NCJ Number
244030
Date Published
2000
Length
266 pages
Annotation
This book, Gun Culture or Gun Control? Firearms, Violence and Society, examines the social and political reactions to events in the United Kingdom that eventually led to strengthened gun control laws.
Abstract
In 1996, 16 children and their teacher in a primary school in the small town of Dunblane in Great Britain were shot and killed. Within months of this incident, the British Government passed new gun control laws that outlawed the ownership of all privately owned handguns. This book examines the social and political reactions to the shooting and the subsequent passage of gun control legislation in Great Britain. The book also examines the differences between public attitudes to firearms and their control in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The main topics explored are: the social history of firearms on both sides of the Atlantic; the differing policy directions adopted in the United Kingdom and the United States; media coverage of the gun question in both countries; and the future of the gun in society. The author notes that the future of the gun debate and gun laws will be shaped by two competing factors, namely market forces and the exploitation of popular anxieties about crime and disorder. Figures and references