Found on the Duke Center for Firearms Law blog, a new 20 minute film history of the Second Amendment set in the context of US history leading up to the Heller and McDonald decisions.
Commentators include Alan Gura, Robert Cottrol, Adam Winkler, Theodore Olson, and many other. Check it out.
I was recently querying Academic Twitter about peer-reviewed social scientific publications on non-deviant African American gun owners to assign in the module on race in my Sociology of Guns seminar (more on that module forthcoming). I was disheartened but not surprised that there are none (historians and legal scholars have done better). After all, only this year was a peer-reviewed sociological study of LGBT gun owners published.
Perhaps the times are changing. From 2:00-4:00pm Eastern Time on July 31, I will be joining Wake Forest Law Professor Gregory Parks and a panel of other academics and experts for a thoughtful and thought-provoking webinar on race and guns in the U.S.
The conversation will examine how race intersects with the history of gun ownership in America, the roots of the Second Amendment, and the modern politics of guns. Panelists will bring a historical, legal, psychological, and sociological lens to bear on the discussion, “Race and Guns in America: A Conversation About Black Gun Ownership.”
You can register for the event here.
For the past 18 months, I have been co-editing, with Trent Steidley of the University of Denver, a special issue of the scholarly journal, Sociological Perspectives. The theme is “A Sociology of Firearms for the 21st Century.”
A major goal we had in soliciting and selecting articles for the special issue was to expand the narrow sociological literature by appreciating the multifaceted role guns play in society and culture beyond crime, deviance, and injury. This is the sort of project I called for in my original “Sociology of U.S. Gun Culture” article.
The printed edition of the journal will be available later this year, but the articles are being posted online once they are finalized. One that I am particularly proud to have had an editorial hand in is “Queers with Guns? Against the LGBT Grain” by University of Texas graduate student Thatcher Combs.
In all the years I have taught the Sociology of Guns (since 2015), I have not been able to assign a peer-reviewed sociological study of LGBT gun owners. I typically assign Rolling Stone’s story on the Pink Pistols and tell the students that some day a sociologist will give their attention to this important topic.
I am preparing my syllabus for this fall’s Version 7 of Sociology of Guns and am happy to have Thatcher Combs’s work to assign at last.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I announced the availability of my small book on the history and current status of concealed carry in the United States. I picked a terrible time to launch the book because I took off for a 4,000 mile drive from NC to California immediately after.
It has been gratifying to see some pictures of the book on social media, including one alongside books by Massad Ayoob and Patrick McNamara, two gun culture celebs well beyond me.
As a reminder, you can buy a print copy of the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other bookseller for $11.95. A Kindle edition of the book for $8.95 is, according to the publisher, forthcoming any time now.
I sold out of the original batch of 50 signed copies for Buy Me A Coffee annual supporters ($60), but have reordered more and will be signing/shipping those when I get home in mid-June. You can also get a “free” electronic copy of the book as a Buy Me A Coffee monthly supporter ($5).
Despite the profound significance of the issue, no comprehensive but concise history of concealed carry laws in the United States yet exists. Concealed Carry Revolution seeks to fill this gap. It is available right now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or by special order through your favorite local bookstore. An electronic version should also be available soon.
An even better way to get a copy of the book is to make a small donation in support of my work through my “Buy Me a Coffee” page (like Patreon). Those who sign up as annual members will receive a free signed copy of the book and monthly supporters will receive a free electronic copy as a “Thank You!”
This small book (100 pages including extensive notes) was originally written as a chapter in my larger book on Gun Culture 2.0 on which I continue to work. As the chapter grew longer and the focus of that work shifted, I found myself with a great deal of material which had no obvious outlet.
If you happen to get a copy of the book, I would appreciate your review (honest, if necessary) on Amazon.com, Goodreads, or your favorite book review site.
As always, I am grateful for your interest in and support of my work in telling the story of American gun culture.
I have been trying to understand what I call, following gun journalist Michael Bane, Gun Culture 2.0 for over 10 years now. I am currently in a race to finish my book on the topic before Gun Culture 3.0 arrives.
I have not yet seen any convincing evidence that American gun culture has reached a new evolution, but recently some scholars have claimed it has. I refer to a press release from the Boston University School of Health, screen capped below.
Continue readingYesterday was the second anniversary of this blog. I began Gun Curious as a complement to my longer-running Gun Culture 2.0 blog because I wanted an outlet for my observations on guns and gun culture that would be of interest to those who simply wanted to know or think more about these issues, especially those whose minds were not already made up.
In two years and 125 posts, I have found what I should have already known: that confirmation bias reigns supreme in real life and on the web.
Because of this, I appreciate all the more the modest number of dedicated readers here who share my curiosity about the significant role guns play in our individual and social lives. I am looking forward to sharing more over the next 365 days.
If you know of someone who shares your gun curiosity, please encourage them to follow the blog via email or the Gun Curious Facebook page.
Late in 2020 an editor from the online magazine Discourse contacted me to see if I wanted to write anything about my work on American gun culture for them. The invitation provided an excellent opportunity for me to formalize some of my scattered thoughts on the Great Gun-Buying Spree of 2020. I quickly agreed.
It was published recently so have a look, and read more after the break.
TLDR: I just posted a publicly-accessible pre-print of a book chapter, “A Woman’s Place in Gun Advertisements: The American Rifleman, 1920-2019,” co-authored with recent Wake Forest University graduate (and current George Washington University Law School 1L) Riley Satterwhite and my son Paul Yamane (Wake Forest ’16). The chapter is scheduled to appear in the forthcoming Second Edition of the book, Understanding American Gun Culture.
For longer than I care to remember, I have been working on an analysis of the portrayal of women in gun advertising. I have posted some elementary thoughts about this along the way, including on Crimson’s Trace’s interesting banner at the 2016 NRA annual meeting and a pair of ads they ran in The American Rifleman in 2009, as well as a TV ad for the M&P Shield placed on Sportsman’s Channel by Smith & Wesson.
Although gun culture is typically characterized as embodying hegemonic masculinity, looking at advertisements over a 100 year time period complicates the gender story. To wit: As soon as I embarked on my study of the rise of self-defense (Gun Culture 2.0) using ads in The American Rifleman (and later Guns), I noticed some surprising appearances of women in those magazines. One example I first posted about in 2015 (did I mention I have been at this for a while?) was an ad for Peters Cartridges featuring a Lady Champion shooter which ran in January 1937.
I am trying to break the grip the current moment has on my attention, and thought a good way to do that would be to have a brief look at my year ahead.
For the spring semester, I am on a research leave, meaning I am excused from my normal teaching and service obligations as a faculty member at Wake Forest University. My main goal during this leave is to make serious progress on my (long-awaited?) book on American gun culture.
I am going to try to wrap up as many ongoing projects as possible in January so that beginning in February the bulk of my attention and energy will be on the book. Among these ongoing projects is a short book on the history of concealed carry laws and their implementation. The book will be available as a print and eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online channels, and by special order through local book stores.
I will also be giving free electronic copies to everyone who supports me as a member on Buy Me a Coffee ($5/month or $60/year).
