Some readers of this blog know I have a side hustle stringing tennis rackets, including for Wake Forest University’s men’s tennis team. In 2016, the team played in the NCAA Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During my free time, my wife and I visited the site of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 in which whites … Continue reading
I have previously attended the National Rifle Association annual meeting twice. Exhibitors and attendees at that show are not very diverse. In my estimation, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show is even less diverse. The faces in the crowd in the picture above and every other picture I have … Continue reading
UPDATE: A Facebook follower commented that this Charleston Rifle Club is a rifle club in name only. There is no shooting facility on the site. It is essentially a social club. Although this doesn’t make its rejection of an African American member any more palatable to me, it does mean this event doesn’t tell us … 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
You never know what you are going to find when you stalk someone online as I have been stalking Dr. William Aprill of Aprill Risk Consulting for the past few years. Aprill’s expertise is, in part, in understanding the psychology of violent criminal offenders and what law abiding citizens can do to make themselves safer … Continue reading
Sociologists are “my people,” but when sociologists talk about guns and gun culture, I often feel a profound disconnect from my own experience with and understanding of the same. At a special session on religion and guns/gun culture today at the annual meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Philadelphia, one of … Continue reading
Without directly engaging the issue of police bias or excessive use of force (about which I do not know enough to engage intelligently), I do want to address the issue of people being “unarmed” at the time of their encounters with law enforcement officers. People often declare “the victim was unarmed at the time” to … Continue reading
