Gun Control Research Articles

Modeling State Firearm Law Adoption Using Temporal Network Models.

US states are largely responsible for the regulation of firearms within their borders. Each state has developed a different legal environment with regard to firearms based on different values and beliefs of citizens, legislators, governors, and other stakeholders. Predicting the types of firearm laws that states may adopt is therefore challenging. We propose a parsimonious model for this complex process and provide credible predictions of state firearm laws by estimating the likelihood they will be passed in the future. We employ a temporal exponential-family random graph model to capture the bipartite state law-state network data over time, allowing for complex interdependencies and their temporal evolution. Using data on all state firearm laws over the period 1979-2020, we estimate these models' parameters while controlling for factors associated with firearm law adoption, including internal and external state characteristics. Predictions of future firearm law passage are then calculated based on a number of scenarios to assess the effects of a given type of firearm law being passed in the future by a given state. Results show that a set of internal state factors are important predictors of firearm law adoption, but the actions of neighboring states may be just as important. Analysis of scenarios provide insights into the mechanics of how adoption of laws by specific states (or groups of states) may perturb the rest of the network structure and alter the likelihood that new laws would become more (or less) likely to continue to diffuse to other states. The methods used here outperform standard approaches for policy diffusion studies and afford predictions that are superior to those of an ensemble of machine learning tools. The proposed framework could have applications for the study of policy diffusion in other domains.

“Where were you shot?”: analyzing location rhetoric as strategic maneuvering in contemporary gun-control discourse

This essay analyzes contemporary American gun rhetoric with particular attention to location. Funded by a pragma-dialectic perspective, I examine conservative and progressive attempts to situate the national discussion about firearms and gun control legislation in urban locations (especially Chicago) and in suburbs (especially schoolhouses), respectively. I demonstrate that these location rhetorics function as strategic maneuvering, enabling both sets of discussants to move the conversation to issue sets that favor them and make their policy preferences seem more reasonable, even as they often prevent the public from responding to the bulk of actual gun violence. To begin, I develop a perspective on public argument based on pragma-dialectic argumentation theory. Next, I attend to conservative rhetoric that publicizes gun violence in large urban population centers, especially Chicago. Then, I turn to liberal gun rhetoric that centers attention on leafy suburbs where mass shootings often occur. In the final portion of this paper, I argue that both strategies disadvantage the public and forestall meaningful improvement on this important issue.

Stronger Than Yesterday: Investigating Peoples' Experiences of View Strengthening on Social Media

ABSTRACTPolarization of views (known as ideological polarization) is one of the greatest societal challenges of our time, potentially sewing distrust and hate among individuals and communities and threatening to undermine the fabric of democracy. Divisive issues such as abortion and gun control are ever‐present and can drive issue polarization, and even affective polarization—a disdain for ‘the other side,’ which can further divide society. Social media has been flagged as a breeding ground for polarized views, with private groups and personalized algorithms facilitating self‐creation of echo chambers that may lead to polarization. While there is prior research on the technological influences on view strengthening, scant Human‐centered research exists and most of it has focused on view change in general, rather than view strengthening specifically. To investigate peoples' experiences of view strengthening on social media, we interviewed 10 people who recently strengthened their views on important topics. While some took steps to avoid creating echo chambers (e.g., by seeking out opposing views), others intentionally created them to allow their views to strengthen without interference. These findings have important implications for designing social media platforms that support careful and conscious view strengthening while mitigating against the risk of information manipulation.

A Wireless Gunshot Recognition System Based on Tri-Axis Accelerometer and Lightweight Deep Learning

Gun violence and misuse pose great threat to the public safety. Real time monitoring of guns usage and gunshot events are very promising for effective gun control. However, most available monitoring systems are installed in fixed location instead of the guns, which greatly limits the flexibility and coverage. In this study, we propose a wireless gun monitoring and gunshot recognition system based on a low-cost triaxial acceleration sensor, which can monitor the gun in real time and accurately recognize gunshot events. Addressing the limited resources of the embedded systems, we further propose an efficient gunshot recognition algorithm EfficientNetTime that combines the lightweight neural network and knowledge distillation, so as to enable the deployment on embedded devices. Firstly, a novel lightweight deep learning model is proposed as the basic model, which combines the advantages of one-dimensional convolution and depthwise separable convolution to effectively characterize the gunshot signal while decreasing the computing cost of convolution. Secondly, using the knowledge distillation, EfficientNetTime is used as the teacher model to generate a compressed student model that maintains accuracy and greatly reducing model size. Lastly, the EfficientNetTime student model can be deployed on resource-limited embedded systems. The proposed method can automatically extract features for end-to-end recognition and is robust to temporal transformations of input signals. Using a publicly available gunshot dataset, the proposed EfficientNetTime model is verified and compared against the state-of-the-art models. Experimental results demonstrate that the EfficientNetTime model surpasses other gunshot recognition methods in terms of the accuracy and model size.

