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Reenactors working with performance artist Dread Scott in 2019 retrace the route of an 1811 rebellion of enslaved people in Louisiana.

My Gun Culture Is Not Your Gun Culture

In Black Southern life, guns have been a sign of readiness against constant threats.
by Chantal James via The New Republic on December 28, 2024
A man wearing a cowboy outfit shoots at a series of targets in a sand pit

Home on the (Firing) Range: Gunfight Reenactments, “Old West” Competitive Shooting, and the Myth of Authenticity

Reenactments of the frontier west, complete with cowboy shootouts on main streets, reproduce a narrative of history that is widely accepted by millions.
by Jennifer Tucker via The Panorama on November 15, 2023
A father and son stand in front of an illustration of a circular target, while the son holds a small gun.

American as Apple Pie

How marketing made guns a fundamental element of contemporary boyhood.
by Rachael Kay Albers via JSTOR Daily on October 19, 2022
Man in American themed boxers, carrying a semiautomatic rifle

How Did Guns Get So Powerful?

Decade by decade, firearms have become deadlier—and tightened their grip on our collective imagination.
by Phil Klay via The New Yorker on June 11, 2022
Exhibit

Guns in America

Reflections on the Second Amendment's original meaning, and how views about gun rights, gun ownership, and gun violence have evolved in the centuries since.
19th-century pistol.

How 19th-Century Gun-Makers Helped Preserve the Union

As the gunmakers’ markets matured through the Civil War era, some began mastering the art of product promotion, following the lead set by Samuel Colt.
by John Bainbridge Jr. via Literary Hub on June 3, 2022
A man holding a gun in a gun shop.
partner

The Gun-Control Effort That Almost Stopped Our Addiction to ‘Weapons of War’

The 1968 Gun Control Act had the right idea — but it came too late.
by Andrew C. McKevitt via Made By History on April 27, 2021
Formal daguerreotype photograph of an African American corporal, holding a Colt model 1849 pocket revolver.

From Negro Militias To Black Armament

Guns have always loomed large in Black people's lives — going all the way back to the days of colonial slavery, explains reporter Alain Stephens from The Trace.
by Natalie Escobar, Gene Demby, Alain Stephens via NPR on December 22, 2020
Diagram of a Spencer rifle.

From Spencer Rifles to M-16s: A History Of The Weapons US Troops Wield In War

Muzzleloaders have evolved into smart-style automatic firearms in just 150 years.
by Richard S. Faulkner, Jeff Schogol via Task & Purpose on July 10, 2018

Gun Studies Syllabus

Imagine a class on gun control activism. Here's what its syllabus might look like.
by Caroline E. Light, Lindsay Livingston via Public Books on April 12, 2018
Amos Lawrence.

The Bostonian Who Armed the Anti-Slavery Settlers in "Bleeding Kansas"

How Amos Adams Lawrence became an abolitionist.
by Robert K. Sutton via Zócalo Public Square on August 8, 2017
A t-shirt that reads "Wanted: Notorious Disgrace to America," with a gun crosshair on Colin Kaepernick.

Spiders, Stars, and Death

It is worth taking a moment to recover the genealogy for the "crosshairs," the universal modern index of imminent violent killing.
by D. Graham Burnett via Cabinet on June 7, 2017

A Brief History of the Assault Rifle

The genealogy of a killing machine.
by Michael Shurkin via The Atlantic on June 30, 2016

Battleground America

One nation, under the gun.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on April 23, 2012
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
partner

The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
by Eran A. Zelnik via HNN on April 15, 2025
Patrick Henry giving a speech to a crowd of Virginians.

What Spurred the South to Join the American Revolution?

How a dispute with a Scottish lord over westward expansion, gunpowder, and the future of enslaved labor made the southern colonies’ embrace the radical cause.
by Andrew Lawler via Smithsonian on April 4, 2025
A woman with a rifle, superimposed on an American flag.

From Philly to Derry: On the Americans Who Armed the IRA During The Troubles

Vincent Conlon’s secret life in the United States as an operative and gun-running Irish rebel.
by Ali Watkins via Literary Hub on March 11, 2025
Arthur Morgan from video game Red Dead Redemption 2 sporting a gun and cowboy hat.

Cult of the Cowboy: Inside the Toxic Adoration of an All-American Obsession

Video games, violence and the enduring allure of the vigilante hero.
by Rachel Wagner via Literary Hub on February 26, 2025
Black Legion members in wearing capes and hoods.

You Know About the KKK, but What About the Black Legion?

The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.
by Dana Frank via Jacobin on October 18, 2024
A pile of guns and rifle magazines on top of bullets.

More Guns, More Money: How America Turned Weapons Into a Consumer Commodity

How an American arms dealer and a surplus of guns in Europe after World War II popularized gun ownership.
by Andrew C. McKevitt via Literary Hub on September 12, 2024
The statue "Authority of Law" by artist James Earle Fraser is seen outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., in 2010.
partner

The Supreme Court's 2nd Amendment Mistake

Consequences mattered to the Founders—and that meant early American judges upheld major gun restrictions.
by Saul Cornell via Made By History on July 26, 2024
A Black person points to Neshoba county on a map of Mississippi.

The Lynching That Sent My Family North

How we rediscovered the tragedy in Mississippi that ushered us into the Great Migration.
by Ko Bragg via The Atlantic on May 20, 2024
A gun shop in Dunedin, Florida.

America Fell for Guns Recently, and for Reasons You Will Not Guess

The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history.
by Megan Kang via Aeon on April 9, 2024
Old car holding up a mining chute on the over of the book “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Rock-Fuel and Warlike People: On Mitch Troutman’s “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Native son Jonah Walters finds something entirely too innocent about the tales told about the anthracite industry’s origins.
by Jonah Walters via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 21, 2024
A photograph of an AR-15 rifle, a pistol, and a knife in camoflage print, as well as bullets and a pair of gloves.

Give Your Mom a Gun

America’s favorite gun.
by Geoff Mann via London Review of Books on March 1, 2024
A diagram of the parts of a flintlock pistol.

Bad Facts, Bad Law

In a recent Supreme Court oral argument about disarming domestic abusers, originalism itself was put to the test.
by Duncan Hosie via New York Review of Books on November 25, 2023
Hand holding a gun painted like the American flag.

The Real Origins of America’s Gun Culture

“Gun Country” chronicles the transformation of guns from tangible weapons to ideological ammunition during the Cold War.
by Becca Rothfeld via Washington Post on November 9, 2023
Collage showing people gathering at the site of school shootings.

The Second Generation of School Shootings

The fear that overtook us that day in 1988 was unfamiliar to most Americans. Now all too many know how it feels.
by Sarah Churchwell via The Atlantic on May 23, 2023
Samuel Cummings holding a gun in a lab.

The Last Honest Mercenary in the Business

International arms dealer Samuel Cummings blanketed the Western Hemisphere with guns.
by Jacqui Shine via Well, Actually on March 28, 2023
Image of an AR-15

The Gun that Divides a Nation

The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.
by Alex Horton, Josh Dawsey, Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Ashley Park via Washington Post on March 27, 2023
AR-15

Varmints, Soldiers and Looming Threats: See the Ads Used to Sell the AR-15

Through six decades, gunmakers and advertisers leveraged social and cultural changes to broaden the AR-15′s appeal.
by Alex Horton, Monique Woo, Tucker Harris via Washington Post on March 27, 2023
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