The Firearm and the Culture of Death (original) (raw)
Related papers
Friendship, Love, and Mass Shootings: Toward a Theological Response for Gun Control
Anglican Theological Review, 2013
This essay explores the place of assault weapons in a theology concerned to emphasize human well-being and community. Current debates and recent tragedies that have included assault weapons raise questions beyond the usual appeals to political rights and individual freedoms. Drawing on the analysis of community in Aristotle and particularly Aquinas, this work seeks to promote a Christian vision of human action and friendship grounded in the church’s confession of the crucified Christ. The essay concludes with a section on the role of the church in a society that includes the use and advocacy of assault weapons.
Essays in Philosophy Gun Ownership and Gun Culture in the United States of America
Almost everyone agrees that gun ownership is part of the complex fabric of values and traditions that comprise American society. All sides in the gun ownership debate understand that firearms are embedded deeply in America's society and culture. But whereas for some the right to own guns is a non-negotiable promise guaranteed constitutionally, for others it is far more an element of the American experience than is desirable. This essay examines three arguments which have not usually received full treatment in analytical debates, but which may help us to reframe the sharp polarization that now characterizes the discourse. The first relies on distinctively American ideals of liberty, property rights, and the right of protection from the state. The second considers the implications of American liberty and property across contemporary culture. The final argument captures a somewhat more obscure aspiration in American life: the freedom which can be enjoyed only when society has achieved the public good of safety from deadly firearms.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
The United States is awash in a sea of both faith and firearms. Although sociologists and criminologists have been trying to understand the predictors of gun ownership in the United States since the 1970s, it has been over two decades since social scientists of religion have been part of this important conversation. Consequently, religion is nothing more than a control variable in most studies of gun ownership. Even then, scholars have rarely gone beyond a basic measure of religious affiliation in which Protestant = 1 (else = 0). This article therefore seeks to bring social scientists studying religion back into the conversation about gun ownership in America and to move the discussion forward incrementally. It does so in three ways. First, it employs a more sophisticated measure of religious affiliation than has been used to study gun ownership in the past. Second, it measures religiosity beyond simply religious affiliation. Third, it recognizes and seeks to specify some of the various ways in which the relationship between religion and gun ownership may be mediated by other religiously influenced sociopolitical orientations. Using data from the 2006-2014 General Social Survey, hierarchical binary logistic regression models show significant effects of evangelical Protestant affiliation, theological conservatism, and religious involvement on personal handgun ownership.
Firearm Availability and Violent Death: The Need for a Culture Change in Attitudes toward Guns
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2015
There are two conflicting positions toward gun ownership in the United States. Proponents of stricter gun control argue that guns are responsible for 32,000 gun‐related deaths each year and that the introduction of stricter gun control laws would reduce this death toll. Gun rights advocates argue that the general availability of guns reduces homicide rates, due to deterrence and because guns are effective means of self‐defense. Based on a review of the evidence, I draw the following conclusions: Gun prevalence is positively related to homicide rates. There is no evidence for a protective effect of gun ownership. In fact, gun owners have a greater likelihood of being murdered. Furthermore, gun ownership is associated with an increased risk of serious injuries, accidental death, and death from suicide. The evidence on the effectiveness of gun control measures has not been encouraging, partly because the influential gun lobby has successfully prevented the introduction of more effectiv...
Guns in America: The Grand Experiment
The Founding Fathers of the U.S., with good reason, were fearful of governments that did not submit to or grant individual human, natural rights. One of these was the right of self-defense. For these men, an armed society was a hedge against tyranny. The Second Amendment through debate and mis-transcription assumed a somewhat different character than that envisioned by the Founding Fathers. As a consequence, this amendment remained the focus of repeated contention until 2008, when the Supreme Court, for the first time, defined the individual rights of each citizen to defend him or herself. Nevertheless, today, the use of firearms in America, when viewed superficially, gives one the impression of a nation bent on destroying itself through unbridled homicide and suicide. This is borne out by the sheer number of deaths attributed to guns annually in America. However, sheer numbers can be deceiving and cannot be used for comparative purposes. In this paper, we examine the history of guns in the U.S., searching for the causation of gun-related homicide. We also examine Pieter Spierenburg's thesis that democracy came too early to America.
The sociology of U.S. gun culture
Sociology Compass
Despite the fact that a robust culture centered on the legal ownership and use of guns by law-abiding gun owners exists in the United States, there is no sociology of U.S. gun culture. Rather, the social scientific study of guns is dominated by criminological and epidemiological studies of gun violence. As a corrective to this oversight, I outline what a sociology of U.S. gun culture should look like. In the first section, I give a brief history of U.S. gun culture from the founding era through the 1960s. Guns began as tools of necessity in the colonies and on the frontier, but evolved into equipment for sport hunting and shooting, as well as desired commodities for collecting. The second section examines these recreational pursuits which formed the core of U.S. gun culture for most of the 20th century. Although recreation remains an important segment, the central emphasis of U.S. gun culture has gradually shifted to armed self-defense over the course of the past half-century. The third section examines the rise of this culture of armed citizenship, what I call "Gun Culture 2.0," the current iteration of the country's historic gun culture. I conclude by suggesting important avenues for future research.
Halakhic Perspectives on Gun Control
Morasha Kehillat Yaakov: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, 2014
What does Jewish law have to say about contemporary American debates about gun control? This article analyzes the sources and values that shape Jewish perspectives on this topic, including a detailed discussion about Jewish views about weapons in general and the legal debates over owning fierce dogs.