War and Peace Journalism in Mass Shootings Coverage - Case Study of a School Shooting in the U.S. Uvalde

Research objective: Analysis of the problem of using the theory of war and peace journalism in reporting mass shootings in the American media on the example of a school shooting in Uvalde. 
 Problem and methods: The article answers the question whether theories about war and peace journalism can be helpful in the analysis of media coverage of mass shootings. The text analyzes how the leading media broadcasters in the U.S. (CNN and Fox News) use war- and peace-oriented mechanisms. The article uses research methods standard for social sciences and humanities, including content analysis with elements of framing analysis, comparative analysis and the case study. 
 Process of argumentation: The starting point for the research was the theories on war and peace journalism by Johan Galtung. The reason for undertaking the research was also the record number of mass shootings in the U.S. in 2021 and the significant importance of the Uvalde shooting in the American public debate on gun control in 2022. The article focuses on the first week of coverage of the shooting. 
 Results: American media use war journalism more often. Coverage is influenced by ideological profile and political affiliation. Political issues and the reconstruction of events come to the fore. Contexts such as victims, solutions, roots of the problem or fate of the perpetrator are discussed less frequently. The shooting in Uvalde became an instrument in the political conflict in which the media took part. 
 Conclusions, innovations, and recommendations: War journalism mechanisms favor media polarization in bipartisan conflict conditions and help show sensational events in a 24-hour cycle. In turn, the mechanisms of peace journalism support reporting on the perpetrator, victims and potential solutions. The article intends to increase awareness of various ways of publicizing extraordinary events and political conflicts and serve for more profound research in the future.

The era of progress on gun mortality: State gun regulations and gun deaths from 1991-2016.

The recent rise of gun violence may lead to the perception that the problem of gun mortality in the United States is intractable. This article provides evidence to counter this perception by bringing attention to the period spanning from 1991 to 2016, when most U.S. states implemented more restrictive gun laws. Over this period, the U.S. experienced a decline in household gun ownership and gun-related deaths fell sharply. The main analysis examines the conditional association between change in gun regulations at the state level and change in gun mortality from 1991 to 2016. We include a range of robustness checks and two instrumental variables analyses to allow for stronger causal inferences. We find strong, consistent evidence supporting the hypothesis that restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths, homicides committed with a gun, and suicides committed with a gun. Each additional restrictive gun regulation a given state passed from 1991-2016 was associated with -0.21 (95% confidence interval = -0.33, -0.08) gun deaths per 100,000 residents. Further, we find that specific policies, such as background checks and waiting periods for gun purchase, were associated with lower overall gun death rates, gun homicide rates, and gun suicide rates. State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4,297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.

Local Gun Safety Enforcement, Sheriffs, and Right-Wing Political Extremism

An increasing number of U.S. sheriffs claim that they will not enforce gun safety policies from state and federal governments in their counties. As locally elected law enforcement with a unique institutional position and significant powers, sheriffs play a key role in local policy implementation. To better understand cooperation (or the lack thereof) between levels of government, we look at these sheriffs’ contentious relationships over firearm regulation. We argue that sheriffs mobilized to resist state and federal gun safety policies through right-wing extremist efforts, tracing the involvement of sheriffs in gun policy over time. Using two surveys of sheriffs (conducted in 2012 and 2021), we show that sheriffs’ preferences against gun safety measures relate to right-wing extremist attitudes, even with controls for political and demographic factors. We demonstrate relationships between sheriffs’ right-wing extremism and an expressed reluctance to support or enforce a wide set of gun safety policies.

Mass Shooting Events

In 1999 the United States experienced its first mass shooting at a public school and later at a church in Texas. It sparked renewed interest in gun control. Our response and the response of law enforcement has changed to protect the citizens. A new vocabulary including mass shooting and the active shooter. These new events are increasing at an alarming rate in our nation. The response has been slow and the solutions even slower. In this article we look at the problem, the response, and some possible solutions. However, the questions of motivation, and prevention remain.

Personal comedy that resonates? Gun control, Uvalde, and identification with Jimmy Kimmel.

Personal comedy that resonates? Gun control, Uvalde, and identification with Jimmy Kimmel.

