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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

The Lessons of a School Shooting – in 1853

How a now-forgotten classroom murder inflamed the national gun argument.
by Saul Cornell via Politico Magazine on March 24, 2018

Bang for the Buck

Three new books paint a more nuanced portrait of the American militias whose gun rights have been protected since the founding.
by Adam Hochschild via New York Review of Books on March 15, 2018

The Second Amendment Does Not Transcend All Others

Its text and context don’t ensure an unlimited individual right to bear any kind and number of weapons by anyone.
by Garrett Epps via The Atlantic on March 8, 2018

What America Gets Wrong About Three Important Words in the Second Amendment

The NRA misquotes George Mason to support its own view of "well-regulated militia."
by Robyn Pennacchia via Quartz on February 24, 2018

Assault Weapons Preserve the Purpose of the Second Amendment

Banning them would gut the concept of an armed citizenry as a final, emergency bulwark against tyranny.
by David French via National Review on February 21, 2018

Five Types of Gun Laws the Founding Fathers Loved

A Second Amendment scholar makes the case that gun restrictions are not a recent phenomenon.
by Saul Cornell via The Conversation on October 15, 2017

Disarming the NRA

The Second Amendment does not stand in the way of better gun laws; the NRA does.
by Adam Winkler via New York Review of Books on October 5, 2017

What Gun Control Advocates Can Learn From Abolitionists

Slave ownership was once as entrenched in American life as gun ownership.
by Rebecca Onion, Manisha Sinha via Slate on June 14, 2016

A Historian’s Revealing Research on Race and Gun Laws

The notion that gun control has racist origins is popular in gun rights circles. Here's what's wrong with the claim.
by Saul Cornell, Mike Spies via The Trace on November 24, 2015
Confederate soldiers stand among the ruins of houses.

The Slave-State Origins of Modern Gun Rights

The idea of an unfettered right to carry weapons in public originates in the antebellum South, and its culture of violence and honor.
by Saul Cornell, Eric M. Ruben via The Atlantic on September 30, 2015

How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment

The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun.
by Michael Waldman via Politico Magazine on May 19, 2014
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Straight Shot

The History Guys look at who has had access to guns in the U.S., and what those guns have meant to the people who have owned them.
via BackStory on January 25, 2013
Lithograph of James Madison from Portrait and Biographical Album of Washtenaw County, Michigan, 1891, Wikimedia.

The Founders’ Muddled Legacy on the Right to Bear Arms Is Killing Us

A case of 18th-century politicking has stymied our ability to deal with a 21st-century crisis.
by William Hogeland via AlterNet on August 14, 2012

Dead or Alive: Originalism as Popular Constitutionalism in Heller

Was the 2008 Heller decision a victory for originalism or a living Constitution?
by Reva B. Siegel via Yale Faculty Scholarship Series on January 1, 2008
Richard Slotkin.

“A Theory of America”: Mythmaking with Richard Slotkin

"I was always working on a theory of America."
by Kathleen Belew, Richard S. Slotkin via Public Books on April 19, 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
Police standing outside Luby's Cafeteria after the 1991 mass shooting.

The Massacre That Turned Texas Into the Most Gun-Friendly State in America

The effects of the 1991 mass shooting at a Luby's in Killeen can still be felt today—in the legislature and on our streets.
by Emily McCullar via Texas Monthly on November 14, 2023
Close-up of the safety trigger on a handgun

“Come and Take It”: How the Aftermath of Sandy Hook Led to More AR-15s Being Sold Than Ever Before

Chris Waltz was appalled. He felt Democrats were using the Sandy Hook tragedy to tell him he wasn’t responsible enough to own an AR-15.
by Cameron McWhirter, Zusha Elinson via Literary Hub on October 2, 2023

Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present

When historians concede to discuss the past with the terms of the present, they abandon the skill set that makes them historians.
by James H. Sweet via Perspectives on History on August 17, 2022
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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.

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