Of Peaceable Kingdoms and Lawless Frontiers: Exploring the Relationship between History,Mythology and Gun Culture in the North American West

The United States is more violent than Canada and it always has been. Even in the face of mass shootings, most Americans remain culturally and politically resistant to the sorts of gun control measures that have long existed in Canada. America’s unique gun culture is embedded in the history, imagery, and especially the mythology of the American frontier. Canada had its own frontier experience and has its own history of gun ownership, but it does not have a parallel gun culture. This article presents a comparative analysis of post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier history and mythology, and examines the construction of contrasting cultural narratives of America’s “Wild West” and Canada’s “Mild West.” It suggests that US–Canadian differences in gun laws and gun culture—even in the borderlands region of Alberta/Montana—are better explained by the countries’ two different frontier mythologies than by their actual western histories.     

Retrieving the Cultural Biography of a Gun

Abstract

The meanings of objects change as the people with whom they are associated change. Over the course of an artefact’s existence, the sum of these meanings constitutes a cultural biography, a life-story of the item. This is the case with objects associated with conflict, just as with those from other contexts; in this case, cultural biographies can have sharply contrasting phases. However, identifying the object in each of its changing relationships with people can be problematic. In the case of a World War I German 150 mm gun, that is one of the few of its type remaining in the world, this has been achieved by comparison of detailed characteristics, markings, and battle damage with historical photographs and surviving documentation. By these means, its role in the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918, and after its capture by the Australian Corps, can be pieced together. The biography of such a gun can include manufacturing technology, a means of destruction, a valued war trophy, a public exhibit, a neglected relic, a source of scrap metal, a museum showpiece, and even a children’s plaything, but the gun investigated here was more fortunate. It is preserved in a museum, although its relationship to people could continue to change.     

Battlefield Casualty: The Archaeology of a Captured Gun

Abstract

Many artefacts in museums lack adequate information about the context from which they were collected. Not surprisingly, this often applies to artefacts recovered from battlefields, where chaotic conditions can result in uncertainty about their origins. This paper examines the case of a Second World War German 88 mm gun preserved in an Australian museum. The museum had little contextual information for this weapon, except that the Australian Army captured it in North Africa in 1942, probably after the Second Battle of El Alamein. However, an archaeological analysis of the gun, particularly of damage incurred during battle, can link it to photographs taken after the battle and re-establish its historical context and the circumstances of its acquisition. In this way, a museum artefact can become more than a mere exhibit: it can be made to document its own past.     

Explaining Gun Deaths: Gun Control,Mental Illness,and Policymaking in the American States

Seeking to test two commonly proposed solutions to gun deaths in the United States, we examine the extent to which (1) tougher gun control laws, (2) greater access to mental health services, and (3) a combination of both approaches affect the rate of gun deaths in American states. We find that tougher gun control laws, as well as a combination of both approaches, are associated with a lower overall rate of gun deaths, and with a lower rate of nonsuicide gun deaths, while only tougher gun control laws are significantly associated with a reduction in the rate of gun-related suicides. Our findings serve as an initial guide to policymakers seeking to reduce the rate of gun deaths in their states.     

Gun rites: hegemonic masculinity and neoliberal ideology in rural Kansas

Drawing upon empirical data from a qualitative research project in Southeast Kansas, this paper employs feminist and decolonial theories to analyse the interlocking relationality of hegemonic masculinity, neoliberal ideology, social conservatism, rurality, and gun culture. The first goal is to shed light on the subordinating and marginalizing tendencies that arise as a result of gendered conceptions of gun use. The second aim is to illustrate how gun culture is normalized, and often valorized, through individualistic narratives of self-reliance, security, protection, and defence. The third objective is to interrogate the ways in which particular material practices and gendered discourses regarding gun use are reinforced by settler colonialism, whiteness, heteronormativity, enabledness, and nationalism. Finally, the paper critically examines the social hierarchies that are reaffirmed as a result of culturally embedded patriarchal, white supremacist, and neoliberal ideologies, and how rurality mediates the masculinist subjectivities that are produced in such spaces.     

The Norman's Bay Shipwreck,East Sussex,UK: a possible 17th‐century Dutch ship from the Battle of Beachy Head

This report explores a hypothesis that the Norman's Bay shipwreck is the Wapen van Utrecht, a 64‐gun Dutch ship lost during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690. The shipwreck, found off the Sussex coast, was designated by the Protection of Wrecks Act (1973) in 2006, when it was speculated that the wreck was the English 70‐gun ship Resolution, lost in the Great Storm of 1703. Dendrochronology dates the vessel after the middle of the 17th century AD, however, with timbers from Germany or the Low Countries. Initiatives by the Nautical Archaeology Society to bring the protected wreck to a wide public are also discussed.     

Guns and Homicides: A Multiscale Geographically Weighted Instrumental Variables Approach

This article assesses the locally varying effects of gun ownership levels on total and gun homicide rates in the contiguous United States using cross-sectional county data for the period 2009–2015. Employing a multiscale geographically weighted instrumental variables regression that takes into account spatial nonstationarity in the processes and the endogenous nature of gun ownership levels, estimates show that gun ownership exerts spatially monotonically negative effects on total and gun homicide rates, indicating that there are no counties supporting the “more guns, more crime” hypothesis for these two highly important crime categories. The number of counties in the contiguous United States where the “more guns, less crime” hypothesis is confirmed is limited to at least 1258 counties (44.8% of the sample) with the strongest total homicide-decreasing effects concentrated in southeastern Texas and the deep south. On the other hand, stricter state gun control laws exert spatially monotonically negative effects on gun homicide rates with the strongest effects concentrated in the southern tip of Texas extending toward the deep south.     

Constructing Policy Narratives in 140 Characters or Less: The Case of Gun Policy Organizations

This study examines interest groups’ framing of gun policy issues via an analysis of nearly 10,000 tweets by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the National Rifle Association spanning from 2009 to 2014. Utilizing the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), I investigate the extent to which interest groups use social media to construct policy narratives. This research shows that much can be conveyed in 140 characters; both gun control and gun rights organizations used Twitter to identify victims, blame “villains,” commend “heroes,” and offer policy solutions. This research sheds light on the politics of gun control by revealing trends over time in groups’ framing and suggests refinements for hypotheses of the NPF. Finally, this work underscores the importance of social media for public policy scholarship.     

武成永固大将军炮考

故宫端门西广场陈列着一尊清代武成永固大：降军炮（图1,中国国家博物馆藏,一级文物）,它是康熙帝为平定“三藩之乱”而铸造的。清初,平西王吴三桂、平南壬尚可喜、靖南王耿精忠分镇云南、广东、福建,拥兵自重,形成割据势力。康熙十二年（1673年）八月,清廷下令撤藩。十一月,三藩中势力最大的吴三桂起兵,自称天下都招讨兵马大元帅,次年,称周王。先后夺占贵州、湖南、四川。     

The Provenance of Historical Gunpowder from South‐Western Japan: A Stable Isotopic Approach

Stable isotopic analysis was undertaken for the gunpowder ingredients from crude saltpetre and propellants from several types of gun that prevailed during the late 19th century in south‐western Japan. Stable isotopic signatures for δ¹⁵N_{saltpetre nitrogen}, δ³⁴S_{native sulphur} and δ¹³C_{charcoal carbon} in crude saltpetre, gunpowder magazines bearing the trademark of mills from southern Scotland and cartridges for an improved Sharps rifle (with a US trademark) all imply common assemblages from the same source (saltpetre and native sulphur from British India and Sicily, respectively) in the United Kingdom (UK). One Pritchett patron is common for muzzle‐loading Enfield rifles, while the other suggests a four‐allied lead bullet for an unidentified hand gun. Propellants in the Pritchett patron from the same institution also suggest a common source of these rifles. On the contrary, the ingredients for an unidentified rifle and time fuse for a Paixhans gun with unique stylistic devices showed distinctive isotopic signatures, indicating a local Japanese origin. The Pritchett patron from the Kumamoto Museum involved a mixed provenance from the UK and Japan. The stable isotopic analysis provides direct evidence for the ultimate origin of the propellant.     

