dollar and resell them stateside. A booming consumer market made cheap guns accessible to millions of Americans, and rates of gun ownership and violence began to climb. Andrew C. McKevitt tells the history of this gun boom through the dynamics of consumer capitalism and Cold War ideology, the combination of which resulted in a vast number of Americans arming themselves to the teeth and centering their political identity on their guns. When gun control legislation emerged in the 1960s, many Americans, accustomed to the unregulated postwar bounty of cheap guns and fearful of Soviet invasion, domestic subversion, and urban uprisings, fiercely challenged it. Meanwhile, gun control groups were diverted from their abolitionist roots toward a conciliatory, fundraising-focused strategy that struggled to limit the stockpiling of firearms. Gun Country recasts the story of guns in postwar America as one of Cold War and racial anxieties, unfettered capitalism, and exceptional violence that continues to haunt us to this day. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Andrew C. McKevittPublisher: The University of North Carolina Press Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press Weight: 0.272kg ISBN: 9781469674964ISBN 10: 1469674963 Pages: 336 Publication Date: 14 November 2023 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Manufactured on demand  We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier. Table of ContentsReviews"Illuminating, timely . . . . an original way of understanding a stunning and enduring increase in gun ownership in the US . . . . McKevitt offers a compelling argument about where the extremity of America's permissiveness toward deadly weaponry originated and how debates on the Second Amendment's meaning have evolved in response to shifting cultural preoccupations. He also makes a persuasive appeal for how the human costs of mass gun ownership could be mitigated.""--Kirkus Reviews" Author InformationAndrew C. McKevitt is John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University. He is the author of Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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