Jennifer Carlson’s contribution to our “Understanding Gun Violence” series discusses why it is essential for a broad range of social science approaches to work on the question of gun violence, and how the topic itself can deepen social science concepts and questions. Focusing on sociology, Carlson brings the analytical lenses of masculinity and race to understand gun ownership under shifting socioeconomic conditions. She also shows how a research focus on private gun ownership can complicate classic sociological debates around the nature of the state and its purported monopoly on legitimate force.