The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know. By Philip J. Cook and Kristin A. Goss (Oxford University Press, 2014, 280pp. US$ 16.95) (original) (raw)
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Special Issue Editors’ Introduction: A Sociology of Firearms for the Twenty-First Century
Sociological Perspectives
This special issue of Sociological Perspectives arrives amid a renaissance in the academic study of guns in recent years. In addition to individual books and articles, this collection sits alongside several other recent edited volumes (Carlson, Goss, and Shapira 2019; Fisher and Hovey 2021; Obert, Poe, and Sarat 2019) and special issues of journals (Metzl as editor for Palgrave Communications in 2019 and Dowd-Arrow, Burdette, and Hill as editors for Sociological Inquiry in 2021). These works contribute new insights to our understanding of guns in society. With this special issue, our contribution to the scholarly discourse on firearms returns to the key insights a sociological perspective brings to firearms research. These articles advance scholarly firearms research as a sociological topic by emphasizing, among other themes, the importance of guns as cultural objects, political activities related to guns, and the importance of race, gender, and sexuality. While many scholars continue to advance research on firearm violence (and for good reason given the firearm homicides, suicides, and massacres that happen too frequently), nearly half a century of research has focused primarily on the illicit use of firearms, with a secondary focus on the statistical correlates of gun ownership (Wright and Marston 1975; Wright, Rossi, and Daly 1983). These emphases have left a broader research agenda exploring firearms and the social activities adjacent to them underdeveloped (Yamane 2017). The time has come for sociologists studying firearms to "walk and chew gum at the same time" by emphasizing the social roles of firearms and their influences on social behaviors. This is especially true in societies where firearm ownership and lawful use of firearms remain a common and, in some places, normative behavior. Simply put, we hope that readers will find in this issue the fruits of focusing on firearms as a topic of sociological interest in their own right. This issue consists of 11 contributions to this nascent research agenda. Though we did not consciously pursue themes within this issue, two broad areas of interest are evident among the articles. First, half of the authors explore the diversity and complexity of firearm owners, including owners' understandings of firearms and motivations for owning them, in ways that go beyond previous studies. Second, half of the authors examine the social attitudes and activities that emerge due to the presence of firearms in society, including but not limited to activism for criminal justice reform, information seeking after mass shootings, the compliance of gun dealers with policy, and how the notion of guns as a criminal justice problem has driven much of the funded research on guns in the United States. Understanding the Diversity and Complexity of Gun Owners The production of this special issue overlapped not only with the global COVID-19 pandemic, but with the greatest gun buying spree in the recent history of the United States. Following a methodology that uses federal background checks to proxy the number of firearm sales that occurred (see: Steidley and Kosla 2018), it is likely that at least 20 million firearms were sold in 2020, many to new and non-traditional gun owners.
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 Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ("the right of the people to keep and bear arms") has deeply affected political and social attitudes towards firearms in the United States. The organising principle of this paper is to discern whether the principal reason for widespread gun ownership in America is constitutional, cultural or governmental. Through critical readings of several influential works of gun ownership in the United States (e.g. John Lott, "More Guns Less Crime, "The Bias Against Guns"; James Jacobs, "Can Gun Control Work?") this paper attempts to analyse the constitutional arguments around gun ownership, as well as the legislative dimension of the gun control/ownership discourse.
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.
THE US GUN POLICY: DOMESTIC AND EXTERNAL DIMENSIONS
American History and Politics, 2020
The purpose of the article is to explore proliferation of firearms in the United States due to social problems (mass shootings) and public demand for increasing gun control. Primary challenges cover exploring the U.S. firearms history, which provides a key to understanding the causes of the current situation in this area; reviewing of Americans’ attitudes toward gun ownership; studying the U.S. foreign policy in the context of arms exports from Ukraine to the United States. Moreover, attention is paid to exploring the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Donald Trump’s decision on arms control and a comparative analysis of his gun policy with the policy of his predecessors. [...]