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How did the US get so many guns?
Episode 2100

How did the US get so many guns?

Andrew C McKevitt charts the forces behind the postwar weaponry boom which has seen US civilian gun ownership skyrocket

HistoryExtra podcast · Immediate

September 29, 202448m 17s

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Show Notes

Today there are an estimated 450 million guns in civilian hands in the United States – ten times the number than at the end of the Second World War. But how did that conflict spark a weaponry boom? And what are the social and economic currents that have led the US to have more guns than people? Matt Elton speaks to Andrew C McKevitt, whose Cundill History Prize-shortlisted book Gun Country explores these questions.



(Ad) Andrew C McKevitt is the author of Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023). Buy it now from Amazon:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gun-Country-Capitalism-Culture-Control/dp/1469677245/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty.



Find out more about the Cundill History Prize here: https://www.cundillprize.com


The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.

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