A Sociologist Walks Into a Gun Range . . .

Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of the country’s leading scholars of the American political right. For his first book, Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton University Press, 2013), Shapira spent years embedded with a militia group, which helped point him to his next subject, gun culture. To research his new book, Basic Pistol: Living and Dying by the Gun in America (Pantheon, September 15), Shapira spent four years immersing himself in that culture, participating in firearms and self-defense training courses in Texas and around the country and getting to know instructors and students.Texas Monthly recently spoke over videoconference with Shapira, who is completing an academic fellowship in Germany.Texas Monthly: You point out that thirty…

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