Some issues split the American populous right down the middle. Think climate change, immigration, abortion, and universal health care, for instance. Another issue with the power to divide is gun rights.

Liberals generally believe in more stringent gun control while conservatives want more access. So what should we make of Wake Forest University sociology professor David Yamane and his book Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture?

If you’re interested in a rational discussion about this controversial topic, head to Atascadero Bible Church on June 25, when from 6 to 8 p.m. Yamane will offer a talk called Guns in America: A Civil Conversation in Uncivil Times, followed by a Q-and-A and book signing.

Yamane had never so much as touched a gun, but suddenly at the age of 42, he became curious.

“I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know, a blue bubble, a gun-less bubble, and then went to college at UC Berkeley, which was even bluer than where I grew up, and I got into sociology, which is even bluer. And so, I sort of had this little blue bubble insulating me from firearms my whole life. I wasn’t particularly opposed to them. I really just had no experience with firearms, and then I moved to North Carolina in 2005. And I started gradually seeing guns around,” he explained during a Zoom conversation.

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• Image Courtesy Of David Yamane
• TURNING DOWN THE HEAT David Yamane’s 2024 book Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture takes a reasoned approach to a polarizing topic.

He realized that gun ownership was normal for many of the people he knew and socialized with. Then, he met his wife-to-be, who was in the Coast Guard and familiar with firearms.

“I just sort of thought, ‘Guns are all around me, but I don’t really know how they work, and they’re pretty scary and dangerous, so maybe I should figure out how they work.’ So she arranged for me to go to the gun range with one of her high school classmates who was a gun trainer, and I was just purely trying to figure out how the guns work. How can I make them safe if I come across one? How do I know if they’re loaded?” Yamane said. “So, shooting 9 mm pistol, I found that it was really fun and challenging. I went in afraid of guns and came out interested in guns. And that really led to a kind of personal exploration that became a sociological exploration beginning in 2011 and continuing to this day.”

As he began to study American gun culture, he was surprised—as a liberal and sociologist—to discover that “gun owners are people, too. I think based on what I knew from the popular media, what I knew from scholarly research on guns—which tends to focus on violence, injury, and crime—that I didn’t really have a sense of how normal everyday gun owners are, that they really were people that I knew in everyday life, you know? My significant other, her parents, the IT guy that I had to call to help install my Internet, my real estate agent, guys I played tennis with.”

Yamane also learned that a lot of people who own guns feel the stigma of being a gun enthusiast, and they keep it secret: “When I came out more and more as a gun owner myself, I had other Wake Forest faculty contact me very quietly and say, ‘Hey, I’m a gun owner, too. Don’t tell anybody.’ Or, ‘Hey, I’m interested in getting a firearm. Can you help me?'”

He has an interesting take on the history of the NRA and how it evolved into the organization it is today and how he sees struggle for control of the organization between zealots and more reasonable minds.

He also has a reasoned take on the usefulness of the oft-repeated aphorism “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

“I think it’s true as far as it goes, but it just doesn’t go very far,” Yamane said. “I have 13 guns in my house right now, but unless I act with those guns, they’re not going to hurt anybody. On the other hand, guns are lethal weapons. I think that this is one of the things that people sort of try to shy away from with that little play on words, but the reality is, if you want to harm yourself or someone else, a gun is an excellent weapon to do that with, right? By design, right? It’s built into the design of the tool. You could do it also with a hammer, with your fist, with a chainsaw, but, you know, the gun is a very efficient way of accomplishing that end.”

He’s aware of the statistics proving gun ownership or living in a home with a gun increases one’s chance of being a victim of gun violence, but he’s got a counterargument. He understands not everyone interprets the Second Amendment in the same way, but again, he has his thoughts. He’ll happily discuss gun ownership as protection against a tyrannical government or whether guns are effective for home defense or whether we should have more permissive conceal carry laws. He’s open to any discussion.

He also admits there’s no easy answer to America’s undeniable gun violence problem.

“If I had the answer, I’d give it and collect my Nobel Peace Prize and retire,” he said with a laugh. “But seriously, I think there are ways we can reduce gun injuries. There’s no silver bullet. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.”

It starts with a rational and reasonable discussion, and he said it’s happening now through an Ad Council initiative called Agree to Agree, which is about “bringing people from all different backgrounds together and instead of saying, ‘We disagree about guns,’ ask, ‘What can we agree on?’ I participated in that, and we agreed that with gun ownership comes the responsibility of preventing unauthorized access. That was my sort of bottom-line point that I wanted to get across, and I think that any responsible gun owner and any non-gun-owner can agree on that, right?” Δ

Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at [email protected]. Are you ready
to talk guns?