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Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do

2008 album by Major Lazer

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ5619346
Source-derived summary

Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do is the debut studio album by the Jamaican-American electronic dance music band Major Lazer, released on June 16, 2009, which at the time consisted of Diplo and Switch. The album is heavily influenced by Jamaican dancehall music and features guest appearances from Jamaican artists on every track.

Reception

Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do was critically acclaimed among release, Rhapsody called it the 10th best album of 2009. After the album's release, Major Lazer was commercially and critically accepted amongst the reggae community and are often credited for changing the dancehall, reggae and moombahton community and genres, making them more commercially accepted in the United States.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do” is 2008 album by Major Lazer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Guns, Don't and Kill, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2009. For this dossier, Guns, Don't and Kill is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2008 album by Major Lazer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5619346. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do primary sources, Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do archive and Guns research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.