So, first of all, sorry that this is so late. My brain has decided to become technology illiterate today, so it's been an all around struggle. Partially, it was a struggle to decide what to write about. Initially, I thought the topic for the week was mass media in general, but as it's not, I won't get into any of that.
Anyway, I was looking through the Library of Congress's archives of newspapers and decided to look for anything that might pertain to my thesis topic. Tentatively, it's about the corresponding rise of the American National Security state and special interests in personal security, namely the NRA. I wasn't expecting to find a lot, since the archives only go up through 1922, and a lot of what I'm interested in comes into play after the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, I really did not find all that much in the historical records, but I think the lack of evidence is pretty interesting. Anything that I did find had more to do with the control of ballistics and accuracy, rather than the less literal debate over gun control that is pervasive now.
This picture and its caption, which I took from an 1899 Pennsylvania newspaper, illustrate that the theory of gun control was more for military tactical use than the restriction of firearms within the civilian public.
To me, it would be interesting to chart the change and trajectory of this phrase over time. Clearly, gun control today is not understood as it was in 1899. There's far more public interest in it, as well as national security than there was pre-1922, as evidenced by this Google trends graph.
Although I didn't find any positive evidence for my thesis research in this particular search of the Library of Congress archive, it wasn't a useless search. I just think that this is a somewhat interesting case, to me at least, that newspapers/magazines/printed media can provide evidence through a documented lack of coverage.
Anyway, I was looking through the Library of Congress's archives of newspapers and decided to look for anything that might pertain to my thesis topic. Tentatively, it's about the corresponding rise of the American National Security state and special interests in personal security, namely the NRA. I wasn't expecting to find a lot, since the archives only go up through 1922, and a lot of what I'm interested in comes into play after the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, I really did not find all that much in the historical records, but I think the lack of evidence is pretty interesting. Anything that I did find had more to do with the control of ballistics and accuracy, rather than the less literal debate over gun control that is pervasive now.
To me, it would be interesting to chart the change and trajectory of this phrase over time. Clearly, gun control today is not understood as it was in 1899. There's far more public interest in it, as well as national security than there was pre-1922, as evidenced by this Google trends graph.
Although I didn't find any positive evidence for my thesis research in this particular search of the Library of Congress archive, it wasn't a useless search. I just think that this is a somewhat interesting case, to me at least, that newspapers/magazines/printed media can provide evidence through a documented lack of coverage.
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