Building a Collaboration between ICW and the Center for the Study of Guns and Society (CSGS) at Wesleyan University

This past year I served as ICW Postdoctoral Researcher and Visiting Scholar of History at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. My work centered on the budding collaboration between ICW and the Center for the Study of Guns and Society (CSGS) at Wesleyan University. Established in April 2022, CSGS stands as the nation’s first academic center dedicated to interdisciplinary humanities approaches to the social and cultural history of firearms. CSGS fosters pioneering original research in the history of firearms, with topics ranging from firearms technologies and manufacture to practices of owning, carrying, and using a firearm. The center continues to uncover the cultural significances of gun ownership and the historical conditions that have enabled the acceptance of high levels of gun violence in the United States, relative to other countries. As a hub for interdisciplinary research, CSGS regularly hosts conferences and workshops, engages in numerous research projects, and invites collaborations with other universities, museums, and institutions.

My role included strengthening the connection and potential for collaboration between CSGS and ICW. I served as liaison between the two institutes and contributed to plans for a joint conference that are underway. One task I completed was compiling a list of archival institutions in California that may be fruitful for future research on the history and culture of firearms in California. I included with each institution listed a brief narrative regarding the access, potential, and relevance for each, as well as certain relevant collections to be examined. Another subject I researched, which stands as a potential topic for a conference presentation at an ICW-CSGS conference, was the history and culture of the Stembridge Gun Rental company in Hollywood, CA. Stembridge housed the largest collection of prop guns in the country and supplied nearly every American movie or television set with firearms and blanks, from approximately 1920-2007. This image of the rental company comes from a 1969 article in True: The Man’s Magazine, a publication promoted “for today’s man.”[1] Stembridge held its near-monopoly on prop guns for another four decades.

I conducted research for a CSGS project looking at historical laws and practices of firearm use in the U.S. My research focused on California, one of the five states being examined, post statehood. I analyzed sources such as codes, laws, and ordinances, 1850-1923, ranging from state to municipal. The laws consisted of prohibitions or requirements for a permit to carry, conceal, or discharge a firearm. The state of California presented a distinct case legally because most laws and ordinances relating to guns came from each county. California only held statewide gun laws during the Civil War and Reconstruction; after this period the state government repealed many statewide laws and left it to the counties to determine the legality of gun use separately. The county had become the primary framework for establishing local government in new states and territories. A county could be readily extended or subdivided as more settlers arrived and could expand its reach to govern even the most sparsely settled areas in the country.

The results of the research I conducted is now part of the CSGS database. I created a spreadsheet containing information about each law, such as the type of law it was, the year it was passed, the jurisdiction under which the law resided, and any additional comments to help the team at CSGS and future researchers locate and analyze these laws. These laws ranged from state codes or session laws to municipal ordinances to territorial provisions. I was to download each law and place it in a file under a uniform title. The title had to contain the following information and format: YEAR-STATE-Type or YEAR-STATE-Municipality-Type. For example, a law regarding the carrying of a firearm in 1863 would look like “1863 CA Carry,” while a municipal law or ordinance about licensing appeared as “1875 CA Pasadena License.” I have included a brief snapshot of the files downloaded as pdfs with their titles. Each pdf was uploaded onto the shared CSGS folder for California, along with each law’s entry into the shared spreadsheet.

My research for CSGS and ICW furthers the mission of both institutes. Not only will it ideally foster future collaborative work, but my work on California contributes to the central goal of CSGS, which is to uncover the social, cultural, and legal history of firearm use in the U.S. through humanities methodologies. I look forward to seeing what will come next for this state-laws project, and the imperative work being pursued at the Center as well as at ICW.

Photo captions:

1. Bob Thomas, “7,000 Guns for Hire,” True: The Man’s Magazine (January 1969): 36 and 78. Photograph by Bob Grant, opposite page 78.
2. Screenshot of the types of laws – and the naming format – compiled for the CSGS project:

[1] Bob Thomas, “7,000 Guns for Hire,” True: The Man’s Magazine (January 1969): 78.