Guns and Society

silverado mike

silverado mike

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Hello everyone,

I'm relitively new to the forums. I'm curently brainstorming a capstone paper for school. this is my last project to get out of college (I've taken the long road)

I'm planning my topic as guns in american society.

my question for new england shooters is. what topics should I focus on?
I'm going to need to come up with 20 pages with references.

where would you focus and reference from?

Thank you in advance,

Mike
 
I would focus on the misinformation that is spoon fed to those who are unknowledgable about firearms ownership by the media and many politicians. They use this tactic in order to create a deep-seeded fear in the public to forward their unconstitutional agenda of eliminating firearms ownership by law-abiding citizens of the United States.
 
silverado mike said:
Hello everyone,

I'm relitively new to the forums. I'm curently brainstorming a capstone paper for school. this is my last project to get out of college (I've taken the long road)

I'm planning my topic as guns in american society.

my question for new england shooters is. what topics should I focus on?
I'm going to need to come up with 20 pages with references.

where would you focus and reference from?

Thank you in advance,

Mike
Click to expand...

Some ideas - feel free to use or ignore. Good luck!

Attitudes of gun ownership in US History, how and why changed

A) Guns and Colonial/Pre-Colonial period & Westward Expansion - hunting/defense/revolution. Reference deToquaville, Jefferson & Federalist Papers

B) Civil War & Reconstruction - anticedents of today's gun control. Revitalized Federal Government & increased centralization of power

C) Frontier & Late 19th Cent. - Contrast 'wild west' with settled east as example of American society's change from agrarian expantionist to settled industrial

E) World Wars, Population growth and Pax Americana - enormous growth of Federal government coupled with popular ideas of government as solution to problems. Decline of the individualist 'Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' Boomer generation's association of guns with military, Viet Nam and repression - Boomers are now the 'elder statesmen' and shape public opinion.
 
Exactly what Whitey627 said. Focus on their 'facts' and then expose the real facts to them. One point I would mention is how they state that guns are the leading cause of death among children. In the study they often quote a 'child' is anyone up and OVER the age of 18.

Another good segment you can focus on is the Main Stream Media's bias towards only reporting a shooting when its the bad guy doing it and IGNORING when a law abiding citizen does it. Two cases you may wish to focus on is the one that just happened here in Orlando about 1 week ago as well as the case in an Arizona Wal-Mart 1-2 years ago. The Wal-Mart one is especially good because the guy who was shot and killed was attacking the women with a knife and she actually had a RO against the guy. Without a doubt she would be dead if the guy who was CCW'ing was not there.
 
silverado mike said:
Hello everyone,

I'm relitively new to the forums. I'm curently brainstorming a capstone paper for school. this is my last project to get out of college (I've taken the long road)

I'm planning my topic as guns in american society.

my question for new england shooters is. what topics should I focus on?
I'm going to need to come up with 20 pages with references.

where would you focus and reference from?

Thank you in advance,

Mike
Click to expand...


Here ya go http://www.gunfacts.info/

Is a great resource and covers basically every gun myth out there with all the sources to back it up. Ive used the info in many many papers.
 
You may want to reach out to

Dr. Ignatius Piazza Founder and Director http://www.frontsight.com

DR. Piazza Has many examples of how the good guys prevailed because of the use of personal armed self defense.

He is also a very big proponent of the 2nd ammendment. So depending on your college/proffessors views you may want to temper the way you present the information but in general he has some good information or you might be taking the even longer road. [wink]

BTW what view are you starting this project from (Pro/Anti). It is a very interesting project for a final thesis project good luck.
 
Last edited:
Hello Again,

I'm located in Hopkinton MA.
I'm pro gun I have been shooting since I started in a junior rifle program at the age of 12. I curently shoot twice a week be it skeet, pistol, plinking or sighting in the deer guns.

I'm right now trying to figure out what direction the professor is leaning.
Thanks for the input thus far everyone.

Mike
 
Last edited:
Find some stats on crime rates pre and post-ban. Bet you there's no difference, maybe even worse since. The guns they "ban" are not not the guns that are being used in the street crimes politicians make such a big deal of. These criminals aren't going into a LEGIT shop with their LTCs and dropping $1000 on a quality firearm to commit a petty crime. The only people these limitations affect are US!
 
Compare the political treatment of gun owners in liberal states (MA, CA and NY are high on the list) to that of blacks in the deep south in the 60s. Outside of the violence towards blacks then, the similarities are striking. Desire to impose local restrictions. They don't use the word but anti's use the same arguements about states rights as jim crow supporters did. Subjective licensing like in NY, CA and MA where subjective qualities about a person are used to deny a right, in this case firearms ownership, then it was voting using literacy tests and other insane voting licensing schemes. The use of boycotts and other economic pressure to suppress blacks is also commonly employed by antis' to remove legal guns from stores and suppress legal shooting sports activities.

