Today’s Plan:
Sample Project: Heller
So I just got finished going through the first round of Booth questions, and I have some concerns. I do not see enough focused research questions. Some of this might be that folks haven’t read the research they are annotating closely enough and are just surface skimming. But some of it might be that I am asking you to do more cognitive work than you are ready to do. So let me show you how I would go about putting together a research proposal on gun policy.
Thinking through Friday’s Booth #2 activity: when it comes to guns I know one of the big historic shifts is a Supreme Court case called District of Columbia vs. Heller. I’d be kind of surprised if anyone in the Gun Policy groups hasn’t heard of this one. Before I started researching it, all I knew was that this decision reinforced (or expanded–depending on your academic/political perspective) an individual’s right to own a gun.
So, what am I going to do?
- I am going to look up the Supreme Court case to find the ruling and dissents
- I am going to go to Google Scholar to see what I can dig up
- I am going to go to the UNCO library to see what I can dig up. Gold Mine!
- I am going to do a regular old Google search to see what I can dig up
- Hey, I found this annotated version of the Constitution, and it is a .gov account. Seems useful.
Just skimming some stuff while searching, I’ve learned that Heller was a surprising decision. It settled a LONG standing debate about the second amendment, and it did it in a way that legal scholars and experts didn’t expect.
