The Science of Gun Policy

The Science of Gun Policy
Author: Rosanna Smart
Publisher:
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2020-08-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781977404312

In this report, part of the RAND Corporation's Gun Policy in America initiative, researchers seek objective information about what the scientific literature reveals about the likely effects of various gun laws. In this second edition of an earlier work, the authors add five gun policies to the 13 examined in the original analysis and expand the study time frame to incorporate a larger body of research. With those adjustments, the authors synthesize the available scientific data on the effects of 18 policies on firearm deaths, violent crime, the gun industry, defensive gun use, and other outcomes. By highlighting where scientific evidence is accumulating, the authors hope to build consensus around a shared set of facts that have been established through a transparent, nonpartisan, and impartial review process. In so doing, they also illuminate areas where more and better information could make important contributions to establishing fair and effective gun policies.

Regulating Gun Sales

Regulating Gun Sales
Author: Daniel W Webster
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1421411725

This excerpt from the “masterful, timely, data-driven” study of the gun control debate examines the potential of stronger purchasing laws (Choice). As the debate on gun control continues, evidence-based research is needed to answer a crucial question: How do we reduce gun violence? One of the biggest gun policy reforms under consideration is the regulation of firearm sales and stopping the diversion of guns to criminals. This selection from the major anthology of studies Reducing Gun Violence in America presents compelling evidence that stronger purchasing laws and better enforcement of these laws result in lower gun violence. Additional material for this edition includes an introduction by Michael R. Bloomberg and Consensus Recommendations for Reforms to Federal Gun Policies from the Johns Hopkins University.

Gun Studies

Gun Studies
Author: Jennifer Carlson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317446062

As cultural, social, political, and historical objects, guns are rich with complex and contested significance. What guns mean, why they matter, and what policies should be undertaken to regulate guns remain issues of vigorous scholarly and public debate. Gun Studies offers fresh research and original perspectives on the contentious issue of firearms in public life. Comprising global, interdisciplinary contributions, this insightful volume examines difficult and timely questions through the lens of: Social practice Marketing and commerce Critical theory Political conflict Public policy Criminology Questions explored include the evolution of American gun culture from recreation to self-protection; the changing dynamics of the pro-gun and pro-regulation movements; the deeply personal role of guns as sources of both injury and security; and the relationship between gun-wielding individuals, the state, and social order in the United States and abroad. In addition to introducing new research, Gun Studies presents reflections by senior scholars on what has been learned over the decades and how gun-related research has influenced public policy and everyday conversations. Offering provocative and often intimate perspectives on how guns influence individuals, social structures, and the state in both dramatic and nuanced ways, Gun Studies will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology, political science, legal history, criminology, criminal justice, social policy, armaments industries, and violent crime. It will also appeal to policy makers and all others interested in and concerned about the use of guns.

Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence

Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2013-10-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0309284414

In 2010, more than 105,000 people were injured or killed in the United States as the result of a firearm-related incident. Recent, highly publicized, tragic mass shootings in Newtown, CT; Aurora, CO; Oak Creek, WI; and Tucson, AZ, have sharpened the American public's interest in protecting our children and communities from the harmful effects of firearm violence. While many Americans legally use firearms for a variety of activities, fatal and nonfatal firearm violence poses a serious threat to public safety and welfare. In January 2013, President Barack Obama issued 23 executive orders directing federal agencies to improve knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, what might help prevent it, and how to minimize its burden on public health. One of these orders directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to, along with other federal agencies, immediately begin identifying the most pressing problems in firearm violence research. The CDC and the CDC Foundation asked the IOM, in collaboration with the National Research Council, to convene a committee tasked with developing a potential research agenda that focuses on the causes of, possible interventions to, and strategies to minimize the burden of firearm-related violence. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence focuses on the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, the impact of gun safety technology, and the influence of video games and other media.

Evaluating Gun Policy

Evaluating Gun Policy
Author: Jens Ludwig
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2004-05-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780815753377

Compared with other developed nations, the United States is unique in its high rates of both gun ownership and murder. Although widespread gun ownership does not have much effect on the overall crime rate, gun use does make criminal violence more lethal and has a unique capacity to terrorize the public. Gun crime accounts for most of the costs of gun violence in the United States, which are on the order of $100 billion per year. But that is not the whole story. Guns also provide recreational benefits and sometimes are used virtuously in fending off or forestalling criminal attacks. Given that guns may be used for both good and ill, the goal of gun policy in the United States has been to reduce the flow of guns to the highest-risk groups while preserving access for most people. There is no lack of opinions on policies to regulate gun commerce, possession, and use, and most policy proposals spark intense controversy. Whether the current system achieves the proper balance between preserving access and preventing misuse remains the subject of considerable debate. Evaluating Gun Policy provides guidance for a pragmatic approach to gun policy using good empirical research to help resolve conflicting assertions about the effects of guns, gun control, and law enforcement. The chapters in this volume do not conform neatly to the claims of any one political position. The book is divided into five parts. In the first section, contributors analyze the connections between rates of gun ownership and two outcomes of particular interest to society—suicide and burglary. Regulating ownership is the focus of the second section, where contributors investigate the consequences a large-scale combined gun ban and buy-back program in Australia, as well as the impact of state laws that prohibit gun ownership to those with histories of domestic violence. The third section focuses on efforts to restrict gun carrying and includes a critical examination of efforts in Pit

Firearms and Violence

Firearms and Violence
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2005-01-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0309091241

For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies. Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.

