gun violence

From Gun Violence to Gun Safety

In July 2012 I took up the issue of the use of the word “culture” in Charles Blow’s New York Times column on Gun Culture. Then in December 2012 with the horrors of Newtown, I returned to the issue of gun violence in a series of posts.

Since then, I have urged US anthropology to tackle these issues. In 2018, there were signs that the events in Florida were reshaping national discourse on these matters. Can anthropology help turn the tide?

The March 2018 issue of Open Anthropology, titled Enough: Anthropologists Take on Gun Violence featured 15 articles in anthropology that were free-to-read through March 2019. And here is a summary of the key blog-posts in the gun control and gun violence series:

• Anthropology for a Safer World updates the theme for 2018 and provides a brief bibliography on anthropology and guns.
• The Gun Control Podcast – Bringing Sanity to Gun Violence (December 2015) attempted to summarize this issue as mass shootings continued.
• Shoddy Anthropology & Gun Control: Human Nature, Culture, History (March 2013) underscored how “shoddy anthropology” contributed to gun control inertia.
• Anthropology, Gun Reform, American Anthropological Association (January 2013) followed on the December 2012 round-up, thanking the American Anthropological Association for a statement on gun violence.
• Anthropology and Gun Violence: New Guns or New Gun Control? (December 31, 2012) was an account of how the Newtown massacre caused more gun buying than gun control.
• Gun Violence Anthropology: AAA and the NRA (December 26, 2012) was a round-up of anthropologists writing on gun control after Newtown. I also pleaded for a gun violence statement from the American Anthropological Association.
• Semi-Automatic Anthropology: Yes, the guns really do matter (December 19, 2012) revisited the post on Gun Culture, making the case that this was a simple issue for anthropologists to address.
• Semi-Automatic Weapons Buyback – The Future of Gun Reform (December 18, 2012) attempted to urge a forward-looking policy in what seemed to be a moment of potential political change.
• Gun Culture and Anthropology on Culture (July 2012) began the series as a form of reflecting on the use of culture beyond anthropology.