Maryville College’s Dr. Doug Sofer digs a little deeper into the complex issue of firearms with upper-level history course
Feb. 27, 2024
When Dr. Doug Sofer first moved to East Tennessee two decades ago, he realized he had a lot to learn about his new home and its traditions.
For the associate professor of history at Maryville College, that process included getting a better understanding of local gun culture and of firearms themselves, a journey that led him to both a wealth of scholarly insight and a new hobby: To this day, he enjoys target shooting but feels most at home in the classroom.
More recently, it led to the creation of a unique course at MC: “Firearms: A History,” a 300-level course for juniors and seniors that has a single purpose: to foment deeper conversations, anchored by respect and healthy discourse, around the complex issues so often devoid of nuance in today’s polarized debate.
“When people oversimplify questions, as a historian it bothers me — and there may be no greater kind of oversimplification than when complicated issues get turned into bumper stickers, slogans and memes,” Sofer said. “When I first moved here, I didn’t understand gun culture at all, but I wanted to understand it, so I went to the John Sevier Hunter Education Center (in Knoxville). A friend of mine took me hunting, and even though I didn’t hit much, I learned a lot about the mentality, and I’m glad I tried it.
“I don’t think, on any side of the political spectrum, that bumper stickers, slogans and memes capture the complexity of the questions surrounding an issue like this. The fact is, the United States has a history of guns. Like it or not, they’ve played a role, for better or worse, in U.S. history.”
A balance of perspective
Sofer’s class, like all others at Maryville College, approaches the subject material with balance and nuance. Two of the required texts examining the Second Amendment, for example, come from opposite ends of the political spectrum: “The Second Amendment: A Biography,” by attorney Michael Waldman, former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law; and “The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms,” by attorney Stephen Halbrook, a litigant who has represented firearm associations, manufacturers, importers, dealers and others in numerous cases since 1978 and a senior fellow at the libertarian think thank The Independent Institute.
“We’re learning from historians as well, but these two books are by attorneys trying to represent each side who did extensive historical research,” Sofer said. “The idea was to use both and to let their work sort of interrogate the other. These guys are out there working with the evidence, and while they do disagree vehemently at times, there’s a surprising amount of common ground as well. And I think what’s important to point out is that when people talk about the opinions of the Founding Fathers, especially as they relate to the Second Amendment, what they tend to miss is that the Founding Fathers often disagreed with one another, sometimes very strongly.”
As a topics course built around discussion of ideas (there are no hands-on components), it follows in the footsteps of other classes designed by Sofer and his colleagues that apply foundational liberal arts principles to specific subject matter. Sofer refers to these kinds of courses as “material history,” and in the past, he’s taught classes on the history of the world through drugs, and the history of Latin America through food.
“One trend in history these days is to look at items and try to understand the past through those lenses,” he said. “This is no different, in that we’re trying to understand some parts of world history through guns, and the fact is, guns have had a massive impact on history. A lot of history has been determined by which country’s armies have more of them, but also who have been better trained to use them. These are decisive factors in world history that might determine who is in control of one area of the world versus who is not.”
In presenting the course to administrators of Academic Affairs prior to its launch in the Spring 2022 semester (it’s a biennial class taught every other semester), Sofer framed it as an ideal addition to the Maryville College approach to teaching. At MC, the History Department is a small one made up of four professors (including Dr. Dan Klingensmith, who will return to the classroom this summer but has served as the vice president and dean of the College since 2019), but that also allows each faculty member latitude that might not be found at larger schools, he added.
“There’s a great breadth of material we can tackle that you won’t get at big universities,” he said. “I actually use that format for my podcast (“You Are a Weirdo,” available on all streaming platforms that uses “the power of history to understand the strangeness of now”). In that sense, instead of being spread too thin, the fact that each of us has to cover so much of the world becomes a strength, because large-scale comparative histories work very well with material histories, and in a course like the History of Drugs, you can look at things like the use of hallucinogens by Native Americans, or the introduction of opium from the Far East.”
The nuance of history
The Far East, in fact, is where “Firearms: A History” begins. Using the book “Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation and Rise of the West” by Emory University historian Tonio Andrade as part of the course’s required readings, one of the first historical questions Sofer helps students navigate through is why the Chinese invented gunpowder around 1000 AD, but over the next millennium found themselves outgunned by the West. The material follows the spread of firearms through Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, and students examine the role of changing firearm technologies over the centuries and the implications of these shifts in different cultural and historical contexts.
The second third of the course, he added, is devoted to the Second Amendment, and what he often finds is that while students can often recite it verbatim, the historical context around it is not as well known.
