An AR-15 and Toxic Masculinity
And an older man book group
Our 11-person mature-man book group meets monthly, usually at one of our homes. This month’s meeting was the book American Gun by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson. And the place was at my house.
We’re all in the vicinity of 70. Next month, we’ll meet with a younger-man group for a joint conversation. Baby boomers meet Generation X. I joined this 20-year-old group four months ago after thinking about it for many years.
Did I want to sit around and discuss books? And with only men?
We’re a diverse group with college professors, a banker, a high school teacher, an administrator, a physician, an engineer, and a reporter. Most are liberal, but not all. Everyone has a point of view about the books we read.
No one dominates the conversation. No toxic masculinity. Back to that in a moment.
I’ve linked to the Amazon page for American Gun so you can read a sample of the reviews. Our group thought it was a terrific book. I couldn’t put it down because the narration was excellent. It’s a cultural history of one facet of America over the past 50 years.
If you want to know why there are so many guns in America, this is the book for you. It’s not an anti-gun book or an anti-AR-15 book. It’s an exploration of why this particular gun became the American Gun.
Our group included a few hunters. However, no one owned or had even touched an AR-15. So we asked our local sheriff and police departments if one of their officers could help us to understand this weapon.
Byron joined us for an hour and brought along two AR-15s. He’s a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and has been in both the police and sheriff’s departments as a firearms instructor.
He laid out the two guns on my dining room table and showed us how they were put together, including the bullets used. Then, he passed them around.
I hadn’t held a gun in over 50 years and never pulled the trigger on the 0.22 I carried that one time while hunting with friends. When I cradled each, I put my finger on the trigger and imagined a target.
I still don’t get it. That’s why I’m glad to have read the book.
The pizza arrived when Officer Byron did — and cooled on the kitchen table with the beer waiting in the refrigerator. We peppered him with questions, and he gave thoughtful answers.
I was struck by how he respected the guns and saw them, in his hands, as necessary for our safety. Yet, he wished it had not become the weapon of choice for so many Americans, including Thomas Crooks, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump.
After Byron left, we opened the pizza boxes and the beer. No one cared that the pizza was cold. We had a book to discuss.
About 30 minutes into the conversation, someone, I think it was Jim, raised the issue of toxic masculinity. The authors of American Gun took us into the worlds of several mass shooters, all men, including Stephen Paddock, who killed 60 and wounded 413 in Las Vegas in 2017.
You can read the Wikipedia entry on toxic masculinity here. Another excellent article by conservative columnist David French on the male toxicity of the recent Republican convention here.
I’m providing these resources because our group said nothing particularly enlightening about why men do bad things. Other than this, our sons had gone through the local public school and had become swept up in school groups, including athletics, music, school governance, and drama productions.
They had made connections and learned how to be with others. Indeed, that’s one antidote to the social isolation that is often a symptom of mass killers.
Honestly, our group of long-time men were as perplexed as, perhaps, you are at both America’s gun fetish and the men who use these weapons to kill others and themselves.
As I sat in my living room, looking out at this group of aging men, each willing to give up two hours of his time to listen, engage, ponder, probe, open up, and, ultimately, sit with the horrors described in American Gun and the ambiguity of a weapon that destroys and protects, I thought, I’m honored to be a part of this men’s group.
That, in some mysterious way, we’re part of the solution.
Here’s our group’s 2024 book list: How the South Won the Civil War, Heather Cox Richardson (January); Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe (Feb.); The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, Miko Pelad (March); The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride (April); Second Nature, A Gardener’s Education, Michael Pollan (May); The Name of War, Jill LePore (June); American Gun, (July); The Great Transition, Nick FullerGoogins (August); The Death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories, Leo Tolstoy, September); I am not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett (October); North Woods, Daniel Mason (November); The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, David Grann (December).
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