Firearm Policy Research Articles

Firearm Policy: Physician Organizations' Role in Political Action Committee Funds, 2018.

Objectives. To compare donations to individual politicians from physician organization political action committees (PACs) and from the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA PVF) in 2018.Methods. We identified 7 organizations with published firearm injury prevention policy. We determined the difference in funds received from physician organization PACs and the NRA PVF for each congressmember. We examined their voting records on firearm-related legislation.Results. A total of 141 congressmembers received funds from both physician organization PACs and the NRA PVF. Of these, 99.3% voted for legislation not consistent with organization recommendations. The majority (70.2%) received more funds from the combined physician organization PACs than from the NRA PVF.Conclusions. Physician organization PACs have a financial impact on NRA-backed congressmembers. They currently contribute to politicians with voting records inconsistent with their own policy recommendations. Firearm violence prevention does not currently outweigh other legislative priorities for physician organization PAC contributions.

School Firearm Violence Prevention Practices and Policies: Functional or Folly?

Abstract Firearm injuries are the third leading cause of death for youth (14% of all deaths of youth 1–19 years of age). In 2016, there were 3155 firearm deaths of youths <19 years of age. Recently...

The association of firearm laws with firearm outcomes among children and adolescents: a scoping review.

We conducted a scoping review to determine the current state of knowledge and areas for advancements in research on the association of firearm laws with child and adolescent firearm-related outcomes. We queried Scopus, EMBASE, Pubmed, and CJ Abstracts for English language original empirical research articles on policies affecting child and adolescent firearm-related outcomes published between January 1, 1985 and July 1, 2018. Data were abstracted, and methodologic quality assessed. Twenty articles met inclusion criteria. Among the policies studied were child access prevention laws (12 studies) and minimum age restrictions for firearm purchase and possession (4 studies). Outside of child access prevention laws, which are associated with reductions in child and adolescent unintentional and firearm suicide deaths, there is, at best, equivocal evidence of policy effects. This area is understudied, particularly in regard to nonfatal firearm injuries, for which the lack of a national surveillance system hampers research efforts. Further rigorous firearm policy evaluations are needed.

The Changing Ideological Politics of U.S. State Firearms Regulation

Are the components of policy ideology in the American states fixed, or do they change over time? We document a change in the ideological loading and internal consistency of state firearms laws. While state policy liberalism has long correlated positively with restrictive gun regulation, this relationship strengthened over the 1986‐2016 period. Moreover, states' gun policy regimes have become more internally consistent since 1986, and newly salient issues, such as concealed‐carry laws and assault weapons bans, have been enfolded into the existing dimension of regulatory restrictiveness. This process also corresponds to a shift in the geographic bases of the Republican and Democratic Parties toward nonurban and urban areas, respectively. The changes in gun policy patterns across states reflect dynamic representation of voter ideology. The results suggest that certain modeling assumptions used to generate cardinal state policy ideology scores in prior research ought to be revised.Related ArticlesJoslyn, Mark R., and Donald P. Haider‐Markel. 2018. “Motivated Innumeracy: Estimating the Size of the Gun Owner Population and Its Consequences for Opposition to Gun Restrictions.” Politics &amp; Policy 46 (6): 827‐850. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12276Smith‐Walter, Aaron, Holly L. Peterson, Michael D. Jones, and Ashley Nicole Reynolds Marshall. 2016. “Gun Stories: How Evidence Shapes Firearm Policy in the United States.” Politics &amp; Policy 44 (6): 1053‐1088. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12187Tucker, Justin A., James W. Stoutenborough, and R. Matthew Beverlin. 2012. “Geographic Proximity in the Diffusion of Concealed Weapons Permit Laws.” Politics &amp; Policy 40 (6): 1081‐1105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00399.x

(Strategically) Absent Advocates: How domestic violence-related firearms policies passed in pro-gun states, 2013–2015

