Gun Violence Prevention Resources

Books:

  • The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know by Philip Cook and Kristin Goss — The Gun Debate offers a clear-eyed view of one of the country’s most polarizing issues. In it, economist Philip J. Cook and political scientist Kristin A. Goss examine the history of guns in the United States, as well as the most recent research and data on gun ownership, firearm violence, the gun industry, and public policy aimed at restriction
  • Gun Fight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America by Adam Wikler — In this thought-provoking history of gun control and the right to bear arms, constitutional law professor Adam Winkler examines the complicated relationship between American’s love of firearms and their ongoing battle to control them. Using the six-year court battle of District of Columbia v Heller that resulted in the reversal of D.C.’s handgun ban, Gunfight dissects the Second Amendment and the intersection of constitutional law and gun control
  • Private Guns, Public Health by David Hemenway — In this myth-busting book on gun violence, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center David Hemenway approaches the controversial issue as a public-health problem. Using accessible research and engaging fact-based arguments, he clearly and convincingly lays out a plan to reduce death and injury from gun violence in the United States
  • The Second Amendment: A Biography by Michael Waldman — At the center of the gun debate lies one of the most controversial provisions of the Bill of Rights: the Second Amendment. In this lively biography of the notorious amendment, Michael Waldman explores its creation, its history, and the ongoing public and political debates around its true meaning
  • Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence  Edited by Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague and Dean Rader — Focused intensively on the crisis of gun violence in America, this volume brings together poems by dozens of our best-known poets, including Billy Collins, Patricia Smith, Natalie Diaz, Natasha Threthewey, Robert Hass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Each poem is followed by a response from a gun violence prevention activist, political figure, survivor, or concerned individual, including survivors of the Columbine, Sandy Hook, Charleston Emmanuel AME, and Virginia Tech shootings
  • SHOT: 101 Survivors of Gun Violence in America  by Kathy Shorr and Max Kozloff — SHOT is about people who have been shot and survived the experience. It portrays 101 survivors, aged 8 to 80, from all races and many ethnicities. They are the representatives of “survivorhood.”
  • Gun Violence Prevention?: The Politics Behind Policy Responses to School Shootings in the United States by Selina Kerr – This book examines the gun-related policy responses to three school shooting incidents in the United States. Gun violence prevention activists and others involved in policy making were interviewed for the book, and news media articles and policy documents were critically assessed. As a result, interpretations of the Second Amendment are shown to affect the acceptability of certain gun restrictions
  • Guns and Suicide: An American Epidemic by Michael Anestis, PhD — The majority of gun deaths in the United States are suicide deaths, and the majority of suicide deaths are gun deaths. Most people are unaware that suicide, at nearly 43,000 deaths per year, is more common than homicide and other widely publicized tragedies. And yet, suicide is typically absent from discussions of gun violence. As such, the national conversation on gun violence is inadequate and unrelated to the majority of gun deaths in this country
  • Gun Violence and Mental Illness by Liza Gold, MD — With the alarming increase in mass shootings, the link between firearm violence and mental illness has increasingly generated both sensational headlines and serious inquiry. Gun Violence and Mental Illness looks beyond the inflammatory social and political rhetoric that all too often surrounds discussions of gun violence in the United States
  • Guns Down: How to Defeat the NRA and Build a Safer Future with Fewer Guns  by Igor Volsky –One of Mashable’s “17 books every activist should read in 2019” Twenty years after Columbine, a leading gun control activist offers a radical argument for the gun control movement our country desperately needs Ninety-six people die from guns in America every single day. Twelve thousand Americans are murdered each year. The United States has more mass shootings, gun suicides, and nonfatal gun injuries than any other industrialized country in the world
  • Gun Violence and Mass Shootings by Bradley Steffens — The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018, renewed the national debate over gun violence-a debate led by the students themselves. This book examines the prevalence of all types of gun violence in America and the factors-historical, cultural, and constitutional-that make this country an outlier among industrialized nations. It also explores possible solutions to reducing gun deaths and the controversies surrounding those proposals

Ted Talks:

Pod Casts:

  • FiveThirtyEight — In the wake of a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast devotes an entire episode to the debate about guns in America — what the public wants, how the politics of guns have changed and what Washington will do
  • Aftermath — Ever imagine what it’s like to be shot?  Reporters Amber Hunt of the Cincinnati Enquirer and Elizabeth Van Brocklin of The Trace traveled the country talking to people who know too well
  • Gun Violence – American Medical Association — Gun violence is a public health crisis. Learn more about recommended policies
  • Loaded Conversations — Loaded Conversations is about living in gun-lovin’ America. A temporary East Coaster moves her family back to her native Ohio and finds the new neighbors armed to the teeth.  Why?  And what does it mean to live this way? Writer and mother Rebecca Flowers, who’s never owned a gun in her life (and probably shouldn’t), talks with people on all sides of the issue while sharing her own frank perspective
  • The Science of Everything — A science-based discussion of the issue of gun control in the United States. After reviewing some basic statistics about crime and gun ownership, James Fodor examines the empirical evidence concerning the relationship between gun ownership and violent crime, highlighting the many difficulties associated with such studies and the limitations of this literature

Websites: