CONCLUSIONS REGARDING GUNS AND GUN CULTURE
We conclude with the final two of James Wright’s “Ten Essential Observations on Guns in America”:
Observation 9: Guns are neither inherently good not inherently evil; guns, that is, do not possess teleology.
Observation 10: Guns are important elements in our history and culture.
These observations set the stage for some bigger picture thinking about guns, gun owners, and gun culture as we wrap up this course. We should remain mindful of the fact that in seven sessions, we have only just scratched the surface of all of the complexity and interest in this topic.
I hope the time you have invested in this class will pay dividends well into the future.
CORE RESOURCES
*Evan Selinger, “The Philosophy of the Technology of the Gun,” The Atlantic (July 23, 2012).
Timothy W. Luke, “Counting Up AR-15s: The Subject of Assault Rifles and the Assault Rifle as Subject,” in The Lives of Guns, ed. Jonathan Obert, Andrew Poe, and Austin Sarat (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 70–92.
*Anthony A. Braga et al., “Firearm Instrumentality: Do Guns Make Violent Situations More Lethal?,” Annual Review of Criminology (2021).
SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES
*Yamane, David. “Understanding and Misunderstanding American Gun Culture and Violence.” Journal of Lutheran Ethics (May 2023).
Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2011). This is the best single-volume treatment of the history of guns in America.
*Lee Kennett and James LaVerne Anderson, The Gun in America: The Origins of a National Dilemma (1975). Reading this book, I came across passage after passage in which I was reminded that much of what we see in contemporary gun culture and debates over the place of guns in society is not novel.
*B. Bruce-Briggs, “The Great American Gun War,” The Public Interest (1976). Published around the same time as Kennett and Anderson, I sometimes assign this essay to highlight again how the gun wars being fought today have been going on for some time. There’s nothing new under the sun.
*Richard Hofstadter, “American as a Gun Culture,” American Heritage Magazine (1970). A classic lament of American gun culture. Students get a summary of his argument via my work so I don’t require it.
SUPPORT
There is no tuition for this course. If you would like to support my mission of educating people and enriching conversations about guns in America, please use either of the two donation buttons below. Your contributions help offset the costs associated with making this and other work freely available with no subscriptions or paywalls. Even a small one-time PayPal contribution or gift of one $5 “coffee” helps. (Venmo added by request.) Thank you for sustaining my work and my morale.