Reducing Gun Violence in America

Reducing Gun Violence in America
Author: Daniel W. Webster
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-01-28
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1421411113

The book includes an analysis of the constitutionality of many recommended policies and data from a national public opinion poll that reflects support among the majority of Americans—including gun owners—for stronger gun policies.

Gun Violence and Mental Illness

Gun Violence and Mental Illness
Author: Liza H. Gold, M.D.
Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1585624985

Perhaps never before has an objective, evidence-based review of the intersection between gun violence and mental illness been more sorely needed or more timely. Gun Violence and Mental Illness, written by a multidisciplinary roster of authors who are leaders in the fields of mental health, public health, and public policy, is a practical guide to the issues surrounding the relation between firearms deaths and mental illness. Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides. This book is an apolitical exploration of the misperceptions and realities that attend gun violence and mental illness. The authors frame both pressing social issues as public health problems subject to a variety of interventions on individual and collective levels, including utilization of a novel perspective: evidence-based interventions focusing on assessments and indicators of dangerousness, with or without indications of mental illness. Reader-friendly, well-structured, and accessible to professional and lay audiences, the book: * Reviews the epidemiology of gun violence and its relationship to mental illness, exploring what we know about those who perpetrate mass shootings and school shootings. * Examines the current legal provisions for prohibiting access to firearms for those with mental illness and whether these provisions and new mandated reporting interventions are effective or whether they reinforce negative stereotypes associated with mental illness. * Discusses the issues raised in accessing mental health treatment in regard to diminished treatment resources, barriers to access, and involuntary commitment.* Explores novel interventions for addressing these issues from a multilevel and multidisciplinary public health perspective that does not stigmatize people with mental illness. This includes reviews of suicide risk assessment; increasing treatment engagement; legal, social, and psychiatric means of restricting access to firearms when people are in crisis; and, when appropriate, restoration of firearm rights. Mental health clinicians and trainees will especially appreciate the risk assessment strategies presented here, and mental health, public health, and public policy researchers will find Gun Violence and Mental Illness a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume that eschews sensationalism and embraces serious scholarship.

Warped Narratives

Warped Narratives
Author: Melissa Kate Merry
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2020-01-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472126245

The politics of gun policy in the United States are dramatic. Against the backdrop of daily gun violence—which claims more than 33,000 lives per year—gun control groups push for stronger regulations, while gun rights groups resist infringements upon their Second Amendment rights. To illuminate the dynamics of this polarized debate, Warped Narratives examines how and why interest groups frame the gun violence problem in particular ways, exploring the implication of groups’ framing choices for policymaking and politics. Melissa K. Merry argues that the gun policy arena is warped, and that both gun control and gun rights organizations contribute to the distortion of the issue by focusing on atypical characters and settings in their policy narratives. Gun control groups emphasize white victims, child victims, and mass shootings in suburban locales, while gun rights groups focus on self-defense shootings, highlighting threats to “law-abiding” gun owners. In reality, most gun deaths are the result of suicide. Homicides occur disproportionately in urban areas, mainly affecting racial minorities. While warping makes political sense in the short term, it may lead to negative, long-term consequences, including constraints on groups’ ability to build broad-based coalitions and to reduce prospects for compromise. To demonstrate warping, Merry analyzes nearly 67,000 communications by 15 national gun policy groups between 2000 and 2017 collected from blogs, emails, Facebook posts, and press releases. This book is the first to systematically assess the role of race in gun policy groups’ framing and offers the most comprehensive examination to date of interest groups’ presentation of this issue.

More Guns, Less Crime

More Guns, Less Crime
Author: John R Lott
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2000-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780226493640

Does allowing people to own or carry guns deter violent crime? Or does it simply cause more citizens to harm each other? Directly challenging common perceptions about gun control, legal scholar John Lott presents the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever done on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws. This timely and provocative work comes to the startling conclusion: more guns mean less crime. In this paperback edition, Lott has expanded the research through 1996, incorporating new data available from states that passed right-to-carry and other gun laws since the book's publication as well as new city-level statistics. "Lott's pro-gun argument has to be examined on the merits, and its chief merit is lots of data. . . . If you still disagree with Lott, at least you will know what will be required to rebut a case that looks pretty near bulletproof."Peter Coy, Business Week "By providing strong empirical evidence that yet another liberal policy is a cause of the very evil it purports to cure, he has permanently changed the terms of debate on gun control. . . . Lott's book could hardly be more timely. . . . A model of the meticulous application of economics and statistics to law and policy."John O. McGinnis, National Review "His empirical analysis sets a standard that will be difficult to match. . . . This has got to be the most extensive empirical study of crime deterrence that has been done to date." Public Choice "For anyone with an open mind on either side of this subject this book will provide a thorough grounding. It is also likely to be the standard reference on the subject for years to come."Stan Liebowitz, Dallas Morning News "A compelling book with enough hard evidence that even politicians may have to stop and pay attention. More Guns, Less Crimeis an exhaustive analysis of the effect of gun possession on crime rates."James Bovard, Wall Street Journal "John Lott documents how far 'politically correct' vested interests are willing to go to denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them. Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful, scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue."Milton Friedman