It is a dangerous topic though since the level of violence against blacks is not shared by violence on gun owners nor is gun ownership a right in many eyes so expect a big fat D on your paper if you do this, but it would be good to expose.
 
Man, you can take all sorts of directions with a paper on guns in today's society.

You could talk about the scare tactics used to try to get restrictive legislation thru states or congress.

You could talk about the lack of gun violence in Israel, where teenagers openly carry Uzis to class

You could talk about the unpreparedness of the US population to defend itself (thru lack of gun knowledge/trainiing of teenagers) if there was a major war or extensive terrorist action on our soil.

You could talk about how guns in the hands of citizens, as our forefathers said, would guarantee the continuation of our liberties and rights, since any government can not be trusted with absolute power over its citizens.

You could talk about the excessive portrayal of handgun violence in modern moview, TV, rap music, video games, and how completely opposite that portrayal is compared to the way law abiding citizens exercise their gun rights.
 
Bob P said:
silverado mike said:
I'm right now trying to figure out what direction the professor is leaning.
Thanks for the input thus far everyone.

Mike
Click to expand...

[rofl][rofl][rofl]
Smart move! Give 'em what he wants to hear and get out.
Click to expand...
+1
That is sooo true! Stroking the professor's view is worth at least a letter grade's worth of effort.

By the way, what's the major?
History? Education? Political Science? Economics? (John Lott's nobel prize is in economics)
 
n1zfg said:
+1
That is sooo true! Stroking the professor's view is worth at least a letter grade's worth of effort.

By the way, what's the major?
History? Education? Political Science? Economics? (John Lott's nobel prize is in economics)
Click to expand...
its a BA in Liberal Studies.
they let me use my resume as life credit so my consentration is computer science and sociology.
 
If the Liberal Studies Prof is Liberal be careful with any of the Frontsight stuff I mentioned earlier. If a liberal goes to that site their head will likely implode.
 
My college statistics project was comparing the inherent accuracy of .22 ammunition based solely on muzzle velocity. Without trying I hit 18 pages not including the data tables. (for the record, "standard velocity" won regardless of brand)

Do yourself a favor and select a VERY narrow question. Detail the variables you can not account for, go into great detail of the pertinent data and you'll be amazed at how quickly you can chew up 20 pages.

Now, what to talk about.

How about: Why when firearms were a common and celebrated tool at the turn of the 20th century, they are reviled in popular culture only 100 years later. Heck, you can spend 20 pages just detailing the type of common shooting events at fairs and other public celebrations that occurred in the early 1900's. You might even want to narrow the scope to print media presentation. Compare newspaper articles on firearm related subjects from the year 1900 and the year 2000.

Not only does the subject narrow the sources, you can glean a lot of applicable quotes directly from the sources. If possible, go interview an expert like a curator of a museum and discuss the public perception. Again, a great source of quotes AND a source likely nobody else will have.
 
As a tip from a former university professor, don't play to what you think they want to hear, but argue, intelligently, for you hypothesis or opening position and then back it all up with data. You may want to briefly look at the history of an armed society in the US, what it means to the country to have the 2nd amendment, then go on to look at countries where the individual - and in some respects the collective rights - of the citizens to own firearms had been eroded or eliminated and what the consequences were to those societies. Nazi Germany is a good example, and is the current situation in the UK and Australia.

Good luck.
 
I would suggest that you research the origins of the 2nd Amendment and the legal environment and changes over the last 200+ years that have sought to limit/undermine the 2nd Amendment. Easy to research because there are numerous academic papers and case law to use for sources. Also many other academic papers and studies on the matter.
 
Put the truth about guns and the biased liberal media out there. Like someone said cite examples of legal gun owners using their right to carry to protect themselves. A recent one would be the liquor store owner in Worcester who shot an armed robber. Didn't hear much about that one because he protected his life and killed a criminal. Had it been the other way around, it would have been all over the news stating that we don't need guns because they end up criminal hands.
 
By the way, there are many studies out there that show the media's bias against guns. A little digging will get you very far. There are some notable stories about media outlets outright banning the use of pro-gun advertisements or allowing pro-gun advocates on the air.
 
wow,

thanks guys for the input I'm in the proccesss of wading through to narrow my topic. some of the insight has had me leaning in diffrent directions.
I'm going to do a little prelim research to see whats out there to "dig" up.
 

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