Conceptual basis of gun policy

Abstract

Gun violence has reignited academic and public debate about support for restrictive gun policies, the need for stronger gun control, and countering school shooting. The article analyzes the national and foreign guns policies. Unlike most comparative legal studies on the problems of guns control, built on comparison and identification of features, the analysis of differences, this study was aimed at identifying the essential grounds, the nature of state control relations over the circulation of guns. We aimed to synthesise evidence identifying effective interventions and policies that influence the social determinants of gun violence. The paper widely uses the literature review method in combination with classical methods of studying legal phenomena, which made it possible to identify Legal model of gunpolicies that exist in the world, determine the legal means of implementing the guns policy, its principles. We systematically searched legal databases (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Traveler’s Guide to the Firearm Laws of the Fifty States — Gun Laws for the 50 States”, databases of Federal Ministry of Justice Germany, database provisioning legislative activity of Russia). The study revealed gaps in the Russian guns policy and the organization of guns control and supervisory activities of law enforcement agencies, including the problem of restricting access to guns for certain categories of persons — members of extremist and terrorist organizations, as well as persons who have committed crimes who have received a criminal procedure the status of a suspect or accused. We conclude that a promising strategy for reducing gun violence is to make guns a legal liability to criminals, a goal that can be furthered through a variety of both regulatory and law-enforcement tactics. Changes to the legislation on guns and criminal procedure legislation aimed at strengthening guns control are proposed.