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Posted on 09/17/2026 5:45:36 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of the country’s leading scholars of the American political right. For his first book, Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton University Press, 2013), Shapira spent years embedded with a militia group, which helped point him to his next subject, gun culture. To research his new book, Basic Pistol: Living and Dying by the Gun in America (Pantheon, September 15), Shapira spent four years immersing himself in that culture, participating in firearms and self-defense training courses in Texas and around the country and getting to know instructors and students.
Texas Monthly recently spoke over videoconference with Shapira, who is completing an academic fellowship in Germany.
Texas Monthly: You point out that thirty years ago, the vast majority of gun owners in the United States, around 75 percent, reported owning guns for hunting and sport shooting and a minority, about 25 percent, reported owning guns for self-defense. Today those numbers have flipped. What caused this seismic shift?
Harel Shapira: We so often think about gun culture as this timeless feature in American life. It isn’t. There are a handful of reasons that led to where we are today. First is the spike in violent crime that starts around the late sixties and grows through the seventies and eighties. We see massive riots in cities like Detroit and Los Angeles. Concerns about crime enter the American national consciousness. Politicians make “getting tough on crime” a primary point of the political agenda. Media, both national and local, also started focusing more heavily on ideas of safety.
At around the same time, and here I’m talking about the 1980s, the Ronald Reagan era, there also begins to be an ideological emphasis on individual responsibility along a number of dimensions, with safety being one of them. This is around the time the NRA transforms into a political cultural organization that frames gun ownership not simply as a right guaranteed by the Second Amendment but as a core part of what it means to be American. Guns enter the culture wars of the eighties alongside women’s rights, gay rights, and welfare.
There are two major incidents that further bring guns into the picture: In 1984, a man named Bernhard Goetz shoots four Black teenagers on a New York subway train who Goetz alleged were attempting to rob him. He pleads self-defense, and a jury agrees with him. And then in 1991, there’s the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre in Killeen, Texas, at the time the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. A woman named Suzanna Hupp was in the restaurant that day and later testified to the Texas Legislature that she couldn’t protect herself or her parents, who were killed, because Texas law required her to leave her handgun in her car before entering the restaurant. Hupp became the face of the movement to legalize concealed carry in the state. Governor Ann Richards refused to sign a subsequent bill that would allow it. George W. Bush seized on that issue when he ran for governor in 1994, and concealed carry became law.
Once you have cultural norms, legal norms, and political justifications in place, it all normalizes on an everyday level the idea of owning a gun for self-defense. The more it’s become normalized and the more it’s become accepted, the more appealing it’s become to a broader sector of the population.
TM: You point to data showing gun-ownership rates have been growing over the past three decades—today 100 million Americans own at least one gun. You also point to data showing gun ownership is a strong predictor of not only your gender and race but also how you vote.
HS: Gun owners are diversifying. The fastest-growing demographics of people who are getting concealed-handgun licenses are women and nonwhite Americans. But part of the reason they’re the fastest-growing demographic is because when you move from essentially zero to one, that’s a huge leap, but that’s still only zero to one. Gun owners are still predominantly white men. So it’s diversifying, but it’s not a diverse culture.
TM: Let’s get into the culture. What are the beliefs and norms, or, as you write, “the narratives and rituals” of this culture?
HS: It is centered on a deep belief in personal responsibility, especially in matters of safety. And I think that it’s as much, again, about a practical solution to being safe as it is a cultural belief that taking personal responsibility is the more moral and righteous way to be an American.
And with that, there’s a deep overlap with what it means to be a man. It is enmeshed with classic traditional American masculinity and the idea of the man as the protector, which is such a powerful concept. To be a good husband, to be a good father is to be able to protect your loved ones. These are powerful narratives.
The other major element is that this worldview is organized around a dichotomy between the good guy and the bad guy. The NRA popularized this idea that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Again, it’s framing a practical solution for how to stop mass shootings, but it’s also an ideological statement: Step up, protect your loved ones. Don’t rely on the government. Be the good guy. A lot of self-defense firearms training asks us to not complicate things. Part of what I hope to do in this book is to criticize that simplistic way of thinking.
TM: Where did you attend these classes?
HS: The majority of my research and time was in Texas, but I also went across the country. I tried to diversify in terms of blue state, red state, rural, urban. I spent time, for example, in Massachusetts at schools outside of Boston. I spent time outside of Portland, Oregon, with a female instructor. This is not a story about any individual, not an individual instructor, not an individual gun owner. It’s a story about the broader cultural moment.
TM: Why focus on these schools?
HS: It’s where you can see gun culture manifest, not just as words, but in practice. I wanted to see people interacting, talking, living it out. I’m a teacher at UT-Austin, and teachers, no matter what level or what subject, play a really significant role in our society because of the influence that they have on other people.
TM: They set the culture.
