The Triumph of the Gun-Rights Argument
The Triumph of the Gun-Rights Argument

Author: Harry L. Wilson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-01-16

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1440830363

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Taking the bold position that the battle over gun control has already been won by the pro-gun-rights faction, this book will be equally informative to those immersed in the debate and those new to it. Gun control evokes passions equaled by few other subjects. As this book shows, the debate over firearms begins with cultural values and extends into questions of constitutional rights, public health and safety, and politics. Examining its subject through the prism of the Sandy Hook shootings, the book looks at the influence of elected officials, the courts, interest groups, and average citizens in shaping gun-control laws. It shares poll results detailing what the public really thinks about guns and why, and it explains the various components of gun policy and policymaking to show how they come together to form the current reality. While small skirmishes about the right to bear arms will continue for some time, the author, a self-described "gun-owning academic," asserts that changing public opinion, Supreme Court decisions, dominance of gun-rights interest groups, the Democratic Party's virtual withdrawal from the discussion, and a declining violent-crime rate have formed a perfect storm, resulting in the effective end of the gun control debate. This assertion and the thoughtful examination that leads to it will be of equal interest to those engaged in the argument and those researching it for the first time.

After Gun Violence
After Gun Violence

Author: Craig Rood

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2019-05-20

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0271085452

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Mass shootings have become the “new normal” in American life. The same can be said for the public debate that follows a shooting: blame is cast, political postures are assumed, but no meaningful policy changes are enacted. In After Gun Violence, Craig Rood argues that this cycle is the result of a communication problem. Without advocating for specific policies, Rood examines how Americans talk about gun violence and suggests how we might discuss the issues more productively and move beyond our current, tragic impasse. Exploring the ways advocacy groups, community leaders, politicians, and everyday citizens talk about gun violence, Rood reveals how the gun debate is about far more than just guns. He details the role of public memory in shaping the discourse, showing how memories of the victims of gun violence, the Second Amendment, and race relations influence how gun policy is discussed. In doing so, Rood argues that forgetting and misremembering this history leads interest groups and public officials to entrenched positions and political failure and drives the public further apart. Timely and innovative, After Gun Violence advances our understanding of public discourse in an age of gridlock by illustrating how public deliberation and public memory shape and misshape one another. It is a search to understand why public discourse fails and how we can do better.

Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea
Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea

Author: Joshua Horwitz

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2009-04-29

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0472033700

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"Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea recasts the gun debate by showing its importance to the future of democracy and the modern regulatory state. Until now, gun rights advocates had effectively co-opted the language of liberty and democracy and made it their own. This book is an important first step in demonstrating how reasonable gun control is essential to the survival of democracy and ordered liberty." ---Saul Cornell, Ohio State University When gun enthusiasts talk about constitutional liberties guaranteed by the Second Amendment, they are referring to freedom in a general sense, but they also have something more specific in mind---freedom from government oppression. They argue that the only way to keep federal authority in check is to arm individual citizens who can, if necessary, defend themselves from an aggressive government. In the past decade, this view of the proper relationship between government and individual rights and the insistence on a role for private violence in a democracy has been co-opted by the conservative movement. As a result, it has spread beyond extreme militia groups to influence state and national policy. In Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, Joshua Horwitz and Casey Anderson set the record straight. They challenge the proposition that more guns equal more freedom and expose Insurrectionism as a true threat to freedom in the United States today. Joshua Horwitz received a law degree from George Washington University and is currently a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Casey Anderson holds a law degree from Georgetown University and is currently a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C.

Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America
Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America

Author: Adam Winkler

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2011-09-19

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0393082296

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A provocative history that reveals how guns—not abortion, race, or religion—are at the heart of America's cultural divide. Gunfight is a timely work examining America’s four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. In this definitive and provocative history, Adam Winkler reveals how guns—not abortion, race, or religion—are at the heart of America’s cultural divide. Using the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller—which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation’s capital—as a springboard, Winkler brilliantly weaves together the dramatic stories of gun-rights advocates and gun-control lobbyists, providing often unexpected insights into the venomous debate that now cleaves our nation.

