This week my local newspaper, the Winston-Salem Journal, ran an opinion column I wrote reflecting on the murder of a college student on the campus where I work. This reminded me that I have been meaning to create a landing page to collect all of the various posts I have written on this blog pertaining to violence and gun violence.
I recognize that some object to the phrase “gun violence” since violence is violence and we don’t talk about “fist violence” or “stick violence” or “knife violence.” Fair enough. I recognize and accept this point. At the same time, many of those people also encourage us not to bring knives to gun fights, and some even argue that we should only use our handguns as a means to fight our way back to our rifles. People, not tools, engage in violence. But tools are force multipliers.
In light of this, and in order to use a language common in discussions of these issues in American society, I at times talk about “gun violence.”
In reverse chronological order (most recent first):
- The Telling Geography of American Violence
- When Violence is the Only Answer
- Having a Hard but Productive and Non-Racialized Discussion of Violence
- On race, victimization, and gun violence
- Review of “Juvenile Offenders and Guns: Voices Behind Gun Violence”
- The Problem with Averages in Understanding Guns, Violence, and Crime (Take 3)
- The Problem with Averages in Understanding Guns, Violence, and Crime (Take 2)
- Knives (and Guns) of New York
- There is No Such Thing as Gun Violence in General
- Gun Violence Panel at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting
- The Problem with Averages in Understanding Guns, Violence, and Crime: No One Lives in “The United States”
- Gun Culture 2.0 and Criminal Violence that Involves Guns
- Tragic But Not Random: Andrew Papachristos on Gun Violence
- Unhelpful Exaggeration of Data on “School Shootings” Sets Back Scholarship on Gun Violence
- Cure Violence: Approaching Violence as a Public Health Issue
- Gun Violence: A Campus and Community Discussion at Winston-Salem State University
- We All Want to DO SOMETHING About Gun Violence-But What?
Gun Culture 2.0 
Thanks. Nice way to split that hair, David.
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You mean splitting hairs in the POSITIVE sense right?
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Yes, positive sense. Sorry if that was not clear.
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😉
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the Winston-Salem Journal piece is quite good. It equally applies in New Mexico where ethnicity, poverty, and violence rates all overlap and are our elephants.
I thought of sending this piece to the paper out this way but I already had sent in a different essay about the upcoming elections.
http://northmesamutts.blogspot.com/2018/02/gun-violence-is-more-than-gun-deep.html
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Reblogged this on .
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If I were to split the hair I’d use “_criminal_ gun violence,” when that is what is being discussed.
Although I do get annoyed at the particularization of “gun” violence out of all the other ways people are preyed upon, what actually angers me on an “intellectual integrity” level is lumping in accidents and suicides with deliberate criminal acts when the common usage of “violence” is one person deliberately harming another, not people being accidentally harmed nor harming themselves.
Particularly since those who push the conflated “gun violence” numbers in order to restrict rights almost uniformly and deliberately allow that misapprehension to exist in the minds of the third parties they are trying to sway until called on it by those of us aware of their rhetorical trickery. That’s intellectual malfeasance and, melodramatic as it sounds, I cannot abide it. Win your argument with facts and logic, not deliberately deceptive rhetoric, or stop arguing.
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Agree. The conflation is deliberate and wrong.
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The surprise to me was that they ran that peace without some kind of we-don’t-support or we-don’t-agree or this-is-not-our-opinion kinda thing. I check this blog because I find facts based on verifiable data here. I also will admit the comments following were interesting as well.
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I have tried to build up enough credibility to be able to say things to people on all sides of the gun debates in America that they may not otherwise want to hear. At the same time I recognize that people will hear what they want to hear and filter out the rest. But still I press on!
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I wish I had this like 2 weeks ago!!! Love your shit professor!!!
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[…] Another post lists his published articles: https://gunculture2point0.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/on-violence-and-gun-violence-collected-posts-on-g… […]
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