Gun nation: Inside America's gun-carry culture

Yet a little defiance of government authority is mixed in there as well. "The Democratic Party in many ways overinvested in symbolic legislation on gun control, which explains the backlash from hunters or people who have a legitimate reason to feel unsafe and want a gun by their bedside," says Sanford Levinson, a University of Texas constitutional law professor and expert on the Second Amendment. "But the more important thing is what the Republican Party has done over 25 years, which is to really delegitimize national government and make people feel that the national government is not merely incompetent, but also likely to be antagonistic and maybe even tyrannical."

The 9/11 attacks reinforced the view among many Americans that dark forces lurk in society that people need to defend themselves against. While the overall violent crime rate is down, a recent poll by Rasmussen Reports showed that 72 percent of Americans feel that local crime will increase in the near term. Some experts say this generalized anxiety is reflected in the popularity of movies and TV shows about zombies and similar topics. The grim mood hasn't gone unnoticed by ammo manufacturers, one of which is trying to capitalize on the zeitgeist by selling a line of Zombie Max cartridges and shells.

Paul Valone is another reason America is more heavily armed today. One day in 1994, Mr. Valone, an airline pilot, was watching lawmakers on C-SPAN press their case for an assault weapons ban in Congress. Outraged, he called around to various gun rights groups to find out what he could do. Frustrated with their response, he eventually launched his own group, Grass Roots North Carolina, which has evolved into a potent lobbying force in the state.

While many people automatically assume the expansion of gun rights is linked to the power of the National Rifle Association (NRA) – which does remain a magnum political force in Washington and across much of the country – others say it is the effectiveness of smaller, and often more uncompromising, groups like Valone's that are shifting the debate. Many of them are run by just a handful of committed activists who spread their frequently tart messages through pamphlets, blogs, and massive e-mail lists.

It was Valone's group, for instance, that largely wrote the state's recently passed park carry law and a more general concealed weapons statute before that. When a bill mandating stricter storage for guns at home was introduced in the state legislature in 2001, Grass Roots North Carolina helped defeat it by branding the measure as "the rapist protection act."

Currently, the group is pushing to expand the concealed carry law so people can bring guns into restaurants. It is also in court trying to thwart the ability of authorities to suspend concealed-carry permits during declared emergencies. The lawsuit stems from an incident a few years ago in King, N.C., where a looming snowstorm sparked a temporary weapons ban out of concern that people in the middle of a crisis may be too quick to solve problems with the barrel of a gun.

Similarly, in 2010, Gov. Bev Perdue (D) prohibited carrying guns in public in anticipation of the arrival of hurricane Earl, which coincided with hunting season. Grass Roots North Carolina argues she turned 11,000 dove hunters into criminals.

"People like to explain all of this away as the gun lobby doing its work, but it's really peasants with pitchforks," says Valone. "We were the tea party before the tea party was cool."

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