Angels versus Devils: The Portrayal of Characters in the Gun Policy Debate

This research examines the role of the devil shift and angel shift in interest group rhetoric using the case of gun policy. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) suggests that the devil shift—whereby political actors characterize their opponents as more malicious and powerful than they actually are—is common in intractable policy debates. Through an analysis of e‐mails and press releases by two gun control organizations and two gun rights organizations, I examine how groups portray themselves and their opponents. I identify two dimensions relevant to these portrayals: (1) whether a character in a policy narrative is portrayed as good or evil, and (2) whether a character is portrayed as strong or weak. The findings indicate that while the devil shift is present, the angel shift—that is, the glorification of one's own coalition—is more common in gun policy groups' communications. Two alternative characterizations, which I call the angel in distress and the devil diminished, are also present. The use of these character portrayals varies significantly across political coalitions and as a function of communication purposes. The results suggest a need to reconceptualize character portrayals to better understand how they operate as narrative strategies in the NPF.     

Making a Killing (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In this editorial Gusterson critiques anthropologists' writing on US gun culture and suggests a different way of making the case for gun control.     

A seventeenth-century trade gun and associated collection from Pine Island,Alabama

A set of artifacts, apparently associated with human remains (one tooth), from Pine Island, Alabama, was donated to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1915. In preparation for repatriation, this collection was investigated extensively by a volunteer team. This paper reports the results of this analysis, focusing especially on a new type of trade gun and the glass beads. The goal of the research is to provide an accurate date for the collection to assist in identifying the Native American group represented.     

Notes on the Design and Construction of Urban's Giant Bombard

Abstract

The advent of the large gun known as the bombard meant that the medieval city could no longer ride out a siege behind the security of its formerly impregnable walls. Fifteenth-century Europe saw the development of two broad families of particularly large ordnance: the wrought iron bombard of western Europe and the cast bronze bombard of eastern Europe.     

Toponymy of the Child Ballads: Problems of Representation in Written and Oral Texts

Foundation myths by definition are politically focused tales, describing the origin of nations, states, ruling dynasties, clans, and other consanguineal groups. The myths of Tan’gun and Chumong are the oldest extant foundation myths of Korea, but only the Myth of Tan’gun has had a continuous influence on the affirmation of Korean polities and nationalism for over a thousand years. This article explores why that has been the case.     

The Field Artillery Revolution and the European Military Balance, 1890–1914

ABSTRACT

This article centres on the introduction of the French 75mm light field gun, and its impact on the European military balance in the two decades before the First World War. It argues that the 75mm (and particularly its new recoil-absorption mechanism) dramatically accelerated the rate of fire and gave France a major military advantage over Germany between c. 1899 and 1906. Subsequently the application of the new technology to howitzers and heavy artillery enabled Germany to redress the balance. On the eve of war, however, Germany's leaders feared a new round of French and Russian emulation, and this fear influenced their policy in the July 1914 crisis. The article also examines the failure to forestall the quick-firing revolution at the First Hague Peace Conference; the new technology's role in the First Moroccan Crisis; its dissemination across Europe and the Franco-German competition to amass reserves of shells.     

Matchlocks, Flintlocks, and Saltpetre: The Chronological Implications for the Use of Matchlock Muskets among Ottoman-Period Bedouin in the Southern Levant

This paper examines the chronological implications for the prolonged use of matchlock muskets by the Bedouin during the Ottoman Period (1453–1918). Although the technology behind the matchlock ignition system is from the fifteenth century, this weapon was used by many Bedouin until the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, the presence of gun parts from matchlock muskets poses a potential problem for identifying Bedouin occupations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the southern Levant and in northern Arabia. This issue is heightened by the paucity of diagnostic artifacts found at archaeological sites associated with the Bedouin during the Ottoman Period.     

Policy Diffusion and Strategies for Promoting Policy Change: Evidence From California Local Gun Control Ordinances

Recent research efforts on policy innovation and diffusion largely have focused upon policymaking at the state government level. In this article we seek to develop an understanding of the ways momentum for policy change can be generated among receptive local governments. We use gun control policymaking within California to illustrate how local government characteristics, the presence of regional associations, and the establishment of interest groups may lead to policy development and diffusion. We also identify linkages between interest groups, focusing events, and the successful use of a new image of gun violence as a public health problem, yielding insights into strategies that may be used successfully to promote policy change.