Logging My Decade Wandering Around American Gun Culture (2011-Present) (Updated May 2023)

I have been wandering around American gun culture for almost over a decade now, from the first time I shot a gun back in January 2011 to the N-th time I have gone shooting just this morning earlier this month.

An occupational hazard (such as it is) of scholarship is the more you know about a subject, the more you realize you don’t know. So, despite my extensive research on Gun Culture 2.0, I have a hard time convincing myself that I know enough to speak as an expert. This has prevented me from making as much progress on my book project as I would have hoped. But in the past two few years I have been finding my voice and making progress.

Trying to bring some closure to the research phase of my project and build some momentum to get writing, in 2020 I went back over the past 9 years and created a spreadsheet with all of the major fieldwork sites and events I have participated in or observed.

Since then, I have been updating the spreadsheet regularly, which can access here in this Google Sheet.

I know this list is incomplete (there are some North Carolina CCW courses I attended that I cannot find my notes for) and I will update it as possible. That said, my recorded time “in the field” totals 726.5 799.5 805.5 hours. About two-thirds of this is pure observation (504.5 526 hours) and roughly one-third is participation (222 273.5 279.5 hours). In 21 of the 71 29 of the 84 30 of 85 events logged I engaged in live fire. (I have discussed the pros and cons of participation vs. observation previously, here and here.)

Grappling in Extreme Close Quarters Combat course with Craig Douglas, March 2019. Photo by Sandra Stroud Yamane

This list does not include hundreds of hours of television programs, DVDs, and streaming videos I have watched, podcasts I have listened to or participated in, mundane visits to gun ranges and stores, class field trips to the gun store/range, and so on.

It does convey the breadth of what I have examined so far, and gives me some confidence that I can translate these observations into some knowledge for the masses.

Although I’ve more than exceeded my budget for this research, there are just a few more people/classes/topics I would like to explore that I think are really important to understand where gun culture is and is going:

• [NOTE: SINCE THE ORIGINAL POST, R.I.P. WILLIAM APRILL] “Unthinkable” with William Aprill. Major oversight in V1.0 of this post. I have been wanting to observe his full class forever!
• Medical class (perhaps with someone like Caleb Causey of Lone Star Medics)
• Knife class (perhaps with someone like Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training)
• Home defense shotgun class (perhaps with Tim Chandler of Justified Defensive Concepts)
• Pepper spray class (perhaps with someone like Chuck Haggard of Agile Training)

There are many big name trainers — some of whom I know personally — who have been on my “bucket list” but financially they are probably not in the cards at this point.

To be sure, if anyone looks at my spreadsheet and sees something obviously missing, please let me know!