In the USA, gun deaths occur at a rate that is 25 times higher than that of other developed countries (Grinshteyn and Hemenway in Am J Med 129(3):266–273, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.025 ). However, legislation targeted toward regulating firearms often fails to pass into law. While surprising to many observers, this policy response follows an established pattern in American politics: despite public support for tighter gun laws, the gun rights lobby often successfully suppresses gun reform due to their greater monetary resources, political savvy, and access to grassroots support than advocates of gun control (Bruce-Briggs in The Public interes 45:37, 1976; Goss in Disarmed: the missing movement for gun control in America, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006). However, laws that restrict domestic abusers from owning firearms have diverged from this pattern. This study identifies an element of advocates’ political strategy that increased the likelihood of policy change: the prominence of domestic violence prevention advocates and “strategic absence” of larger gun control groups in the policy debate. The insights generated by this study shed light on broader questions about advocacy strategy, the policy-making process, and the modern politics of firearms.

The Urgent Need for Legal Scholarship on Firearm Policy

Restrictions on federal funding for research pertaining to firearm policy have stymied academic inquiry by social science and public health researchers for over two decades. As a result, most researchers agree that our public discourse about this urgent issue is woefully under-informed, or even ill-informed, on both sides of the debate. Legal academia, which does not operate under the same grant-writing regime as most other disciplines, can and should help fill this gap in researching and theorizing the unresolved questions related to firearm policy. In fact, theoretical development and clarification from the legal academy is often a necessary antecedent for empirical researchers in other fields to frame and develop their own studies properly, especially about the real-world effects of competing policy approaches to firearms. This Essay sets forth a plea to law professors to undertake much-needed research in this area and offers suggestions of understudied topics with low entry barriers for legal commentators. Recommendations for interdisciplinary collaborative efforts round out this discussion. A brief conclusion reaches the endgame issue: ensuring access to the work we produce.

Opinions on a Firearm Prohibition Policy That Targets Intimate Partner Violence.

Firearms and intimate partner violence form a nexus of dangerousness and lethality. But, some policies aim to separate the two phenomena. The present study aims to fill a gap in the literature focusing on opinions toward a firearm prohibition for persons with injunctions for protection in effect against them by analyzing data from a convenience sample of 290 undergraduate students at a large research university in Florida, United States. Overall, any agreement with the policy was high. Multivariate analyses indicated that females/women and gender identity minorities, together, tended to express more agreement with firearm prohibition than males/men. Multivariate analysis also showed that participants who experienced sexual violence also displayed more agreement with the prohibition when compared to individuals who did not experience sexual violence victimization. "Lower" severity sexual violence victimization had the strongest relationship with policy opinions. Possible explanations for the gender difference in opinions include the implications of hegemonic masculinity and power differentials among genders. A possible explanation for the relationship between sexual violence victimization and policy opinions includes empathy. Policy implications and directions for future research include investigating the potential relationship gap in firearm prohibitions within Florida, engaging college men to change the conceptions around firearms through educational intervention, harnessing the tech-savvy power that college students have to generate awareness of policies, and considering interconnections among opinions, polyvictimization, and firearm policies.

The Association of Firearm Caliber With Likelihood of Death From Gunshot Injury in Criminal Assaults

