[inaudible discussion] >> good evening. thank you for joining us tonight. my name is -- i'm the community relations manager here the book store. and tonight's event its part of a series of events we hold here, featuring authors both from ny and from other far places like boston and harvard. , cambridge. we're really delighted to be featureing caroline light this evening. the author of a new book, "stand your ground: a history of america's love affair with lethal self-defense."

she will be joined by nyu's professor ann pellegrini and they will be talking amongst themselves about the book and they promise to make it very lively. i think that's the best way to say that. caroline will also be reading from the book and then we'll have the q & a session. so, just a quick introduction. caroline light is the director of undergraduate studies in studies of women, gender and sexuality at harvard university. she is also the author of a previous book from 2014, that pride of race and character, the

jewish benevolence in the jim crow south, published by nyu presence. angela pellegrini is professor of studies and cultural analysis as nyu and also the director of the center for the study of gender and sexuality here at nyu. it's with great pleasure that i am here to welcome both of you and welcome the people here in the audience. thank you for joining us, and let's have a little pause for very important topic that i think is very timely to all of us. thanks to much for being here and mess become caroline light and angela pellegrini. >> thank you. thank you for being here. on a school night. to talk about somewhat demoralizing things. and also i want to thank nyu book store for hosting me.

it's a real honor to be here and especially to thank ann pellegrini for inengage is in thus discussion and invite michigan me to the her classroom and having a discussion about contemporary legal self-defense and has been an intellectual influence in my work for the past couple of decades. >> i was five years old. >> she was five-year-old own we she published her book, performance anxiety but the books on racialization and -- derivative of the work she has done so i want to thank her for that. so, where shall we start? >> well, the book is so topical, and i guess i wondered what can history off center so this is a become that you began writing

sort of the same -- after the death of trayvon martin so in 2012. we hear still far too often about the lethal use of force against young black and brun men in particular and so this is a topic in the news all the time but what can history -- how can history help us think about which subjects may be targeted for death with impunity and who gets to use -- who gets to weaponize fear. >> yeah. that's an excellent question, and so i am -- sorry -- can you hear me if i stan -- okay. i'm obviously trained as a historian, so typically when i try to look for answers to-under urgent social issue others in the contemporary universe i look the past to understand the genealogy of this way of thinking, in this case the weaponization of fear as professor pellegrini just said. and for me, i was very surprised

by what i found when i started looking back into legal doctrine not just of the united states but prior to the -- the united states, english common law doctrine which allowed actors of the using of legal self-defense and in particular circumstances. one thing discovered that it found interesting was the rootss of the doctrine. when you look at stand your ground laws, which are now a reality in different iterations in 33 states in the united states, so they vary according to the state. but they're often referred to as castle laws. so, this invocation of that old adage, a man's house is his castle, really haunts this sort of justification of these ground ground ground laws -- the "stand

your ground" laws. the the idea you have a right to protect yourself in your home from danger without first retreating. however it's misleading and ahistorical because truthfully the castle doctrine is about your right to protect yourself in your home. and "stand your ground" laws endow people with the power to fight back live lethal violence in public spaces beyond their home, and it is actually selective in the way ground ground -- stand your ground laws are adjudicated. so you have season with trayvon martin and melissa alexander, the law does not apply everyone and they're selectively enforced. would say one of this lessons of history is to show the inaccurate way in which stand your ground laws are promoted as being a universal appeal to the

safety of everyone's castle. >> the initial premise is within your own home, you and the "you" might not just be just anyone you but the owner of the home, the property old holder has a right to defend himself and his family in his own home. how does it move from being located in a particular private space to being some is -- i don't know -- partiable. some people get to take it with them into a public space so they can defend themselves in shared -- a park or roadway. >> right. it changes a lot in translation from england to the united states. so, one thing i try to show in the book is how this idea of lethal self-defense and the castle doctrine shift in space and time. so, for instance, it's in the early republic in the united states that the duty to retreat

