Basic Pistol

All across America, people are taking classes in how to use a gun. But who are the firearms instructors teaching them? What are people learning in these classes? And how does it explain the gun violence that’s now playing out on a daily basis? In Basic Pistol, University of Texas sociologist Harel Shapira takes us to the concealed heart of the American obsession with guns: the firearms courses where people learn to kill in the name of self-defence. Starting with a popular shooting course called Basic Pistol, he has spent ten years immersed in the world of gun-training. His experience is an astounding deep dive into how Americans train their minds and bodies to use guns. Shapira reveals that, far from simply teaching the mechanics of gun safety, these schools are teaching a way of living in the world that is rooted in racist fears, aggressive masculinity and an entitlement to violence. In storytelling that will take your breath away, we discover that the risk of widespread gun ownership is not simply the possibility of more gun violence and mass shootings. The risk is to the very foundations of democracy itself.