Abigail Kohn’s book, Shooters, attempts to challenge the preconceptions associated with shooters, a term preferred to the description ‘gun enthusiast’.  Media representations label gun owners as “gun nuts” and “sickos” (Preface) but Kohn tries to study American gun culture from the position of the pro-gun advocates and organisations to find out why they are so passionate about guns and gun-related activities.  Kohn does this through extensive research into gun culture, conducting in-depth interviews with many shooters as well as spending fourteen months attending shooting ranges, gun shops and competitions.

Shooters is a useful starting point when considering gun culture. Kohn begins by explaining what ‘gun enthusiasm’ actually involves as well as briefly discussing what guns represent to some gun enthusiasts, although this is also discussed generally throughout the book.  Through describing the various competitions and activities that shooters participate in, Kohn then reveals to the reader the extent to which guns play a part in shooters’ lives, resulting in the shooters engaging in a separate world - the world of gun enthusiasm.

Kohn’s interviews suggest that the shooters’ enthusiasm for guns comes from the notion that guns help them to discover their identity because it has connotations of nation and power, which the predominantly white middle-class shooters do not feel they have in contemporary multi-cultural America.  Whilst Kohn herself tries to perform the role of mediator between pro-gun and pro-gun control or anti-gun, this is conflicted by her role as a vehicle through which the shooters can defend themselves and their enthusiasm for guns.  This results in Kohn offering a detailed but ultimately very biased account of the gun culture in America, which only seems to take into account the experiences of the mainly white, middle-class Americans who enjoy guns recreationally.  Their reasons against gun control, basically that it is un-American, means that whilst their enthusiasm is appreciated, it is difficult to sympathise with their complaints against gun control or anti-gun organisations.