Of my three goals for 2018, my goal of shooting competition comes largely from Kevin Creighton of the Misfires and Light Strikes blog. I have written a lot about Col. Jeff Cooper’s central role in establishing the civilian gun training industry which played a central role in the supplanting of Gun Culture 1.0 by Gun … Continue reading
Later this week I will be attending a Gun Studies Symposium at the University of Arizona in Tucson, organized by Jennifer Carlson, Kristen Goss, and Harel Shapira. The symposium includes a Who’s Who of scholars who have studied guns for decades, including Philip Cook (Duke), David Kopel (Denver Law), Robert Spitzer (CUNY), Frank Zimring (Berkeley), … Continue reading
Question: Why do people own guns? Surveys typically offer people several options to describe their motivations, usually including: hunting, collecting, recreation, and personal protection or self-defense. Over the past 20 years, self-defense has replaced hunting as the primary reason for gun ownership for Americans. Some surveys allow people to list multiple reasons, for example the … Continue reading
Reasons for owning, getting into, carrying and shooting guns — topics of my first three posts about the Pew Research Center’s new report, Exploring America’s Complex Relationship with Guns — are good indicators of involvement in American gun culture. But in consulting with the Pew team as they were designing their survey, I also suggested … Continue reading
On June 22nd, while I was deeply immersed in my observations of a 250 Defensive Pistol course at Gunsite Academy, the Pew Research Center released a research report called America’s Complex Relationship with Guns. I was particularly interested in the report because back in February I consulted with the Pew Research Center team about my … Continue reading
Continuing my thinking about recreational gun culture as serious leisure that began with hunting, target/sport shooting is the main reason for gun ownership for a nearly 1 in 10 gun owners, and is a primary reason for gun ownership for as many as 3 in 10 gun owners. In 2004 her book, Shooters, Abigail Kohn … Continue reading
I have mentioned previously that part of documenting the rise of Gun Culture 2.0 is an analysis of changes in the themes present in gun advertising over time. To that end, I have been collecting one randomly selected issue of The American Rifleman per year for the past 100 years. A bunch arrived recently. The … Continue reading
