Gun Policy Research Articles

National support for gun policies among U.S. adults in 2019 and 2021

Gun-related deaths and gun purchases were at record highs in 2020. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, public protests against police violence, and a tense political environment, which may influence policy preferences, we aimed to understand the current state of support for gun policies in the U.S. We fielded a national public opinion survey in January 2019 and January 2021 using an online panel to measure support for 34 gun policies among U.S. adults. We compared support over time, by gun ownership status, and by political party affiliation. Most respondents supported 33 of the 34 gun regulations studied. Support for seven restrictive policies declined from 2019 to 2021, driven by reduced support among non-gun owners. Support declined for three permissive policies: allowing legal gun carriers to bring guns onto college campuses or K-12 schools and stand your ground laws. Public support for gun-related policies decreased from 2019 to 2021, driven by decreased support among Republicans and non-gun owners.

Gun Violence and Gun Policy in the United States: Understanding American Exceptionalism

America has both the highest gun death rate (12 per 100,000 persons) and the highest gun circulation rate (about 121 firearms in circulation for every 100 persons) of any developed country. Taken together, these statistics might lead one to assume that high gun death rates in America are all but a certain outcome. However, gun death rates vary substantially across America suggesting that a range of solutions to reduce gun death and injury exist. This transdisciplinary volume contains a novel collection of articles that overview the evolution of American gun policy, presents evidence on the efficacy of both policy and non-policy interventions, and provides insight on where we go from here given American culture, norms, and legal structures.

The smoking gun: How gun policies influence types of firearms involved in violent crimes in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom

The article contributes to the discussion about gun control by examining whether restrictions on certain types of firearms influence the number of crimes committed with these types of guns. The aim is to determine whether there is any causal nexus between the stringency of gun policy and the number of violent crimes committed with firearms. A comparative analysis is conducted in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. Our research shows that the strictness of gun policy and legal availability have a very small influence on crime; hence, further restrictions will not help to reduce the number of violent crimes committed with firearms. More useful approaches seem to deal with the black market, arms trafficking and related societal problems.

State Firearm Legislation and Youth/Young Adult Handgun Carrying in the United States

PurposeTo examine the association between state firearm legislation and youth/young adult handgun carrying in the United States and to identify policy priority areas for intervention. MethodsWe linked person-level gun carrying data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. youth and young adults with state-level gun policies over a 15-year period. Cross-classified mixed effects logistic regressions estimated the associations between state gun policies and handgun carrying and explored whether the associations varied by person-level demographic characteristics. ResultsYouth and young adults in states with a greater number of gun policies were less likely to carry a handgun than youth and young adults in states with fewer gun policies. Regulations on gun purchasing, concealed carrying permitting, and domestic violence-related laws were particularly important in reducing youth/young adult gun-carrying behavior. In addition, these associations varied by gender and race/ethnicity. DiscussionState firearm legislation may be an effective mechanism to reduce youth and young adult gun carrying and ultimately mitigate gun-related mortality and morbidity.

Association Between Child Access Prevention and State Firearm Laws With Pediatric Firearm-Related Deaths

IntroductionWe aim to study the association between state child access prevention (CAP) and overall firearm laws with pediatric firearm-related mortality. MethodsThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System was queried for pediatric (aged < 18 y) all-intent (accidental, suicide, and homicide) firearm-related crude death rates (CDRs) among the 50 states from 1999 to 2019. States were into three groups: Always CAP (throughout the 20-year period), Never CAP, and New CAP (enacted CAP during study period). We used the Giffords Law Center Annual Gun Law Scorecard (A, B, C, D, F) to group states into strict (A, B) and lenient (C, D, F) firearm laws. A scatter plot was constructed to display state CDR based on CAP laws by year. The top 10 states by CDR per year were tabulated based on CAP law status. Wilcoxon rank-sum was used to compare CDR between strict and lenient scorecard states in 2019. ResultsThere were 12 Always CAP, 21 Never CAP, and 17 New CAP states from 1999 to 2019. No states changed from CAP laws to no CAP laws. Never CAP and New CAP states dominated the high outliers in CDR compared to Always CAP. The top 10 states with the highest CDR per year were most commonly Never CAP. Strict firearm laws states had lower median CDR in 2019 than lenient states (0.79 [0-1.67] versus 2.59 [1.66-3.53], P = 0.007). ConclusionsStricter overall gun laws are associated with three-fold lower all-intent pediatric firearm-related deaths. For 2 decades, the 10 states with the highest CDR were almost universally those without CAP laws. Our findings support the RAND Gun Policy in America initiative's claims on the importance of CAP laws in reducing suicide, unintentional deaths, and violent crime among children, but more research is needed.

