More than just macho -- why men want to carry guns

Jennifer Carlson, an author who has studied the gun culture, writes that sociologists trying to understand the push for wide-ranging open-carry laws have focused mainly on men.
The open-carry concept barely existed 10 years ago and its advocates today consist almost entirely of men. In an Op-Ed column for the Los Angeles Times, Carlson noted that the gun rights agenda is not just about guns, it's also about a crisis of confidence in the American dream.

As men doubt their ability to provide financially for their family, she explains, their desire to protect becomes all the more important.

Carlson's piece, which focuses almost entirely on Michigan gun owners, describes how a Flint man and others she talked with equated economic insecurity and the Second Amendment.

"(They) suggested that breadwinning now is harder than it used to be. Indeed, men's participation in the labor force has been on a steady decline since the 1970s. Well-paying manufacturing jobs have dried up," she wrote.
"... (These men) see carrying a gun as a masculine duty and the gun itself as a vehicle for a hardened kind of care-work — caring for others by shielding them from danger, with the threat of lethal force."