begins to get unmined in a serious way through certain legal battles. >> can you say more about the duty to retreat? what does that command someone to do. >> the duty to retreat is one of the central legal doctrines in english common law. i was that is someone was attacking you, you did not have a right to fight back with lethal violence until, quote, your back was up against the wall. so you had to try get away as minute as you could before you fight back. one exception to that was the castle doctrine. that is instituted in 1604 that in a court case, in england, where we get this old adage, man's house is his castle. so, the castle doctrine then provides an exception for someone who is attacked in heir home. but originally there's a duty to retreat and that duty to retreat also existed in the united states, and i argue, too in the book dish show in the book that

the duty to retreat, wherever you are, still exists for certain social actors and they tend to be those social actors who are most vulnerable politically, economically, et cetera. >> so how does the -- if the notion of a duty to retreat, except in the limit space of the house, comps to u.s. colonies that become the united states, how does it expand? i think one of the things you're doing in the book -- this where is history -- thinking be this historically is helpful -- 'er showing the ab obviousness is not obvious at all. happens through a set of legal actions, social actions, a kind of -- then get knit together so i'ms inevitable afterwards. >> it really isn't. there's a section i can read that sort of lays the groundwork for this, but i show in the book

that there's a certain set of cultural economic, political, circumstances, that come to bear in the united states on that duty to retreat and that in the end, make the duty to retreat in din inmence rat with the white rye pry export manifest destiny and this duty to retreat is incompatable with the spread of the nation from one coast to the others and become can incompatible with white masculine honor and i show that through different kinds of court battles in particular because the law provides a particularly salient archive when you're looking at the ways in which different laws get adjudicated for different kinds of social actors. what was true for one kind of social actor would not be true for another. >> you talk about the case of thomas selfridge from the early 19th century in boston. could you tell us about the case?

this is like the moment of this movement -- this expansion of the duty to retreat. >> so, the case of thomas selfridge happens in boston, and it's -- i think it's within two years of the infamous killing of alexander hamilton by aaron burr. it's just within a couple of years of that and doesn't become as famous but it becomes a landmark legal case that gets referred to in later 19th 19th century cases about the duty to retreat. do you want me to read this section? this early in the book. and it started with the trial. so, when thomas self ridge did trial for manslaughter in december 1806, the young nation's laws were vague on the topic of lethal self-defense. this 32-year-old lawyer had killed a man in the streets of

boston, claiming that he did so to protect himself from grave danger. the english machine common law on which united states laws were based held that someone must withdraw in the face of attack and not retaliate until retreating as far as he conveniently or safe he can. crown or the king held the exalt of -- vindicating or avenging the wronged citizens inflicted on but other and the taking of anothers life was among the most serious of crimes, one ironically punishable by death. in united states the idea of backing away from to threat or of allowing the government for protect one from harm clash evidence with the ideals of independence and individual rights common the nation was founded, and while the race of the men the center of the case went unmentioned. whyness and masculinity and

property ownership web site as critical the distribution of political rights as the rights to defend ones self. while deal doctrine held eduty to treat, popular opinion saw a white man residents retreat from an assault as especially an assault on his honor, as cowardly, incompatable with the value offed liberal democracy. i talk about how in enlightened thickers like thomas hobbs and johnlock challenged the monarchy's monopoly on lethal pun in: hoss wants this first to invoke an inalienable to self-defense and wrote: a covenant not to defend misdemeanor from force is void, and in this second essay on civil government in 1690, locke invoked self-defense that great law of nature and argued

whosoever shedeth map's blood by man, shall his blood be shed. so, i mentioned before that the exception to the english duty to retreat was the castle doctrine. that originates in a case in 1604, and popularizes the notion of a man's house is his castle, but while there's no reference to the race of the man authorized to defend his castle this practice the castle doctrine originates predominantly in the context of white property owners. predominantly white men. in the united states the legal conditions that exclude most women and nonwhites from access to political and economic rights and property ownership guaranteed the castle serve as a safe haven for white men and their property. so i go on to talk about he legal doctrine of cover tour, where under british chron law