Publisher’s note

Gun-related deaths and gun purchases were at record highs in 2020. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, public protests against police violence, and a tense political environment, which may influence policy preferences, we aimed to understand the current state of support for gun policies in the U.S. We fielded a national public opinion survey in January 2019 and January 2021 using an online panel to measure support for 34 gun policies among U.S. adults. We compared support over time, by gun ownership status, and by political party affiliation. Most respondents supported 33 of the 34 gun regulations studied. Support for seven restrictive policies declined from 2019 to 2021, driven by reduced support among non-gun owners. Support declined for three permissive policies: allowing legal gun carriers to bring guns onto college campuses or K-12 schools and stand your ground laws. Public support for gun-related policies decreased from 2019 to 2021, driven by decreased support among Republicans and non-gun owners.

Guns, Classrooms, and Politics: Eliciting and Reflecting Upon Education Student Beliefs in the Age of School Shootings

Unearthing the perspectives students bring with them in their college-level education coursework is especially important as education instructors are tasked with interrupting the unexamined proliferation of dominant ideologies among future educational professionals. The introduction to education course serves as an important site for this interrogation. One trend largely unexplored in the scholarly literature is the pedagogical use of controversy in introduction to education coursework. This study analyzes student discussion of the controversy of school gun violence within a redesigned introduction to education course. Data for this study come from student postings and final reflection papers in an online section of that course. Qualitative analysis of student thinking reveal three themes regarding U.S. school gun violence: gun violence as political intrusion into schools, gun policy as marginalizing and legitimizing presence, and gun use as professional boundary for teachers. These themes provide insight into the ways education students conceptualize teachers, professional educators, and the context of schooling. The student interactions and reflections in this study also suggest that scaffolded discussions of school gun violence present a poignant opportunity for education coursework to foster authentic student reflection on the policy, politics, and professions associated with American education.

US gun policies: what researchers know about their effectiveness.

US gun policies: what researchers know about their effectiveness.

Correcting misperceptions of gun policy support can foster intergroup cooperation between gun owners and non-gun owners

Past research finds that a majority of gun and non-gun owners support key gun safety policies, yet gun owners tend to underestimate other gun owners’ support for these policies. We predicted that these misperceptions of support might lead gun owners to view non-gun owners as being less similar to themselves, which might undermine intergroup cooperation to promote gun safety policies and fuel intergroup animosity. Importantly, we also predicted that correcting these misperceptions would be an effective way to reduce intergroup division and enhance intergroup cooperation. We tested these predictions across two studies in which participants were randomly assigned to read information designed to correct misperceptions of gun owner support or to read other, control information. Across both studies, we find that correcting gun owners’ misperceptions of gun owner support for gun safety policies leads to greater perceptions of identity overlap between gun and non-gun owners, greater willingness to work with each other to promote gun safety policies, and less negative affect towards each other. This suggests that correcting gun owner misperceptions of gun owners’ support for gun safety policies might be an effective intervention to facilitate intergroup cooperation to promote these policies. Therefore, efforts to promote gun safety policies might benefit from educating gun owners about the degree of support for these policies that already exists among gun owners. Doing so might present a simple and cost-effective way to mobilize gun owners in support of these policies.

