Although I have not made as much progress on it as some of the other chapters, one of the planned chapters of my Gun Culture 2.0 book will address the issue of risk. Hence, my scattered blog posts about the issue of risk. These include my thoughts about assessing risk in the decision to carry … Continue reading
I have been critical of psycho-sexual analyses of guns. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a gun is just a gun. But thanks (but not really) to Tac-Sac (and thanks to Patrick Blanchfield for pointing this out at the Gun Studies Symposium I am attending at the University of Arizona today), I have to admit that sometimes … Continue reading
Pocket pistols are all the rage today and, as I have written previously, this can give the impression that they are a new phenomenon. But, of course, they are not. To the contrary, they are much older than I ever knew. I learned this recently while visiting the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum at Colonial … Continue reading
I shot two replica muzzle loaders yesterday at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. I am guest lecturing on religion and guns and gun culture in two classes today at the College of William and Mary, so I drove up to Williamsburg yesterday. My host mentioned that Colonial Williamsburg opened a musket range in spring 2016. … Continue reading
This past summer I was asked to write the concluding chapter for a book on Understanding American Gun Culture. The book was the product of a conference I wanted but was unable to attend and so I was happy to get involved after the fact. The book’s editors asked me to ponder the question, what’s … Continue reading
For those who don’t want to read 1,000+ words on the issue, here is the bottom Line: In my considered opinion, it makes sense to use the following terms to describe different events, from most specific to most general: Mass public killing: Event in which a large number of people (mass) in a public or … Continue reading
A while back, Professor Adam Lankford (Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Alabama) sent me an open letter to the media and asked if I would sign my name to it. I, along with 146 other scholars, agreed. The letter (reprinted in full below) asks the media “to take a principled stand in … Continue reading