“At the time the Constitution was written, the amendments came out of state amendment ratification committees, because the Constitution was ratified with the promise of an unmade Bill of Rights. James Madison went out of his way to make sure that happened,” Sofer said. “So people brought these ideas to the federal government, and they were narrowed down to 10 that we now know as the Bill of Rights. And what’s interesting is that later on, both Madison and (Thomas) Jefferson were on the board of directors for the University of Virginia, and there were no firearms allowed on the campus during that time.
“So it’s important to understand, when talking about the opinions of the Founding Fathers, that even then, there were two Founding Fathers who felt like there were places where you could not have firearms.”
By the same token, he added, there is some argument to be made that the framers of the Constitution did indeed have military-grade weapons in mind when considering the right to keep and bear arms. The application of it, especially in connection with “a well-regulated militia,” has to be viewed through a historical lens, he said.
“Militias were an important early part of U.S. history, before there were professional police forces, before there was a National Guard, before there was a standing army, and that meant that civilians needed to know not just how to defend themselves, but to do so in a military-like way,” Sofer said. “So the fact is, the founders were talking about military weapons. Now, what would they do in a world where there were no militias, or at least none in the same form? What would they think, coming from a time when you could reload once every 30 seconds if you were skilled at muzzle loading? What would they think about a 50-round semi-automatic that you can shoot as fast as your finger can pull the trigger?
Broadening perspectives in both directions
“I do feel like they wanted to, for the foreseeable future, enshrine that right in the Constitution, but we’re not here to dismiss any ideas about its interpretation. We try to look at all different kinds of opinions, and at the evidence, and take it all seriously.”
First taught in Spring 2022, the course then and this semester has attracted a broad range of students, Sofer said. Some are History majors needing a 300-level course to complete the required curriculum; others are drawn to the subject matter. Their familiarity with it, he added, runs the gamut as well, from military veterans to recreational shooters to self-described “gun nuts” to those whose only exposure to them has been through Hollywood films and TV shows.
History major Rae Fox ’23 went into the class in Spring 2022, she said, with an insufficient amount of information on the topic of firearms to form an opinion. What she learned, she said, was that the complexities of such weaponry and the laws governing them have to be approached through an informed lens to merit serious consideration.
“One of the most important things that I have taken away from not only this class but my whole Maryville College experience is being able to step back and look critically at the many different perspectives of polarizing topics,” she said. “It also helped that we had people from many different backgrounds and views, which added to the class. We looked objectively at both the history and arguments made from both sides of the topic that can allow for, even if you do not agree, at least understanding of one another so that some kind of compromise can be met.”
For Lilly Daffron ’23, taking the class the first semester it was offered felt like a responsibility she had, given its relevance to one of her two majors, Criminal Justice. As one of Sofer’s students, she gleaned new information and came to understand varying points of view that left her feeling better informed about the subject, she said.
“Over the duration of this course, my understanding of the depth regarding the conversation around firearms changed,” she said. “Learning how the development of firearms set up countries and political conflicts today, how the history is still very much a part of the gun control commentary today even if it’s under the surface — and how far back the discussion goes — are just a few ways in which my understanding changed while taking this course. Suddenly, this was not just a modern issue involving assault rifles and background checks.
“The way I thought about the Second Amendment also changed. We analyzed two authors’ differing interpretations regarding it, and now I feel like my conversations around gun control and firearms include a deeper understanding of differing opinions and an enriched knowledge of the purpose of the Second Amendment in consideration of interpretations.
“This course challenged my classmates and me to think critically about a hot-button topic,” she added. “Dr. Sofer introduced varying perspectives into our discussion, allowing us to gain a full scope of the topic. All in all, this course was one of my favorites.”
And that, Sofer said, is the entire goal of “Firearms: A History.” The syllabus states plainly that varying viewpoints will be presented, that a healthy amount of readings will be assigned, and that engagement in class discussions is paramount. It’s an intellectual journey, of sorts, that aligns ideally with the Maryville College model of education … and if opinions change along the way because of information revealed therein, then he’s accomplished what he set out to do when creating the course.
“If we’re going to have an issue as important as this, we better be prepared to do the work. In other words, it isn’t about an internet meme, and it isn’t just about how you feel,” Sofer said. “History helps us understand the problems of our day, and if we’re making a historical argument about the founding generation, we need to try and understand the gun generation. And if we’re making logical arguments based on the available historical evidence, we have to engage with that evidence, and that’s hard work sometimes. But we’re not afraid of hard work at Maryville College.”