Guns in the Anglo-American democracies: explaining an American exception

Abstract

This article looks to the founding fragment analytical tradition in search of an explanation for America's unique relationship with guns, reviewing key aspects of gun control policy and gun-related culture in the USA and four other Anglo-American societies: Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. The discussion that follows argues that only contributors to the fragment tradition that identify considerable differentiation between the USA and Canada can plausibly explain the former's relationship with guns. Finally, the conclusion argues that it was the American Revolution's amplification of the effects of ideological fragmentation from Europe that best explains the American gun exception.