American Gun Culture

Curated by Caroline E. Light and Lindsay Livingston
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In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting of February 14, 2018, scholar Danielle McGuire invited historians on Twitter to propose readings that would provide resources for gun control activists. In response, Public Books reached out to scholars Caroline Light and Lindsay Livingston to develop a Gun Studies Syllabus. There are an estimated 310 million firearms in the United States today—more than one gun per person—and while the US comprises about 5 percent of the world’s population, its inhabitants possess over 40 percent of the world’s guns. The US also experiences more gun deaths than any economically comparable nation: more than 38,600 in 2016, with nearly two-thirds of them suicides. How did the nation get here, and what is it doing to prevent gun violence? To answer these questions, this syllabus provides an interdisciplinary introduction to America’s unique “gun culture.”
  1. 7
    1. Book

      Guns Across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights

      ISBN 0190621060

    2. Book

      Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy

      ISBN 1595580875

    3. Paper

      The Stock and Flow of U.S. Firearms: Results from the 2015 National Firearms Survey

    4. Article

      The Big Picture: Gun Culture

    5. Website

      Gun Violence Archive

    6. Website

      Small Arms Survey

    7. Article

      The Demographics of Gun Ownership

  2. 14
    1. Book

      The Second Amendment: A Biography

      ISBN 1476747458

    2. Book

      A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America

      ISBN 0195147863

    3. Book

      Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry

      ISBN 163388564X

    4. Book

      Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America

      ISBN 0393077411

    5. Podcast

      More Perfect Podcast – The Gun Show

    6. Note

      Untitled

      Now that we have a grasp on the overviews of this topic, we will delve into some primary sources.

    7. Legal

      The Federalist Papers: No. 29

    8. Legal

      The Federalist Papers: No. 46

    9. Legal

      Proposed Amendments to the Constitution

    10. Legal

      Dred Scott v. Sandford

    11. Legal

      United States v. Cruikshank

    12. Legal

      District of Columbia v. Heller

    13. Legal

      Militia Act of 1903

      This act stipulated the conditions for the federalization of the National Guard

    14. Website

      Repository of Historical Gun Laws

      This is a good resource for further research in specific firearms legislation.

  3. 8
    1. Book

      Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

      ISBN 0872867234

    2. Book

      Negroes and the Gun

      ISBN 161614839X

    3. Article

      The Slave-State Origins of Modern Gun Rights

    4. Article

      How the U.S. Got Its Police Force

    5. Article

      Indians and Guns

    6. Legal

      An act concerning Servants and Slaves (1705)

    7. Legal

      Mississippi Black Codes (1865)

    8. Article

      Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890

  4. 7
    1. Book

      The Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America

      ISBN 0806130318

    2. Article

      Did the Wild West Have More Gun Control Than We Do Today?

    3. Article

      Mass Killing in Popular (Mis)Memory

    4. Article

      How the Wild West was spun

    5. Legal

      Arizona Territory’s Ordinance No. 9: “To Provide Against Carrying of Deadly Weapons”

    6. Film

      High Noon

    7. Film

      The Lone Ranger

  5. 9
    1. Book

      This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

      ISBN 0465033105

    2. Book

      We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

      ISBN 0814725244

    3. Book

      Performance in a Militarized Culture

      ISBN 1138740802

      Read specically chapter 16: Picking Up the Gun: Spectacular Performances of Firearm Ownership in the Long Civil Rights Movement

    4. Article

      CAN NEGROES AFFORD TO BE PACIFISTS? (1960)

    5. Book

      To Die for the People

      ISBN 0872865290

    6. Video

      Angela Davis - interview 1972 - talking about revolution

    7. Article

      Oral History Interview with Mabel Williams (1999)

    8. Video

      Kathleen Cleaver, Mabel Williams, and Angela Y. Davis – "Self Respect, Self Defense, & Self Determination"

    9. Video

      Condoleezza Rice on The View, March 1, 2018