The possessive investment in guns: towards a material, social, and racial analysis of guns

The essay addresses how racial gun violence in the United States can be better understood by centering the gun as a material and social actor rather than focusing primarily on individual bias or intent. Drawing on new materialist and anthropological theories of object-human relations (especially Appadurai’s concepts of the social life of things and mediants/materiality), the author asks: How has a shift in demand toward personal self-defense reconfigured the meaning, design, marketing, and legal treatment of guns in ways that normalize racialized violence, particularly by police and white civilians against people of color? The introduction situates the inquiry amid high-profile cases (e.g., Trayvon Martin) and argues that examining the gun’s materiality and social life clarifies systemic dynamics of access, accountability, and justification through self-defense claims that disproportionately privilege whites and harm communities of color.

The paper synthesizes multiple strands of scholarship: (1) Anthropological and new materialist theory on objects as social and agentive (Appadurai 1986, 2015; Latour 2005; Bennett 2010), proposing that guns have social lives and act as mediants that shape human action and relations. (2) Critical race theory and work on whiteness and privilege (McIntosh 1988; Lipsitz 1998; Bonilla-Silva 2006; Ahmed 2007; Ralph 2014), highlighting how race becomes visible while racist outcomes are rendered invisible through ostensibly neutral practices like self-defense law. (3) Historical and sociological studies of U.S. gun culture, policy, and marketing (Haag 2016; Spitzer 2005, 2017; Light 2017; Osnos 2016; Yamane et al. 2009; Squires 1996, 2019), documenting the evolution from hunting/sport to “gun culture 2.0” centered on personal protection, and the role of industry messaging appealing to white male identities. (4) Empirical work on cognition and embodiment related to firearms (Witt & Brockmole 2012; Swanson et al. 2015; Shapira & Simon 2018; Carlson 2015), suggesting gun ownership changes perception, vigilance, and practices. (5) Legal scholarship and reporting on concealed carry, stand-your-ground, and disparate impacts (Medlock 2005; Reich & Barth 2017; Associated Press 2014; Newton 2017), showing expanded rights for (mostly white) gun owners and harsher penalties for communities of color. Together, the literature supports analyzing guns as racialized objects whose marketing, legal frameworks, and engineering co-produce normalized racial violence under the rubric of self-defense.

This is a theoretical and interpretive essay employing: (1) Conceptual framework: Appadurai’s dual concepts—social life of things and mediants/materiality—are applied to guns to treat them as co-constitutive of social relations and racial outcomes. (2) Multi-mediation analysis: The author traces three mediants that produce self-defense as a material outcome—(a) marketing/advertising (print and Web 2.0 ecosystems), (b) law (concealed/open carry, stand-your-ground, liability shields, key court rulings), and (c) engineering/design (shift to compact, concealable, higher-caliber handguns and accessories). (3) Historical-institutional tracing: The essay situates contemporary demand for self-defense in longer U.S. racial histories of gun regulation and use, from colonial restrictions on Black and Indigenous peoples to late 20th-century political realignments. (4) Illustrative case analysis: A close rereading of the Trayvon Martin shooting centers George Zimmerman’s Kel-Tec PF-9 to exemplify how gun design, marketing, and Florida’s legal environment mediated both the killing and its legal aftermath. Evidence is drawn from published scholarship, media reports, legal developments, manufacturer materials, and public online content; no new empirical dataset is collected.

- Guns function as mediants within racialized assemblages: they shape perception, bodily practice, and social relations, co-producing racial gun violence rather than serving as inert tools. - The shift in demand toward personal self-defense is a material outcome of intersecting mediations: (1) racialized marketing and online ecosystems that script threats and valorize vigilantism; (2) legal changes (concealed/open carry expansion, stand-your-ground, individual-right interpretation in Heller and McDonald, PLCAA immunity) that expand access and reduce accountability; (3) engineering advances that prioritize small, concealable, accurate, higher-caliber handguns designed for everyday carry. - The benefits and protections of gun ownership under self-defense regimes accrue disproportionately to whites, while people of color face greater barriers, harsher enforcement for possession, and less successful self-defense claims (e.g., disparate outcomes under stand-your-ground). - Web 2.0 “gun culture 2.0” further racializes self-defense narratives: widely viewed content normalizes vigilance and frames people of color as threats, even when creators avoid explicit slurs; comment ecosystems reveal racialized coding (e.g., “thug,” “gangster”). - Florida exemplifies the ecosystem: by 2016 it had more than 700,000 active concealed-carry permits; 28 states replicated its approach; an investigation found Floridians lived on average within 10 miles of a gun dealer, with 3.2 times as many gun dealers as post offices, reinforcing a market tailored to self-defense handguns. - Case illustration (Trayvon Martin): Zimmerman’s Kel-Tec PF-9—a lightweight, flat 9mm pistol engineered for concealment—mediated both the lethal encounter and legal framing of self-defense; racialized suspicions, marketing tropes, and permissive laws combined to enable the shooting and acquittal, while similar claims (e.g., Marissa Alexander) failed for Black defendants. - Handguns, not assault rifles, account for most U.S. gun deaths; the contemporary market has prioritized smaller, deadlier pistols aligned with self-defense demand. - The normalization of self-defense obscures systemic racial privilege by making racialized threat hyper-visible while rendering the racism of outcomes invisible to the state and segments of the public.

By reframing guns as agentive mediants with social lives, the essay explains how systemic racial outcomes in gun violence emerge beyond individual bias: marketing scripts who is dangerous, law codifies who may carry and when lethal force is excusable, and engineering supplies ever-more concealable lethality. This assemblage makes racialized threat perceptions actionable and legitimates harm as self-defense, disproportionately protecting whites and exposing people of color to violence and punishment. The analysis addresses the research question by showing how a demand-centered, material-social approach clarifies why certain killings are deemed justified and why gun rights and protections are unevenly distributed. Significance: It connects new materialist theory to critical race analysis, positioning the gun industry and legal architecture as co-producers of race and racial harm. The framework suggests interventions that shift demand and re-mediate safety—beyond narrow Second Amendment debates—could disrupt the assemblage that normalizes racialized violence.

The essay contributes a material, social, and racial analysis of guns, arguing that the American turn to self-defense—mediated by racialized marketing, permissive legal regimes, and handgun engineering—has normalized racial gun violence and differentially distributed rights and protections. Guns both reflect and produce racial order: they whiten some owners while darkening others, shaping who is seen as a legitimate victim or defender. Future directions include: reframing public safety through criminal justice reforms that reduce reliance on carceral logics; redirecting policy toward demand-shifting (e.g., away from self-defense framings), product safety (smart guns), taxation, and liability for manufacturers and sellers; and further integrating new materialist perspectives with critical race scholarship to analyze how objects co-constitute racial categories and harms.

- Scope: The essay adopts a narrow definition of racial gun violence focused on police and white civilian uses of firearms against people of color under claims of self-defense; other forms (e.g., targeted mass shootings, intra-community violence, neglect) are acknowledged but not analyzed in depth. - Method: The work is theoretical and interpretive, relying on secondary sources, examples, and an illustrative case rather than systematic empirical data collection. - Context: The analysis is U.S.-centric and may not generalize to different legal, cultural, or market environments.