Following their gun field trip reflections, the core assignment in Sociology of Guns is for students to move beyond their personal views (articulated in their field trip reflection essays) and adopt a scholarly approach to the question of guns in society.
Here the issue is not their personal experiences with or beliefs about guns, but empirical research on guns. Students consider the role guns actually play in society by systematically engaging sociological theories and studies (called “the scholarly literature”) on one specific aspect of the broader phenomenon (e.g., concealed carry, homicide, self-defense, hunting, sport).
Because there is a limited number of topics I can cover in a single semester, I encourage the students to choose a topic that is of interest to them that they want to investigate further.
The topics selected by students to investigate this semester are:
- Symbolic firearm usage in U.S. political activism
- Female gun ownership
- New gun owners
- Effectiveness of self-defense with firearms
- Gun use in Latino communities
- Illegal gun markets and crime
- Guns and masculinity
- Race and police use of force
- Guns, race, gender, and policing
- Religion and guns
- How do criminals get guns?
- “Assault weapons” and assault weapons bans
- Guns and domestic violence
One of the requirements for the assignment is that students incorporate a minimum of 10 scholarly books and/or articles on the topic. The sources must based on original, peer-reviewed empirical research.
As a consequence, the topics the students end up studying tend to be more conventional (like those listed above). Some more specific topics the students originally propose to study have to be thrown out or modified because there is not a sufficient body of scholarly literature on which to draw. This in itself is a learning experience because some topics the students think are important have not drawn much, if any, scholarly attention.
For example, there are not 10 scholarly books and/or articles on LGBT gun owners or guns in Asian American communities. I approved the topic on “gun use in Latino communities” with the proviso that the student might set about looking for 10 sources on the topic and come up empty handed (or find that the vast majority of studies will focus on criminal use of guns by gang-involved Latino youth).
Before submitting their final papers, students present a synopsis of their findings to me and their classmates in a “Celebration of Learning” so all can benefit at least a little from their work.
Gun Culture 2.0 
Great topics all – I hope you make their papers available as you do their range experience essays. I am glad you point out to them that on some topics the quantity of “scholarly” source material is so slim. But how do you help them recognize or weed out “scholarly” material that, although peer reviewed, is many times vacant of objectivity and sometimes wildly biased?
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I have called out biases in peer-reviewed published research on this and my Gun Culture 2.0 blog over the years. It is a problem for peer-review when there is not a diversity of views on a topic. Something I have pointed out that Jonathan Haidt points out: https://guncurious.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/gun-studies-peer-review-and-jonathan-haidts-the-righteous-mind/
In my experience and opinion, I think most research on guns is not vacant of objectivity or wildly biased, but rather contains more subtle biases (though I recognize this is a matter of opinion). For example, https://guncurious.wordpress.com/2019/10/05/frustrating-anti-gun-biases-in-scholarly-publications-on-guns/
The way I try to counter this is by closely reading published research with the students in class and highlighting places where subtle biases are able to creep in, even with peer review. For example, one article we read this semester is “The Meaning of Guns to Gun Owners.” I have written about a bias I found in this article and I shared that with students in class. https://gunculture2point0.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/the-meaning-of-guns-to-gun-owners-in-the-us-by-siegel-and-boine/
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Oh, please don’t mis-understand. The reason I subscribe to you is precisely because of your exemplary efforts to distill through biases. And, I would be the first to point out that there is possibly NO MORE BIASED info than that of the PRO-gun lobby, lol. One of the reasons people come to me is because I refuse to use lots of info from the gun lobby in an effort to be as neutral as I can be. Again, lol if it weren’t such a rampant problem. I only wish I could help you and your students in some way (in addition to recommending that ppl follow your blog).
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Hope I didn’t sound too defensive in response to your good comment. Just wanted to answer it and add some additional context beyond what you asked about.
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[…] Student Research Topics for Sociology of Guns (Fall 2021) […]
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[…] The major assignment students complete in the course is a seminar paper in which they move beyond their personal views (articulated in their field trip reflection essays) and adopt a scholarly approach to the question of guns in society. Students consider the role guns actually play in society by systematically engaging sociological theories and studies (called “the scholarly literature”) on one specific aspect of the broader phenomenon. Because there is a limited number of topics I can cover in a single semester, I encourage the students to choose a topic that is of interest to them that they want to investigate further. The topics students chose this semester can be found here. […]
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