Gun Rights Research Articles

Corporate social counterpositioning: How attributes of social issues influence competitive response

AbstractResearch SummaryWhilst existing research generally assumes corporate social responsibility (CSR) is seen as universally positive, firms increasingly adopt practices, and take stands, on highly polarizing social issues (e.g., gun‐control, LGBTQ rights, abortion). To better understand this phenomenon, we develop a theory about when firms will emulate, ignore, or oppose each other's CSR efforts, based on attributes of the underlying social issue (its salience and polarization), the level of market competition, and the substantiveness of CSR. Our theory predicts several distinct equilibrium outcomes, including the potential for social counter‐positioning, whereby rival firms take advantage of socio‐political polarization to horizontally differentiate by taking opposing stances on a polarizing issue. Counterpositioning is more likely when salience is high, but agreement is low, when markets are competitive, and when CSR is largely symbolic.Managerial SummaryFirms increasingly find themselves drawn, willingly or not, to taking stances on a controversial social issue (e.g., gun rights, abortion), though doing so risks alienating (some) stakeholders. In this paper, we develop a theory of why, when, and how firms should take a stance on a polarizing issue. We argue that firms profit from doing so when (1) the issue is salient, (2) markets are competitive, and (3) the actions are mostly symbolic. We also show that taking a stance on polarizing issues creates opportunities for the firms' competitors to counter their ideological positioning, strengthening weaker rivals in the process. Thus, in competitive markets, taking clear stances on polarizing, salient issues can segment the market, increasing the profits of all firms, and, potentially, intensifying polarization.

Men's Rights, Gun Ownership, Racism, and the Assault on Women's Reproductive Health Rights: Hidden Connections

In this current era characterized by much fear of, and anxiety about, the political influence and actions of the U.S. alternative right (alt-right), only a small number of men’s rights organizations receive attention from the media, the Democratic Party, or a large cadre of progressives. This article demonstrates that ignoring all-male anti-feminist organizations is a flawed strategy for challenging the recent rise of the alt-right because these misogynistic groups are heavily involved in the gun rights movement, major contributors to racist practices and discourses, and active participants in efforts to criminalize and curtail women’s access to abortion. Another, but equally important, aim of this piece is to briefly suggest new means of creating effective movements aimed at achieving social justice, one that involves a coalition of broader constituencies that prioritize gender and sexuality as well as race/ethnicity and social class.

Supplemental Material for When an Irresistible Prejudice Meets Immovable Politics: Black Legal Gun Ownership Undermines Racially Resentful White Americans’ Gun Rights Advocacy

Supplemental Material for When an Irresistible Prejudice Meets Immovable Politics: Black Legal Gun Ownership Undermines Racially Resentful White Americans’ Gun Rights Advocacy

Defense with dignity: how the dignity of violent resistance informs the Gun Rights Debate

Perhaps the biggest disconnect between philosophers and non-philosophers on the question of gun rights is over the relevance of arms to our dignitary interests. This essay attempts to address this gap by arguing that we have a strong prima facie moral right to resist with dignity and that violence is sometimes our most or only dignified method of resistance. Thus, we have a strong prima facie right to guns when they are necessary often enough for effective dignified resistance. This approach is distinctively non-libertarian: it doesn’t justify gun rights on the basis of (mere) liberty or security. Nonetheless it is compatible with libertarian defenses of gun rights based on a liberty right to guns, and, if sound, in fact lowers the bar for gun rights in some ways, as it justifies access to guns even when nonviolent means would better achieve the liberty or security aims of potential victims. And although this defense of gun rights is most readily categorized as “conservative” or rightist, it relies upon principles and intuitions about dignity popular among progressives in other domains, such as in disability, women’s, or LGBT rights debates.

Gun Control Policies And The Right To Bear Arms In America: A Utilitarian Perspective

The purpose of this study is to utilize Bentham’s Utilitarianism model to explain gun control policies and the right to bear arms in the United States of America. Meanwhile the literature and available evidence from mass shooting revealed that gun control advocates and gun rights advocate alike appear to be firmly rooted in their respective positions. Perhaps the quintessential question is this – Who’s right and who’s wrong. In an attempt to answer the question above, the researcher utilized the narrative research approach and the application of Utilitarian principles to explain the gun control policies, and gun rights of citizens to inform criminal justice reforms. It is evidenced in this study that in many ways, Bentham and his successors’ writings, discussions and arguments for the application of the principle of utility can be felt in contemporary society, like the USA when it comes to issues like gun control. The United States is a Representative Republic and though not direct but a form of democracy. The study revealed that even though, the structure of the U.S. government is such that certain levels of accountability or checks and balances are in place to hold those in authority of governance accountable, but the system have failed to adequately enact and enforce laws to control the issues of homicides, and gun control to protect the lives of citizens. This finding aligns with Bentham’s proposition in the literature that those who hold the “operative power” in government, administration, and judiciary are, like everyone else, motivated by personal interest but not for the greater good. Therefore, this study recommend that it is imperative to devise mechanisms that will ensure that only by acting in the public interest could they promote their own interests. KEYWORDS: Utilitarian, gun control, gun rights, policy, firearms, assault rifles, Second Amendment. DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/123-09 Publication date: August 31 st 2022

