Stand your ground : a history of America's love affair with lethal self-defense / Caroline E. Light.

Author's note. Mom the sharpshooter
Introduction : when good citizenship is armed citizenship
"That great law of nature" : the origins of a selective self-defense culture
Defensive violence and the "true man" : the end of reconstruction and the duty to retreat
"Mighty power in the hands of the citizen" : justice and true manhood in the western borderlands
"Queer justice" and the sexual politics of lynching
"An American tradition" : the Black paramilitary response to white supremacist terror and unequal protection
"The stuff of pulp fiction" : unreasonable women, vigilante heroes, and the rise of the armed citizen
Avoiding a "a fate worse than death" : how we learned to stand our ground
Conclusion : kill or be killed, an American mantra.