God And Guns In America

What if Christians did more than offer thoughts and prayers in response to gun violence? Ethicist Michael Austin argues—from a biblical but nonpacifist perspective—that we can impose firearms restrictions to make our society safer and less fearful while still respecting the rights of gun owners. God and Guns in America is a thoughtful, measured, and articulate treatment of a polarizing topic that is too often treated with more heat than light.

America, beginning as a small group of devout Puritan settlers, ultimately became the richest, most powerful Empire in the history of the world, but having reached that point, is now in a process of implosion and decay. This book, inspired by Frankfurt School Critical Theory, especially Erich Fromm, offers a unique historical, cultural and characterological analysis of American national character and its underlying psychodynamics. Specifically, this analysis looks at the persistence of Puritan religion, as well as the extolling of male toughness and America's unbridled pursuit of wealth. Finally, its self image of divinely blessed exceptionalism has fostered vast costs in lives and wealth. But these qualities of its national character are now fostering both a decline of its power and a transformation of its underlying social character. This suggests that the result will be a changing social character that enables a more democratic, tolerant and inclusive society, one that will enable socialism, genuine, participatory democracy and a humanist framework of meaning. This book is relevant to understanding America’s past, present and future.

This book is an antidote to the forms of American nationalism, masculinity, exceptionalism, and self-anointed prowess that are currently being flexed on the global stage. Through a fascinating combination of ethnographic research across seven US states and the application of postcolonial, anti-racist, feminist and poststructuralist theories, Land, God, and Guns reveals how time-honoured rites of passage associated with taken-for-granted notions of manhood in the American Heartland are constitutive of a constellation of colonial worldviews, capitalist logics, gender essentialisms, ethnocentric religious beliefs, jingoistic populism, racial animus, and embodied violence. A constellation that, within the US, upholds a heteropatriarchal and racist ordering of life that both privileges and ultimately damages its main proliferators – white settler men. This is a detailed work that at once unravels rural white settler masculinity and the US state at their roots, whilst demonstrating why any analysis of the cultural production and social practice of masculinity in the United States must take into account the country's historical trajectories of imperialism, land dispossession, nation-state building, enslavement, extractive accumulation and valorisation of masculinist assertions of dominance.

Rock and Roll legend Ted Nugent contends that a lot of what is wrong with this country could be remedied by a simple, but controversial concept: gun ownership.

The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller from a presidential candidate for the 2016 election! In God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, Mike Huckabee asks, "Have I been taken to a different planet than the one on which I grew up?" The New York Times bestselling author explores today's fractious American culture, where divisions of class, race, politics, religion, gender, age, and other fault lines make polite conversation dicey, if not downright dangerous. As Huckabee notes, the differences of opinion between the "Bubble-villes" of the big power centers and the "Bubba-villes" where most people live are profound, provocative, and sometimes pretty funny. Where else but in Washington, D.C. could two presidential golf outings cost the American taxpayers $2.9 million in travel expenses? Government bailouts, politician pig-outs, and popular culture provocations from Jay-Z and Beyoncé to Honey Boo-Boo to the Duck Dynasty's Robertson family. Gun rights, gay marriage, the decline of patriotism, and the mainstream media's contempt for those who cherish a faith-based life. The trouble with Democrats, the even bigger trouble with Republicans, our national security complex, and how our Constitution is eroding under our noses. Reflections on our way of life as it once was, as it is, and as it might become...these subjects and many more are covered with Mike Huckabee's signature wit, insight, and honesty.

In this astonishing and at times terrifying book, acclaimed writer and political commentator Martin Dillon examines for the first time the true role of religion in the conflict in Northern Ireland. He interviewed those directly involved--terrorists like Kenny McClinton and Billy Wright and churchmen like Father Pat Buckley--finding that the terrorists were more forthcoming than the priests and ministers. Dillon charts the history of the paramilitary forces on both sides and exposes the shocking covert role of British intelligence. He finds that, ultimately, both the church and government have failed their communities, allowing men and women of violence to fill a vacuum with bigotry and violence.

★ Publishers Weekly starred review Parkland. Las Vegas. Dallas. Orlando. San Bernardino. Paris. Charleston. Sutherland Springs. Newtown. These cities are now known for the people who were shot and killed in them. More Americans have died from guns in the US in the last fifty years than in all the wars in American history. With less than 5% of the world's population, the people of the US own nearly half the world's guns. America also has the most annual gun deaths--homicide, suicide, and accidental gun deaths--at 105 per day, or more than 38,000 per year. Some people say it's a heart problem. Others say it's a gun problem. The authors of Beating Guns believe it's both. This book is for people who believe the world doesn't have to be this way. Inspired by the prophetic image of beating swords into plows, Beating Guns provides a provocative look at gun violence in America and offers a clarion call to change our hearts regarding one of the most significant moral issues of our time. Bestselling author, speaker, and activist Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin show why Christians should be concerned about gun violence and how they can be part of the solution. The authors transcend stale rhetoric and old debates about gun control to offer a creative and productive response. Full-color images show how guns are being turned into tools and musical instruments across the nation. Charts, tables, and facts convey the mind-boggling realities of gun violence in America, but as the authors make clear, there is a story behind every statistic. Beating Guns allows victims and perpetrators of gun violence to tell their own compelling stories, offering hope for change and helping us reimagine the world as one that turns from death to life, where swords become plows and guns are turned into garden tools.

"Writing in a narrative style reminiscent of Womack's Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, author explains a series of 1890s uprisings in Tomochic, in the border state of Chihuahua, against the Porfirians' determination to dictate who would control the lan

James Atwood contends that the thirty thousand gun deaths America suffers every year cannot be understood apart from our national myth that God has appointed America as "the trustee of the civilization of the world" and even "Christ's light to the nations." Because these purposes are noble, and we are supposedly a good and trustworthy people, violence is sometimes "required" and gives license to individuals to carry open or concealed weapons, which "save lives" and can even be "redemptive." Atwood, an avid hunter, cautions that an absolute trust in guns and violence morphs easily into idolatry. Having spent thirty-six years as a Presbyterian pastor fighting against the easy access to firearms, one of which took the life of a friend, he uses his unique experience and his biblical and theological understanding to graphically portray the impact guns have on our society. He documents how Americans have been deceived into believing that the tools of violence, whether they take the form of advanced military technology or a handgun in the bedside stand, will provide security. He closes with a wake-up call to the faith community, which he says is America's best hope to unmask the extremism of the Gun Empire.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING FOLLOW-UP TO AMERICAN SNIPER Join Chris Kyle on a journedy to discover “how 10 firearms changed United States history” (New York Times Book Review) Drawing on his legendary firearms knowledge and combat experience, U.S. Navy SEAL and #1 bestselling author of American Sniper Chris Kyle dramatically chronicles the story of America—from the Revolution to the present—through the lens of ten iconic guns and the remarkable heroes who used them to shape history: the American long rifle, Spencer repeater, Colt .45 revolver, Winchester 1873 rifle, Springfield M1903 rifle, M1911 pistol, Thompson submachine gun, M1 Garand, .38 Special police revolver, and the M16 rifle platform Kyle himself used. American Gun is a sweeping epic of bravery, adventure, invention, and sacrifice. Featuring a foreword and afterword by Taya Kyle and illustrated with more than 100 photographs, this new paperback edition features a bonus chapter, “The Eleventh Gun,” on shotguns, derringers, and the Browning M2 machine gun.