A tragic intersection in Saint Louis, Missouri: Communication, protest, property, and guns

ABSTRACT On June 28, 2020, St. Louis “Expect Us” racial justice protesters marching to their mayor’s front door encountered Mark and Patricia McCloskey aiming guns at them as they walked past the couple’s mansion on a private road. A clash of “rights” erupted in this situation when viewed through the opposing participants’ lenses. On one hand, two persons pulled guns on unarmed protesters that they viewed as encroaching dangerously on their private property. On the other hand, peaceful protesters pursuing their collective cause were forced to detour onto a private street and were met by two persons brandishing guns. This essay examines this troubling encounter in St. Louis when two parties convinced of their starkly different rights protected by law collide. I synthesize Aristotle’s and Kenneth Burke’s interrelated conceptions of tragedy to analyze these opposing activities in St. Louis by property and gun rights advocates versus the Expect Us political protestors as a tragedy. First, I discuss six historical events in St. Louis from 1906 to 2021 that contextualize this confrontation. Next, I explore the essence of the rights protected by the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution and how they pertain to this encounter. I then define and apply five overlapping features of Aristotle’s and Kenneth Burke’s accounts of tragedy to consider the implications of this highly publicized event as a microcosm of our presently polarized American society.

Voting on gun rights: Mapping the electoral scope of the pro‐gun constituency in America

AbstractObjectiveAlthough it is clear that gun issues often shape the electoral preferences of some voters and the electoral success of some candidates, there has been little effort to examine the factors that shape electoral outcomes in direct democracy contests involving gun rights.MethodsWe use weighted ordinary least squares analysis of county‐level data to predict where support for gun rights will be higher. The data include demographic and political variables and are based on a universe of 515 counties drawn from eight states that held direct democracy elections on virtually identical measures solidifying the “right to bear arms.”ResultsAlthough all of these measures passed, our analysis suggests that support for these measures is higher in counties that had more support for Republican presidential candidates, an older population, and fewer non‐white residents. Support was lower in counties with higher education, more women, and greater population density.ConclusionWe conclude that the partisan and urban/rural divide on gun rights drives electoral results in these direct democracy contests.

Tracing Changes in a Gun Control Q&A: The Story of “One Hundred Round Magazine Drums”

In recent years, the US society has witnessed a sharp growth in political divide, particularly between those holding conservative and liberal views (Pew Research Center, 2014, 2017). Among the multitude of issues that the American people find divisive, the issue on gun regulation has been one of the most controversial ones (Pew Research Center, 2021) wherein attitudes towards guns vary drastically and are divided along partisan lines. Citizens take to platforms of civic participation such as town hall meetings to express concerns about such divisive issues and seek accountability from politicians. This analysis focuses on one such instance and documents how, with the focal issue of high-capacity firearms, both the citizen and politician adjust their next actions in this gun regulation discussion. Specifically, we observe how the citizen reformulates the notion of gun rights while the politician shifts the perspectives of his responses.

The State of American Federalism 2021–2022: Federal Courts, State Legislatures, and the Conservative Turn in the Law

Abstract Contemporary American politics features intense political polarization and closely contested battles over the direction of public policy. Conservatives and liberals alike have used the many venues in the American federal system to try to gain an advantage. In this article, we suggest that a key feature of contemporary American federalism is the institutional advantage that conservatives have achieved due to recent shifts in the ideological conservatism of the federal judiciary and growing Republican dominance in state legislatures. We assess the consequences of these developments, focusing on efforts to weaken federal administrative agencies’ authority and discretion, challenge individual voting rights and institutional control over elections, expand conservative approaches to personal liberties in areas such as abortion, religious practice, and gun rights, and to preempt local policy authority. These developments have the effect of consolidating authority in the hands of Republican-controlled state governments and in some cases bringing about national-level policy changes via state initiatives, and with important implications for American society, politics, and federalism.

Book Review: The Right to Bear Arms

Halbrook has offered another outstanding and enjoyable history lesson related to gun control and the right to bear arms. A main reason for the book, according to the author, is to refute assertions that American individuals have no constitutional right to bear arms. Starting with a discussion of gun rights in medieval times, Halbrook discusses the long history of government infringements upon these rights. While federal courts have more recently disagreed on the meaning of the right to bear arms in the context of the Second Amendment, particularly in “may issue” states, Halbrook’s excellent presentation of the history of the right to bear arms reinforces the clarity of the Second Amendment within its historical context to more contemporary times.

