Focusing on police chiefs in three states, this study revisits the Weberian presumption of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. Seventy-nine interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michigan, and California allow for an examination of their understanding of gun policy. Analysis reveals that they selectively embrace two frames of the state’s relationship with legitimate violence: gun militarism for criminal gun activity associated with black and brown communities and drug- and gang-related crime and gun populism with respect to lawfully gun-owning Americans, often marked as white and middle class. Sensitive to state-level sociolegal regimes, gun populism takes the form of antielitism in gun-restrictive California, crime-fighting by proxy in gun-permissive Michigan, and co-policing in gun-lax Arizona. The racial politics of legitimate violence intersect with state-level gun policies selectively to erode police chiefs’ investment in the state’s monopoly on violence, demonstrating that gun politics is pertinent not only for understanding violence in the United States but also for understanding the racial complexity of U.S. policing.

中文翻译：

---

重新审视韦伯假设：枪支军国主义、枪支民粹主义和警务中合法暴力的种族政治

本研究以三个州的警察局长为重点，重新审视韦伯式的假设，即国家垄断合法暴力。对亚利桑那州、密歇根州和加利福尼亚州的警察局长进行了 79 次采访，以检验他们对枪支政策的理解。分析表明，他们有选择地接受了国家与合法暴力关系的两个框架：针对与黑人和棕色社区相关的犯罪枪支活动的枪支军国主义以及与合法拥有枪支的美国人有关的毒品和帮派犯罪和枪支民粹主义，通常被标记为作为白人和中产阶级。对州级社会法律制度敏感，枪支民粹主义在枪支限制的加利福尼亚采取反精英主义的形式，在枪支许可的密歇根州通过代理人打击犯罪，在枪支宽松的亚利桑那州采取联合警务的形式。