RT Book
T1 Gun country: gun capitalism, culture, and control in Cold War America
A1 McKevitt, Andrew C. 1980-
LA English
PP Chapel Hill
PB The University of North Carolina Press
YR 2023
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1851712984
AB "Just 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"--
NO Includes bibliographical references and index
CN HV7436
SN 9781469674964
SN 9781469677248
K1 gun control : United States : History : 20th century
K1 Firearms ownership : United States : History : 20th century
K1 Cold War : Social aspects : United States
K1 HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
K1 POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / General
K1 United States : Economic conditions : 20th century
K1 United States : Social life and customs : 20th century
K1 USA : Schusswaffe : Kultur : Ideologie : Kapitalismus : Ost-West-Konflikt : Geschichte 1945-2022