Weapon of Choice
Weapon of Choice

Author: Fredrick E. Ayres

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-10-27

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0674241096

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How ordinary Americans, frustrated by the legal and political wrangling over the Second Amendment, can fight for reforms that will both respect gun owners’ rights and reduce gun violence. Efforts to reduce gun violence in the United States face formidable political and constitutional barriers. Legislation that would ban or broadly restrict firearms runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Second Amendment. And gun rights advocates have joined a politically savvy firearm industry in a powerful coalition that stymies reform. Ian Ayres and Fredrick Vars suggest a new way forward. We can decrease the number of gun deaths, they argue, by empowering individual citizens to choose common-sense gun reforms for themselves. Rather than ask politicians to impose one-size-fits-all rules, we can harness a libertarian approach—one that respects and expands individual freedom and personal choice—to combat the scourge of gun violence. Ayres and Vars identify ten policies that can be immediately adopted at the state level to reduce the number of gun-related deaths without affecting the rights of gun owners. For example, Donna’s Law, a voluntary program whereby individuals can choose to restrict their ability to purchase or possess firearms, can significantly decrease suicide rates. Amending Red Flag statutes, which allow judges to restrict access to guns when an individual has shown evidence of dangerousness, can give police flexible and effective tools to keep people safe. Encouraging the use of unlawful possession petitions can help communities remove guns from more than a million Americans who are legally disqualified from owning them. By embracing these and other new forms of decentralized gun control, the United States can move past partisan gridlock and save lives now.

Confronting Gun Violence in America
Confronting Gun Violence in America

Author: Thomas Gabor

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-12

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3319337238

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This book critically examines the link between guns and violence. It weighs the value of guns for self-protection against the adverse effects of gun ownership and carrying. It also analyses the role of public opinion, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and the firearms industry and lobby in impeding efforts to prevent gun violence. Confronting Gun Violence in America explores solutions to the gun violence problem in America, a country where 90 people die from gunshot wounds every day. The wide-range of solutions assessed include: a national gun licensing system; universal background checks; a ban on military-style weapons; better regulatory oversight of the gun industry; the use of technologies, such as the personalization of weapons; child access prevention; repealing laws that encourage violence; changing violent norms; preventing retaliatory violence; and strategies to rebuild American communities. This accessible and incisive book will be of great interest to students and researchers in criminology and sociology, as well as practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in gun ownership and violence.

Guns, Traumas and Exceptionalism: America in the Twenty-First Century
Guns, Traumas and Exceptionalism: America in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Howard Epstein

Publisher:

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9781542802031

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What is the most damaging gun crime of all? It's pretending that gun-control laws, on their own, are ever going to achieve anything. They didn't work at Columbine, they didn't work at Virginia Tech, at Sandy Hook or at the scenes of any other rampage-killings and, alone, they are not the answer to those outrages that may yet come along.Horrifically, American students are three times more likely to die by the bullet in the schools and colleges in America than those in all such places of learning of the rest of the world combined. And the workplace death-rate in the USA is twice that of the rest of the world combined.As gun control alone plainly does not work, it is time for something new. It is time to improve gun control regulation by addressing the problem of gun crime through gun culture. Not only does gun-crime cause trauma, but also traumas cause gun-crime. And America has been battered by more traumas than any comparable nation. In this book, I set out to show how twenty national traumas, in the 80 years from the Wall Street Crash to the Credit Crunch, have battered the American psyche and mixed in a toxic way with the gun, an icon in US society, to unleash almost unchecked violence. I explain how America got to be so violent, and the better place it can get to by dealing with gun crime as a matter of gun culture. I suggest two new paradigms for alleviating the problem - two highly-practical routes for reducing gun-crime that need to be considered, debated and adopted. In this way, I argue, the tide can be turned. America is exceptional in many more good ways than bad, and has the vitality and the strength to achieve redemption.

Guns, Traumas and Exceptionalism
Guns, Traumas and Exceptionalism

Author: Howard David Epstein

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-08-12

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9781536926927

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What is the most damaging gun crime of all? It's pretending that gun-control laws, on their own, are ever going to achieve anything. They didn't work at Columbine, they didn't work at Virginia Tech, at Sandy Hook or at the scenes of any other rampage-killings and, alone, they are not the answer to those outrages that may yet come along. Horrifically, American students are three times more likely to die by the bullet in the schools and colleges in America than those in all such places of learning of the rest of the world combined. And the workplace death-rate in the USA is twice that of the rest of the world combined. As gun control alone plainly does not work, it is time for something new. It is time to improve gun control regulation by addressing the problem of gun crime through gun culture. Not only does gun-crime cause trauma, but also traumas cause gun-crime. And America has been battered by more traumas than any comparable nation. In this book, I set out to show how twenty national traumas, in the 80 years from the Wall Street Crash to the Credit Crunch, have battered the American psyche and mixed in a toxic way with the gun, an icon in US society, to unleash almost unchecked violence. I explain how America got to be so violent, and the better place it can get to by dealing with gun crime as a matter of gun culture. I suggest two new paradigms for alleviating the problem - two highly-practical routes for reducing gun-crime that need to be considered, debated and adopted. In this way, I argues, the tide can be turned. America is exceptional in many more good ways than bad, and has the vitality and the strength to achieve redemption. (c) Howard David Epstein - London August 2016

Carry
Carry

Author: Toni Jensen

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1984821202

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NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence. Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize • Goop Book Club Pick • “Essential . . . We need more voices like Toni Jensen’s, more books like Carry.”—Tommy Orange, New York Times bestselling author of There There Toni Jensen grew up around guns: As a girl, she learned to shoot birds in rural Iowa with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she’s had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten. In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America. In the title chapter, Jensen connects the trauma of school shootings with her own experiences of racism and sexual assault on college campuses. “The Worry Line” explores the gun and gang violence in her neighborhood the year her daughter was born. “At the Workshop” focuses on her graduate school years, during which a workshop classmate repeatedly killed off thinly veiled versions of her in his stories. In “Women in the Fracklands,” Jensen takes the reader inside Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and bears witness to the peril faced by women in regions overcome by the fracking boom. In prose at once forensic and deeply emotional, Toni Jensen shows herself to be a brave new voice and a fearless witness to her own difficult history—as well as to the violent cultural landscape in which she finds her coordinates. With each chapter, Carry reminds us that surviving in one’s country is not the same as surviving one’s country.