when a woman was married she rehelping quiched all of her -- relinquished her property and political rights to her husband, essentially as sir william blackstone writes the very beg or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage or at least incorporated and console dated into that of her house under whose wing, protection and cover she performs everything. so hence the name covertour, the castle that married woman occupied belong to her house. she central mythology is that that married woman lives under her husband's protection within his castle. coverture has a lot of social implications. one is that a woman could not defend herself from an abusive spouse. the law allowed husbands to discipline their wives through the right of chastisement or physical punishment. according to blackstone a husband, quote, might give his

wife moderate correction, end quote. the only exception to the masculine monopoly on violence existed when a white woman protected her chastity. this had to be from a stranger, too, so there was no such thing as marital rape. this was not -- there was no acknowledgment of marital rape, when 0 woman said i do she consented to sex whenever he husband wanted it. in fact in the nation of marital rape was not you lawed until the 1990s. so this is another i would say a legal fiction in the words karla holloway you writes about the intersection of literary knowledge with legal knowledge. so, there's this right to protect her chastity. by granting men full authority over their wifes and daughters the doctrine overcoverturr coexist evidence witch set her

colonialammism and legalized slavery. talk about the way the legal doctrine is interimplicated with legalized sharery and settler colonyism. the doctrine did not and to native americans and african-americans unless they were free property owners. like coverture slave live and colonialism rest on the belief of supremacy of christian men and their their control over other human beings. the law allowed masters liberal description when it came to disciplining slaves and most slave-owning states prohibited african-americans, free as well as enslaved from owning weapons. while a few of the laws punishedmasters for outright killing their slaves, usually murder of the abusive slave masters received scant discipline by the law.

the number one incentive preventing a master from killing his slave was his monetary investment in the slave's labor. living the intersection of white supremacy and patriotic and slaved women could not legally defend themselves from most forms of violence, valued for labor and reproductive capacity which contributed to owenner's work force, enslaved women played a vital role in the economy, slave's consensual was made irrelevant but hi status as property. as the legal system coafer done tur slave si ensured the most valuable property remained under the control of white men. legal doctrines governing the hierarchical relations of husband and wife, of master and slave, one ininextricably connected and conspired to remove the nation's most

vulnerable from the level right to defend themselves. so that's the historical contes this okay of selfridge takes place him was a devoted federalist and got in this major feud with a man named benjamin often who was a democratic republican or the party of jefferson. he published a statement in the boston gazette calling austin a coward, a liar and a scoundrelism won't get into the details. they were fighting over a catering bill. >> he would be tweets it today at 3:00 a.m. >> absolutely. this was a provocative kind of gesture and result evidence in ben gentleman minimum austin threatening to send somebody to settle the score with thomas selfridge. so, selfridge armed him with a pistol because he was described as court at being weak and infirm. he said to one acquaintance he was not fit for bullying or fies

city cuffs but he was prepared to defend himself. that afternoon on august 4th, he was walking towards the public exchange on state street where he encountered austin's 18-year-old son, charles austin. charles was a stirredy, athletic young man, harvard student, and at that moment he was rapidly approaching selfridge with a cane in his upraised hand, and witnesses disagree over who made the first assault but the end result was that selfridge fired, killing austin, and selfridge was taken into police custody and arraigned for manslaughter. the end of the legal battle -- this case goes on for quite a while and receives a lot of sort of popular interest. and especially because it was political, because it was between the warring partieses or members of the wearing parties -- warring parties is received a lot of press and also

paul revere was on the jury which i find fascinating. in the lows closing arguments the defense argued that the castle doctrine's defense of habitation applied to thomas selfridge and that he had a legal right to protect himself just as people were allowed to protect their homes help said every man is bound in order to defend and protect his own life, when the government cannot do it for him. which i find resonates a lot today. so further, echoing hobbs, the defense allergid that now law created be civil society may abridge so essential and natural a right as that of self-defense. on the prosecution side, they argue that not only was it illegal to kill in defense of one's honor, the practice was incompatable with liberal democracy. he cautioned the jury against the society in which the would-be noble shall be allowed with his gold cane or elegantly

mounted pistol in defense of his honor to play a secure but mortal game. under such circumstances violent okayos would reny g supreme. all the the -- the judge's instructs to the jury upheld the duty to retreat. the judge suggested that selfridge could have escaped austin's attack through leslie that means. however his instructions did not resonate with the jury, which swiftly returned a vert verdict of not guilty. selfridge went free. so this trial becomes the precedent for all the later cases in the 19th century on the duty to retreat. is there a duty to retreat in a public space? this case says, well, actually north really. it depends on who you're talking about.

