Policy Punchline

David Yamane is Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. For the first twenty years of his career, Prof. Yamane focused on the sociology of religion. Since 2011, he has researched the sociology of guns. As Prof. Yamane once explained, “there is no sociology of U.S. gun culture.” Most gun-related studies are epidemiological or criminological, and few people really study why, in many parts of the country, guns are actually a normal part of everyday life. Prof. Yamane seeks to fill this research gap. Part of the reason there is little sociological research on gun ownership is that in parts of the country with few gun owners, like in left-leaning university environments, gun ownership is particularly stigmatized. Prof. Yamane himself grew up in California and has spent his career in academia, so he was in for a surprise when he moved to North Carolina about ten years ago and found that gun ownership could be normal. It contradicted the narrative he had grown up with. Prof. Yamane realized he was like