Sociology of Guns Module 8: Gun Injuries, Suicide, Rights and Responsibilities

With Module 8 the course shifts its attention to what could generally be called negative outcomes with firearms: injury and death, both suicide (Module 8) and homicide (Module 9), as well as issues surrounding police use of force (Module 10).

I am particularly interested in ways in which those involved in gun culture can play a role in reducing negative outcomes with guns. Initiatives like the Gun Shop Project and Walk the Talk America (WTTA) provide some models. I am pleased for the fourth consecutive year to welcome to class as a guest speaker gun trainer Rob Pincus, a board member of WTTA and co-founder (with Dan Gross, formerly of Brady) of the Center for Gun Rights and Responsibilities.

Walk the Talk America (WTTA) table at 2019 SHOT Show. Photo by David Yamane

Required readings for Module 8 are:

• Fowler, Katherine A., Linda L. Dahlberg, Tadesse Haileyesus, Carmen Gutierrez, and Sarah Bacon. “Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States.” Pediatrics (2017) (with Errata). Does for children what Fowler, et al. (2015) did for the US population, a comprehensive overview of firearms injuries.
• Anestis, Michael D., Claire Houtsma, Samantha E. Daruwala, and Sarah E. Butterworth. “Firearm Legislation and Statewide Suicide Rates: The Moderating Role of Household Firearm Ownership Levels.” Behavioral Sciences & the Law (2019). The title here is descriptive of the main independent and dependent variables in the study.
• Johnson, Renee M., Catherine Barber, Deborah Azrael, David E. Clark, and David Hemenway. “Who Are the Owners of Firearms Used in Adolescent Suicides?” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior (2010). Where do adolescents who commit suicide with firearms get their guns?
• Vriniotis, Mary, Catherine Barber, Elaine Frank, and Ralph Demicco. “A Suicide Prevention Campaign for Firearm Dealers in New Hampshire.” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior (2015). An example of how gun control and gun rights advocates can collaborate.

Recommended readings for Module are:

• Fowler, Katherine A., Linda L. Dahlberg, Tadesse Haileyesus, and Joseph L. Annest. “Firearm Injuries in the United States.” Preventive Medicine (2015). A comprehensive overview of firearms injuries by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control.
• Anestis, Michael D. Guns and Suicide: An American Epidemic (2018). There is a voluminous literature on this topic, but this single volume captures much of it.
• Peter Manseau, Melancholy Accidents: Three Centuries of Stray Bullets and Bad Luck (2016). The introduction lays bare the editor’s bias (“the dark shadow that guns cast on American culture”), but the old news stories reproduced here capture both serious mistakes and extremely bad luck.
• Claude Werner, Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make (2019). A book about bad decision making by people with guns that lead to significant negative outcomes, written by a data analyst and elite gun trainer.

I don’t take the recommended readings to be comprehensive or complete. Suggestions are welcome.