so this case provides legal foundation for the gradual decay throughout the united states of the duty to retreat. selfridge's case proved that a man violent live attacked in a public place might not be obligated to retreat before defending himself and practice, however, this was the right reserve evidence only for particular people in specific circumstances. >> you have just sketched out a genealogy of how a doctrine that allowed -- okay -- some white men because those white men that owned property to defend their property understand as a develop sile but also the -- domicile and also the property of the wife and children and slaves they might own since slaves are property. so the movement front the right to defend your property, and, again, people can be property, too -- but that it moves so the public space what found so fascinating in the selfridge case the difference is argue and self ridge attests to this as

well that somehow were he to have invested by the 18-year-old he would have lost his man lins. louse heismanly honor would have method it impossible for him to live even if he survived the beating. so there's something bet the property value of white masculinity that moved with him. so the logic of property is there in public. at least for the subject whose property rights over his self, his identity, are considered valuable. >> couldn't built any better missiles. in the smart part i read there's an invocation of if the defense of habitation which is what the castle doctrine is about. it's about your right to protect your domicile and there's a stretch of the that goes on here of the defense of habitation to the defense of white masculine honor itself. and there's so many different vectors that influence this in the early republic.

one of which, i think, is the command to spread the influence of european defended christian civilization from sea to shining sea. there's very much -- even in thomas jefferson's vision of so-called limited government, which was the heart of that debate between the federalists and the democratic republicans. >> many of us have seen the musical holiday hamilton." >> this is the next frontier. but jefferson, too, even in his sort of doctrine of limited government, was all about expanding the territory itself, like through the louisiana purchase. so, this was something that became very naturalized once the early republic takes root. so i feel like that's part of

it, too, is the expansion of property. and obviously imbedded in all of this is settler colonialism i don't spend muff time unpacking the narrowlyized forward that 0 of of course the european defended people are going to prepared their influence without regard to people who were already living in the territory. so that's part of it, too. the naturalized violence that takes place against aboriginal people. >> the naturalization, too of a notion of property that is alienable. that you can actually sell and trade and so then the licensed killing of those who have a different view of property who might not see land as property in the same way. >> exactly. >> you can kill those who don't have a notion of property because that's a violation of property or proper property. >> a sign of their lack of capacity for higher civilization. their failure to recognize value and property value, like you're saying, alienation of land, of

property. so i think that's part of it. i definitely think there's an economic principle to this as well. but the sort of long and short of it is, once this case happens, it doesn't take long throughout the 19th century for the duty to retreat to essentially become gutted, but specifically for white men, and there's a multiple times where there's appeal to white masculine vulnerability that kind after mirrors what you were saying about selfridge, the fact he is kind of weak, not fit for bullying or is in consecutive cuff -- fisticuffs and this man is vulnerable, veteran or injure or whatever, white masculine vulnerability becomes central to reasonable suspicion of threat, and that is a recurrent theme today, too this reverse

victimization narrative. >> you effective if there described injury nullification as happening right. so the jury acquits selfridge against the instruction offices the judge. this is about the question of from whose perspective is violence or fear reasonable? could you -- all right. let's fast forward to the future which is back to future begin he history, and are there are some contemporary examples our this self-defense is perpetuating racial and gender biases. >> that's what led me to do this work, is that the concept of reasonable haunts the margins all these contemporary cases right now. so when we look at what happened to trayvon martin, five years ago, his killer was acquitted based on the jury's understanding of his reasonable sense of fear and anxiety when

