- Professor – Arizona State University
- 2015 – Author – Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline
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About Dr. Jennifer Carlson
Dr. Jennifer Carlson is a sociologist whose research focuses on gun ownership and gun culture in the United States. Rather than studying firearms only through crime statistics, she uses ethnographic fieldwork, spending time with concealed carry license holders, firearms instructors, gun sellers, police chiefs, and licensing officials to understand why Americans choose to own and carry guns. Her first book, Citizen-Protectors (2015), drew on interviews and participation in concealed carry classes in Michigan and argued that many carriers see armed self-defense as a civic duty. Gun owners and 2A advocates often cite her work as a serious academic treatment of carry culture.
She earned a BA from Dartmouth College (2004) and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (2013), and joined the University of Arizona in 2016, where she later became an associate professor of sociology and government and public policy. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022. She has since moved to Arizona State University, where she is a professor in the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, and she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2024.
Key Facts
- 2015 – Published Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline (Oxford University Press)
- 2018 – Co-edited Gun Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Politics, Policy, and Practice
- 2020 – Published Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement, and the Politics of Race (Princeton University Press)
- October 2022 – Named a MacArthur Fellow
- May 2023 – Published Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy (Princeton University Press)
- 2024 – Elected to the National Academy of Medicine
Sources
- MacArthur Foundation: Jennifer Carlson, Class of 2022
- Arizona State University: Jennifer Carlson faculty profile
- University of Arizona News: Gun culture expert awarded MacArthur Fellowship
- Princeton University Press: Merchants of the Right
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