A foundational issue in firearms policy has been whether the type of weapon used in an assault affects the likelihood of death. To determine whether the likelihood of death from gunshot wounds inflicted in criminal assaults is associated with the power of the assailant's firearm as indicated by its caliber. Cross-sectional study with multivariate analysis of data on shooting cases extracted by the authors from police investigation files for assaults that took place in Boston, Massachusetts, between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2014. These data were analyzed between October 1, 2017, and February 18, 2018. In all cases the victim sustained 1 or more gunshot wounds in circumstances that the Boston Police Department deemed criminal. The working sample included all 221 gun homicides and a stratified random sample of 300 nonfatal cases drawn from the 1012 that occurred during the 5-year period. Seven nonfatal cases were omitted because they had been misclassified. The primary source of variation was the caliber of the firearm used to shoot the victim. Whether the victim died from the gunshot wound(s). The final sample of 511 gunshot victims and survivors (n = 220 fatal; n = 291 nonfatal) was predominantly male (n = 470 [92.2%]), black (n = 413 [80.8%]) or Hispanic (n = 69 [13.5%]), and young (mean [SD] age, 26.8 [9.4] years). Police investigations determined firearm caliber in 184 nonfatal cases (63.2%) and 183 fatal cases (83.2%). These 367 cases were divided into 3 groups by caliber: small (.22, .25, and .32), medium (.38, .380, and 9 mm), or large (.357 magnum, .40, .44 magnum, .45, 10 mm, and 7.62 × 39 mm). Firearm caliber had no systematic association with the number of wounds, the location of wounds, circumstances of the assault, or victim characteristics, as demonstrated by χ2 tests of each cluster of variables and by a comprehensive multinomial logit analysis. A logit analysis of the likelihood of death found that compared with small-caliber cases, medium caliber had an odds ratio of 2.25 (95% CI, 1.37-3.70; P = .001) and large caliber had an odds ratio of 4.54 (95% CI, 2.37-8.70; P < .001). Based on a simulation using the logit equation, replacing the medium- and large-caliber guns with small-caliber guns would have reduced gun homicides by 39.5%. Firearms caliber was associated with the likelihood of death from gunshot wounds in criminal assault. Shootings with larger-caliber handguns were more deadly but no more sustained or accurate than shootings with smaller-caliber handguns. This conclusion is of direct relevance to the design of gun policy.

State Firearm Laws and Interstate Firearm Deaths From Homicide and Suicide in the United States

ImportanceFirearm laws in one state may be associated with increased firearm death rates from homicide and suicide in neighboring states.ObjectiveTo determine whether counties located closer to states with lenient firearm policies have higher firearm death rates.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis cross-sectional study of firearm death rates by county for January 2010 to December 2014 examined data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for firearm suicide and homicide decedents for 3108 counties in the 48 contiguous states of the United States.ExposuresEach county was assigned 2 scores, a state policy score (range, 0-12) based on the strength of its state firearm laws, and an interstate policy score (range, −1.33 to 8.31) based on the sum of population-weighted and distance-decayed policy scores for all other states. Counties were divided into those with low, medium, and high home state and interstate policy scores.Main Outcomes and MeasuresCounty-level rates of firearm, nonfirearm, and total homicide and suicide. With multilevel Bayesian spatial Poisson models, we generated incidence rate ratios (IRR) comparing incidence rates between each group of counties and the reference group, counties with high home state and high interstate policy scores.ResultsStronger firearm laws in a state were associated with lower firearm suicide rates and lower overall suicide rates regardless of the strength of the other states’ laws. Counties with low state scores had the highest rates of firearm suicide. Rates were similar across levels of interstate policy score (low: IRR, 1.34; 95% credible interval [CI], 1.11-1.65; medium: IRR, 1.36, (95% CI, 1.15-1.65; and high: IRR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.20-1.73). Counties with low state and low or medium interstate policy scores had the highest rates of firearm homicide. Counties with low home state and interstate scores had higher firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.02-1.88) and overall homicide rates (IRR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.03-1.67). Counties in states with low firearm policy scores had lower rates of firearm homicide only if the interstate firearm policy score was high.Conclusions and RelevanceStrong state firearm policies were associated with lower suicide rates regardless of other states’ laws. Strong policies were associated with lower homicide rates, and strong interstate policies were also associated with lower homicide rates, where home state policies were permissive. Strengthening state firearm policies may prevent firearm suicide and homicide, with benefits that may extend beyond state lines.

