Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 59

December 1, 2023: Gun Control Histories: Jim Jefferies

[30 yearsago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun control legislation knownas the BradyBill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments andlayers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past andpresent!]

On two ofthe many great arguments in a comic case for gun control.

To mymind, one of the most persuasive (and definitely the funniest) cases for gun controlwas made by Australian stand-up comedian JimJefferies in his 2014Netflix special Bare (that’s Part1; here’s Part 2). Ifyou haven’t had a chance to watch that stellar extended bit, please check it outand then come on back if you would for a couple takeaways from among Jefferies’excellent arguments.  

Welcomeback! Perhaps the single most pointed (and likewise very funny, if in aparticularly Black Comedy kind of way) commentary on America’s epidemic of gun violenceis the headlineshared by The Onion after everymass shooting since 2014: “‘No way to prevent this,’ says only nation wherethis regularly happens.” Jefferies’ starting point in his gun control bit is anextended and inarguable version of the same point: that after a horrific1996 massacre in his native Australia, the country passed aggressive guncontrol legislation, and there have been no mass shootings there since. Ofcourse (as he also notes) the U.S. is not Australia, but here as well in thedecade after the 1994Assault Weapons Ban there were immeasurably fewermass shootings than there have been since that ban was allowed to expire in2004. We know full well, both from our own experiences and from those of othernations, that there are aggressive steps which can limit mass shootings; wejust, as Jefferies mockingly points out, aren’t taking them.

Jefferiesisn’t ultimately as interested in questions of national laws and policies,however, as he is in the ways that individuals make the case for unfettered gunownership. And to my mind, he uses his comedy to note one of the singleclearest hypocrisies in that case: that the pro-gun crowd claims to want theseweapons for protection, but that they likewise note that “responsible gunowners” keep their guns locked in a safe to prevent accidental shootings,especially by and toward children (a tragically commonexperience). “Then they’re not fucking protection!,” Jefferies exclaimsafter a pointed pause, in one of the single funniest and most accurate momentsI’ve found in any stand-up special. Followed closely by his recognition of theonly genuine argument that the pro-gun crowd can make in good faith: “Fuck off,I like guns.” I suppose it’s obvious enough from this week’s series that I donot like them; I know that’s partly a difference of preference, but I hope theseries has also illustrated the long history of national debates over guns andthe common welfare.

NovemberRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?

November 30, 2023: Gun Control Histories: The Brady Bill

[30 yearsago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun control legislation knownas the BradyBill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments andlayers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past andpresent!]

On sixinterconnected figures who together helped create one of the most groundbreakingpieces of gun legislation in American history.

1)     James andSarah Brady: In recent years, we’ve become all too accustomed to victimsof gun violence and their loved ones workingas gun control activists; I don’t mean that each and every one of thosecases isn’t individual, important, and inspiring, just that the overall storyis too damn familiar in 21st century America. But that wasn’t thecase in the 1980s, when former Reagan administration official James Brady (whohad been severely wounded by John Hinckley during hisMarch 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan) and his wife Sarah became leading voices in the fight forbackground checks on gun purchases. The contingencies of history are impossibleto unravel with certainty, but I think it’s very fair to say that the BradyBill was aptly named, that it never would have gotten anywhere without thesymbolic, strategic, and significant leadership provided by this couple.

2)     EdwardFeighan and Howard Metzenbaum: As that cute little dude from Schoolhouse Rock would remind us,however, for a bill to become a law it takes lawmakers willing to introduce andsponsor it, and in February1987 these two Ohio Democratic lawmakers, Representative Feighan and SenatorMetzenbaum, did just that, introducing the Brady Bill as part of the 100thCongress. It would eventually be voted down 228-182 in the House ofRepresentatives in September 1988, and would not become a law for more thanhalf a decade, a reflection of the power and pressure of the NRA,the gun lobby more broadly, and its Congressional allies. But those factorsonly make clearer still how courageous it was for these two elected officialsto take on those power structures, risk their own political careers in theprocess, and start the ball rolling on the Brady Bill becoming a law. 

3)     ChuckSchumer and Bill Clinton: I don’t tend to get into the weeds of debatesamong Democrats and the American Left on this blog, and I can promise you Iplan to continue not doing so as often as possible; see thispost on circular firing squads for why. Suffice to say, for many on theLeft Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton represent not just a Democratic Old Guardwhose time has come and gone, but also the essence of Neoliberalism. And maybeso, but in that case it’s even more impressive that one of Clinton’s firstsignature moments as president was a pretty radical one—signingthe Brady Bill into law in November 1993, after Representative Schumer hadreintroduced it and it had finally passed the House. There might not be a lotabout politics in the 1990s that we should seek to emulate today, but I wouldargue that the era’sgun control victories definitely qualify.