An Examination of the Role of Perpetrator’s Relationship to Overall School Shooting Casualties

High-profile school shootings in recent years have fueled fear and uncertainty among stakeholders (e.g., parents, teachers, and students) and the public debate on gun control legislation nationwide. These fears are reflected in the public discourse and the academic community, which focuses their investigation on rampage school shootings. To address this gap in the empirical literature, the current study’s goal is twofold: (1) to contribute to the descriptive understanding of school shooting characteristics; and (2) address the gaps in the extant literature through examining the perpetrators relationship with the school on the total number of victims during a school shooting incident. Secondary data analysis was performed on the K-12 School Shooting database (K-12 SSDB). A negative binomial and descriptive analysis were conducted on the K-12 School Shooting database, established by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) in 2018, which has been recently updated to reflect recent incidents. The findings and policy implications of the findings are discussed in detail in the manuscript.

Effect of Mass Shooting on Mental Health of Children and Adolescent

This article discusses the controversial issue of gun control and its impact on mass shootings and mental health, particularly on children and adolescents. The Second Amendment has led to an increase in improper use of firearms, with gun deaths increasing every year. The psychological effects of mass shootings, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, can have long-lasting impacts on children and adolescents. They may experience trauma, anxiety, fear, and social isolation. Witnessing such events can lead to difficulties in managing day-to-day activities and mental health problems. To support children and adolescents after a mass shooting, it is important to ensure that they feel safe and secure, increase security measures in schools and other public places, and provide counseling and therapy services to help them process their trauma and manage their anxiety and other mental health issues. Addressing gun violence is essential in preventing mass shootings from occurring and reducing their impact on young people's mental health.

Why Do Issues “Whose Time Has Come” Stick Around? Attention Durability and the Case of Gun Control

In any healthy democracy, myriad policy issues compete for the public’s attention. Most remain on the periphery of politics, either because they achieve salience only in narrow communities of interest or because they grab headlines only for brief periods of time. But sometimes issues become what we term “durable attention items”—they capture public attention and sustain it over many years. Why? We focus on one such newly durable issue—gun control in the United States. Using an original dataset of roughly 4,500 letters to the editor over a 40-year period, we demonstrate that this once-episodic issue, long dominated by a narrow constituency of pro-gun advocates, has become a mainstay of mass politics. We show that the gun issue’s growing agenda status is due entirely to pro-regulation people mobilized by a combination of contextual factors, namely regularized mass shootings and efforts to relax gun policy, working in tandem with partisan polarization. Besides offering novel evidence of a fundamental shift in American gun politics, the study contributes to our theoretical understanding of how episodic issues come to command consistent political engagement over the long term.

Veteran suicide rates mirror, but do not account for, elevated suicide rates among the general population in US cultures of honor.

Veteran total and firearm suicide rates are higher compared to the general population. Among the general population, total and firearm suicide rates are higher in US states deemed cultures of honor compared to non-honor states, likely because honor states have higher firearm ownership rates and fewer firearm laws. Considering that veterans tend to live in states with fewer firearm laws and that veteran population rates predict both statewide total and firearm suicide rates, it is possible that the elevated suicide rates seen in honor states in part due to those states having a greater presence of veterans compared to non-honor states. Publicly available databases were used to obtain total and firearm suicide rates (per 100 k) for veterans and non-veterans, as well as our covariates (e.g., rurality). Veteran population proportions were higher in honor states than non-honor states. Veteran and non-veteran total and firearm suicide rates were higher in honor states compared to non-honor states. Statewide differences in all four suicide rates were indirectly explained by honor states having higher firearm ownership than non-honor states. These findings add to a growing body of literature showing that enacting firearm regulations may be a viable public health approach for preventing suicide.

Examining U.S. school shootings as state crimes of omission

ABSTRACT The argument presented in this paper is that the failure of the United States federal government to enact adequate gun control laws that would help prevent school shootings is a state crime by omission. Drawing on international law, as critical criminologists have recommended since the 1970s, the paper shows that the federal government is failing to act when it has a duty to protect schoolchildren. The paper concludes with recommendations for federal gun control.

March for Our Lives Movement Strategy for Gun Control Law Reformation of America in 2018-2019

Gun violence appears to be widespread in American culture. The year 2018 became a momentum for the founders and activists of the March For Our Lives movement, specifically the Stoneman Douglas High School Mass Shooting. This Movement's accomplishments are quite remarkable; the most important thing is that they were able to pass around 60 bills on safer firearms. The purpose of this research is to analyze the advocacy strategies employed by the March For Our Lives Movement. One of their efforts to carry out advocacy activities is the formation of the Transnational Advocacy Network (TAN). The network then employs a variety of strategies, including Information Politics, Symbolic Politics, Leverage Politics, and Accountability Politics. This research employs a qualitative method with a descriptive approach. The literature study was used to collect data from secondary sources.