BIG GUNS OR BIG TALK? HOW THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION MATTERS FOR CONCEAL CARRY WEAPONS LAWS*

Social movement organizations (SMOs) often aim to influence society through policy change. However, policy change may actually be the result of public opinion, political opportunities, or other factors, thus creating a spurious relationship between SMO activity and policy outcomes. Interestingly, the power of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to influence policy is often assumed but seldom tested. Drawing on social movement and political-sociological theories of policy change, this study assesses NRA influence on state-level firearm policy outcomes using the case of concealed carry weapons (CCW) laws. Using event-history analyses, I find the NRA does influence CCW laws, but its effect is mediated by public opinion, political ideologies, competitive elections, and political opportunities. Issue-specific public opinion and political ideologies also interact with one another to influence CCW laws. These findings build upon a growing literature that illustrates how SMOs interact with political contexts to generate policy change.

The Effects of Cueing and Framing on Youth Attitudes towards Gun Control and Gun Rights

I analyze attitudes towards gun control from a recent survey of American high school students. For students who most closely identify as Republicans, cueing them to think about prior school shootings increases their agreement that armed staff in schools will improve safety and arming citizens will reduce risk of mass shootings. For those identifying as Democrats and Independents, providing them with selective information that certain states have loose gun control laws and low rates of gun violence makes them more supportive of gun rights. For Republicans, providing selective information that certain states have loose gun control laws and high rates of gun violence makes them less supportive of gun rights. These results suggest that emotional cues may exacerbate a priori biases, while informational cues may be more likely to change people’s minds about firearm policies.

New data on intimate partner violence and intimate relationships: Implications for gun laws and federal data collection

Age at first marriage has risen substantially and birth rates are at a record low; people are spending more time in relationships that, by comparison, have fewer emotional, financial, and legal commitments. Little research has examined intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence in current and former adult (vs. adolescent) dating relationships. Such information is relevant to federal firearms policies that are based on the nature of an intimate relationship. We examined assaultive behaviors by the type and status of the relationship – current spouse, former spouse, current boyfriend or girlfriend, and former boyfriend or girlfriend – in 31,206 IPV incidents responded to by Philadelphia police in 2013. Over 80% of the IPV incidents involved individuals in non-marital relationships. Incidents involving current boyfriends or girlfriends had the highest percentage of violent behaviors (e.g., punch, strangle). They also were more likely than current spouses to use bodily weapons (hands, fists, or feet) or non-gun weapons (knives, bats, etc.) (AOR = 1.19 and 1.43, respectively), to injure their victims (AOR = 1.37), and to be arrested (AOR = 1.46). Former unmarried partners had the highest odds of stalking their intimate (AOR = 3.37) and violating a restraining order (AOR = 2.61). Gun use was similar across relationship type. A growing portion of the population is not protected by federal policies designed to keep guns out of the hands of abusers. Current boyfriends and girlfriends are a risk to their intimates. Federal data collection practices and firearm policies merit updating to more fully take into account dating, same-sex marriage, and other partnerships.

Investigation of Factors Relating to the Web-Based Presentation of Policy and Information on Campus Firearm Policy and Smoking Policy

In order to explore themes of privilege in regard to policy availability, language accessibility, and underlying bias, policies related to two topics of interest to higher education campus visitors, campus firearm carry policy and smoking policy, are explored to determine how Web-based information is presented to various audiences. Implications of policy accessibility are compelling; language barriers can adversely affect access to campus events and educational services. Representative samples of policies of five states that allow some form of open or concealed campus firearm carry were studied to determine possible factors of importance. Representative samples of two additional states in the more restrictive continuum of the campus carry issue were also studied as a control. In addition, policies relating to smoking were examined to determine themes related to overall policy presentation approach. Findings indicate that few Websites facilitate the provision of translated policy, and that few options exist for easy translation of policies into other languages at the point of origin. In addition, this study presents evidence that the recentness of legislative activity and desire to mitigate visitor concerns may be considered as factors impacting policy availability. Keywords: policy language accessibility, campus policy