Last guncontrol history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?

November 29, 2023: Gun Control Histories: Parkland

[30years ago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun controllegislation known as theBrady Bill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments andlayers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past andpresent!]

[NB. Thisis another older post, part of a 2018 year in review series. But like yesterday’s,I think it speaks to both overarching topics and our own moment, so am sharingit as part of this series.]

On what’snot new, kind of new, and entirely new about our worst contemporary tragedies.

Sevenyears ago to the day, I wrote a year inreview piece on the January 2011 Gabrielle Giffords shooting, and on howpioneering scholar RichardSlotkin’s AmericanStudies analysesof violence and guns inAmerican history and identity could help us understand suchshocking and disturbing acts of political and social violence. The fact thatI’m writing a year in review piece seven years later about another massshooting—and, more exactly, the fact that I could have picked any one of thealmost literally countless other 2018 massshootings as a starting point for this post; although we must keepcounting, and must keep thinking about each ofthem and their victims individually—proves Slotkin’s theses and thensome. The final bookof Slotkin’s trilogy called America a “gunfighter nation,” andhardly a day has gone by in 2018 that hasn’t featured literal, painfullyexemplary acts of gun-fighting. Indeed, one of the most frustratingly commonresponses to such mass shootings—the idea that we just needmore guns and shooters to intervene—represents yet another layer tothat symbolic but all-too-real gunfighter nation mythos.

So we’vealways been a nation deeply linked to images and realities of violence andguns, and mass shootings like the February14th, 2018 massacre at Parkland, Florida’s MarjoryStoneman Douglas High School have to be put in thatlongstanding and foundational American context. But at the same time, noAmericanStudier or American historian (or even slightly knowledgeable andengaged observer of American society) could possibly argue that mass shootingshave not become more ubiquitous, more of a fact of American daily life, overthe last few years; that whatever the longstanding impulses or inclinations towhich they connect, these horrific acts of mass violence have not found more consistentoutlets in the 21st century. Or, to put it more exactly andcrucially, that white Americans have not been forced to deal with the threat ofmass violence more fully—as AfricanAmericans, NativeAmericans, and AsianAmericans (among other groups) can attest, such threats have been part ofthe American experience of too many communities for centuries. But in 2018, thethreat of mass violence has for the first time become a genuine possibility forevery American community at every moment and in every space, from nightclubs to synagogues, supermarkets to highschools.

Thatconstant threat comprises a dark new reality, perhaps especially for Americanparents (my sons have to do monthly active shooter drills in their schools,something I can’t quite bear to dwell on). But in the aftermath of the Parklandshooting, youngstudents at the high school also modeled another and very different newreality: a generation willing and able to use their voices, their socialmedia presence, and their activistacumen to challenge such dark histories and their causes. We’ve onlyjust begun to see the potential effects of this group of young people and thebroader generation they represent, although the Novembermidterm elections certainly exemplified the kinds of victoriesthis cohort can help produce. But while electoral and political results arecertainly important, the fundamental truth is that the Parkland students havealready and significantly changed the conversation, making clear that both gunvictims and student communities will have a say in the ongoing debate aroundmass shootings and guns in the United States.

Next guncontrol history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?

November 28, 2023: Gun Control Histories: Myths, Realities, and the 2012 Election

[30years ago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun controllegislation known as theBrady Bill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments andlayers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past andpresent!]

[NB. Iwrote this post in a pre-election series back in 2012, obviously, but I thinkits histories and contexts are far more broadly relevant than that, and remainvery much so today.]

On thestakes of 2012 for the newest phase in our longstanding, conflicted nationalrelationship to guns.

When youremember how the American Revolution—or at least the military portion of it—gotstarted, the 2nd Amendment sure makes a lot of sense. After all, theMinutemen who fought the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, who fired that shot heard ‘round theworld, were a militia in the truest sense of the word: farmers andother locals who brought nothing more than their own lives—and their ownguns—to those crucial first conflicts. And for manydecades after the Revolution, state and local militias continued to serve asthe nation’s primary armed forces, with a standing army being assembledas necessary (during military conflicts such as the War of 1812 and the MexicanAmerican War, for example) but not consistently maintained. Given thosecontexts, the syntax and logic of the 2nd Amendment—whichreads in full “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the securityof a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not beinfringed”—seem perfectly natural and uncontroversial.

