Most podcasts on which I appear are streamed and recorded live. Celine Gounder’s podcast, by contrast, is more highly produced. She interviewed me in early April for the new season of “In Sickness and In Health” which focuses on gun violence. When she reached out to me, I made clear that my scholarly expertise is …
2017 was a terrific year for my research on American gun culture. I didn’t accomplish everything I had hoped, but I did more than I could reasonably expect. Although I didn’t quite reach my goal of doubling this blog’s readership in 2017, I came pretty close. I have already written about my personal favorites and …
I am very happy to report that my second academic article on gun culture was published today in the journal Sociology Compass (my first was on religion and gun ownership). Thanks to a generous grant from Wake Forest University’s ZSR Library and the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, “The Sociology of U.S. Gun Culture” …
I love whisk(e)y. My love knows almost no boundaries. American, Canadian, Indian, Irish, Japanese, Scotch, Texas. Barley, corn, rye, wheat. Neat, rocks, mixed. To fuel my love I have been reading Reid Mitenbuler’s recent book, Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America’s Whiskey. Early on, Mitenbuler introduces the first alcohol distiller among the British …
I recently completed the Massad Ayoob Group’s MAG-40 course, “Armed Citizens’ Rules of Engagement,” co-sponsored by Derby Guns of Scottsdale (shout out to Kate and Jim Kreuger!). This is the course Ayoob used to teach under the auspices of the Lethal Force Institute in New Hampshire. (A review of the LFI course written in 1999 …
For the first 42 years of life, I had never even handled a real gun, much less shot one. My experience was limited to shooting BB guns as a teenagers. We would usually shoot at cans, but one day I took aim at a bird that was too far away to hit, pulled the trigger, …
The challenge of decision making with a gun is heightened in a society in which many people — military, sworn law enforcement, security guards, private citizens, and criminals — have and carry guns. Some, like Franklin Zimring in his book When Police Kill, argue that the ubiquity of guns forces law enforcement officers to treat every encounter … Continue reading
Shooting a gun is relatively easy. The number of toddlers who have shot and killed themselves and others is ample evidence of that. Shooting a gun with enough accuracy for most self-defense situations is also simpler than it might seem. Ask those who took basic gun training courses with Tom Givens and successfully defended their … Continue reading
I was skeptical when Paul Carlson of Safety Solutions Academy invited me to attend a shoothouse course he was putting together for members of the gun media at Alliance Police Training. In addition to not exactly being a member of the gun media, the focus of my work is specifically on civilian armed self-defense as … Continue reading
Almost 8 years ago, I shot a gun for the first time, not because I was interested in guns, but because I was afraid of them. Exactly 6 years ago, in November 2012, I took my first gun training course: Massad (Mas) Ayoob’s MAG-40. (See also the funny and informative case of Mas testing the … Continue reading
I received some pleasant news from the publisher of my article on “The Sociology of U.S. Gun Culture” this morning: It is one of the Top 20 most downloaded articles published since July 2016. In the article I argue that there really is no existing sociology of gun culture because we have been too focused … Continue reading
I found some extra material that got left out of my first three posts (here and here and here) reflecting on Matthew Ford’s study of military small arms innovation. So this is a bonus post reflecting on the idea of “Gucci kit” applied to those who carry concealed. Recalling Ford’s definition of Gucci kit (taken … Continue reading
This is the third of three posts reflecting on the civilian defensive firearms lessons to be learned from Matthew Ford’s book about military small arms innovations. Part 1 considered balancing competing features of weapons, ballistic science and lethality, and Part 2 looked at the implications of how the “battlefield” is defined. This third post considers … Continue reading