The Socialization of Conflict and Its Limits: Gender and Gun Politics in America*

ObjectiveThis study considers efforts by gun rights and gun regulation groups to socialize the conflict over firearms policy by engaging a coveted issue public—women. I assess whether gun rights groups have succeeded in weakening women's support for gun control laws and increasing women's firearms ownership. I also examine whether gun regulation groups have succeeded in mobilizing their female sympathizers for political action.MethodsDrawing on two survey archives spanning several decades, I use descriptive statistics and logistic regression to analyze the relationship between women and guns over time.ResultsGun rights groups have had little success in persuading women to become “pro‐gun” in attitudes or behaviors. Gun regulation groups have mobilized their female sympathizers but not enough to offset the political engagement of pro‐gun men.ConclusionThe findings suggest that civic identities, organizational capacities, and countervailing pressures constrain efforts to socialize conflict through persuasion and mobilization.

Parents' Expectations of High Schools in Firearm Violence Prevention.

Firearm violence remains a significant problem in the US (with 2787 adolescents killed in 2015). However, the research on school firearm violence prevention practices and policies is scant. Parents are major stakeholders in relation to firearm violence by youths and school safety in general. The purpose of this study was to examine what parents thought schools should be doing to reduce the risk of firearm violence in schools. A valid and reliable questionnaire was mailed to a national random sample of 600 parents who had at least one child enrolled in a public secondary school (response rate = 47%). Parents perceived inadequate parental monitoring/rearing practices (73%), peer harassment and/or bullying (58%), inadequate mental health care services for youth (54%), and easy access to guns (51%) as major causes of firearm violence in schools. The school policies perceived to be most effective in reducing firearm violence were installing an alert system in schools (70%), working with law enforcement to design an emergency response plan (70%), creating a comprehensive security plan (68%), requiring criminal background checks for all school personnel prior to hiring (67%), and implementing an anonymous system for students to report peer concerns regarding potential violence (67%). Parents seem to have a limited grasp of potentially effective interventions to reduce firearm violence.

Firearm-Related Laws in All 50 US States, 1991-2016.

To describe a new database containing detailed annual information on firearm-related laws in place in each of the 50 US states from 1991 to 2016 and to summarize key trends in firearm-related laws during this time period. Using Thomson Reuters Westlaw data to access historical state statutes and session laws, we developed a database indicating the presence or absence of each of 133 provisions of firearm laws in each state over the 26-year period. These provisions covered 14 aspects of state policies, including regulation of the process by which firearm transfers take place, ammunition, firearm possession, firearm storage, firearm trafficking, and liability of firearm manufacturers. An examination of trends in state firearm laws via this database revealed that although the number of laws nearly doubled during the study period, there was substantial heterogeneity across states, leading to a widening disparity in the number of firearm laws. This database can help advance firearm policy research by providing 26 years of comprehensive policy data that will allow longitudinal panel study designs that minimize the limitations present in many previous studies.

Survey of American College of Surgeons Committee on trauma members on firearm injury: Consensus and opportunities.

In the United States, there is a perceived divide regarding the benefits and risks of firearm ownership. The American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma Injury Prevention and Control Committee designed a survey to evaluate Committee on Trauma (COT) member attitudes about firearm ownership, freedom, responsibility, physician-patient freedom and policy, with the objective of using survey results to inform firearm injury prevention policy development. A 32-question survey was sent to 254 current U.S. COT members by email using Qualtrics. SPSS was used for χ exact tests and nonparametric tests, with statistical significance being less than 0.05. Our response rate was 93%, 43% of COT members have firearm(s) in their home, 88% believe that the American College of Surgeons should give the highest or a high priority to reducing firearm-related injuries, 86% believe health care professionals should be allowed to counsel patients on firearms safety, 94% support federal funding for firearms injury prevention research. The COT participants were asked to provide their opinion on the American College of Surgeons initiating advocacy efforts and there was 90% or greater agreement on 7 of 15 and 80% or greater on 10 of 15 initiatives. The COT surgeons agree on: (1) the importance of formally addressing firearm injury prevention, (2) allowing federal funds to support research on firearms injury prevention, (3) retaining the ability of health care professionals to counsel patients on firearms-related injury prevention, and (4) the majority of policy initiatives targeted to reduce interpersonal violence and firearm injury. It is incumbent on trauma and injury prevention organizations to leverage these consensus-based results to initiate prevention, advocacy, and other efforts to decrease firearms injury and death. Prognostic/epidemiologic study, level I; therapeutic care, level II.

