Project description
Investigating gun control measures and gun cultures evolution in Europe
Between the 1870s and the 1970s, Europe experienced a silent revolution that transformed it from a continent where guns were in daily use to a place where gun control measures and the cultural depoliticisation of firearms were the norm. This shift has become crucial for maintaining public order, fostering social peace and ensuring the smooth operation of political systems. The ERC-funded EU-GUNS project will investigate the lawful possession and use of small firearms by law-abiding civilians in Western Europe. Using a comparative and transnational approach, the project seeks to understand the root causes of this transformation and its historical impact on the making of modern Europe. This endeavour will produce the first comprehensive history of the gun issue in modern Europe.
Objective
This research project is a comparative and transnational historical investigation of the lawful possession and use of small firearms by law-abiding civilians in Europe between ca. 1870 and ca. 1970. Over the course of this century-long period, Europe underwent a silent revolution, which led it from being a continent where guns were in daily use to becoming a place where weapons in civilians’ hands became associated with violence and crime. This led to the progressive establishment of gun control measures and to the cultural deglamorization and depoliticization of guns as a cornerstone of public order, social peace and, more generally, the smooth running of political systems. The overall goal of the project is to study the root causes of this shift and its impact on European history.
The project provides a wide-ranging examination of the gun question. It adopts an integrated methodological approach that encompasses legislative measures, cultural representations and gun-related practices within a broad, comparative and transnational diachronic framework involving select countries in Western Europe (France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden).
Heuristically, the project does not equate the possession and use of guns with political violence and warfare; instead, it focuses on lawful gun ownership and use. This constitutes a privileged point of view and a fundamental benchmark to fully grasp the impact and cultural roots of political violence. The project has the ambition to write the first political, social and cultural history of the gun question in Europe. It will not only fill a major gap in the current literature, but also newly address the relationship between processes of enlargement of states’ competences, the control of violence and the rights of individuals, which ultimately lies at the core of the making of modern and contemporary Europe and the nature of European citizenship.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
35122 Padova
Italy