Welcome! This guide will serve as a starting point for Shippensburg University students wishing to conduct research on various aspects of the national debate over gun control. You will find news sources to keep you up-to-date on recent firearms issues; information on past and present gun control legislation; websites of advocacy groups; and books, articles, and reports concerning gun control.
Search Terms
Main Term(s): gun control, gun laws Related Terms: firearms, gun violence, weapons Broader Terms: government regulations, pressure groups, safety regulations Narrower Terms: National Rifle Association, right to bear arms, second amendment, gun violence - prevention
Denning, Brannon P. "Right to Bear Arms." Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ed. David S. Tanenhaus. Vol. 4. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. p248-251.
There are as many guns in the United States as there are adults. This book, presents the issue with both sides of the debate on all the issues and, thus, the tools to make an informed decision. It breaks the debate into topics like history, effectiveness, legislation and court cases, individuals and organizations, and reliable further resources.
This encyclopedia is designed to give understanding to the topics, concepts and ideas which have motivated and shaped the fields of activism, civil engagement and social justice as well as offering short biographies of all the major thinkers and leaders who have influenced, and continue to influence, the study of activism. With anti-globalization rallies and acts of civil disobedience increasing in the western world, activism and social justice are topics of general public debate in the media. This encyclopedia looks to put into context the history of 20th and 21st century political and social activism and further the debate on social justice.
The shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 was one of the worst mass murders in the U.S., but it did not lead to any new federal gun control policy. In contrast, following a similar event in Montreal in 1989, Canada created new comprehensive gun policy.Such different outcomes are the focus of this survey, which sets out to explore the gun policymaking process in the U.S. and Canada in the aftermath of major events. It explores the many factors that lead to the drastically different reactions of the federal governments in each state if the aftermath of a mass shooting or assassination. To do so, it examines such elements as institutional arrangements, interest groups pressures (NRA, e.g.), and the party in power, studying the impact of such key events as the assassinations of J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Georgina Leimonis and shootings that occurred at Columbine, Stockton, and Vernon.A unique comparative study, Gun Policy in the United States and Canada will be an essential resource to anyone researching gun policy issues and comparative policymaking.
Gun-related violence remains an intractable problem despite a decline in the past decade. Some believe the solution lies in stricter gun control laws while others think these measures would be ineffective or counter-productive. Guns, Gun Control, and Elections examines current gun control policy and explains how it was adopted by discussing the roles and interactions of elected officials, interest groups, political parties, and the public. Original research on media coverage and public opinion as well as a chapter on state policy (Virginia) make the book both informative and accessible. The book focuses on the utility of gun policy, and its discussion of policy impact is grounded in real-world politics. Wilson also highlights the importance of gun control in the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 as well as in some U.S. Senate and statewide campaigns.
How are guns used and viewed by criminals? Where do criminals obtain guns? And how do laws make firearms more or less accessible? Confronting these contentious questions, Guns, Violence, and Criminal Behavior offers a comprehensive exploration of the social processes surrounding illegal firearm use and criminal behavior. The authors draw on in-depth interviews with felons convicted of gun-related crimes and previous quantitative studies to offer a fresh look at the key issues of gun violence. Highlighting the overlooked symbolic influence of guns in criminal situations, their findings underscore the power of social and cultural forces in affecting gun use.
Few constitutional disputes maintain as powerful a grip on the public mind as the battle over the Second Amendment. In Out of Range, one of the nation's leading legal scholars takes a calm, objective look at this bitter debate. Tushnet breaks down the different positions on the Second Amendment, showing that it is a mistake to stereotype them. Along the way, he examines various experiments in public policy, from both sides, and finds little clear evidence for the practical effectiveness of any approach to gun safety and prosecution. Of course, he notes, most advocates of the right to keep and bear arms agree that it should be subject to reasonable regulation. Ultimately, Tushnet argues, our view of the Second Amendment reflects our sense of ourselves as a people. This compact, incisive examination offers an honest and thoughtful guide to both sides of the argument, pointing the way to solutions that could calm, if not settle, this bitter dispute.
OpenSecrets.org, a resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis, is powered by The Center for Responsive Politics, which is a research group that tracks money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. This is their analysis of the politics behind the gun control debate.
