Thread by @AFilindra

Don't expect the school shooting in Texas or last week's racially-motivated shooting in Buffalo to lead to any meaningful policy change. 🧵Based on my research and that of others. 1/15
@bfloodUIC @CSDDatNU @imillhiser

For very many people, guns are not simply tools. They are potent symbols of good citizenship, membership, and belonging. They are centrally associated with deeply-held beliefs about what makes one a true American. 2/

As @debbiejsr shows there are multiple ideologies of Americanism. I show that people who associate true Americanism with whiteness, Christianity, nativity, rurality and traditional gender roles, also believe that gun ownership, military, and helping police make true Americans 3/

About 40% of whites subscribe to this ideology. Many GOP but not only. These beliefs are not new nor NRA-created. They are as old as the Republic and inscribed in American political institutions. /4

In the early Republic, political rights were linked to military obligations. All white adult males had to enroll for militia service and state constitutions required enlistment for voting rights /5

States did not have the money to arm every eligible man. So the Uniform Militia Act of 1792 required that all eligible white men buy and maintain their military weapons for military training 6/

The law also required a registry and the federal government did counts of all the guns available in citizen hands. Imagine that! Gun registration! In America! 7/

The NRA was a product of these military institutions and carried into the 21st century an ideology that valorized armed citizenship. For 100 years, it linked it to military preparedness and service. 8/

As of the 1970s, the era of mass mobilization and militarism ended with the Vietnam war (see @kathleen_belew among others) and the NRA linked it's ideology of armed citizenship to the consumer act of gun buy. Ownership rather than preparedness became the hallmark of virtue. 9/

Since the 1990s, the group has emphasized the 2A as a political right to fight against tyranny (much closer to its original meaning), but of consumer-gunowners not soldiers (not what the framers had in mind) 10/

In fact, it has elevated gun rights as "the 1st freedom", because without guns how can you trust political elites to be honest? Since 2008, GOP elites jumped on the bandwagon, with talk of "second amendment remedies" and shooting through laws they don't like (also: Manchin) 11/

Not surprisingly, Americans who embrace this martial ideology followed suit. A substantial minority today ranks gun rights above other rights and believes that the 2A gives individuals a right to shoot at government. 12/

When guns have become elevated to the category of fundamental rights and for many the first right, any discussion of control is foreclosed. "Rights talk" makes compromise all but impossible (see: abortion debate and libs don't call it 1st freedom) 13/

In this rhetorical environment, gun rights supporters won't accept any compromise and with the GOP fearing primaries, they will continue to offer "thoughts and prayers" in place of any serious discussion. Plus things are likely to get even more difficult for the Left. 14/

The SCOTUS is about to hand down another major guns ruling, the first since 2010. Without a leaked draft, I can tell you gun safety advocates will be heartbroken. And shootings will keep happening. 15/15