Firearms, once again, have dominated this week’s news cycle. In New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern issued a swift ban on semi-automatic and automatic weapons after a white supremacist killed 50 Muslim worshipers. In Indiana, several teachers were injured by Airsoft guns during an active shooter training that the sheriff’s department defended as “realistic.”
But is the heart of the gun debate as simple as all guns are bad? The essays in today’s reading list ponder this question and more, from one Ohio teacher’s uncomfortable firearms training (which gives context to the Indiana incident) to Judith Levine’s argument that any gun control movement must also advocate for disarming police.
But first, Walter Johnson’s sensitive exploration of the psychology behind shooting and his assertion that “the cause of the United States’s problem with guns is not guns, it is the United States.”
Justice Scalia betrayed originalist interpretation when he defended an individual right to own guns.
Despite recent shootings, schools, including college campuses, exemplify the success of gun control.
