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Is it possible to break the cycle of gun consumerism and violence? Any substantive effort to do so must acknowledge the deep roots in the postwar era of our contemporary crisis. There’s an irony in saying that: Americans across the political spectrum already believe their gun culture has deep historical roots, buried far down in the soil of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But our guns-everywhere society would not exist without the postwar boom of gun consumerism, just as our fear-everywhere society would not exist without the Cold War and racial anxieties teaching us to fear our neighbors or our government of the people. The postwar world forged the gun country as much as did the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century developments that typically get all the credit.

— Gun Country by Andrew C. McKevitt

The twenty-first century witnessed a perfect storm of racialized gun capitalism: perpetual fear of terrorists and foreign others; endless overseas wars; the end of the ban on assault rifles and companion legislation to protect companies that marketed them as instruments of militarized personal violence; a stream of entertainment that fetishized weapons of war; and, in the 2010s, the popular resurgence of the Black freedom movement in the form of Black Lives Matter.

— Gun Country by Andrew C. McKevitt

The AR-15 is infinitely customizable, and a booming industry of manufacturers stand at the ready to supply countless modifications that allow owners to feel like they’ve built a special weapon all their own. They’re “Lego sets for anyone old enough to shoot a machine designed for offensive military operations,” in the words of a former industry insider; others in the industry referred to the AR-15 as the “Barbie doll of guns” because of the marketing of a multitude of mix-and-match accessories. As a consumer subculture, then, AR-15s are not all that different from car culture or motorcycle culture or computer culture or even the high-stakes Beanie Baby subculture of the 1990s. This powerful consumerist appeal is one reason why the NRA calls the AR-15 “America’s Rifle.” It is the preferred rifle of the American consumer-citizen playacting as a citizen-soldier.

— Gun Country by Andrew C. McKevitt

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…

— The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer

He found that he had this sudden desperate longing for the fuming, smoky streets of Ankh-Morpork, which was always at its best in the spring, when the gummy sheen on the turbid waters of the Ankh River had a special iridescence and the eaves were full of birdsong, or at least birds coughing rhythmically

— The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer