EP 23: Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America with Andrew Mckevitt

There has been a mythology surrounding guns in the United States that allegedly involves the Founding Fathers and the 2nd Amendment but the reality of Americans increasingly arming themselves can be traced to the middle decades of the 20th century.In this episode of Books in 5, the author of "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" joins us to detail the first half of the Cold War as the genesis of modern gun culture as it combined the supply of surplus guns in Europe, enterprising young marketers and policymakers not recognizing the harms of so many firearms. With millions of people getting their hands on a commensurate amount of guns in an atmosphere of geopolitical uncertainty & racial biases which continues into the present, those who want to curb the violence won't succeed unless they recognize the true history of how this lifestyle became embedded in American life.Andrew C. McKevitt is John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University. He is the author of Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America.https://uncpress.org/9781469677248/gu...https://x.com/drewmckevitthttps://andrewcmckevitt.com/