US Gun Culture and Gun Impacts

What does the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution say and how has it been interpreted?

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What are the different types of guns and their uses in American society?

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What are the arguments for and against gun control measures?

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What are the statistics and trends related to gun-related homicides, suicides, and accidents?

In the United States today, both those who defend an expansive vision of gun rights and those who seek to regulate firearms more stringently use the term “gun culture” as if it were a fact of life that needs no explanation. But what does this ubiquitous term – which relates a broad category of technology (“the gun”) to one of the most notoriously difficult to define categories in humanistic scholarship (“culture”) – actually mean? And what is the relation of this cultural formation to the sociological realities of gun ownership and gun violence in the United States? In this class, we will engage both humanities and sociological methodologies and scholarship to trace the legal, social, and cultural history of firearms in the United States from the pre-revolutionary period to our contemporary moment, thinking along the way about how and why we have come to understand our relationship with firearms technology as a “culture," and how that culture produces (or doesn't) our exceptional levels of gun violence.

Collaborations

• Collaborators TBA

US Gun Culture and Gun Impacts in the News

At the Humanities Lab, we strive to ensure our Labs are relevant and current. Here are some recent articles about US Gun Culture and Gun Impacts in today’s news!

US vs the world: Gun culture, laws and mass shootings | CNN 

Key facts about Americans and guns | Pew Research Center

The real origins of America’s gun culture