Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium (ATS), 7 p.m.

Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race

Jennifer Carlson, associate professor of sociology and government & public policy, University of Arizona

Carlson presents the troubling paradox of color-blind gun law and racialized gun criminalization. Based on interviews with close to eighty police chiefs she identifies two racialized frameworks—gun populism and gun militarism—that inform and justify how police understand and pursue public safety across different domains of gun violence.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of political science and sociology and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center.

Topic Overview Written by Bao Tran ’23

Biography

Jennifer Carlson is associate professor of sociology and government & public policy at the University of Arizona, where she teaches courses on guns, rights, trauma, justice, and law. Her award-winning research examines how guns shape American life, including those who survive gun violence’s harrowing aftermath, police who enforce the country’s complex gun laws, gun sellers and retailers who are on the front lines of surges in gun purchasing, and the people who choose to own and carry guns.

Her book, Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race, explores the relationship between gun politics and public law enforcement through interviews with over six dozen police chiefs in Arizona, California and Michigan.