The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics. Today, several annual statistical publications, such as Crime in the United States, are produced from data provided by nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.
ATF is a law enforcement agency in the United States Department of Justice that protects United States citizens from violent criminals, criminal organizations, the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, the illegal use and storage of explosives, acts of arson and bombings, acts of terrorism, and the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco products.
The National Rifle Association seeks to educate the public about firearms, defend US citizens' second amendment rights, and lobbies for gun rights legislation.
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is dedicated to promoting the right of U.S. citizens to privately own and possess firearms. They carry on many educational and legal action programs designed to inform the public about the gun control debate.
The Brady Campaign works to pass and enforce federal and state gun laws, regulations, and public policies through grassroots activism, electing public officials who support gun control legislation, and increasing public awareness of gun violence.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) seeks to secure freedom from gun violence through research, strategic engagement and effective policy advocacy. CSGV is comprised of 47 national organizations working to reduce gun violence. Its coalition members include religious organizations, child welfare advocates, public health professionals, and social justice organizations.
Important grassroots activist organization formed by stay-at-home mom Shannon Watts following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns is a coalition of over 1000 current and former mayors across the country who have joined together to prevent criminals from possessing guns illegally.
GunFreeKids.org (GFK) is an Internet-based 501 (c) 4 issue advocacy organization, which provides tools for people to take action on pending state and national legislation and assists voters nationwide in learning about and supporting state-based candidates who favor gun violence prevention policies.
Non-partisan group that gathers data on all acts of gun violence in the United States (2013-present). Includes a wide range of reports as well as a powerful database that can be searched and filtered in many ways.
This library database serves as a search engine to search most library databases at the same time, including magazine and journal databases, e-book collections, and the library catalog. News databases are not included in a comprehensive way. Supplement this with direct searching of ProQuest Newstand and Lexis Nexis Academic. Search results default to items that the library owns, either in online or print format. Remove the "Available in Library Collection" limiter to retrieve items available through interlibrary loan.
Academic Search Complete is our most important general database. covering all subject areas. It is useful for research in all classes, as it includes 26+ million newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, with 50% of these immediately available in full-text.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
Contents indexed in Ship Library Discovery Search.
One of the most comprehensive news databases in the world, ProQuest Global Newstream includes access to over 3000 news sources, including 2,200 newspapers, as well as blogs, podcasts, websites and news wire feeds worldwide.
Development note - alt link use stats: (91 total hits, 33 since 7/2012 -- 10 /2012)
This library database is one of the world's largest full-text databases, including very extensive news, legal, and business information. Along with ProQuest Newstand, it is our primary source of news information.
Provides citations to some 700,000+ articles in academic journals and professional magazines in criminal justice and related fields. Full text is immediately available for almost 80% of the articles.
The Trace is a non-profit new agency dedicated to reporting on the gun crisis in the U.S. It was formed as a news spinoff from the Everytown for Gun Safety advocacy group. The Daily Bulletin digests stories from other news media and the Trace also conducts extensive reporting.of its own.
This freely accessible database is a comprehensive source for criminal justice publications, including library abstracts for 225,000+ journal articles, research reports, data sets, and government publications. Since 2014, journal articles are largely excluded, with the focus on materials produced, funded, and sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Justice. Most entries include links to the full text of reports and data sets. Search for the full text of journal article and book titles in the Ship Discovery Service.
Covers scholarly publications in sociology, social work, criminal justice, and related fields. Contains >2.5 million articles and other materials (70% in full text) with deep coverage from 1960 and some back to 1882.
America: History & Life is the definitive index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1955 to present, this database is without question the most important bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history.
Covers U.S. government publications from the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. Contains 500,000+ publications since 1976, with full-text for most recent materials. Freely accessible database
This specialized legal database includes the full-text of 300+ law reviews and 150+ legal journals, as well as legal trade publications and news sources.
Westlaw is our major legal database that includes secondary and primary legal sources. It contains statutes, codes, arbitrations, and case law. Westlaw also includes the legal encyclopedias, journals, treatises, and law reviews. In addition to legal materials, it also has extensive collections of national and state/local news sources, as well as regional business magazines.
Produced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, this guide contains gun legislation from 1968 on, information on the gun industry, and general information about the laws.