School shootings during 2013-2015 in the USA.

Data on the factors associated with school shootings in the USA are limited. The public conversation has often suggested several factors that may be linked to these events, however with little empirical support. Aiming to fill this gap, we describe the characteristics of school shooting incidents in the USA between 2013 and 2015 and explore whether four factors that represent domains of firearm policy, educational policy and epidemiological risk factors for intentional firearm injuries-background check (BC) policies, per capita mental health expenditures (MHE), K-12 education expenditure (KEE) and urbanicity-were associated with school shootings during this period. We searched LexisNexis, a newspaper and broadcast media databases for school shooting incidents from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2015. Presence of BC laws was extracted from legal information in LexisNexis. State-level covariates of per capita MHE (2013), KEE (2013) and urbanicity (2010) rates were obtained from publicly available data sources. We used negative binomial regression models accounting for clustering by state to explore unadjusted associations between the BC laws, state-level covariates and school shootings to report IRR and 95% CI. We documented 154 school shootings (35, 55 and 64 each year). In unadjusted models, BC for firearm purchase (IRR=0.55, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.76), ammunition purchase (IRR=0.11, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.27), log per capita MHE (IRR=0.58, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.90), log per-capita KEE (IRR=0.09, 9% CI 0.02 to 0.29) and urbanicity (IRR=0.97, 95% CI 0.96 to 0.99) were associated with school shooting. School shootings are less likely in states with BC laws, higher MHE and KEE, and with greater per cent urban population.

Gun Stories: How Evidence Shapes Firearm Policy in the United States

This article examines the role of evidence in the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's firearm policy debate proximate to the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. The groups’ member‐directed policy narratives are operationalized with The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), and new categories of evidence for the framework are developed. Analysis of 2,535 paragraphs of member newsletters indicates the groups display different patterns of narrative components. Evidence is associated with narrative elements, and that narrative strategy has a significant, but mixed relationship with evidence. Most importantly, findings indicate that evidence frequently co‐occurs with characters, leading us to conclude that evidence has a buttressing, or supportive, role in policy narrative closely associated with character attributions. The findings expand the understanding of evidence in contentious policy debates and offer a new component for NPF theory.Related Articles Nevbahar, Ertas. 2015. “.” Politics &amp; Policy 43 (): 426‐451. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12120/abstract Raile, Eric D., Amber N. W. Raile, Charles T. Salmon, and Lori Ann Post. 2014. “.” Politics &amp; Policy 42 (): 103‐130. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12063/abstract Shanahan, Elizabeth A., Mark K. McBeth, and Paul T. Hathaway. 2011. “.” Politics &amp; Policy 39 (): 373‐400. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00295.x/abstractRelated Media . https://www.youtube.com/user/BradyCampaign . https://www.youtube.com/user/NRAVideos

Guns and contemporary society: the past, present, and future of firearms and firearm policy: v.1: Background to the current debate over firearms; v.2: Cultural issues related to firearms in the United States; v.3: Current controversies and policy recommendations

Guns and contemporary society: the past, present, and future of firearms and firearm policy: v.1: Background to the current debate over firearms; v.2: Cultural issues related to firearms in the United States; v.3: Current controversies and policy recommendations