Sociology of Guns: Downhill from Day 1

I am teaching my Sociology of Guns seminar at Wake Forest University for the 10th consecutive year this semester, dating back to 2015. The highlight of the course for the students, if not for me, is our class field trip to the gun range.

On the first day of class, rather than meeting on campus, we take a mandatory trip to the gun range where students are given the option (but not required) to shoot a .22LR semi-automatic pistol, a 9mm semi-auto pistol, and a .223-caliber semi-auto rifle.

I am only partially joking when I say that the class goes downhill from day 1. Look at these smiles.

As usual, the students wrote range field trip reflection essays, and I will be posting some of those here.

In class this week (our second meeting of the semester), I asked the students to give their one word initial responses to the field trip. The image below shows their responses.

I spoke about the trip and the students’ initial responses in a recent Light Over Heat video, embedded here.

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