sociologists such as Jennifer Carlson and Angela Stroud, who study what Carlson calls the “everyday politics of guns in an age of decline.” Both researchers study not how guns kill but why guns are deemed worth living and dying for. Stroud, for instance, extensively interviews white, permit-holding, “good guys with guns” and finds that these men carry firearms “because a white person with a gun is not presumed to be a criminal, he or she can navigate the world with some confidence that other people, most notably the police, will not presume they are bad guys.” White privilege
