An Education in Violence: Teaching and Learning to Kill in America

• In Event: 144 - Regular Session. Interpersonal Violence

Abstract

Through ethnographic fieldwork at gun schools located in central Texas, my research expands and complements existing public health, public policy, and criminological approaches to gun violence by examining how Americans teach and learn to use guns. By participating in classes offered at these schools, by interviewing instructors and students, and by watching people become comfortable around guns, I move beyond accounts which document people’s motivations for having guns, to analyzing how they train their bodies and minds to kill.

Author

• Harel Shapira, University of Texas at Austin