Rampage Nation
Rampage Nation

Author: Louis Klarevas

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2016-08-23

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1633880672

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In the past decade, no individual act of violence has killed more people in the United States than the mass shooting. This well-researched, forcefully argued book answers some of the most pressing questions facing our society: Why do people go on killing sprees? Are gun-free zones magnets for deadly rampages? What can we do to curb the carnage of this disturbing form of firearm violence? Contrary to conventional wisdom, the author shows that gun possession often prods aggrieved, mentally unstable individuals to go on shooting sprees; these attacks largely occur in places where guns are not prohibited by law; and sensible gun-control measures like the federal Assault Weapons Ban—which helped drastically reduce rampage violence when it was in effect—are instrumental to keeping Americans safe from mass shootings in the future. To stem gun massacres, the author proposes several original policy prescriptions, ranging from the enactment of sensible firearm safety reforms to an overhaul of how the justice system investigates potential active-shooter threats and prosecutes violent crimes. Calling attention to the growing problem of mass shootings, Rampage Nation demonstrates that this unique form of gun violence is more than just a criminal justice offense or public health scourge. It is a threat to American security.

Guns 360
Guns 360

Author: Eric S. See

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-06-22

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 1538140683

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Guns 360 takes a comprehensive and common-sense approach to some of the most difficult issues facing not only the criminal justice system but also society as a whole: firearm possession, regulation, and control. Issues related to firearms cut across all dimensions of society and are a concern to everyone from the members of the general public, law enforcement, academics, politicians, public health agencies, and the media. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to fully understand and appreciate the many facets related to firearms. Firearm related issues cover more than mere ownership and possession. School shootings and mass shootings dominate the headlines and cause fear for both parents and students. Firearm regulation and licensing divide politicians and create solid one issue voting blocks. Firearms used in domestic violence incidents and weapons owned and used by the mentally ill generate more victims than solutions. The marketing, messaging, and purchasing of firearms are all shaped by a variety of criminological, sociological, and psychological forces used to influence commercial behavior. This book combines academics in the fields of criminology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics, communications with practical experts with law enforcement, military, management, forensics, public health, medicine, and digital forensics backgrounds. This multidisciplinary approach has been brought together to further our understanding of firearms and their impacts on our society from every angle. Firearms will never disappear, nor will the controversy surrounding them suddenly turn into agreement. What can be accomplished however is an increased knowledge, understanding, and discussion of the complex topics involved within these debates.

Guns and Control
Guns and Control

Author: Guy Smith

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1510760083

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A Nonpartisan guide that arms both sides of the gun control debate. The slogan of the Gun Facts Project is “We are neither pro-gun nor anti-gun. We are pro-math and anti-BS.” From project creator Guy Smith comes Guns and Control: A Nonpartisan Guide to Mass Public Shootings, Gun Accidents, Crime, Public Carry, Suicides, Defensive Use, and More. No matter what side of the aisle one is on, people are baffled by gun control. This book is designed to be a guide to thoughtful discussion; it arms readers with facts and the logic behind conflicting arguments and leaves emotional rhetoric to the pundits and focuses on the thorny issues of the debate. Guns and Control will: • Guide readers step-wise through each of the major gun control topics: mass public shootings, assault weapons, street crime, suicide, private carry, defensive gun use, gun availability, and more. • Help readers gain the broad perspective and the full set of important, true facts, just in time for the 2020 Presidential Election. • Arm readers against some of the more egregious misinformation. • Support readers in formulating their own conclusions. Guns and Control will grant high-level perspectives—for example, that mass public shootings are a global phenomenon, occurring in nearly all developed nations—and explore details to understand the causes, and thus possible cures, of gun violence-related problems. Was the push for de-institutionalization in mental health management a contributing factor to the rise in mass public shootings? Guns and Control will help readers find answers to such questions. What the public lacks is a clear, unbiased, broad perspective on the realities of guns, explained in simple, straightforward, and entertaining ways. Guns and Control will demystify these misunderstood aspects of who uses and misuses guns.

The Last Gun
The Last Gun

Author: Tom Diaz

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2013-03-26

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1595588418

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Newtown, Connecticut. Aurora, Colorado. Both have entered our collective memory as sites of unimaginable heartbreak and mass slaughter perpetrated by lone gunmen. Meanwhile, cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., are dealing with the painful, everyday reality of record rates of gun-related deaths. By any account, gun violence in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. A widely respected activist and policy analyst—as well as a former gun enthusiast and an ex-member of the National Rifle Association—Tom Diaz presents a chilling, up-to-date survey of the changed landscape of gun manufacturing and marketing. The Last Gun explores how the gun industry and the nature of gun violence have changed, including the disturbing rise in military-grade gun models. But Diaz also argues that the once formidable gun lobby has become a "paper tiger," marshaling a range of evidence and case studies to make the case that now is the time for a renewed political effort to attack gun violence at its source—the guns themselves. In the aftermath of Newtown, a challenging national conversation lies ahead. The Last Gun is an indispensable guide to this debate, and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we can finally rid America's streets, schools, and homes of gun violence and prevent future Newtowns.