Gun Control In America Research Articles

In Search of the Smoking Gun: Consensus and Division in the Gun Control Debate

Incidents of gun violence and mass shootings continue to shock the U.S. citizenry. Each time there is a call for change, but then little happens. In this article we explore the history of gun control in America, how the issue became polarized, and search for sources of consensus or divide. Situated in Pennsylvania, we utilize a state-wide survey and regional focus groups to explore why individuals support or oppose gun control. Similar to prior research, we find the topic becomes polarized when reduced to a discussion for or against the second amendment. However, in the focus groups, we find much consensus on specific proposed policies, particularly those designed to protect children. Overall, our findings reveal that citizens remain open to gun control when the debate is directed at specific policies, rather than rhetoric. Our findings are important for future research on gun control as well as to policy-makers.

(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 Debate on Gun-Control

This presentation will begin by looking at the concept of deep disagreements and how it relates to the current debate on gun-control in America. Deep disagreements occur when people do not share the same underlying assumptions as coined by Fogelin (1985). Next, I will examine the issue of gun-control through the two main arguments of the pro-gun party: that guns make America a safer place and that the U.S. Constitution grants American citizens the right to bear arms. I will then offer anti-gun arguments against these claims as well as independent anti-gun claims in an attempt to rationally reconcile the two sides. Lastly, I will conclude with the assertion that the debate on gun-control is in fact rationally reconcilable.

Archetypal Hatred: Orlando Consciousness

The massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, which killed 49 and wounded 53 people on June 12, 2016, has been termed a terrorist act, another example of the rampant issue of gun control in America, and, of course, a tragedy. It has also been called a hate crime, but most media and other commentary have shied away from a focus on the gay aspect. This article focuses on why the gay community seemed specifically targeted, and what that intentionality represents from a Jungian perspective. Jung's essay on Wotan (a god in Germanic mythology), with a focus on the archetypal underpinnings of Nazi Germany, as well as his thoughts on taboo, specifically relationship taboo in tribal cross-cousin marriages explored in Aion, are examined in an attempt to underscore the importance of an underlying hatred and hostility toward gay men that existed in the unconscious of the shooter, and which may exist in the culture at large. Backlashes from religious groups that occur as gay rights are extended, as well as specific hate crimes like the Orlando shooting, point toward this underlying hostility toward gay men. This hostility is part of a dangerous unconsciousness suffered by the so-called modern world, a reminder of the thin veil of civility we live under: vulnerable, in moments like Orlando, or in larger contexts such as Nazi Germany, to explosion in the form of massacre, despotism, and other tragic and hideous manifestations.

Experimental Errors: Paul Bert and the Alabama Tenure Killings

Experimental Errors: Paul Bert and the Alabama Tenure Killings

Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America

Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America

A well-regulated militia: the founding fathers and the origins of gun control in America

Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the to bear arms as neither an nor a right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern collective right view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern individual right view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the collective rights theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century. A Well Regulated Militia not only restores the lost meaning of the original Second Amendment, but it provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns. For anyone interested in understanding the great American gun debate, this is a must read.

Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America by Kristin A. Goss

Journal Article Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America by Kristin A. Goss Get access Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in Americaby Kristin A. Goss. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2006. 304 pp. $29.95. Harry L. Wilson Harry L. Wilson Roanoke College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 122, Issue 2, Summer 2007, Pages 336–337, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2007.tb01631.x Published: 25 March 2013

Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America

Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America. By Kristin A. Goss. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 304p. $29.95. If popular political movements attract the attention of a wide range of political scientists, this is the case, to no small degree, because they seem to bridge an impossible chasm. They seem to bridge—or at least to begin to build a bridge between—on the one hand, the lofty aspirations of democrats who invoke a language of government “by the people,” and on the other, the reality of modern democracies in which elites govern, while citizens judge their performances. When people vote, they affirm—or they reject—the leaders who make and enforce collective decisions. When people participate in popular movements, by contrast, they act in public to articulate and press claims about collective norms. When ordinary citizens participate in mass political movements, that is to say, they act collectively to exercise political power.

Disarmed: the missing movement for gun control in America

List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii CHAPTER ONE: The Gun Control (Participation) Paradox 1 CHAPTER TWO: A Movement in Theory 31 CHAPTER THREE: Socializing Costs: Patronage and Political Participation 73 CHAPTER FOUR: Personalizing Benefits: Issue Frames and Political Participation 105 CHAPTER FIVE: Changing the Calculation: Policy Incrementalism and Political Participation 145 CHAPTER SIX: Mobilizing around Modest Measures: Three Cases 176 CHAPTER SEVEN: Conclusion: Politics, Participation, and Public Goods 190 Appendix A: Gun-Related Trends 201 Appendix B: Brief Case Studies of Other Social-Reform Movements 204 Appendix C: Survey of Million Mom March Participants 208 Notes 215 References 249 Index 271

A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America

A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture

Michael A. Bellesiles's Arming America is a stunning and seminal book that challenges everything we've previously been taught about America's history with guns. Painstakingly examining the historical record, Bellesiles shatters the myth of America's gun-toting revolutionary citizens. Beginning with the European tradition from which the American colonists emerged, Bellesiles indicates that ordinary people had virtually no access to or practical training in firearms. Bellesiles illustrates a dramatic surge of interest in hunting in the 1820s and 1830s on the part of urban middle- and upper-class men, and discovers that in the 30s the word manly increasingly became linked with gun use. By the mid-1850s technological advances had already contributed to an increase in gun manufacturing, but the Civil War encouraged industrialization and gun production as well. At the end of the war, the decision to allow soldiers to keep their weapons transformed the once seldom-needed tool to a perceived necessity, fostering an emotional connection between man and weapon. Given the ramifications of this book in the societal debate concerning gun control in America, many expressed outrage upon the book's initial publication by Knopf. When questions arose as to details of Bellesiles research, the politically motivated effort by the gun Iobby and its supporters expanded to include a committee of scholars and historians who devoted months to checking Bellesiles's footnotes in the archives where he did his research--a practice that is extremely unusual in historical scholarship--and cited evidence of lax research in several pages. In this revised edition, Bellesiles answers his academic critics, providingupdated research addressing their legitimate concerns, while finding that the underlying thesis of his book remains as solid as ever. Legal scholar and historian Richard B. Bernstein adds a foreword in which he examines the virulent power of the American Right to obliterate those voices which speak out in opposition to their own.

Gun Control in America

The Political QuarterlyVolume 69, Issue 3 p. 288-296 Gun Control in America Robert Singh, Robert Singh University of EdinburghSearch for more papers by this author Robert Singh, Robert Singh University of EdinburghSearch for more papers by this author First published: 28 June 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.00163Citations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume69, Issue3July‐September 1998Pages 288-296 RelatedInformation