The Roots of America's Gun Culture

Instructions
Use the following sources to help you answer and complete the Guided Notes.

Guided Notes
Complete the following prompts in your Notes.

Article - for each of the headings/questions throughout the article, what is one fact that helps you understand the roots of America's gun culture?
- Headings/Questions
  1. Isaac Chotiner: How much is the story of guns intimately connected to the story of slavery?
  2. And what is the connection between the period you are writing about and the prevalence of guns today?
  3. But didn’t the British themselves regulate the manner in which they were selling guns everywhere?
  4. Is this not the exact logic that governs how America sells arms today? One of the reasons the U.S. would always give or sell weapons, particularly in the Cold War, was that certain regimes supposedly needed to be defended, and we’d say, “If we didn’t arm them, then someone else would arm them.”
  5. Why did the United States become the British colony where guns had such an outsize role, despite the British inundating other areas?
  6. Given the centrality of gun selling to the British economy then, are you surprised there is not a strong gun culture there now?
  7. Was there anything you studied that made you think differently about the debate we are having over guns today?
Article with Data
- Using the charts with data, where does Arizona rank in the different data points?
  - Grade
  - Gun laws strength
  - Gun death rate per 100k
  - Gun death rate rank

​The Roots of America's Gun Culture