Continuity and Change in the American Gun Debate

Abstract

My paper traces the debates about firearms control over the three decades since I became involved in gun research in the late 1960s. The circumstances of public discourse about guns in the late 1960s were rich in sentiment and almost completely lacking in empirical data. Questions of firearms control were only episodically important at the national level, and the administration of federal gun laws was of minuscule importance prior to 1968.