Merchants of the Right - by Jennifer Carlson

Book Synopsis

An eye-opening portrait of the gun sellers who navigated the social turmoil leading up to the January 6 Capitol attack

Gun sellers sell more than just guns. They also sell politics. Merchants of the Right sheds light on the unparalleled surge in gun purchasing during one of the most dire moments in American history, revealing how conservative political culture was galvanized amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, racial unrest, and a U.S. presidential election that rocked the foundations of American democracy.

Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with gun sellers across the United States, Jennifer Carlson takes readers to the front lines of the culture war over gun rights. Even though the majority of gun owners are conservative, new gun buyers are more likely to be liberal than existing gun owners. This posed a dilemma to gun sellers in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election: embrace these liberal customers as part of a new, perhaps post-partisan chapter in the American gun saga or double down on gun politics as conservative terrain. Carlson describes how gun sellers mobilized mainstays of modern conservative culture--armed individualism, conspiracism, and partisanship--as they navigated the uncertainty and chaos unfolding around them, asserting gun politics as conservative politics and reworking and even rejecting liberal democracy in the process.

Merchants of the Right offers crucial lessons about the dilemmas confronting us today, arguing that we must reckon with the everyday politics that divide us if we ever hope to restore American democracy to health.

Review Quotes

"As much as Carlson's book is a work of sociological analysis, it is also a warning. . . . Armed conservatives are working toward a democracy not of the ballot but of the bullet. As Carlson's book shows, they're well on their way."---Jack McCordick, New Republic

"Carlson takes on a topic of crucial importance: the relationship between conservative gun culture and the core commitments of American democracy. Along the way, she sheds fascinating new light on the factors that galvanized the largest gun-buying spree in the country's history in 2020 and shaped how many Americans responded to the tumult of that year."---Matthew Lacombe, Science

"Carlson's study will be welcomed by anyone angered, conflicted about, or interested in gun control and devotion to the right to bear arms in the U.S."-- "Library Journal"

"Gun culture and its purveyors . . . are impor­tant for Carlson not just in themselves and because of their epically awful results, but as a window into the forces that threaten to unravel our society and our democracy. This book is a must-read for all who seek to understand those forces."---David P. Gushee, Christian Century

"Illuminating. . . . Carlson packs the proceedings with intriguing insights and observations. It's a fresh take on how guns and politics mix."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"The author treats her subjects with respect and intellectual generosity, and her positioning of gun culture in democratic thought is a model of thoughtful scholarship."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

About the Author

Jennifer Carlson is professor of sociology at Arizona State University and the author of Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement, and the Politics of Race (Princeton). The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she has contributed to leading publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times.