Caserta 1 Aaron Caserta Meredith Mullins English 102 18 October 2010 Citation, Summary, Paraphrases and Direct Quotes

Hagan, John, and Holly Foster. "Contemporary Sociology." JSTOR. American Sociological Association, Jan. 2000. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2654930>. To summarize this article, authors John Hagan and Holly Foster compare America and Canada in both gun regulations and gun crime. They show the differences in our histories and why each country is the way it is now. They explain that the solution to Americas problem cannot be copied from Canada, but they suggest a bottom-up approach through implementation of regulations such as trigger lock requirements and mandatory safety courses. We argue that the Canadian-American comparison vividly illustrates the causal role played by guns and the possibility of a less violent America, but that the American policy prescription cannot simply copy Canadian policy without addressing cross-national differences (Hagan and Foster 44). Hagan and Foster insist that America and Canada share similarities in their populations, but on the other hand the methods used to restrict guns and ammo shows major differences in actual crime rates (Hagan and Foster 47). There are signs that such suits are driving an important wedge between the National Rifle Association, which is unyielding in its opposition to gun control measures, and leaders in the gun industry, who have seen the toll imposed on American tobacco companies and executives by comparable civil suites (Hagan and Foster 50).

Caserta 2 The change in America cannot come completely from the government taking away guns. This would be a top-down approach and would fail miserably. The change has to come from the bottom-up through slow implementation of restrictions on gun ownership (Hagan and Foster 51).