HS: One of the most powerful quotes from a gun instructor reflecting on his job is when he told me, “I’m a life coach.” And he was right! When I went to my first training programs, I expected we would spend, you know, three hours learning about the mechanics of a gun, about how to hold it, how to load it and shoot it. Not at all. From the start, the classes focused on talking about danger, about what you would do if and when you shoot someone, about life-or-death scenarios. And I’m sitting there as a sociologist listening to this, and I realize right away, “Oh, this is a cultural education.” These instructors are important in a way that I didn’t initially recognize, which is they’re teaching a whole worldview, a way to think about safety, a way to think about danger. And these instructors are the “good guys with the guns.” Guns are politically polarizing, but the one area where there’s some consensus is in the belief that we need more firearms training. Well, what does that look like in practice? What are Americans actually learning in this training?
TM: How does Texas figure into all of this? The state is closely associated with gun culture in the public imagination. Are we the epicenter of this culture, or are we taking notes from elsewhere?
HS: There are traditions and histories in Texas of the frontier, of individualism, of rough vigilante justice that are baked into our culture that made the state fertile ground for this culture. In some ways, what we’re seeing is a continuation of that history. Texas has the most guns and gun owners in the country, but that’s more a function of our large population; we actually don’t have a very high gun-ownership rate. But yes, symbolically, Texas is at the heart of American gun culture. That said, one of the most frustrating aspects of engaging audiences on this topic is when I give talks about my research in other parts of the country, especially in the Northeast, I inevitably get a response from someone framing this as a problem created by “those crazy people down in Texas.” I recently gave a talk at Princeton University, and someone said something like that, and I pointed out to them that I had just come from a shooting range ten minutes from campus and there was a line out the door to go shoot. If you think this is entirely a Texas story, you are mistaken. I really don’t want people to think about this as a story about some “crazy culture” down here. It’s an American story.
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Ping-worthy?
Militia groups are 95% FBI agents and 5% sociologists doing research.
This was in Texas Monthly? I’m going outside to see if there are any flying pigs nearby...
You didn’t ask me, but I think so.
If I Wrote a Book.
I have a feeling I wouldn’t like this guys book.
LOL!
His whole, sad story is right here:
” The other major element is that this worldview is organized around a dichotomy between the good guy and the bad guy. The NRA popularized this idea that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Again, it’s framing a practical solution for how to stop mass shootings, but it’s also an ideological statement: Step up, protect your loved ones. Don’t rely on the government. Be the good guy. A lot of self-defense firearms training asks us to not complicate things. Part of what I hope to do in this book is to criticize that simplistic way of thinking.”
He proves that “sociology professor” is another way to say, “sad victim of Dunning-Kruger.” I won’t read his book with such an arrogant, out-of-touch premise.
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That rubbed me the wrong way as well. I’m not sure what’s simplistic about my having read multiple books on use of force, handing out copies of Masaad Ayoob’s excellent book In the Gravest Extreme to people thinking about acquiring a firearm for personal defense, etc. In short, well-considering the mental and legal aspects of armed self defense. But I’m just a simplistic Neanderthal, I suppose.
I suppose the professor’s “complex” solution is to rely on western governments for protection; the same ones that abet and nurture crime, and have shown utter hatred for their citizens.
No thanks, I’ll go for the simplistic solution.
And if I read books.
Texas Monthly has always seemed to be disoriented carptbagger urbanite know-it-all materialist liberal poser magazine. Look at the ads to see the target demo.
When it was a new rag they ran an article on McDonald Observatory and said it looked like a deodorant can. It reveals the true uglyness and shallowness of their little liberal minds and the chronic superior acting sneer at everything Texan. While selling ads for the same expensive urban status symbols as the New Yorker.
This article is EXACTLY what they print. UT-Austin Humanities (non STEM) faculty type crap, OTHERing normal Texas. At UT the libs have to be MORE liberal than the average New Englander because they are embarrassed among other Democrats if they aren’t the farthest left lib in the room. (think Begala, Brennan).
Texas Monthly has always seemed to be disoriented carptbagger urbanite know-it-all materialist liberal poser magazine. Look at the ads to see the target demo.
When it was a new rag they ran an article on McDonald Observatory and said it looked like a deodorant can. It reveals the true uglyness and shallowness of their little liberal minds and the chronic superior acting sneer at everything Texan. While selling ads for the same expensive urban status symbols as the New Yorker.
This article is EXACTLY what they print. UT-Austin Humanities (non STEM) faculty type crap, OTHERing normal Texas. At UT the libs have to be MORE liberal than the average New Englander because they are embarrassed among other Democrats if they aren’t the farthest left lib in the room. (think Begala, Brennan).
Most writing by Sociologists and Historians have an Agenda. They are taught in our universities that they only are of worth if they have such a goal.
“disoriented carptbagger urbanite know-it-all materialist liberal poser”...
LOL!
“disoriented carptbagger urbanite know-it-all materialist liberal poser”...
LOL!
Now that's what I'd call a serious circle-jerk.
He merely stated what he did (and credit due for trying to cover all demographics) but didn’t make a conclusive argument one way or the other.
The Luby’s Cafeteria massacre in Killeen was mentioned but not Major Hassan’s jihadi killing spree down the road at Ft. Hood. THAT occurred because all those well-trained soldiers usually have LESS access to firearms than civilians because weapons are kept locked in armories between field exercises and range training.
Well, that and allowing human time bombs called Muslims to join the US military.
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