Conclusion: Where we are, and where do we go from here?

Many academics argue that the world is full of tired old clichés. From the First World War (Cranfield, 2012) and metaphysics (Moore, 2011) to brand management (Kapferer, 2008) and political realism (McQueen, 2020), they would seem to be present in many areas of study, and usually linger despite being proven to be groundless. Studies in the area of firearms are no exception to this, and we are often confronted with the statement that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” (see, for example Stroud (2020); Goldsmith et al (2020)). Pitt (2014) argues in favour of the value neutrality thesis – the idea that guns are neither good nor bad, and that the “the values of the people doing the building are not in the artefacts” (2014: 89) and, while there is value in that argument, this conclusion will explore the different aspects of this statement in light of the discussions in the earlier chapters of the book.