On January 24, 2013, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, a bill to stop the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices. Click here for the full text of the bill and more information regarding gun control legislation.
Library database that covers the most important and controversial issues of the day. Contains the full text of CQ Researcher, a weekly publication. Each issue provides a comprehensive overview and background essay, data tables and graphs, chronology, pro-con starter, and list of major research and advocacy groups. Includes extensive lists of sources and hot-linked footnotes throughout.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
Quality Web Sources
High Quality Web Source Finder
Use this search tool to find high quality web sources for your research. You can limit by In-Depth Journalism, Newpaper Topic Guides, Science News, CRS (Congressional Research Service) Reports, and Web Directories. Please Note: Several ads will appear first in the results list.
ProPublica is a freely available website produced by a major online non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest. ProPublica features two kinds of reporting: Investigations, which include a series of in-depth articles about a topic (often between 15 and 30 articles - major topics range from dozens to 100+ articles). MuckReads are shorter reports featuring investigative journalism from other news agencies. Major areas of interest include, among others: healthcare and the health industry, fracking, censorship, money and politics, and financial and economic issues.
Reveal is a freely available website and the online media platform for the Center for Investigative Journalism, a major online non-profit news organization, founded in 1977, and dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest. They publish series of investigative reports on a topic (typically between 10 and 20). Major areas of coverage include: criminal justice, the environment, guns, health care, labor and employment, national security, religion, surveillance and privacy, and veterans.
The Center for Public Integrity is a freely available website produced by a major online non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest, with a special focus on accountability and fairness, especially in terms of the role and influence of money. Topics featured include politics and elections, national security business, the environment, juvenile justice and health.
NPR is one of the most important freely-available sources of investigative journalism. It includes excellent topical pages but these are not easily browseable on the website. Use the High Quality Web Source Finder search box to locate the topical pages for your issue.
This very high quality web site, located at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and sponsored by leading academic journalism programs, guides journalists and other researchers to find scholarly sources related to many of the most important topics in the news. Whenever the source is not available in full-text, use the discovery layer or library A-Z journal list to get library access to the article or to order it on interlibrary loan.
Newspaper Topic Guides
A number of important national newspapers have topic or issue sections of their website that bring together all the paper's articles on particular topics. The leading example of this is "Times Topics" from the New York Times. Each topic guide/section has a search tool that lets you refine your search.
Unfortunately, these sections are often not easy to browse or locate on the newspaper websites. Use the "High Quality Web Source Finder" search box above to search for your topic. Then choose the Newspaper Topic Guides tab to look for these in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. If you should hit a pay wall when browsing these newspapers, simply search for articles from any of these three papers using the ProQuest Newstand library database.
Congressional Research Service Reports (CRS Reports)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research division of Congress. It issues detailed research reports on a very wide range of issues. CRS doesn't maintain its own website, but its reports are available through several organizations and libraries.
Website that attempts to make all CRS reports easily available to the public. The result of a bi-partisan movement to get Congress to pass a bill requiring open access.
The University of North Texas maintains a freely available digital library collection of Congressional Research Service reports, with the goal "to provide integrated, searchable access to many of the full-text CRS reports that have been available at a variety of different web sites since 1990" -- website. Best search tool for finding CRS reports. Update holdings of specific reports through the Federation of American Scientists or through a web search on the name of a report.
This freely available website produced by the Vanderbilt University Libraries provides an alphabetical topical directory to important websites on some 50 current issues. These guide pages typically include sections for these kinds of web resources: Basic Sites, Government, International, News, Statistics, Interest Groups and Research Centers and Other Educational Sites.
Welcome! This guide will serve as a starting point for Shippensburg University students wishing to conduct research on various aspects of the national debate over gun control. You will find news sources to keep you up-to-date on recent firearms issues; information on past and present gun control legislation; websites of advocacy groups; and books, articles, and reports concerning gun control.
Gun Control in the United States: A Reference Handbook by 
Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice by 
Gun Policy in the United States and Canada by 
Guns, Gun Control, and Elections: The Politics and Policy of Firearms by 
Guns, Violence, and Criminal Behavior: The Offender's Perspective by 
Out of Range: Why the Constitution Can't End the Battle over Guns by 