The massacre generation: Young people and attitudes about mass shooting prevention

AbstractObjectiveWe propose that citizens navigate an increasingly complex social and political world using a “cultural toolkit” shaped by firearms and gun violence. Young people in particular have experienced more mass shootings than any previous generation and have witnessed a lack of government response to these massacres. This article explores the attitudes that members of the Massacre Generation express about mass shooting prevention.MethodsWe analyze data from several public opinion surveys conducted following major mass shootings in the United States using logistic regression. These surveys were fielded and sponsored by a variety of organizations and asked a nearly identical question about whether mass shootings can be prevented by societal and governmental action.ResultsWe find that the Massacre Generation is indeed more likely to think the government can prevent mass shootings by implementing stricter gun control laws. We find evidence of these attitudes in multiple public opinion surveys from 2012 to 2018. Furthermore, we find no age effect in multiple surveys conducted between 1999 and 2011, suggesting that these attitudes are a relatively new phenomenon.ConclusionYoung people today express that government regulation (i.e., stricter gun laws) can prevent gun violence, placing them at odds with older generations. We discuss the implications of our findings for gun policy development and the future of the gun debate.

How do veterans view gun policies? Evidence from the Guns in American Life Survey

AbstractObjectiveDo veterans of the U.S. armed forces, a population with unique knowledge of and experience with guns, have distinctive views of gun control policies? While veterans are commonly assumed to be conservatives and Republicans, an emerging body of work has begun to explore the complexities of their policy opinions, partisanship, and voting behaviors. Such work provides needed nuance about this symbolically and politically important group.MethodsUsing the Guns in American Life Survey (2018, n = 3103), we test whether veterans (with combat and noncombat experiences), family members of veterans, and nonveterans have different perspectives, even after taking into account factors such as gun ownership and partisanship. ResultsThe findings indicate that veterans (and particularly combat veterans) are more supportive than nonveterans of expanding civilians' gun carrying rights. On the other hand, veterans with and without combat experience are more likely to favor banning AR15 and military‐style rifles and high‐capacity ammunition clips. Veterans are also more likely to favor a 14‐day waiting period for all gun purchases, but they do not have unique positions on mental health screening for gun purchases.ConclusionTaken together, these findings appear to reflect a veteran population that is positively disposed toward guns in general but also understands the destructive power of military‐style weapons.

Public opinion on laws regulating public gun carrying

This study sought to examine public support for gun carrying-related policies from 2019 to 2021, a period encompassing the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing calls for racial and social justice. We conducted the National Survey of Gun Policy in January 2019 and 2021. The surveys were fielded using the NORC AmeriSpeak panel. Respondents indicated support for six policies regulating civilian gun carrying. Analyses, conducted in 2021, incorporated survey weights for nationally representative estimates. There were significant declines in support from 2019 to 2021 for two policies that would expand where civilians can lawfully carry guns: allowing concealed carry when on K-12 school grounds (23% in 2021 vs 31% in 2019) and college/university campuses (27% vs 36%). Support was also significantly lower for requiring concealed carry applicants to pass a test demonstrating safe and lawful use (74% in 2021 vs 81% in 2019). For the two new policies in the 2021 survey, more than half of respondents overall supported prohibiting open carry at demonstrations/rallies (54%) and prohibiting the carry of guns into government buildings (69%). There was lower support among gun owners (39% and 57%, respectively). Since 2019, there has been a decline in support for expanding locations for civilian gun carrying. Support remains high among U.S. adults, including the two-thirds of gun owners, for requiring concealed carry applicants to demonstrate competence in safe and lawful gun use. Our findings in support of a more regulated approach to concealed carry are in direct contrast to state-level shifts eliminating concealed gun carrying regulations.

