Something Other Than Objective Risk Motivates Defensive Gun Ownership (Light Over Heat #46)

This video concludes my ongoing series systematizing the dominant academic approach to understanding Gun Culture 2.0, what I call “The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership.”

Here I engage the 5th of the model’s 5 points: That something other than objective risk motivates defensive gun ownership.

From a sociological perspective, that something else centers on the discipline’s Holy Trinity: class, gender, and race. From a psychological perspective, defensive gun ownership is a maladaptive coping mechanism.

Links to the first five videos in the series are below.

Defensive Gun Ownership is Irrational – The Standard Model Part 4 (Light Over Heat #45)

This video continues my ongoing series systematizing the dominant academic approach to understanding Gun Culture 2.0, what I call “The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership.”

Here I engage the 4th of the model’s 5 points: Based on the first 3 points, defensive gun ownership is IRRATIONAL.

Links to the first four videos in the series are below.

Guns ADD Risk of Negative Outcomes – Part 2 (Light Over Heat #44)

This video continues last week’s video on how scholars, especially public health scholars, see guns as adding to the risk of negative outcomes.

This is part of my ongoing series systematizing the dominant academic approach to understanding Gun Culture 2.0, what I call “The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership.”

Here I engage the third of the model’s 6 points, offering my own take on guns as a risk factor that tries to navigate between the “YES THEY ARE” and “NO THEY’RE NOT” that too often characterizes discussion of the issue.

Links to videos 1 (Light Over Heat #41) and 2 (Light Over Heat #42) and 3 (Light Over Heat #43) are below.

Studies Show Guns ADD Risk of Negative Outcomes – The Standard Model Part 3 of 5 (Light Over Heat #43)

This video continues my series systematizing the dominant academic approach to understanding Gun Culture 2.0, what I call “The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership.”

The model has 6 points, and in this 3rd video, I discuss point 3: how guns are seen to add risk of negative outcomes.

Links to videos 1 (Light Over Heat #41) and 2 (Light Over Heat #42) are below.

ACADEMIC TRIGGER WARNING: I got carried away discussing the methods employed in public health research on guns as a risk factor (I am a professor, after all), so this video is longer and more tedious than average. AND I also took the last third of the video in which I critique the public health research and put it in a separate video that will run next week.

Why Guns Are Neither USED nor USEFUL for Self-Defense – The Standard Model Part 2 of 5 (Light Over Heat #42)

Last week I discussed some work I am doing systematizing the dominant academic approach to understanding Gun Culture 2.0, what I call “The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership.”

The model has 6 points. In this 2^nd of 5 planned videos, I discuss point 2: That guns are neither USED nor USEFUL for self-defense.

I also offer some critiques of this point in the model.

New “Light Over Heat” videos are released on YouTube every Wednesday, so please surf over to my YouTube channel and SUBSCRIBE to follow, RING THE BELL to receive notifications, and SHARE so others can learn about this work.

The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership (Light Over Heat #41)

In mid-November, I am presenting at a workshop about firearms and self-defense at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. I am using the occasion to write out something that has been in my mind for some time: Systematizing the dominant academic approach to understanding defensive gun ownership (Gun Culture 2.0).

In this and the next five Light Over Heat videos leading up to the Saint Anselm workshop, I will be sharing what I am calling “The Standard Model of Explaining the Irrationality of Defensive Gun Ownership.”

This week’s video summarizes the entire 6-point model.

New “Light Over Heat” videos are released on YouTube every Wednesday, so please surf over to my YouTube channel and SUBSCRIBE to follow, RING THE BELL to receive notifications, and SHARE so others can learn about this work.

Light Over Heat #5: The Concealed Carry Revolution and Concealed Carry Training

In last week’s video on Gun Culture 2.0, I mentioned the “Concealed Carry Revolution” as establishing an important aspect of the legal environment within which people practice armed self-defense today.

In this fifth “Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane” video, I discuss the shall-issue and permitless carry revolutions, and a recent criticism by the Michael Bloomberg-funded newsadvocacy organization “The Trace” that these laws allow the promiscuous toting for firearms in public without proper “training.”

The question of gun training is one I have written about frequently on this blog and in Chapter 5 of my book, Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America.

New “Light Over Heat” videos are released on YouTube every Wednesday, so please surf over to my YouTube channel and SUBSCRIBE to follow, RING THE BELL to receive notifications, and SHARE so others can learn about this work.

Light Over Heat #4: Gun Culture 2.0

In this fourth “Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane” video I discuss the concept of Gun Culture 2.0, the self-defense core of American gun culture today.

I have been developing the concept and studying the phenomenon for over 10 years now, posting hundreds of times on my Gun Culture 2.0 blog and publishing a number of academic and popular works about it.

This is a short (4 minute) video primer for the uninitiated and refresher for the initiated.

New “Light Over Heat” videos are released on YouTube every Wednesday, so please surf over to my YouTube channel and SUBSCRIBE to follow, RING THE BELL to receive notifications, and SHARE so others can learn about this work.

Gun Culture 2.0 Book (Provisional) Table of Contents

As mentioned the other day, I have finally gotten the pitch for my book on Gun Culture 2.0 into the hands of some literary agents. Now the waiting game begins.

In the mean time, below you will find the provisional table of contents for the book to whet your appetite.

Preface. On Being a Truth Advocate

Introduction. How a Liberal Professor Became an Armed American

1. Guns are Normal, Normal People Use Guns

2. Building an Arsenal

3. Living with AR-15s

4. Top Shot and the Human-Weapon Relationship

5. Swept Up in the Concealed Carry Revolution

6. Pascal’s Wager and Firearms

7. Serious Mistakes and Negative Outcomes

8. Training in Applied Violence

9. The Changing Face of Gun Owners in America

Conclusion. What the Professor Learned

Differences Between New and Long-Standing US Gun Owners by Wertz, et al.

The great gun buying spree(s) of 2020 have raised the issue of NEW GUN OWNERS. We have no reliable data on how many of those millions of NICS checks being run this year are for people who are buying a gun for the first time. Anecdotal evidence suggests a short answer of A LOT.

But it is also the case that even in a “normal” year, there are about 1 million new gun owners. This is one of the many interesting conclusions from a study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2018 which my Sociology of Guns students are reading this week.