Bibliograph

Stand your ground, a history of America's love affair with lethal self-defense, Caroline E. Light

Type

Label

Stand your ground, a history of America's love affair with lethal self-defense, Caroline E. Light

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Stand your ground

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

950004008

Responsibility statement

Caroline E. Light

Sub title

a history of America's love affair with lethal self-defense

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 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

Table Of Contents

"That great law of nature" : the origins of a selective self-defense culture -- Defensive violence and the "true man" : the end of Reconstruction and the duty to retreat -- "A mighty power in the hands of the citizen" : justice and true manhood in the western borderlands -- "Queer justice" and the sexual politics of lynching -- "An American tradition" : the black paramilitary response to white supremacist terror and unequal protection -- "The stuff of pulp fiction" : unreasonable women, vigilante heroes, and the rise of the armed citizen -- Avoiding a "fate worse than death" : how we learned to stand our ground

Classification