The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment
The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment

Author: David C. Williams

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0300127553

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David Williams offers a new reading of the Second Amendment suggesting that it guarantees to individuals a right to arms only insofar as they are part of a united & consensual people so that their uprising can be a unified revolution rather than a civil war.

Standing Our Ground
Standing Our Ground

Author: Lucy McBath

Publisher: 37 Ink

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1501187791

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From the national spokesperson for Everytown for Gun Safety and a mother who “turned her sorrow into a strategy and her mourning into a movement” (Hillary Clinton) comes the riveting memoir of a mother’s loss and call to action for common-sense gun laws. Lucia Kay McBath knew deep down that a bullet could one day take her son. After all, she had watched the news of countless unarmed black men unjustly gunned down. Standing Our Ground is McBath’s moving memoir of raising, loving, and losing her son to gun violence, and the story of how she transformed her pain into activism. After seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis was shot by a man who thought the music playing on his car stereo was too loud, the nation grieved yet again for the unnecessary loss of life. Here, McBath goes beyond the timeline and the assailant’s defense—Stand Your Ground—to present an emotional account of her fervent fight for justice, and her awakening to a cause that will drive the rest of her days. But more than McBath’s story or that of her son, Standing Our Ground keenly observes the social and political evolution of America’s gun culture. A must-read for anyone concerned with gun safety in America, it is a powerful and heartfelt call to action for common-sense gun legislation.

The Second Amendment
The Second Amendment

Author: Michael Waldman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1476747458

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Presents a history of the Second Amendment to illuminate its controversies, debates, and misapprehensions, explaining its contexts and purposes while revealing how it came to represent gun-ownership rights in the twentieth century.

Gun Rights
Gun Rights

Author: The New York Times Editorial Staff

Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1642824135

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As the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms may be considered a founding tenet of American life. The expression of that right, however, has generated no end of debate. The association of guns with injury, murder, suicide, and accidents has prompted activists and lawmakers alike to propose and pass regulations about who can buy guns and how they can be used. While one segment of the population wants to ban guns altogether, another bristles at any infringement at all. In between both extremes are multiple issues and perspectives that this thought-provoking collection of articles examines in depth. Media literacy questions and terms are included to help readers further analyze news coverage and reporting styles.

Gun Politics in America [2 volumes]
Gun Politics in America [2 volumes]

Author: Harry L. Wilson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-06-06

Total Pages: 914

ISBN-13: 1440837295

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Covering the history of firearms and gun control in America, this two-volume work presents original documents and helps readers understand these documents in relation to the social and political context in which they were written. Offering the most complete collection of primary documents on the subject of guns and gun politics, this two-volume set will give readers a comprehensive, unbiased understanding of the complex and often-surprising evolution of gun ownership, gun culture, and gun politics in the United States. This fascinating history is examined through approximately 150 primary source documents from the Colonial era to the present day. Each section opens with an informative headnote that provides important context for understanding the social and political milieu in which the document was created. The chronologically arranged set begins with Colonial laws regulating firearms, then proceeds through debates regarding the Second Amendment and laws that prohibited slaves from possessing guns. The use and regulation of firearms in the "Wild West" is explored, as is the era of Prohibition and organized crime in the 1930s. Later chapters cover the impact of 1960s-era racial and political violence and assassinations on gun laws and attitudes; the struggles over gun control and gun rights in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations; the increased clout of the NRA during the Bush administration; and the impact of events ranging from the Sandy Hook Massacre to the Supreme Court's District of Columbia v. Heller decision. Documents include laws, speeches, court decisions, Congressional debates, and more, giving college students and other interested readers the opportunity to evaluate each document—and each period—for themselves.