faced by an unarmed black teenager in a florida suburb. so, this notion of who has reasonable fear, for whom is that fear -- in the eyes of the jury it was intelligible and understandable that george zimmerman was fearful when he saw trayvon martin. i have a bunch of cases the case of mcdonald is a good illustration of how reasonable fear ends up in some ways secondtive creating a duty to retreat that continues to haunt certain groups of people. ... know how this ends,

in the court case that resulted mcdonald's maintained and many witnesses maintained she was acting in self-defense. they were attacking her. the prosecuting attorney insisted mcdonald had every opportunity to retreat to safety, which was not a stand your ground states, to retreat from danger when attacked outside the home. mcdonald's's failure to retreat made her a murderer, the scales of justice have a blindfold on them, freeman signaled the blindness of the law to human differences such as race and gender and sex, and the attack

-- using the deadly encounter was no different than ordinary bar brawl, and second-degree manslaughter sentenced to 41 months serving 19 in an all-male prison, and mcdonald was placed on trial for surviving a hate crime. so i have a bunch of cases, and there is another case of a small child, person of color, nonconforming and fights back, a woman who is a domestic violence survivor who fight against her attacker, and in a stand your

ground state, one of my conclusions is for all the reasons we were talking about, specific coding, and the adjudication of criminal law, and they don't not just help my door iced people, and they exacerbate the already powerful racial and gender justice system, and an groups of people for license to kill and excluding vast majority of us from the right to defend ourselves. >> and get cash and race neutral

and gender neutral, and the best language of liberal diversity. the law is blind, and the trans-woman, shows how neutral it is by prosecuting her that her vulnerability wasn't a factor. >> so many different cases, a case of a young trans-man, ty peterson in georgia serving a sentence, to add insult to injury the trans-individual who becomes criminalized in a prison of the gender which they don't

identify, he was criminalized because -- the evidence of his favor, did not have the money to appoint great attorney, the court-appointed attorney did not tell about stand your ground, not that it exonerated him, so many layers to this, just about racial exclusion or patriarchal exclusions, homophobic, class element whereby if you lack the resources, and run the risk of being criminalized, happens a lot to survivors who fight back against violent partners. >> i want to mention one more

and open up some conversation with the audience, this i found an extraordinary case, whitley jones, african-american woman in south carolina, she defended herself, ended up in defense, he died, initially churches were not to be brought against her, acted reasonably in the doctrine of stand your ground and state appeals the decision not to charge but what i found extraordinary was attorney for the state -- times together a lot of the things you have been

telling us about, less than a man's right to stand his ground with streeter he got into a fight with this is an african-american woman at the intersection of racism and sexism, and disadvantage in terms of how the law proceeds. >> the law working the way it was supposed to, there were witnesses, abused by this man, tried to escape, only killed when she couldn't get away and at the stand your ground hearing, acted -- the state prosecutors came after her with

guns blazing and the statement summarizes everything these laws were never intended to protect women from domestic violence in the man's castle, and design against stranger danger. and the goal of the book is to illuminate, and that provokes us to think we need to be individually precipitating on citizenship against different -- and undocumented immigrants, the litany of thrusts that were supposed to be afraid of. and these laws were not to

protect them. and has remained -- a free woman, and get her into prison. >> the issue of stranger danger, so many characters proposed, and solicitation of fear, and certain citizens are not being deputized in ways that were violent. >> whether we were talking about border patrol, or leasing of

public bathrooms. policing borders and invocations of protection we started with and an invocation to a particularly racialized gendered protection of white women, and justified the lynching of 4000 african-americans, invocation of the urgent need to protect women and recurrent sort of echoes of that, fears around bathrooms and to threaten women and children, these are recurrent themes and i hope by excavating the history we can be more mindful when they crop up time after time.

