Bridging the Gun Divide with Dr. David Yamane
In our next episode of Guns Unpacked, we are joined by Dr. David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University. His 2024 book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor's Surprising Journey Inside America's Gun Culture, explores his 12-year journey into gun culture and gun ownership as a liberal professor. This episode was recorded months ago; we decided to release it right after the 2024 election cycle as it provides some crucial lessons for thinking beyond our current political divides.
Dr. Yamane takes us on his journey into researching gun culture, reflecting on how his upbringing and a later personal experience with violence shaped his relationship to the gun debate and gun culture.
"Between and betwixt these two positions"
As an academic, a liberal, and a gun owner, Dr. Yamane has encountered divergent interactions and dynamics with other academics as well as everyday gun owners–and though he admits there can be tensions, he highlights how his position allows him to act as a mediator or translator, focused on understanding. Dr. Yamane’s framework to understand gun culture in the US begins with self-defense as a universal concern, though he cautions that social reality is often much more complex than the terms social scientists come up with to understand it. In fact, one issue Dr. Yamane sees as a barrier to the gun debate is that we often speak completely different languages and use different terminology, which fuels mistrust.
"The terminological debates that we have are a reflection of the lack of trust that we have in one another when we talk about guns. They're a symptom of a deeper problem."
As Dr. Yamane discusses, all-or-nothing perspectives hinder conversations, as does the impulse to paint either side with broad brush strokes that label “all” group members as bigots. Looking ahead, Dr. Yamane worries that current gun culture could fragment into political camps, with people of opposing views seeing each other as possible “enemies” even among gun owners. That said, as a liberal gun owner, he remains optimistic about bridging our divides–listen in to learn more!