But theterm “militia” has of course come to mean something completely different inearly 21st century America, and the shift to my mind signifies theother side to our national relationship to guns. These contemporarymilitias, comprising communitiesof heavily armed resistance to perceived threats (from thegovernment, from the United Nations, from ethnic or racial “others”), see theirguns, and their right to bear them, not as a part of our shared nationalcommunity, but as a wayto defend their own lives and security within, and yet fundamentally outsideof, that nation. For these Americans, it seems to me, the key words in the 2ndAmendment are “free” and “the people,” since in this reading of the Amendmentits guarantees have nothing to do with the government (which would presumably dothe regulating of militias) nor the nation (the State) and everything to dowith every individual gunowner. There is of course no necessary conflictbetween individual gunowners and the national community—again, the Minutemenwere composed precisely of such individuals, coming together to fight for theirfledgling nation’s interests—but such conflicts have without question come toform a complex, controversial, and crucial part of gun culture in America.

Whichbrings me to today, and specifically to the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have,in response to pressurefrom the NRA and ALEC and other conservative organizations, been passed bynumerous state legislatures since the ascendance of Tea Party majorities in the2010 elections. How we analyze these controversial pro-gun laws—which factoreddirectly into theTravyon Martin shooting and other recenttragedies—depends precisely on whether we see them as part of our nation’sfounding identity, a legacy of the Concord Minutemen; or part of thecontemporary militia movement, tied to the 21stcentury Minutemen and their ilk. But in any case, there’s no doubtthat the 2012 election—which NRA vicepresident Wayne LaPierre has called “a turning point for gunrights”—will greatly influence these narratives moving forward; there’s lessthan no evidence that a second-term President Obama would ban guns or dismantlethe 2nd Amendment (as LaPierre warns), but certainly an empoweredRepublican majority (nationally and at that state level) could continue to passmore laws like “Stand Your Ground,” and otherwise to push forward thisextremely pro-gun agenda.  Which would bea very American thing to do—but what version of America it would embody is anentirely open and significant question.

Next guncontrol history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?

November 27, 2023: Gun Control Histories: The Constitution and Framing Era

[30years ago this week, Congress passed the groundbreaking gun controllegislation known as theBrady Bill. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments andlayers to the debate over gun control and guns in American society, past andpresent!]

Noconversation about gun control and guns in American history (or law) can failto engage with the Constitution, the 2nd Amendment, and the Framingera. I did so at length ina Saturday Evening Post ConsideringHistory column almost exactly four years ago, so in lieu of a new posttoday I’ll ask you to check out that column to get a sense of the histories andcontexts I’d highlight and analyze from those foundational periods. See youback here tomorrow!

Next guncontrol history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Histories or contexts you’d highlight?

November 25-26, 2023: My Biggest Thanks-giving

[For thisyear’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to express thanks for a handful ofopportunities I’ve had to connect with scholarly communities this Fall. Leadingup to this special tribute to my two most important scholarly influences!]

On threeof the countless ways my sons inspire my own continued work.

1)     Last year’s amazing efforts: In June Idedicated one of mySaturday Evening Post ConsideringHistory columns to two projects from the past school year through which mysons had taught me a lot about my own work on and goals for both the past andthe future. It’s one of my favorite columns across these nearly six years I’vebeen at the Post, so would ask you tocheck it out if you could and then come on back for two such influences fromthis current year!

2)     Kyle on Frederick Douglass: I have mixedfeelings about the school work my sons are asked to do over the summer (and Icertainly think there’s more of it than there needs to be), but this pastsummer it was certainly fun to chat with Kyle about one of his summer readingtexts (for AP Lang), Narrative of theLife of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. And even more fun wasreading the essay that Kyle eventually wrote analyzing Douglass’ rhetoricalstrategies in that narrative—his arguments about how Douglass challenged ideasabout slavery and sought to connect with a white Northern audience were as thoughtfuland impressive as his writing always is, but also helped me think about boththe continued needfor subjects like Black history (and specific topics like the histories ofAmerican slavery) and about connecting with distinct audiences (a lifelong goalof my own work).

3)     Aidan’s college essays: It’s late November ofAidan’s senior year, and I’m still far from ready to truly contemplate him beingsomewhere else next year. But he’s doing a great job convincing me he’s morethan ready for all that’s next, and a big part of that has been his amazingwork on all the pieces of writing that are now part of college applications(both the main personal essay and the many college-specific supplementalessays). His main personal essay was a profoundly thoughtful, moving, funny,and inspiring look at hisvegetarianism and its connection to many other layers of his life and identity,and it made me want to be a better person. And one particular supplementalessay, where he wrote about the importance of challenging prejudices and how hehopes to make that work a part of his life at and beyond college, gave me hopefor the future. Can’t beat those influences, on my scholarship and everywhereelse!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS.People, communities, or anything else you’re thankful for this year?

