Jennifer Carlson

Jennifer Carlson is a Professor of Sociology at Arizona State University, and a MacArthur Fellow (Class of 2022). Her award-winning work examines the politics of guns in American life, including those who survive gun violence’s harrowing aftermath, police who enforce the country’s complex gun laws, gun sellers and retailers who are on the front lines of surges in gun purchasing, and the people who choose to own and carry guns. She is the author of Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline (2015, Oxford University Press), Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Public Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race (2020, Princeton University Press), and Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of Democracy (2023, Princeton University Press). Her academic articles have appeared in the leading sociology and law & society journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, Social Forces, and Law & Society Review. Beyond academia, Carlson has contributed to the public conversation on guns in a variety of platforms, from NPR and PBS to the Aspen Ideas Festival, and she has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.  She is currently the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant examining the experiences of gun violence survivors in Florida and California.