IMO, the most interesting CCW-related topic for a paper would be to examine the "shall-issue revolution"--the rapid spread of right-to-carry laws over the past 20 years. In 1988, only 8 states had "shall-issue" CCP laws, but today, I think 39 of them do. This happened because over the past two decades, pro-CCW groups were able to successfully convince dozens of state legislatures that "shall-issue" laws not only aren't dangerous, but in fact may make the public safer. Of course, anti-gun groups opposed them in every one of these states, and tried to convince the state legislatures of the opposite; they warned that if we allowed just anyone to get a CCW, the streets would be filled with blood as people shot each other over traffic disputes and stuff like that. But in almost every case, they failed, because the facts just weren't on their side. States that hadn't yet adopted "shall-issue" laws could look at what had happened in states that had already adopted them, and see that the anti-gun advocate's warnings were unrealistic. In fact, they could see that crime rates often declined after states adopted "shall-issue" laws. Every state that adopted "shall-issue" laws and didn't turn into the Wild West became another point of evidence in favor of the pro-CCW groups, and against the anti's. I think writing your paper about this would be a good way to simultaneously look at the politics and the public safety implications of CCW.
I don't have any specific links for you at the moment, unfortunately, but I'll try to track some down later.
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