The Gunning of America PDF Download

Author: Pamela Haag
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465048951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
"An acclaimed historian explodes the myth about the 'special relationship' between Americans and their guns, revealing that savvy 19th century businessmen--not gun lovers--created American gun culture"--

Author: Lisa Fisher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179362514X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Understanding America's Gun Culture focuses on building understanding of some of the issues associated with U.S. gun culture and the contemporary debate about the availability and use of guns. This edited volume is unique in that it draws on a wide variety of disciplines and presents perspectives on both sides of the debate. Contributors hail from the academic disciplines of history, social work, criminal justice, sociology, religion, and theological ethics as well as policy agencies. Some chapters examine the issues social-psychologically to help readers better understand dynamics within the debate. Others pose important ethical and philosophical questions about gun culture. Still others address practical policy solutions for enhancing gun safety and minimizing gun violence, even bringing in international perspectives. This second edition includes literature published in the last two years and two new chapters, one focusing on gender within gun culture and another that features a conversation between the editors and an ethnographic researcher with broad expertise in gun culture and research and policy trends. Together, the chapters create a thought-provoking compilation that offers insightful findings, considers theoretical and practical implications, and invites further exploration of the topic.

Author: Clayton E. Cramer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This provocative book debunks the myth that American gun culture was intentionally created by gun makers and demonstrates that gun ownership and use have been a core part of American society since our colonial origins. Revisionist historians argue that American gun culture and manufacturing are relatively recent developments. They further claim that widespread gun violence was largely absent from early American history because guns of all types, and especially handguns, were rare before 1848. According to these revisionists, American gun culture was the creation of the first mass production gun manufacturers, who used clever marketing to sell guns to people who neither wanted nor needed them. However, as proven in this first scholarly history of "gun culture" in early America, gun ownership and use have in fact been central to American society from its very beginnings. Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The Origins of American Gun Culture shows that gunsmithing and gun manufacturing were important parts of the economies of the colonies and the early republic and explains how the American gun industry helped to create our modern world of precision mass production and high wages for workers.

Author: David Yamane
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476653550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
More than ever, it feels like cultural and political divisions over firearms are tearing the United States apart. Guns are an undeniable and contradictory presence in America, both widely owned and controversial. This book does something remarkable: it promotes insight over animosity in understanding the complex reality of guns in America. It challenges firearms skeptics, entertains enthusiasts, and informs the uncommitted by taking readers on a surprising journey inside gun culture. A lifelong liberal from the San Francisco Bay Area, David Yamane became a new gun owner as a 42-year-old and embarked on an immersive twelve-year study of American gun culture. Weaving together his personal experiences and sociological observations to explain why guns make sense to those who own them, he illuminates defensive gun ownership, the risk of negative outcomes associated with firearms, and what responsible gun ownership looks like in the twenty-first century. This book lowers the heat on America's inflamed arguments about firearms and models the civil discussions we desperately need.

Author: Abigail A. Kohn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190207701
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Frequenting gun shops and shooting ranges, and devoting particular attention to those whose interest in weaponry extends beyond the casual, Abigail A. Kohn captures in finegrained and often entertaining, yet always humane, detail how gun owners actually think and feel about their guns. Through her conversations--with cowboy action shooters at a regional match, sport shooters, hunters, with shooters of all ages and races--we hear of the "savage beauty" of a beautifully crafted long gun, of the powerful historical import owners attach to their guns, of the sense of empowerment that comes with shooting skill, and the visceral thrill of discharging a dangerous weapon. Cutting through the cliches that link gun ownership with violent, criminal subcultures and portray shooters as "gun nuts" or potential terrorists, Kohn provides us with a lively and untainted portrait of American gun enthusiasts.

Author: Michael A. Bellesiles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Firearms ownership
Languages : en
Pages : 604

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Book Description

Author: Michael A. Bellesiles
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780375701986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
"Michael A. Bellesiles is Professor of History at Emory University and Director of Emory's Center for the Study of Violence."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Chris Murphy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1984854585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
“An engrossing, moving, and utterly motivating account of the human stakes of gun violence in America.”—Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Education of an Idealist Is America destined to always be a violent nation? This sweeping history by U.S. senator Chris Murphy explores the origins of our violent impulses, the roots of our obsession with firearms, and the mythologies that prevent us from confronting our national crisis. In many ways, the United States sets the pace for other nations to follow. Yet on the most important human concern—the need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from physical harm—America isn’t a leader. We are disturbingly laggard. To confront this problem, we must first understand it. In this carefully researched and deeply emotional book, Senator Chris Murphy dissects our country’s violence-filled history and the role that our unique obsession with firearms plays in this national epidemic. Murphy tells the story of his profound personal transformation in the wake of the mass murder at Newtown, and his subsequent immersion in the complicated web of influences that drive American violence. Murphy comes to the conclusion that while America’s relationship to violence is indeed unique, America is not inescapably violent. Even as he details the reasons we’ve tolerated so much bloodshed for so long, he explains that we have the power to change. Murphy takes on the familiar arguments, obliterates the stale talking points, and charts the way to a fresh, less polarized conversation about violence and the weapons that enable it—a conversation we urgently need in order to transform the national dialogue and save lives.

Author: Gerry Souter
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Gun ownership has long been a hot-button topic in the United States, and the National Rifle Association has the reputation of being an organization of primarily politically conservative members. American Shooter provides a unique look at gun ownership, handgun bans, shooting sports, and the controversy over how to interpret the Second Amendment from the point of view of a liberal gun owner and enthusiast. Gerry Souter examines the history of firearms in the United States, from the settlers who carried matchlock muskets ashore at Jamestown to the citizens who purchase guns in record numbers today. Recent Supreme Court decisions that uphold the right to bear arms have galvanized citizens on both sides of the debate, making the gun issue hotter than ever. To provide a personal view, Souter weaves in tales of his own experiences with guns, including sport shooting as a young man, hunting and bonding with his father, and facing the smoking end of a muzzle as an international photojournalist. American Shooter is both a history and a personal journey that traces the path of American gun ownership culture from the Revolution to today. It recounts how the country has lived with guns from the flintlock hung over the fireplace to the concealed-carry, laser-sighted Glock semiautomatic pistol tucked away in the hidden pocket of a mom’s purse.

Author: Jimmy D. Taylor
Publisher: LFB Scholarly Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Taylor focuses on the value that gun owners place on their guns and the possibility that different guns mean different things to their owners. His research explores the symbolic meaning of guns, and the ways in which the meaning assigned to guns influences gun ownership and use. Some of the more interesting findings center around conversations with gun collectors and enthusiasts about a series of interaction rituals; rituals pertaining to being a gun owner, a gun user, and possibly even the gun as an object of near-worship. Gun owners also recognize a unique stigma, and respond through a complex series of stigma management techniques.