>> let's open -- with the audience here. >> just wondering, hearing all this what can be done, not just what should be done, what we do. >> any ideas? >> the book is not prescriptive, i don't have words of wisdom in what we need to do, one of the things i am starting to see his anti-violence has to think constitutionally, being violence not just as one thing but when i wrote this, guns play a role in

a lot of these story. to look at vectors of violence when connected and domestic violence and the way in which this is connected to mass incarceration and erosion of social safety net and violent policeing and racial profiling. these things are connected and need to be self-critical about the way in which we engage certain kinds of practices that become naturalized like the stranger danger, it becomes very seductive to imagine we can protect ourselves -- the narrative you as an individual

can take safety into our own hands and a lot of people follow that. and collectively and constellation only about the sources of violence. >> what is the language to describe actions in a world. and actions to defend themselves, who would get called justice for defending freedom. it is a deep question. what gets named violence is historical, context found and let's not assume we know what violence is and history really

helps, a complicated view of the present, one thing that caroline was talking about was talking about the black panther party and crucial role it plays in the history of civil rights in this country and the way the organization has been characterized in some history as violent as non-law-abiding and making useful law in deeply creative ways against white supremacy and if the system is organized, those that are white don't even recognize, groups that stand up for themselves to fight against it. for the privilege of our skin acting violently against us when

it is acting in accord with ideals of justice or freedom. from whose perspective do these stories get told? >> an excellent point about the language used because one thing i noticed is the way the language of rioting gets used, incidents that are called race riots, episodes in which white supremacist violence destroys black communities and the black panther party lives in -- it is violent or antiwhite when in reality core principles were social justice for white supremacists, power and violence. i need to be careful how i am using violent too but we can be

more self reflective as we think about naturalized understanding of violence versus justice. >> i love the way you use these early legal cases to flesh out what has become obviousness for american public life. it is important not to think a lot is determinative of any way to think about things and conceptual resources, what other languages do we get to use outside the court of law? >> it is a different language, cabin what i am saying. >> do you see a connection between the legal history of stand your ground laws and

trump's immigration policy? is there a connection between the domicile and extension to the homeland? and the preservation of white masculinity? >> that is a great question, thank you. so many levels, absolutely. one of the necessary factors in the discourse of armed citizenship is the creation of categories of alienation and strangerhood, sarah writes beautifully about the conceptualization of a stranger other, this is this idea of the security threat to the border that is amplified in the wake of 9/11 and naturalized knowledge and insecurity, in the wake of

9/11 especially, in new york city, we become fearful, we become terrified, borders released and very convenient to invoke these figures of alienation and danger and use them as justification for draconian and incredibly cool exclusionary laws. so many different levels. the implication of the homeland, slippage between defense of habitation and defense of the entire homeland you can see when you look at border patrol, dip utilization of civilians, arms white civilians to patrol the border against so-called illegal immigrants serves the same constellation of exclusion that concentrates power into

particular already propertied hands. >> i was thinking about reading the book, thinking about, you can tell me the exact quote but this notion of good guy with a gun will always be the bad guy is one of the things you said is the ability to identify we know who the bad guys are produces a sense of ourselves as a good guy. we need these bad options that define us and our goodness and in connection to simplicity, and extraordinary and for many of us, critical and aghast at his policies. the simplicity of the speech in the caricature works brilliantly to tag in a broadway huge groups of people and lack of

specificity makes it work. to magnetize whoever you put in there to be scared of and correlates it to the border so it is a good use of language, reducing division to justify violence. >> the fuzziness of those boundaries that anybody can fit into that category. that is a great point and that has been a long-standing tradition of the armed citizenship rhetoric that those good guys can always tell the difference between the good guys and bad guys. it is entrenched in that idea, a good guy with a gun at the pulse nightclub in florida, if only, all those people would have been saved and there is on a fantasy level, you have psychoanalytic theory to help out a little bit but on a fantasy level people want to do good and want to be

heroes and a lot of this discourse of armed citizenship is about being that hero, becoming your ad -- your own action hero where you have your gun come in the right place at the right time and managed to take out the bad guy and that comes up, that is a recurrent theme of good guys that are going to find the bad guys and identify them, take them out before they harm the innocent citizens. >> if you go with melanie klein, the purely good and purely bad is hard to live and acknowledge the ways in which we fall short of our own ideals, aggressive not only towards people we don't know and strangers to us whose differences we might find confusing but aggressive feelings toward people we love. one way to live with it is in an unconscious way to be

