Gun culture or gun control? : firearms and violence : safety and society / Peter Squires.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Squires, Peter, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gun control--Great Britain.

Gun control.

Firearms--Law and legislation--Great Britain.

Firearms.

Firearms and violence--Scotland--Dunblane.

Firearms and violence.

Gun control--United States.

Firearms and violence--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (268 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London : Routledge, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

n 1996 the shooting and killing of 16 young children in a Dunblane primary school provoked wide reaching parliamentary reform to British gun laws. Within months virtually all privately owned handguns had been outlawed. Gun Culture or Gun Control? presents the first substantial analysis of the social and political reactions to events in Dunblane and also examines many of the wider issues relating to gun control in the United Kingdom.Rigorously comparative throughout, Peter Squires provides a non-partisan exploration of the differences between attitudes to firearms and their con

Contents:

Cover; Gun Culture or Gun Control?: Firearms, violence and society; Copyright; Contents; Figures; Preface; 1 Introduction: Why guns?; Opening shots; The gun question; Emerging issues; Opposing camps; Trends in firearm-related offending; Combat ready; 2 The spectre of the gun: Historical and cultural perspectives; Mechanical and ballistic discourses; Social and historical discourses; Civilisation, authority and violence; A conquest of violence or a new form of power?; Firearms and social control in the UK; The Bill of Rights; Concealed weapons and armed responses?

Civilian disarmament and social change3 The making of the American 'gun culture'; Hunting, history and frontier culture; Firearms and violence; The politics of guns; Researching American gun control; The Second Amendment; Second thoughts on the Second Amendment; The individualist interpretation; The collectivist interpretation; A mountain of paper controls; Federal gun controls; Localised gun controls; The queue at the gunstore; Armed and dangerous to one another; The public health agenda; Women and guns; Saturday night's alright for fighting

4 Discovery and construction: Media coverage of the 'gun question'Guns in the news; Guns and gun cultures; Gun cultures and contemporary Britain; A very British gun culture; 'Bang!' goes the neighbourhood; Staring down the barrel; Bent dealers?; Cautious official pessimism; Lessons from the USA; Freedom, fun, farce, fear and commerce; Responsibility, ricochets and repercussions; 5 Tragedy, aftermath and politics; From nowhere?; Evil, hope and humanism; No reason, no reasons; A well-established pattern in a time of assassins?; Through the 'lunatics loophole'; Context and event

Waiting for Cullen: a political chronology of gun controlEndings and recriminations; 6 Taking stock of the gun control arguments; Plugging gaps or changing cultures; Gun control UK; Quantitative criminology and international comparisons; The problem of handguns; The acceptability of risk; Weapons of choice and doubtful motives?; 7 Conclusions: Culture and ricochets; Problems of the gun: realism and relativism; Order and routine; After the Acts; Lethal practices?; Proper targets?; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Bibliography.

ISBN:

1-134-69702-3

1-280-35470-4

0-203-26895-4

1-134-69703-1

0-203-18775-X

9780203187753

OCLC:

60495033