Gun violence as a public health issue: Media advocacy, framing and implications for communication

Following a recent push to reframe gun violence as a public health issue, an online survey (N = 510) helped explore frame salience and frame adoption through the lens of media advocacy. Findings revealed that gun control and gun rights frames are salient, and television, social media and newspapers are the most popular sources of gun violence information. Individuals are being held responsible, while background checks were the most salient and adopted solution among Americans. Three gun rights organizations were the most salient organizations from media coverage related to gun violence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Supreme Court's Six‐Pack Is Set to Refine Arbitration Practice

While the U.S. Supreme Court is in an attention‐attracting phase right now for its work on vaccine mandates, abortion, and gun rights cases, the Court has established its own parallel, concurrent and potentially expansive gaze at the business community's use of arbitration.

How gun control policies influence consumers’ service business evaluations

PurposeGiven the growing prevalence of gun control policies in service settings, this study aims to investigate how the adoption of a gun control policy by a service business influences consumers’ evaluations of the service business.Design/methodology/approachThree experiments were conducted to examine how the adoption of a gun control policy by a service business influences consumers’ brand favorability of that service business and how value congruence (i.e. the alignment between a consumer’s own personal values and perceptions of the brand’s values) is the underlying mechanism.FindingsThis study documents several major findings. First, the authors find that the adoption of a gun control policy by a service business increases consumers’ brand favorability. Second, the authors highlight a boundary condition to this effect, such that a gun control policy actually decreases consumers’ brand favorability for people high (vs low) in support for gun rights. Third, the authors show that value congruence is the psychological process underlying these effects. Fourth, the authors generalize the focal effects to a real-world brand and demonstrate that the adoption of a gun control policy increases brand favorability for consumers low (vs high) in patronage behavior of the brand. Finally, the authors find that a pioneer brand strategy in the adoption of a gun control policy significantly increases brand favorability, whereas a follower brand strategy in the adoption of such a policy is less effective.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to provide critical insight to service businesses as to how their position regarding guns influences consumers’ evaluations of the service business.

Framing dynamics and claimsmaking after the Parkland shooting

ABSTRACT This paper unpacks how dynamic political and media systems shape the kinds of frames political actors champion, when and how they express support for frames and the implications of both for individual claimsmaking. To do so, we conduct a rigorous qualitative analysis of discourse during a two-week period in which the Florida legislature considered and passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act after a shooter killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida. We systematically explore how two framing dynamics – competition and amplification – shape what frames political actors champion and the relative effects of these dynamics on individual claimsmaking in 438 letters to the editor and op-eds appearing in mainstream outlets, 4,962 emails sent to Florida Governor Rick Scott, and 1,000 tweets. We find that amplification and competition shape the relative visibility of frames and the frequency with which individuals use these frames in their claimsmaking. Generally speaking, gun control and progressive groups selectively amplified frames associated with the emerging, student-led Never Again Marjory Stoneman Douglas movement and legislative frames that were consistent with their goals. This seems to have increased the visibility of these ideas in mainstream outlets and influenced claimsmaking insofar as individuals drew on amplified frames across the forums relatively frequently. This was not true of frames opposing gun control. Gun rights groups bickered with politicians and among themselves. As a result, gun rights frames were less prevalent in mainstream discourse and in individual claimsmaking.

Securing Gun Rights by Statute: The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Outside the Constitution

In popular and professional discourse, debate about the right to keep and bear arms most often revolves around the Second Amendment. But that narrow reference ignores a vast and expansive nonconstitutional legal regime privileging guns and their owners. This collection of nonconstitutional gun rights confers broad powers and immunities on gun owners that go far beyond those required by the Constitution, like rights to bring guns on private property against an owner’s wishes and to carry a concealed firearm in public with no training or background check. This Article catalogues this set of expansive laws and critically assesses them. Unlike the formal constitutional guarantee, this broad collection is not solely libertarian, concerned only with guaranteeing noninterference with a negative right. Instead, it is also aggressively interventionist, countermanding contrary policy judgments by employers, universities, property owners, and local government officials, conferring robust rights and privileges, and shifting the distribution of violence in society. This Article underscores the rhetorical and legal connection between this gun-rights expansionism and the formal Second Amendment guarantee. These laws do not derive from a judicial interpretation of the scope of the Constitution, but they are expressed and advocated for in constitutional terms. The Article also highlights how broad gun rights can create unique harm to the body politic and to marginalized groups by fostering fear and mistrust and empowering sometimes-problematic private actors to proactively police their own communities. Finally, the Article shows how gun-rights expansionism influences constitutional doctrine in the context of the Second Amendment, as well as of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Triumph of Politics: The Republican Party's Takeover of the US Supreme Court

In this article, Gerald N Rosenberg revisits his 2014 argument that the US Supreme Court is a political institution. Its decisions in affirmative action cases in education are best understood through the political preferences of the justices. Eight years later, the author finds that the Court's opinions have only strengthened this argument. The article analyses affirmative action cases in education between 2014 and mid-2022 and illustrates the power of politics in explaining some of the most important and controversial decisions of the Roberts Court. These include decisions on voting rights (Shelby County v Holder), gun rights (District of Columbia v Heller) and abortion rights (Roe v Wade). The article re-emphasises the need to read these decisions through the political and cultural system within which the Court operates, rather than relying solely on law and precedent.

