Stand your ground : a history of America's love affair with lethal self-defense

Author / Creator

Light, Caroline E., author

Available as

Physical

Summary

Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun ...

Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement -- and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for "good guys with guns" relies on the entrenched belief that certain "bad guys with guns" threaten us all. This book explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original "duty to retreat" from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. Light traces white America's attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories -- from the original "castle laws" of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of "criminal" Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country's most powerful lobbying forces.

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