September 29, 2021
Presented by author Jennifer Carlson.
In the research for her book Policing the Second Amendment, Jennifer Carlson drew on local and national newspapers, interviews with close to eighty police chiefs, and a detailed analysis of gun licensing processes in order to explore how police understand guns, gun politics, and gun violence across different parts of the US. What she discovered was a troubling paradox—while color-blind laws grant civilians unprecedented rights to own, carry, and use guns that police themselves broadly support, people of color face an all-too-visible system of gun criminalization. She identifies two racialized frameworks—gun populism and gun militarism—that undergird who counts as “a good guy with a gun” versus “a bad guy with a gun,” which in turn inform and justify how police und erstand and pursue public safety across different domains of gun violence.
The Clarke Forum presents Carlson as she unpacks the complex relationship between the police, gun violence, and race to challenge the tired terms of contemporary gun politics and, in turn, reimagine gun policy.
This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of political science and sociology and the Women's & Gender Resource Center.
For more information visit http://clarke.dickinson.edu/wednesday-september-29-2021/
Further information
- Location:
- Time: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
- Cost: Free