Can Developing Virtues Improve Dialogue Across Political Difference?

After the polarizing 2016 presidential election, I heard from many distressed students who felt they lacked the skills or confidence to have difficult conversations with those who disagreed with them politically. In response, I developed a course that aims to help students grow in the virtues and skills necessary for listening and dialogue, putting these to use discussing controversial issues including abortion, gun rights and regulations, cancel culture, speech on campus, immigration, environmental policy, and kneeling for the national anthem. In this article, I make the case for foregrounding virtues such as attentiveness, curiosity, intellectual humility, and empathy to promote good dialogue and prepare students to engage productively across difference. Then, I describe the course design, share qualitative results from student reflections, and highlight insights that are applicable across disciplines. Finally, I address practical obstacles and ethical concerns that have arisen when teaching polarizing topics and offer responses to these challenges.

The Extraordinary Ethics of Self-Defence: Embodied Vulnerability and Gun Rights among Transgender Shooters in the United States

ABSTRACT Ethical ways of being form in response to bodily perceptions of vulnerability. Arguments that position firearms as defensive tools have become increasingly common in debates about gun legislation over the last two decades. This rhetoric has its origin in counter-hegemonic movements like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence, which argued that African-Americans need guns to resist state-sanctioned violence from the police. For white men and women, as well as transgender gun rights activists in San Diego, California, vulnerability forms a key part of the argument for expanding access to guns as defensive weapons. This ‘vulnerability politics’ (Carlson [2014a]. From Gun Politics to Self-Defence Politics: A Feminist Critique of the Great Gun Debate. Violence Against Women, 20(3):369–377) represents both a lived experience and ideological lens that informs ethical behaviour. Firearms owners fashion an ethical self through a combination of the prescribed, normative politics of gun rights rhetoric and creatively innovate with these scripts through their embodied experiences of threat.

Why True Believers Make the Ultimate Sacrifice: Sacred Values, Moral Convictions, or Identity Fusion?

Recent research has identified three promising candidates for predicting extreme behavior: sacred values, moral convictions, and identity fusion. Each construct is thought to motivate extreme behavior in unique ways: Sacred values trigger extreme actions when people are asked to compromise cause-related values for personal gain; moral convictions trigger extreme actions when a cause is aligned with one’s moral compass; and identity fusion triggers extreme actions when a cause is inextricably associated (“fused”) with the personal self. In six studies, we asked which of the three constructs (either alone or in combination) was most predictive of sacrifice for a cause. We measured all three constructs with respect to either of two causes: gun rights (Studies 1–3) or abortion rights (4–6). The outcome measure was endorsement of fighting and dying for the cause. Although all three constructs were significant predictors of the outcome measure when considered separately, identity fusion consistently emerged as the strongest predictor of endorsement of self-sacrifice when all three were considered simultaneously. This pattern occurred regardless of the target cause (gun or abortion rights), the participant’s position on the cause (i.e., pro-gun or anti-gun, pro-choice, or pro-life), or nationality (American vs. Spanish). Also, there was no evidence that the predictors interacted to predict the outcome measure. Finally, a manipulation that threatened the validity of the personal self strengthened the relationship between endorsement of self-sacrifice and both (a) identity fusion and (b) moral convictions. The latter finding suggests that threats to the validity of one’s self-views may amplify the extreme behaviors of true believers.

Beyond Anonymity: Network Affordances, Under Deindividuation, Improve Social Media Discussion Quality

Abstract The online sphere allows people to be personally anonymous while simultaneously being socially identifiable. Twitter users can use a pseudonym but signal allegiance to a political party in their profile (e.g., #MAGA). We explore the interplay of these two dimensions of anonymity on a custom-built social media platform that allowed us to examine the causal effects of personal and social anonymity on discussion quality. We find no support for the hypothesis that personal anonymity breeds incivility or lowers discussion quality in discussions on gun rights. On the other hand, when personal anonymity is combined with social identifiability (operationalized as political party visibility), it improves several features linked to discussion quality, that is, higher rationality and lower incivility. We discuss the mechanisms that might explain the results and offer recommendations for future experiments about the design of social media platforms.