manipulated on a larger scale, the negative feelings we find unbearable and destabilizing transferred to ready-made objects who we learned are safe to hate and it is possible to live in the space of discomfort and not have to act out but going into bad, it has catastrophic consequences, not just at the level of fantasy, some bear the brunt of being the bad object so others feel like we are good citizens. >> that category is growing, proliferating. >> to what extent do you see this as uniquely american, when we think about nonviolence, i associate that with availability

of weapons, but america is the only colonial or imperial power, this comes from english law, how is it different in the united states? >> that is a great point, we have more guns then people and that is unusual. we have something like 5% of the world population, we have half of the guns, we are overachievers, and mass shootings. astronomically more mass shootings than any other nation, our mass shootings, mass shootings typically are enacted by angry white men.

that somehow gets lost amid the efforts to create these ready-made bad objects that are safe to hate. i don't know but i think part of it is corporate. part of it is very deliberate effort in the past couple decades, gun manufacturers find new ways to market the technology, given waiting interest in hunting. several decades back hunting was the number one reason for owning a firearm. now people say the number one reason is self-defense. a lot of that perception of urgent fear and anxiety is rooted in a manufactured effort to create a need for a particular commodity. i don't know. this is a sticky question, why did this happen in the united

states? the whole variety of interlocking, normalized ideas about safety and individualism and subjectivity, every man for himself. >> what you said about the long tradition, glorification of the individual in the united states is struck, you put that together with who is going to buy the weapons now. and a lot of hunting culture in the united states. and cultivate the new market. and how neoliberalism sets in.

the government is retreating. and and put that alongside the ideology and distrust government. and defense of individual insult bootstraps, you have a lot of trends together that produced orientation towards gun ownership. it is hugely helpful. >> given the shrinking of the welfare state. these are parallel. that explosion of do it yourself citizenship correlates with the late capitalist retreat from social welfare and one of the symptoms of this is increased

militarization. militarization of police forces, less investment in training or trying to counteract implicit bias and more investment in better weaponry are more advanced weaponry, militarization of citizenry, and the posse on the border so all of these are symptoms of the same neoliberal turn to self-care, that is compatible with arming yourself. >> goes back to the question what is to be done? people are not hallucinating. many people are more insecure. than they were a decade ago. how is one called to respond to that insecurity? with what resources and who is responsible to help with a shared insecurity? if you individualize the responsibility and sell weapons at the same time you have a recipe for a lot of violence.

>> picking up the question, i am convinced, generalizing, have you thought about the nature of the split in the united states between urban and rural, and the product of liana's age and of a kind of rural america, and these generalizations work if you think about urban populations, which are not as heavily armed. most examples are centered in a rural population that still

hunts but i need my guns for self-defense. one of the cases i think about that goes beyond what you do in the book is the incident at the national wildlife refuge. these guys who are angry and fearful, hate the bureau of land management, they own this land and the federal facility, and they are overrun, but within a year, they are acquitted. it happens in jefferson county out there in rural oregon. it is really weird but i wonder if you have reflections on the nuance of the american quality

by looking at urban, rural. >> great question. i don't know. i really don't. in my book i have a mix example, different cases and a report on chicago, really interesting case, illinois was the last state for concealed carry permits, in all 50 states you have a concealed carry permit or permitless scary if you have one that has constitutional carry, gun violence in chicago and particular areas is an intractable problem when you look at the cauldron of underserved communities, withdrawal of social safety net

of various forms, gang violence, hyperincarceration and police violence, really intractable problem and there is a real difference. the only time i spend on the difference between rural versus urban in the chapter i am looking at african-american resistance, armed resistance and the interesting thing i find, we talked about the black panther party, precursors were rural, the first black civil rights organization to be armed and stand up to white supremacy with weapons according to the law happens in the rural self, row, north carolina, different rural

areas in mississippi and alabama. yet we don't hear about those in our history books as much as we did the black panther party which gets demonized as being antiwhite or violent. in terms of, quote, riots, mostly in urban phenomena and as well but i don't know what to say about the difference in the translation from rural to urban in terms of armed citizenship. >> the trial occur in portland, and was characterized rural. and the self-defense argument,

and and how they were selected. >> it doesn't really matter. i find and they don't matter as much as prevailing ideology and what is reasonable. in zimmerman, and many other trials. and to be fearful in a particular moment. in a way i got that surprised but it is interesting in the city, this is a reasonable set of behavior. and they are lionized, they become the action he rose of do it yourself security citizenship for many people who believe that should be our right.

