Basic Pistol - by Harel Shapira (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From an award-winning scholar of the political right comes an immersive and revelatory journey through the world of gun schools and the curriculum of fear they teach.

"Sobering."--New York Times Book Review

"At once page-turning and deeply disquieting, Harel Shapira's Basic Pistol is a must read."--Heather Ann Thompson, author of Fear and Fury and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Blood in the Water

To understand why so many people die by the gun, we must first understand how so many people live by the gun.

This is the realization that led sociologist Harel Shapira to embed himself in Tactical Training, a popular firearms school in rural Texas. Here, students learn that any grocery store trip could become a shootout, and any day could be the day that a home intruder murders your family. They learn that waiting for the police to save the day is a death sentence. To be safe is to always carry a gun--and to always be ready and willing to use it.

Forty-two classes, ten thousand rounds of ammunition, and one concealed carry license later, Shapira has emerged with Basic Pistol, a dark and richly textured plunge into a uniquely American way of living. Basic Pistol follows Shapira's fraught journey through the world of firearms schools and into a community for whom gun ownership is livelihood, is tradition, is identity. It exposes the racist fears and heroic fantasies gun owners are taught to carry alongside their guns. It shows how a relentless sense of vulnerability has empowered them to shoot with impunity. And it argues this education in violence, as much as any legislation, has torn through the social fabric, killing not only people but the very kinds of relationships that make democracy viable.

Page-turning and paradigm-shifting, Basic Pistol shows that if there's any hope of reining in gun violence, it must start with the people who carry the guns.

Review Quotes

"At once page-turning and deeply disquieting, Harel Shapira's Basic Pistol is a must read for anyone who wants to understand not just why gun violence is so devastatingly prevalent in the United States, but also, and as importantly, how gun ownership has become so normalized, so passionately defended, and so much a part of how countless people now measure their sense of safety as well as connect to their community."--Heather Ann Thompson, author of Fear and Fury and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Blood in the Water

"Sobering . . . . [Basic Pistol] clearly depicts how firearm training centers assiduously cultivate a hair-trigger sensibility. The good guy with a gun is made, not born, and he is made through fear . . . . [It] suggests a deeper tragedy wrought on the relationships of trust and mutuality that make American democracy possible in the first place."--Texas Observer

"Basic Pistol is masterfully crafted. It penetrates the heart of American gun culture and, somehow, renders it both deeply human and utterly monstrous. It's a fascinating, disturbing, and necessary book about the violence of everyday life in the United States."--Eric Klinenberg, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences, New York University

"Utterly brilliant. So much more than the usual diatribe about guns: it is deeply researched and thoughtful. It tells a story about a culture without inviting us to dislike any of the people involved."--Justin Webb, former BBC North America editor

"With analytic rigor, literary skill, and a deep understanding of his subjects, Harel Shapira takes us into the culture of gun ownership and the far-right with a skill that surpasses most journalism on the subject. Basic Pistol memorably demonstrates how a gun safety training program can amount to indoctrination into a never-ending, trigger-ready state of high alert."--Nicholas Lemann, Pulitzer-Moore Professor and Dean Emeritus, Columbia Journalism School, and author of Transaction Man

"Basic Pistol is groundbreaking ethnography. In this fascinating deep dive into America's obsession with guns, Harel Shapira shows how this culture of violence and doom permeates our communities and shapes our politics."--Adam Winkler, Connell Professor of Law, UCLA, and author of We the Corporations and Gunfight.

"Unqiuely researched . . . . an important addition to the conversation about gun violence in the United States."--Library Journal

"Chilling . . . . An eye-opening study that makes its own case for stricter gun control."--Kirkus Reviews

"A vivid and unique perspective on U.S. gun culture."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Harel Shapira is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his BA from the University of Chicago and his PhD from Columbia University. Shapira uses long- term ethnographic research to understand right- wing politics and gun culture in contemporary America. He is the author of Waiting for José The Minutemen's Pursuit of America (Princeton University Press, 2013) and the coeditor of Gun Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics, Policy, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2019, with Jennifer Carlson and Kristin Goss). His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation as well as the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and his writing has been featured in numerous outlets, including The New York Times and The New Republic. He was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2015 and a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2021.