Guns on the Internet Online Gun Communities, First Amendment Protections, and the Search for Common Ground on Gun Control

Gun rights and control are well-trodden subjects, with prior work supporting the right of citizens to own firearms, discussing the failure of gun control efforts, or warning about or exhorting citizen gun ownership, among other things. Although social media in their many forms have only come to dominate modern U.S. life during the past decade, there has been little academic exploration of gun owner communities on the Internet and social media. How do gun owners use social media? How do they meet other gun owners online? What do they talk about as relates to guns? With a massive and well-organized collection of support material, Guns on the Internet faces these questions with an unbiased approach that seeks a foundation for mutual understanding.

Also available as an audiobook.

1. Introduction Part I. The Tour: Guns, the Internet and Social Media 2. How Gun Owners Use Social Media and the Internet 3. Gun Owner Communities on the Internet 4. Politicians and Lobbyists Online Talking Guns 5. Women in Online Gun Subculture Part II. First Amendment Protections for Gun-Related Online Content: Balancing the Right to Free Speech with the Need for Public Safety 6. The First Amendment and the Internet 7. Should YouTube Gun-Related Videos be Protected under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Provisions? 8. Purchasing and Talking Firearms Online Part III. Finding Common Ground? 9. Finding Common Ground?

Connie Hassett-Walker is an Assistant Professor of Justice Studies and Sociology at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. She holds a PhD in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University (2007). Her dissertation ("Delinquency and the Black Middle Class") was awarded second place by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) for the 2006 Social Issues Dissertation Award. Prior to joining the faculty at Norwich University, Dr. Hassett-Walker taught at Kean University, and worked as a research associate at the Violence Institute of New Jersey at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers University). In 2012, she received an AREA grant from the National Institutes of Health to examine the impact of justice system involvement on youths’ substance use trajectories. Her research has been published in a variety of scholarly journals including the Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice. Her first book, Black Middle Class Delinquents, was published in 2009 by LFB Scholarly Publishing.