Project MUSE announces free access to gun violence scholarship

By Project MUSE

Project MUSE is temporarily providing free access to more than a dozen journal articles and books focused on understanding and preventing gun violence. The goal is to encourage the broadest possible engagement with current research and expertise on the topic as the latest round of gun policy debates and discussions continue in the wake of shootings in California, Texas, and Ohio. The selected content has been collected as “MUSE in Focus: Addressing Gun Violence."

"We wanted to work quickly to assemble this material," said Project MUSE director Wendy Queen. "While MUSE content is available to millions of researchers worldwide through their subscribing institutions, it was important to us that this work be made available to everyone."

The material was selected by the Project MUSE staff in consultation with publishers to provide a broad range of perspectives and expertise relevant to the policy debates that are inevitably renewed with each new incident of gun violence. Participating publishers include Johns Hopkins University Press, Michigan State University Press, Penn State University Press, University of Massachusetts Press, University of Michigan Press, University of North Carolina Press, and University of Pennsylvania Press. The collection features titles such as Private Guns, Public Health, by David Hemenway, and After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in an Age of Political Gridlock, by Craig Rood.

Also included is the contributed work, Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, edited by Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick, which JHU Press director Barbara Kline Pope decided to make available as an open access book in 2017 after the mass shooting in Las Vegas. She had joined the Press only several weeks before that incident. Information about the book’s free availability has been shared repeatedly after subsequent shootings.

"It’s enormously sad— it’s astonishing, frankly—that this is the fourth time in less than two years at JHU Press that I have been part of an effort to make material like this available to the public in the wake of horrific gun violence," commented Pope. "It’s tremendously important that the voices of experts and the insights of years of relevant research have full weight in the discussion of gun policy by lawmakers, journalists, and the public. Lives literally depend on understanding that research-based solutions and consensus are possible."