Before I sneak off to SHOT Show next week, I will be starting the spring semester at Wake Forest University. As I have for the past four academic years, I will be teaching my Sociology of Guns seminar. A copy of this year’s syllabus is available HERE. One modification I made in Version 5.0 was …
I have said it before, on this blog and in scholarly publications (also here), but I will say it again: It is no exaggeration to say that sociologists are only interested in guns and gun culture to the extent that they are related to crime, violence, and social inequality. Now, to be fair, sociologists are …
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 …
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, …
Judging from what I saw at the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s 2019 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, concealed carry products for women continue to be a hot retail category. I discussed this in my series of posts from the 2016 United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) Concealed Carry Expo and in the book … Continue reading
Though I am excited to have launched a new blog recently, GUN CURIOUS, I have not forgotten about this blog and my unfinished series of posts on the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show last month. The first gun I owned that I shot regularly was my CZ Redhead 12 … Continue reading
I have previously observed that the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey (GSS) underestimates the rate of gun ownership in the United States. This is a product both of non-response (people who do not answer the “do you own a gun question”) and denial (false negatives) among people who are actually gun owners. Iowa … Continue reading
Over 7 years and nearly 700 posts on this blog, I have gotten deeper and deeper into American gun culture. I began blogging in 2012 as a complete outsider, but traveling to the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show last month, I realized that I have “gone native,” as anthropologists say. (At the SHOT Show, … Continue reading
I first met John Correia back when he only had 600,000 subscribers to his Active Self Protection YouTube page (he now has 1.3 MILLION). Back when he was still pastoring a church. Back when Active Self Protection was a side hustle. Back before he was profiled in The Atlantic magazine. Amazingly, all that was just … Continue reading
Some readers of this blog know I have a side hustle stringing tennis rackets, including for Wake Forest University’s men’s tennis team. In 2016, the team played in the NCAA Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During my free time, my wife and I visited the site of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 in which whites … Continue reading
I have previously attended the National Rifle Association annual meeting twice. Exhibitors and attendees at that show are not very diverse. In my estimation, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show is even less diverse. The faces in the crowd in the picture above and every other picture I have … Continue reading
