Quick Draw History – the NRA, the Politics of Memory and the Great Gun Debate

My project will join a nascent research perspective on the NRA, that looks at the organization as a key player in the social construction of gun culture in the United States. The NRA does this using tools like its youth educational outreach, online television network, museums and its firearms training programs (which instruct over 750,000 Americans annually). My dissertation will examine how the NRA uses these tools to influence the perceptions of the American public not just towards their present, but their past. It will argue that the NRA both draws upon and shapes historical meta-narratives regarding the role of firearms in America’s past because controlling a people’s understanding of their past is a powerful tool for determining the conditions of possibility for the present. These narratives are intended to forward the perspective that firearms have played an integral part in American history and that the US has a cultural tradition of firearms ownership. In order to understand the NRA’s influence, I must first understand how the NRA mobilizes narratives about the past to serve a political purpose. To be continued…

Faculty Supervisor:

Mira Sucharov

Student:

Partner:

George Mason University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Public Service, Policy, and Governance

University:

Carleton University

Program: