guns

Why the NRA Opposes Smart Guns

Katie Trumbly

The law showed favoritism to Smart Guns and personalized technology by only allowing the sale of Smart Guns in the state of New Jersey three years after the first Smart Gun went on U.S. shelves online and in stores. The law, supported by New Jersey Senator Loretta Weinberg, and passed in 2002 was called the Childproof Handgun Law. As a revolt the NRA and gun extremists proceeded to throw the biggest tantrum against gun manufacturing progress since the assault rifle ban. 

White Male Killers and Homicidal Banality

Stephanie Stark

The recent shooting in Santa Barbara is a red flag in a sea of red flags: gun violence is America’s version of the African tragedy. Since 2006, there has been one mass killing nearly every two weeks in the United States, with 75 percent being committed by the use of a firearm. Firearm sales have set records every single year since President Obama has been in office; there have been four times as many firearms purchased as babies have been born in the U.S.

Gun Ownership and the American Male

Leonard Steinhorn

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions in our national gun control debate. The issue is not whether we should have gun control laws in this country — or what they should be.The issue, really, is why so many white middle-American men view any effort to regulate firearms as an assault on their very identity – and thus fight sane and rational laws as if their lives and liberties were at stake.

America’s Hazardous Gun Culture

Yolian Cerquera

Currently, the U.S. ranks number-one in countries with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership per capita, according to the Estimating Civilian Owned Firearms report published by Small Arms Survey  in September 2011. Using a scale of comparison, Americans own more guns than Israelis or Iraqis living in the embattled Middle East. Furthermore, a 2013 Small Arms Survey report stated that between 1986 and 2010, gun manufacturers have produced more than 98 million pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns for domestic sale. 

How the NRA Drew Inspiration From the Black Panthers

Richard Prince

The National Rifle Association (NRA) was inspired by the Black Panthers? Yes, according to Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America (W. W. Norton, 2011). "One of the surprising things I discovered in writing Gunfight was that when the Black Panthers started carrying their guns around in Oakland, Calif., in the late 1960s, it inspired a new wave of gun control laws. It was these laws that ironically sparked a backlash among rural white conservatives..."

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