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Gun Violence

Originally published 03/30/2018
Was the NRA Founded to Protect Black People from the Ku Klux Klan?

Revisionist accounts of the origin of the National Rifle Association say it was formed to help freed slaves defend themselves against racist attacks after the Civil War.

Originally published 03/29/2018
Gun-control advocates believe their activism will mirror the fight for gay marriage. They’re wrong.

James Kirchick

The better comparison is Prohibition — and we all know how that turned out.

Originally published 03/27/2018
The Lessons of a School Shooting—in 1853

Saul Cornell

How a now-forgotten classroom murder inflamed the national gun argument.

Originally published 03/26/2018
How the marches for gun control are like the protests against Vietnam

As in Vietnam, students have a stake in this fight.

Originally published 03/23/2018
America Passed Gun Control in 1968. Can It Happen Again?

Jason Sokol

The King and Kennedy assassinations spurred the passage of the Gun Control Act.

Originally published 03/14/2018
We Shouldn’t Be Surprised that Young People Are Leading the Charge for Gun Control

Bill Heiden

Most importantly, history shows that this kind of street action works.

Originally published 03/14/2018
Patrick J. Charles, author of a new book on guns, defends militia-centric understanding of Second Amendment

“There’s been people on both sides who’ve misappropriated historical evidence over time or failed to fully contextualize it.”

Originally published 03/13/2018
Jonathan Zimmerman says students should go on strike to win gun control

Jonathan Zimmerman

West Virginia teachers won by striking. There’s a lesson in that.

Originally published 03/06/2018
7 Times in History When Students Turned to Activism

History is full of movements led by students — albeit usually in college, not high school. Some were successful and others brutally crushed, but even the latter still resonate.

Originally published 03/06/2018
Before Trump’s wild shifts on the NRA, Ronald Reagan took on the gun lobby

On May 3, 1994, Ronald Reagan and two other former presidents sent a letter to House members, urging them to support a controversial ban on lethal, military-style assault weapons.

Originally published 03/05/2018
Boycotts won't weaken the NRA's bottom line – but that's not the point

Lawrence Glickman

The ethical point boycotters have tried to raise from that time to our own is that, in an interconnected national and international market economy, there are no innocent bystanders.

Originally published 03/02/2018
Even the Wild West Embraced Gun Control

Gil Troy

The Wild West wasn't so wild that it—and the Stormy South—couldn’t include gun control.

Originally published 03/01/2018
This Is How You Get Gun Control

Bruce W. Dearstyne

It’s what happened after several headline-making shootings captured public attention a century ago.

Originally published 03/01/2018
Gun-rights advocates are right that violent films encourage school shootings. They’re wrong about how.

Matthew Christopher Hulbert

The problem isn't the violence — it's the celebration of gun culture.

Originally published 02/28/2018
A gunmaker once tried to reform itself. The NRA nearly destroyed it.

In 2001, a little more than a year after cutting a gun-control deal with the US government, the British conglomerate that owned Smith & Wesson sold it at a dramatic loss.

Originally published 02/27/2018
Both Sides Have Been Getting the Gun Debate Wrong

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

We have a gun culture not because of the sanctity of the 2nd Amendment, but because killing, looting, burning, raping, and terrorizing Indians were an American tradition and militias helped carry out these horrors.

Originally published 02/27/2018
Why Shouldn't Kids Lead the Charge on Gun Safety?

Kathleen Bachynski, Angela Turi, and Alison Bateman-House

They've led on public health before.

Originally published 02/27/2018
Why Are Conservatives So Obsessed With Gun Rights Anyway?

John Ehrenreich

Belief in gun rights hasn’t always been a conservative ideology. Psychology helps explain how it took off.

Originally published 02/26/2018
This Isn’t the First Time Conspiracy Theorists Have Accused Student Activists of Being ‘Paid Actors’

Raymond Arsenault, a civil rights historian and author of Freedom Riders, says that in 1960, white supremacists started to lean into this technique of discrediting student activists by linking their actions to Northern interference.

Originally published 02/23/2018
Hiding Behind the Second Amendment Is a Nasty Scam and Misunderstanding of American History

Robert W. Thurston

We have it in our power to limit the use of both guns and bullets.

Originally published 02/21/2018
Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved

Saul Cornell

The Second Amendment is one of the most frequently cited provisions in the American Constitution, but also one of the most poorly understood.

Originally published 02/21/2018
The American public has power over the gun business – why doesn’t it use it?

Brian DeLay

The American public has more power over the gun business than most people realize. Taxpayers have always been the arms industry’s indispensable patrons.

Originally published 02/19/2018
Gun Violence: What Historians Are Saying

What historians are tweeting and retweeting.

Originally published 12/12/2017
The Brutal Origins of Gun Rights

Patrick Blanchfield

A new history by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the Second Amendment was intended to perpetuate white settlers' violence toward Native Americans.

Originally published 11/08/2017
Columbine is no longer one of the 10 deadliest shootings in modern US history

In the 18 years since Columbine rocked America to its core, the country has seen so many more mass shootings that the attack isn't even among the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.

Originally published 10/16/2017
Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved

Saul Cornell

The Second Amendment is one of the most frequently cited provisions in the American Constitution, but also one of the most poorly understood.

Originally published 10/10/2017
How the US government created and coddled the gun industry

Brian DeLay

The gun lobby has succeeded by promoting an ingenious illusion. It has framed government as the enemy of the gun business rather than its indispensable historic patron.

Originally published 10/04/2017
Gun Anarchy and the Unfree State

Saul Cornell

The real history of the Second Amendment.

Originally published 10/04/2017
Las Vegas Is Only the Deadliest Shooting in US History Because They Don’t Count Black Lives

The black website The Root objects that the media are ignoring the long string of incidents in which blacks were slaughtered.

Originally published 10/03/2017
26 Gun murders (equiv. 130) in England vs. *11,004* in US Annually

Juan Cole

The United States continues to be peculiar in handing out powerful magazine-fed firearms to almost anyone who wants one and not requiring background checks on private purchases even if these are made at gun shows or by persons with a history of mental illness.

Originally published 10/03/2017
Is Las Vegas the worst mass shooting in US history? It’s surprisingly complicated.

It depends on what counts as a mass shooting — and the typical definition leaves out some pretty bad attacks.

Originally published 06/25/2016
What Should We Make of the Democrats' Sit-In in Congress?

Ray Smock

The part of me that is a congressional historian sees this as a useful signpost and a colorful narrative of the ongoing stress that comes from an obstructionist Congress.

Originally published 07/03/2015
Why Aren’t Pro-Life Evangelical Christians Appalled by America’s Record of Gun Violence?

Lawrence S. Wittner

They preach love, but turn a blind eye toward the deaths of 30,000 by guns each year.

Originally published 11/18/2013
War Was Becoming Obsolete in 1884?

William J. Astore

The American philosopher John Fiske predicted war would become obsolete in his 1884 "The Destiny of Man."

Originally published 05/24/2007
School Shootings

What historians are saying.

Originally published 10/03/2017
Country Guitarist Changes His Mind on Gun Control after Vegas: Why That's Not Surprising.

Stone Age Brain

Evolution biased us to feel things we experience. In the modern world, that's a problem.