by James Downey | Aug 2, 2020 | .44, .44 Magnum, .458 Win Mag, .50 Alaskan, .50 BMG, .500 Jeffery, .500 Nitro Express, .500 S&W Magnum, .600 Nitro Express, .700 Nitro Express, .950 JDJ, 11 x 59mm R Gras, 12.7 x 108mm, 14.5 JDJ, 50-110 WCF, cartridges, Cartridges of the World, Discussion., Firearms, Guns, Links, Wikipedia
Yesterday I got a box of cartridges. Now, even with the shortages these days, that isn’t that unusual. But take a look at the contents: OK, for scale: that’s a full-sized .44 magnum cartridge on the right, outside the box. What the Hell??? This was a box...
by David Yamane | Jun 6, 2020 | COVID19, Duke Center for Firearms Law, gun safety, gun sales, Guns
I was privileged to be invited recently to contribute to an ongoing series of videos produced by the Duke Center for Firearms Law on COVID-19 and guns. I was asked to speak about my approach to studying guns, to speculate about why people are buying guns during the...
by David Yamane | May 28, 2020 | Data, gun ownership, Guns, US Census Bureau
Although I’ve addressed U.S. gun ownership levels previously, I realize that I have done so by looking at percentages of individuals and households rather than numbers. Given changing population sizes (the all important denominator), percentages are usually the...
by David Yamane | Apr 20, 2020 | coronavirus, Data, gun sales, Guns, National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), sociology, Trent Steidley
In his third and final guest post in this series (see his first and second), Trent Steidley takes up the claim that the COVID-19 gun purchasing spree of March 2020 was driven by handgun purchases (a claim I made myself, which helped begin this dialogue). Was March...
by David Yamane | Apr 19, 2020 | coronavirus, Data, gun sales, Guns, National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), sociology, Trent Steidley
In his guest post yesterday, Trent Steidley challenged the simplistic use of data from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as a measure of “gun sales.” Today he critically engages the second of three common narratives emerging from...
by David Yamane | Apr 18, 2020 | coronavirus, Data, gun sales, Guns, sociology, Trent Steidley
My recent posts about the great COVID19 gun buying spree of March 2020 (especially handguns) elicited some helpful clarifying and corrective tweets from my colleague Trent Steidley (bio below). I don’t know any sociologist as familiar or adept with National Instant...