Shooting a gun is relatively easy. The number of toddlers who have shot and killed themselves and others is ample evidence of that. Shooting a gun with enough accuracy for most self-defense situations is also simpler than it might seem. Ask those who took basic gun training courses with Tom Givens and successfully defended their … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
I was skeptical when Paul Carlson of Safety Solutions Academy invited me to attend a shoothouse course he was putting together for members of the gun media at Alliance Police Training. In addition to not exactly being a member of the gun media, the focus of my work is specifically on civilian armed self-defense as … Continue reading
Almost 8 years ago, I shot a gun for the first time, not because I was interested in guns, but because I was afraid of them. Exactly 6 years ago, in November 2012, I took my first gun training course: Massad (Mas) Ayoob’s MAG-40. (See also the funny and informative case of Mas testing the … Continue reading
I received some pleasant news from the publisher of my article on “The Sociology of U.S. Gun Culture” this morning: It is one of the Top 20 most downloaded articles published since July 2016. In the article I argue that there really is no existing sociology of gun culture because we have been too focused … Continue reading
When I was in second or third grade, I made a drawing in response to a prompt we were given in school. The prompt was: I have a dream that one day. . . My response, which you can just see in the top left of the picture of my bedroom wall, was: I can … Continue reading
Thinking about race, victimization, and violence in response to a post on Dr. William Aprill’s Instagram recently made me realize that I never posted the text of an opinion column I wrote reflecting on the murder of a college student on the campus where I work. Here it is, from the Winston-Salem Journal on 6 … Continue reading