The impacts of hate violence on the adrenocortical functioning, psychosocial adjustment, and mental health of ethnically/racially diverse LGBQ young adults

Experiences of heterosexist and racist discrimination, sexuality-based victimization, and vicarious exposure to hate violence constitute pervasive and severe sources of social stress that adversely impact diurnal patterns of adrenocortical functioning (via salivary cortisol) and have enduring effects on the mental health of ethnically/racially diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) young adults. Yet, little is known about how these experiences of minority stress are associated with diurnal adrenocortical and psychological functioning among ethnically/racially diverse LGBQ young adults. In three unique studies guided through the application of the intersectionality, minority stress, and allostatic load frameworks, we examined 1) whether sexuality-based peer victimization and diurnal adrenocortical patterns predicted contemporaneous depressive symptoms and trajectories of depressive symptoms; 2) whether experiences of heterosexist and racist discrimination were associated with disruptions to diurnal adrenocortical patterns and challenges to identity integration; and 3) whether diurnal adrenocortical responses in the days following the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016 varied in a time-dependent manner. Data used in these studies were from the the Sexual Orientation and Psychosocial Adjustment Study, collected in Northern California. Overall, the findings suggested that direct and indirect experiences of hate violence adversely impacted diurnal adrenocortical functioning, psychosocial processes related multiply marginalized identity integration, and mental health. These physiological responses to discrimination, victimization, and violent crimes support policy efforts to protect vulnerable communities, including violence prevention, gun control, and community-based trauma response services for those directly and indirectly affected by hate violence and gun violence.

Why Gun Control Reform Is So Difficult: A Latent Class Analysis of Gun Policy Preferences

ABSTRACT Americans have a reoccurring discussion about firearms and gun culture in America with no policy changes. We used data from Pew Research fielded just after the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012 to conduct a latent class analysis of gun policy positions and assess how demographic characteristics, such as religion, impact belonging to particular gun policy latent classes. Unlike much previous research, we analyzed not just individuals’ viewpoints on gun policy but also the actions they take regarding their viewpoints. In this attempt to understand why a seemingly dominant view (i.e., a desire to change gun laws) never seems to move forward, we found that the largest latent class is respondents favoring gun control but who are not active. Further, unlike those within the active gun control class, respondents in the active pro-gun latent class are more likely to contribute financially rather than just sign petitions or speak out.

Lethal Means Counseling for Suicidal Firearm Owners.

The death of a patient by suicide is one of the professional events most feared by psychotherapists and firearms are the most commonly used means of suicide. However, as the number of firearm owners within the United States has increased in recent years, so has the risk of firearm-related suicides. Suicidal patients with easy access to their firearms may give in to the wish to die and end their life with little opportunity for reflection or forethought. Furthermore, because the topic of gun control has become so polarized, patients may not always be open to discussing barriers between themselves and their firearms. Nonetheless, psychotherapists using non-judgmental, respectful, and collaborative lethal means counseling can substantially reduce patient suicides.

Daycare shooting in Thailand: Time to address firearm violence as a global health issue

AbstractOn 6 October 2022, a daycare shooting incident happened in Thailand. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Southeast Asian (SEA) countries and one of the many incidents contributing to the global epidemic of firearm‐related preventable violence. Although firearm violence is commonly associated with the United States, it is also a problem worldwide, causing long‐lasting health issues and huge economic burden. This is due to the root causes of firearm violence transcending national boundaries, including socioeconomic landscape, political dynamics, and globalization. Considering these and the major public health impacts of firearm violence, firearm violence should be prioritized as a global health issue. We identified public health challenges related to global firearm violence management: inadequate regulation, lack of official firearm surveillance, and inadequate access to mental health care. In Thailand, there is a gap in gun ownership policies for the civilian and government personnel and a relatively less strict background check compared to other SEA countries. It is crucial for the governments to strengthen their firearm regulations and invest in appropriate public health interventions, including improving access to mental health services and conducting firearm‐related surveillance and culturally sensitive awareness programs. Various public health stakeholders, including healthcare workers and local communities, should be engaged to effectively mitigate future firearm violence.

Policy Studies Yearbook Annual Review 2022–23: Note from the editor and call for papers

<i>Policy Studies Yearbook Annual Review</i> 2022–23: Note from the editor and call for papers