How Intersectional Threat Shapes Views of Gun Policy: The John Wayne Solution

Abstract Guns are highly visible in the news, in politics, and in American culture more broadly. While most Americans support some gun control, a significant and vocal minority of Americans are firmly opposed. Drawing on work from the recently developing sociology of modern gun culture, we propose an intersectional threat model—wherein perceived threats to multiple privileged identities provoke a distinct response—for understanding the positions Americans take on gun policies. Using data from a 2018 national survey conducted by the American National Election Survey, we find a robust role for perceived threats along gender, race, and citizenship lines in opposition to background checks for private sales and an assault weapons ban as well as support for arming teachers. Interactions reveal multiplicative effects: that gender threats matter more when racial and immigrant threats are also felt. We discuss implications for the prospect of policy and for understanding the pro-gun alt-right movement and other potential applications of intersectional threat.

How Intersectional Threat Shapes Views of Gun Policy: The John Wayne Solution

How Intersectional Threat Shapes Views of Gun Policy: The John Wayne Solution

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Protest and state policy agendas: Marches and gun policy after Parkland

AbstractDoes protest spur the government to act at the regional or local level? Gun control in the United States offers a promising case for studying this question, due to considerable variation in both protest and policy‐making activity following the mass shooting in Parkland, FL in early 2018. We use an original weekly panel dataset of progress on gun control and pro‐gun legislation in all states between 2017 and 2019, paired with weekly protest march data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, to determine whether or not protest spurred state governments to act on gun policy. We find that marches advocating gun control are associated with an increased likelihood of legislative movement on gun control, though they do not appear to discourage action that loosens gun laws. On the other side, pro‐gun marches do not seem to have the desired effect.

Reactive and Asymmetric Communication Flows: Social Media Discourse and Partisan News Framing in the Wake of Mass Shootings

Marked by both deep interconnectedness and polarization, the contemporary media system in the United States features news outlets and social media that are bound together, yet deeply divided along partisan lines. This article formally analyzes communication flows surrounding mass shootings in the hybrid and polarized U.S. media system. We begin by integrating media system literature with agenda setting and news framing theories and then conduct automated text analysis and time series modeling. After accounting for exogenous event characteristics, results show that (a) sympathy and gun control discourses on Twitter preceded news framing of gun policy more than the other way around, and (b) conservatives on Twitter and conservative media reacted to progressive discourse on Twitter, without their progressive counterparts exhibiting a similar reactiveness. Such results shed light on the influence of social media on political communication flows and confirm an asymmetry in the ways partisan media ecosystems respond to social events.

Violence, Criminalization &amp; Punitive Excess

Violence, Criminalization &amp; Punitive Excess

Seeing Guns to See Urban Violence: Racial Inequality &amp; Neighborhood Context

Abstract Guns are central to the comprehension of the racial inequalities in neighborhood violence. This may sound simple when presented so plainly. However, its significance derives from the limited consideration that the neighborhood research paradigm has given guns: they are typically conceived of as a background condition of disadvantaged neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. Instead, I argue that guns belong at the forefront of neighborhood analyses of violence. Employing the logic and language of the ecological approach, I maintain that guns must be considered as mechanisms of neighborhood violence, with the unequal distribution of guns serving as a critical link between neighborhood structural conditions and rates of violence. Furthermore, I make the case that American gun policy should be understood as a set of macrostructural forces that represent a historic and persistent source of disadvantage in poor Black neighborhoods.

Subcultural variability and protean-identification in gun culture

ABSTRACT Gun culture in the Unites States is enmeshed in controversy, and is frequently described as a monolithic, static construct. In this paper, we argue that instead, gun culture is a fluid and fragmented collective of multiple subcultures that overlap, contradict, and coexist. Based on data collected through a collaborative event ethnography (CEE) at gun shows, we found that while gun collective members do strongly identify with gun culture, they also disidentify, schizo-identify, multi-identify, and change their identifications across multiple subcultures. In this way, people engage in protean identification, constantly changing arrays of organizational identifications. Ultimately, these contributions are useful for understanding stigmatized, hidden, or highly complex collectives and have practical implications for gun policy.