Harvard Injury Control Research Center Presentations

Joshua Aiken will explore the relationship between the mass proliferation of handguns in America and political, economic, and cultural responses to the black freedom struggle. Using the personal papers of federal legislators, the lobbying records of firearms manufacturing companies, social survey data, and oral histories, Aiken will describe how notions of “gun control” shifted throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Specifically, Aiken will look at how U.S. racial capitalism influenced the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the legal strategies used by those advocating for an interpretation of the Second Amendment that guaranteed an “individual right” to keep and bear arms.

Brennan Gardner Rivas will be presenting on the long tradition of regulating deadly weapons through state and local laws restricting the carrying of them in public places in the United States. These public carry laws were misdemeanor offenses enforced locally by constables, deputies, marshals, and police. Dr. Rivas has created a dataset of historical public carry offenses in Texas containing thousands of cases and defendants from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this presentation, she shares the results of her research regarding racially discriminatory enforcement of these foundationally important gun laws.