For the fourth year in a row, Rob Pincus visited my Sociology of Guns course at Wake Forest University. Pincus is a mainstay among the guest lecturers in this course in part because he can speak intelligently to a broad range of issues (training, politics, the NRA, suicide, gun rights and responsibilities).
He’s really a gun educator more than a gun trainer, per se.
He also goes far out of his way to make it to class, twice driving the 500 miles from St. Augustine, Florida to Winston-Salem, North Carolina the morning of class, and once doing it as a round trip in a single day! (At his own expense, I should add.)
This year I asked Pincus to come in the week we were talking about negative outcomes with guns, and the related issue of gun rights and responsibilities.
Pincus offered my students the perspective of someone who is 100% in support of the Second Amendment and 100% in support of gun owner responsibility for preventing negative outcomes. Rather than legislating responsible behavior, Pincus favors normative change within gun culture, making irresponsible behavior not illegal but culturally unacceptable.
Central to his message was gun owners’ responsibility to prevent unauthorized access to one’s firearms. As we were discussing suicide the week he visited, he highlighted that the person who should not be accessing one’s firearms could be oneself.
In the wide ranging Q&A with students, the issue of mandatory training came up. This had been previously raised when John Johnston and Melody Lauer visited earlier in the semester, as the students read about concealed carry “training” in chapter 5 of my book, Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America. (Don’t forget to leave those 5 star reviews after you buy it!)
Obviously some of the students are still trying to get their minds around the idea that mandatory training should not be required for gun ownership or carry. Pincus recorded his answer to this question and made it available on YouTube.
I’m grateful that thoughtful people like Rob Pincus and John Johnston and Melody Lauer and Craig Douglas and Randy Miyan (this year) take time from their busy schedules to talk to my students. If you want to help offset the cost of this, please consider throwing a few drinks my way so I can throw some food and drinks their way.
Gun Culture 2.0 