>> i was wondering if you thought about the relationship between all of this and the rise of plea-bargaining in the united states. there are often terribles, i am thinking isn't it incredibly dangerous to have defense counseling, operating based on their own direction of this pathway, how did you find that impasse? >> especially with domestic violence cases, i am not a legal scholar. learning as i go, we can talk about this, a lot of domestic violence survivors were instructed that it is the best way to get out of serving more

prison time. that influences the shape of the archives, influences the way in which we see these as stand your ground cases of something else whether it is justifiable homicide, and straight on criminal homicide. people who recognize they are less likely to be perceived as reasonable and claims of fear will often plead down or be instructed to do so, and class and resources and whether you have the money to hire a great defense attorney. and and exercising their right

to defend themselves. >> looking at historical context, the historical definition, and how it gets amplified, in terms of something, and community to protect that uniform. and what do you think about that. >> how policing is focused on public safety which is very much code for protecting property.

in ferguson, the major transgressions that call out law enforcement are when people destroy private property whether it is automobiles or stores or whatever that these are seen as transgressions against public safety rather than transgressions on public safety. there is a call to protect private property for sure. another thing with law enforcement, or what i found historically, one of them is for law enforcement it is a much lower bar. in the case of a police shooting, of an unarmed citizen a much lower bar, for the police to be exonerated based on reasonable fear and self-defense.

it claim self-defense after shooting and unarmed civilian it is easier to get exonerated and has been for a long time. this has a long genealogy. there is also a lot of disturbing stuff i found about post-reconstruction, policing in the south, police forces in southern states proliferated in the wake of black liberation in response to what was perceived as the threat to public safety of black freedom itself so policing emerges in certain southern jurisdictions in response to that. none of that is surprising to me except the extent to which now we have recording devices readily at our disposal. we can record these instances of police violence and just as elusive. a day and a half ago in

california, and off-duty white police officer basically was trying to hold on to this child, latino boy ended up pulling a gun on him and shooting, a 30-year-old boy and 15-year-old friend trying to intervene are facing criminal charges. the police officer hasn't been charged with anything. if you look at this video it is shocking as an adult, grown man brutalizing a small child. i don't know what to say about it that it is absolutely imbued with notions of property and who has the right to own their property and protect it? the man was attacking the child

because the child on his property. it comes up again and again. >> can we have a happy ending? to turn away from what i think is being urgent and sobering, history has many things to tell us, which bodies can be targeted including lethal violence. it is not about a happy ending but better futures together and thank you for being in conversation with me. >> and in the service of selling books find any book. >> any of these books on legal

theory and evidence. >> thank you so much, caroline light and ann pellegrini, thank you for being here. we have a book ann pellegrini had co-authored that you can tell just by looking, and 20 other myth about lgbt life and people. they are on sale this evening. thank you for being here and hope to see you again soon. may we have good times. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> sunday night on afterwords sheldon whitehouse examines how government is impacted by corporate money and special interest books in his book captured, the corporate infiltration of american democracy. he's interviewed by eric lipton. >> when you have one corporate front group spending several hundred million dollars plus in the last election and threatening planning to spend $400 million in the next election and the midterms, that is a huge footprint and there is a lot more going on behind it. and the long-term effort of the republican party to put so-called business for the judges in the court so that the

courts become increasingly hostile to regular folks and increasingly interested in protecting corporations. >> watch afterward sunday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span2's booktv. >> our visit to chico, california continues with robert cottrell as he explores the counterculture of the 1960s and influential people and movements. >> the rise of america's 1960s counterculture. my book "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll: the rise of america's 1960s counterculture" focuses on the whole of american bulimia to a certain extent which i talk about early progenitors, edgar allan paul, i talk about members of