November 24, 2023: Thankful for Scholarly Communities: U of Buffalo’s English Department

[For thisyear’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to express thanks for a handful ofopportunities I’ve had to connect with scholarly communities this Fall. Leadingup to a special tribute to my two most important scholarly influences!]

I’vewritten many times in this space, most fully in thistribute post, on what the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) ingeneral and the NeMLABoard in particular have meant for my career. NeMLA is quite simply myfavorite scholarly community, and its influences have extended far beyond (bothin time and in reach) my years of service on the Board or even my attendance atthe annual Convention (which will continue next Spring in Boston).Just a couple weeks ago I got to experience a particularly exciting suchextended influence, when—invited by NeMLAExecutive Director Carine Mardorossian, who is also an English Professor atthe University of Buffalo—I had the privilege of giving a talk in the Buffalo EnglishDepartment’s Juxtapositionslecture series. It was a great chance to build on prior book talks for Of Thee I Sing, but in keeping with theseries’ overt interdisciplinary focus I pushed myself to work with culturalworks I hadn’t considered for the book, including 1960s music and 1980s films.I really loved the chance to think about all the layers of culture and societythat these debates over patriotism can help us examine and engage, and am sograteful to Carine, Buffalo, and these ongoing NeMLA connections forexemplifying scholarly community once more.

Specialtribute post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Communities(or anything else) you’re thankful for this year?

November 23, 2023: Thankful for Scholarly Communities: Black in Boston & Beyond Podcast

[For thisyear’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to express thanks for a handful ofopportunities I’ve had to connect with scholarly communities this Fall. Leadingup to a special tribute to my two most important scholarly influences!]

Dr.Hettie Williams isn’t just in atie for the most prolific GuestPoster here on AmericanStudies, although she is indeedthat. She’s also an equally prolific podcast host who has generously sharedmy work, voice, and book Of Thee I Singon two occasions: back in July 2021for the New Books Network; and this Fall for her newly launched Blackin Boston & Beyond podcast for the William Monroe Trotter Institute atUMass Boston (of which Hettie is the new Director!). I really appreciated thechance to share some thoughts on one of my favorite historic sites, the BostonBlack Heritage Trail, as well as many other examples of Black criticalpatriotism in and beyond Boston. Hettie is one of the most supportive folks outthere for many different communities (including her service at President of theAfrican American Intellectual History Society),and I’ve loved the chance to connect with her on many different projects,including this two-part podcast conversation.

LastThanks-giving tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Communities(or anything else) you’re thankful for this year?

November 22, 2023: Thankful for Scholarly Communities: 9 Online Conference

[For thisyear’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to express thanks for a handful ofopportunities I’ve had to connect with scholarly communities this Fall. Leadingup to a special tribute to my two most important scholarly influences!]

As I’ve highlightedmany times in this space, mycurrent book project focuses on one of my favorite stories from Americanhistory: that of the Celestialsbaseball team and their tragic yet triumphant final game in 1881 SanFrancisco. As a result of that focus I’ve started to learn a good bit moreabout 19thcentury baseball, but there’s so much more for to explore, and so I wasbeyond excited to get to share my own thoughts and listen to many others atthis fall’s 9 Online VirtualBaseball Conference. I also connected there with a wonderful high schooleducator, historian, and public scholar, BrianSheehy from North Andover High School, with whom I look forward to many futurecollaborations around Americanhistory, sports histories, patriotism, and more. The best conferences offerboth immediate inspiration and ongoing conversations, and I found both at 9Online and look forward to finding (and writing here about!) furtheropportunities to connect to baseball and sports historians.

NextThanks-giving tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Communities(or anything else) you’re thankful for this year?

November 21, 2023: Thankful for Scholarly Communities: Freedom Over Fascism Podcast

[For thisyear’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to express thanks for a handful ofopportunities I’ve had to connect with scholarly communities this Fall. Leadingup to a special tribute to my two most important scholarly influences!]

Last yearI was honored to befeatured on Stephanie Wilsonand the Hoosier Victory Alliance’s What the Gerrymander? podcast, talking allthings American patriotism. It was a great conversation with plenty of room forfollow-ups, so I was particularly excited to be invited back (as their residentAmerican historian, no less!) to chat about curricula battles, book bans, andmuch more on the renamed but just as vital Freedom Over Fascism podcast.Every podcast I’ve been able to join has helped me think through and expressdifferent sides of my ideas, but Stephanie is particularly great at pushing meto connect nuanced takes on history to impassioned perspectives on the present,and since that duality sums up a lot of what I want all of my work to do thesedays, I greatly value this ongoing opportunity to do so in conversation withone of our best podcast hosts. Watch this space for more!

NextThanks-giving tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Communities(or anything else) you’re thankful for this year?