Research/Isolation/Participation
Research/Isolation/Participation
While I started this project from a place of belief.
A belief that guns should be better regulated or even removed from American society.
That belief also came from a lot of research.
Such as first reading essays in The New Yorker and articles in The New York Times.
It took a few drafts still before I even moved into books.
Such as:
Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline by Jennifer Carlson.
Guns by Stephen King.
Gunfight: The Battle Over The Right To Bear Arms In America by Adam Winkler.
Later in the drafting process.
After the project became less of a broad comedy.
And more of a semiautobiographical seriocomedy.
I got into many more books.
Such as:
The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson
The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic by Jillian Peterson
Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense by Caroline E. Light
The Second Amendment by Michael Waldman
From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter by Seamus McGraw
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Parkland by Dave Cullen
Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture by David Yamane
Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America by Dana Loesch
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement, and the Politics of Race by Jennifer Carlson
Bloodbath Nation by Paul Auster
Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America by Mark Follman
Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse
Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy by Jennifer Carlson
American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter
Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across The Border by Ieva Jusionyte
And probably more than a few more I am forgetting.
But that research as you can tell was all done with my brain.
I didn’t interview people.
I didn’t visit gun ranges.
I isolated myself with my thoughts about guns.
And I certainly didn’t try shooting a gun myself.
I remember I was on a plane one time while writing a draft of the project.
When a man sitting next to me who must have been looking at my screen offered to take me shooting.
I looked him up and down this Navy Seal type guy.
And said no out of fear and bias.
But it probably would have saved me years of extra work if I had taken him up on his offer.
Because it wasn’t until I finally went and shot a gun.
With Progressive LA Shooters.
In 2023.
That I was finally able to finish the writing process.
And just focus on getting the book illustrated.
That moment taught me something the books couldn’t.
It goes to show that sometimes the best knowledge.
Is participation.
