Where to Buy a Gun Within 8 Miles of Wake Forest University Campus

I lived the first four decades of my life completely outside of gun culture, so I remember well when I started to realize after I moved to North Carolina how common and normal guns are to so many people.

Once I was attuned to the reality of guns outside of their criminal misuse, I didn’t have to look very hard to find them all around me. I realized the annex to our local sports arena holds gun shows several times a year. I noticed ground signs advertising “concealed carry classes” on many heavily trafficked street corners. I saw billboards on area highways displaying advertisements for local gun stores. I also discovered, with astonishment, that many of the highly educated professionals I play tennis with have guns. One owns several long guns that were passed down from his grandfather. Another has two semi-automatic pistols in his basement that he used to shoot regularly. A number of the women in our tennis community also own handguns, mostly for self-defense.

Screen cap of Isabella Kornitsky’s “Where to Buy a Gun 8 Miles from Campus,” from https://story.mapme.com/0c625633-e730-4a4e-a9e5-c3c103c8cb8a.

Student Range Visit Reflection #6: A Canadian POV on an American Gun Range

This is the sixth of several planned posts featuring Sociology of Guns Seminar student reflections on our field trip to ProShots, a local gun range. I provide the actual assignment in the first post, and you can also see it in the context of the syllabus itself. (Link to second post and third post and fourth post and fifth post.)

This reflection is by a Canadian student – an outsider to gun culture in both the United States and Canada – who ended up deciding not to shoot on the range but still learned quite a bit.

The Continuing Expansion of Permitless Concealed Carry Laws in the United States

Not even a week after I posted a primer on concealed carry laws in the United States, Kentucky became the third state just this year to go permitless (joining Oklahoma and South Dakota). There are now 15 states in which anyone who can legally possess a gun can carry it concealed in public without a license (although various other restrictions on what, where, and when you can carry still apply).*

One of these is Vermont, which has never restricted concealed carry. The other 14 have what my friend Matthew Carberry calls “Alaska Carry” regimes. So called because Alaska was the first state, in 2003, to adopt a system in which the government issues but does not require permits to carry concealed weapons in public.

This permitless carry era on top of the previous shall issue carry era has resulted in a continuing expansion of the right to bear arms in public.

Graphic by Rob Vance, March 2019. Used with permission.

Student Range Visit Reflection #5: Respecting Weapons and Trusting Others

This is the fifth of several planned posts featuring Sociology of Guns Seminar student reflections on our field trip to ProShots, a local gun range. I provide the actual assignment in the first post, and you can also see it in the context of the syllabus itself. (Link to second post and third post and fourth post.)

This student’s background was familiar to me as I meet many women whose grandfathers, fathers, and brothers hunt but whose grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and themselves do not. So, although her father and brother hunted together, she had never fired a gun before this field trip.

Mother and daughter shooting at Veterans Range, Mocksville, NC. Photo by David Yamane

Concealed Weapon Carry Laws in the US: A Primer

The passage of permitless carry laws in 2019 by South Dakota and Oklahoma provides a good occasion to review concealed weapon carry permit laws in the US.

Regulatory Regimes

There are four basic regulatory regimes governing the carrying of concealed weapons in public. From least to most restrictive, they are:

• Permitless Carry
• Shall Issue
• May Issue
• No Issue (exists de jure but not de facto today)

The image below briefly describes these regimes and highlights certain caveats.

Student Range Visit Reflection #4: As Seen Through European Eyes

This is the fourth of several planned posts featuring Sociology of Guns Seminar student reflections on our field trip to ProShots, a local gun range. I provide the actual assignment in the first post, and you can also see it in the context of the syllabus itself. (Link to second post and third post.)

This student is from Europe, so her experience with guns and gun culture is even more distant than her American classmates and her learning curve consequently steeper.

From https://cynicalqueer.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/map-of-usa-european-view/

Student Range Visit Reflection #3: A Newfound Respect

This is the third of several planned posts featuring Sociology of Guns Seminar student reflections on our field trip to ProShots, a local gun range. I provide the actual assignment in the first post, and you can also see it in the context of the syllabus itself. (Link to second post.)

Many gun people take for granted that everyone has a basic familiarity with firearms. As someone who never saw, touched, or fired a (non-BB/pellet) gun for my first 42 years of life, I know there are many of us out there. The student’s reflection below highlights some of the discoveries that can come from venturing into the unknown of a gun store and range.

Sociology of Guns student field trip to ProShots Range, January 2018. Photo by David Yamane