In this special episode of Guns Unpacked, Alex and Jenny, accompanied by BRIDGS colleague Dr. Callie Cleckner, attend SHOT Show, the National Shooting Sports Foundation's annual trade show in Las Vegas, to explore an unlikely topic: gun suicide. The SHOT show is the largest event of its kind in the world, featuring over 19 acres of exhibits showcasing the latest products from firearms manufactures and related industries. The Guns Unpacked team was there covering a SHOT Show event that had never been held before: a town hall on gun suicide prevention. In considering the gun industry's increasingly prominent efforts on this issue, Alex and Jenny consider a series of difficult questions: what role can or should those who make a living selling firearms play in preventing gun suicide? How should activists in the gun suicide prevention space orient themselves toward the firearms community? How can the vital work of gun suicide prevention navigate the seemingly intractable political divides of our gun debate? The Guns Unpacked Team confronts these difficult questions as they wrestle with the devastating impact of a gun suicide that hit much closer to home. Urgently political and deeply personal, this arresting narrative episode is one that every American needs to hear.

One of the more unusual aspects of being a gun scholar is how frequently we are approached by folks outside the field with their gun stories, whether that means anecdotes about their connections to gun culture or their exposure to gun violence. In this episode, Jenny and Alex sit down to ask each other to reflect on their own stories about when they were first introduced to firearms, when they were first touched by gun violence, and how those early encounters shaped their approach to their scholarship. Their informal and personal conversation about their two very different paths toward gun scholarship ranges over questions of about guns in media, and the myriad ways differences in race, gender, class, and region shape our understanding of gun culture. Tune in if you’re curious about your hosts mutual obsession with OG Nintendo Duck Hunt or their very different introductions to self-defensive gun culture!

In this episode, Jacob Charles, Associate Professor and Strauss Research Professor at the Caruso School of Law at Pepperdine University, helps host Alex Young explore how two pivotal court cases on the Supreme Court's 2026 docket transformed Second Amendment Law. After a broad overview of how the court's understanding of the Second Amendment has changed since the 2008 Heller decision, Charles delves into United States v. Hemani and Wolford v. Lopez to illuminate how these decisions imagine the relationship between drug law and gun law, and property law and gun law, respectively. In the wide-ranging conversation that follows, Charles and Young take on topics ranging from the drinking habits of the founding fathers to the upcoming court challenge to state-level assault weapon bans.