Title Gun country : gun capitalism, culture, and control in Cold War America / Andrew C. McKevitt

Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2023] Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 0000 2023

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Description 1 online resource (x, 319 pages) : illustrations Series Book collections on Project MUSE Contents List of illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. The dumping ground -- 2. Oswald's other gun -- 3. This means war -- 4. Civilization and guns -- 5. The loophole -- 6. Little old ladies in tennis shoes -- 7. The mothers of today -- 8. The Cold War's second amendment -- 9. America's worst disease -- 10. Global gun grabbers -- Epilogue. This American carnage -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index Summary "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"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Description based on print version record Subject Cold War -- Social aspects -- United States Firearms ownership -- United States -- History -- 20th century Gun control -- United States -- History -- 20th century POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / General. HISTORY / United States / 20th Century. Social aspects Manners and customs Gun control Firearms ownership Economic history SUBJECT United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140537 United States -- Economic conditions -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2001001975 Subject United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book Author Project Muse. distributor. LC no. 2023017164 ISBN 9781469674988 146967498X 9781469674971 1469674971 9798890860705

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