Gun Stores Research Articles

A history of visual merchandising and American firearms

PurposeThis article presents a history of the visual merchandising of American firearms from the mid-19th century until the present day. Although the scholarly literature has investigated visual representations of guns in advertising and popular media, it has paid far less attention to how sellers have displayed these objects at or near the point of purchase.Design/methodology/approachPrimary sources include frescoes, engravings and photographs, plus papers, advertising and illustrations in popular newspapers and trade magazines. These and other period visual data are supplemented by secondary sources from a variety of fields, especially retailing and firearms history.FindingsEvidence shows that American firearms were merchandised visually by Samuel Colt at three world expositions in the 1850s, by gunmakers and retailers in the latter 19th century, by Winchester and Remington dealers in the 1920s and 1930s, by high- and low-end retailers in New York in the first half of the 20th century and by gun stores, auctions and shows up to the present day.Originality/valueThe history of visual merchandising generally has focused upon major department stores, their alluring street-front windows and their fancy interior displays. This research explores past and present visual merchandising of firearms by manufacturers and smaller retailers. To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is the first such history of the subject.

Firearm Dealers and Local Gun Violence: A Street Network Analysis of Shootings and Concentrated Disadvantage in Atlanta

Objectives Examine the spatial relationship between firearm dealers and shootings in Atlanta. Methods We combine data from the Atlanta Police Department (APD), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the American Community Survey (ACS) to conduct a street network analysis from 2016 through 2018. We employ the Network Cross K Function to assess whether firearm dealers attract shootings in the city. We examine whether this spatial relationship differs by level of concentrated disadvantage in neighborhoods. Results Without consideration of concentrated neighborhood disadvantage, firearm dealers and shootings are spatially unrelated to one another. Tract-level disadvantage influences the relationship between firearm dealers and shootings wherein dealers significantly attract shootings in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Conversely, shootings are located further from gun stores in non-disadvantaged communities. Shootings related to manslaughter and assault, but not robbery, are spatially associated with firearm dealers in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Conclusions Building on prior research regarding firearm dealers and gun violence, we find support for an attraction effect in disadvantaged neighborhoods for certain types of shootings. We contextualize these findings within a broader discussion of how firearm dealers contribute to the complex ecology of local gun violence. This is important in light of federal policies and investments related to the prevention of and response to gun crime.

Vaccine Passports as a Constitutional Right

Does the U.S. Constitution guarantee a right to a vaccine passport? In the United States and elsewhere, vaccine passports have existed for over a century, but have recently become politically divisive as applied to COVID-19. A consensus has emerged among legal experts that vaccine passports are often constitutionally permissible. Yet there has been almost no serious analysis about whether a vaccine passport can be a constitutional right: whether a government is constitutionally obligated to exempt fully vaccinated people from many liberty-restricting measures. While some measures may be unconstitutional regardless of to whom they apply, we argue that there exist certain public-health restrictions from which the vaccinated must constitutionally be exempted, even if the unvaccinated need not be. The government is never constitutionally obligated to impose liberty-restricting measures in response to an epidemic. But where it does so, it often has an obligation to exempt those who, being successfully vaccinated, pose little danger of transmitting the disease or suffering serious illness. Under U.S. constitutional law, vaccinated people might be entitled to exemptions from six sets of restrictions: (1) domestic travel and movement; (2) international travel; (3) uncompensated shutdowns, under the Fifth Amendment takings clause; (4) abortion, under the constitutional right to privacy; (5) restrictions on access to gun stores, under the Second Amendment; and (6) assembly and worship, under the First Amendment freedom of assembly and free exercise clauses. Contrary to some social-justice and liberty-based arguments, this conclusion is also consistent with longstanding liberal principles of fair allocation of costs, equity, liberty, and non-discrimination.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on interest in owning a firearm in the American public

ABSTRACT News outlets ran stories suggesting that firearm purchases in the United States might have increased during the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic. Such claims were made because gun stores were deemed essential businesses at the onset of the pandemic. However, there is no scientific evidence to validate this claim. We tested whether intentions to own a firearm actually increased at an unprecedented rate, by comparing the rate of increase in firearm checks (a conservative estimate of intentions to obtain a firearm) at the onset of the pandemic with the same time period in previous years as well as with significant events in recent American history. We defined the month of February as the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States because this was the month in which (a) the pandemic caught wider national attention, (b) the first official presidential address relevant to the Coronavirus was made, and (c) the CDC initiated its first measures to stop the spread of the virus. Understanding why (inclination toward) firearm ownership increases during times of national crises can help researchers and gun policy makers better understand the psychological needs driving firearm ownership, and potentially improve gun regulations and gun policies for the future.

“I have a gun and I know how to use it”: A phenomenology of handgun ownership by evangelical Christians

American gun culture pervades American evangelicalism. Field research of this phenomenon utilizes phenomenological methods, involving online and onsite visits to Frontier Justice, a Kansas City-based gun store and boutique with evangelical Christian owners. Additional research entails concealed-carry gun training and interviews and email correspondence with Christian handgun owners, including the pastor of a church with armed security. Research culminates with the purchase of a used handgun for specified purposes. Theological ethics reflection controversially correlates the phenomenon of dutiful or fanatical evangelical gun ownership with fear, idolatry, and narcissism.

Proximity of Gun Stores to High Schools and Student Gun Carrying

Although research has examined various correlates of weapon and gun carrying at school and among adolescents, it has yet to consider the relationship between gun stores around schools and the carrying of guns at school. This study uses data from the 2015–2016 California Healthy Kids Survey, the California Department of Education, and geocoded data on public high schools and gun stores in Orange County, California, to examine the association between proximity of gun stores to schools and the carrying of guns by high school students. Using geographic information system analysis and hierarchical logistic regression, results indicate that the proximity of gun stores to schools is significantly associated with self-reported gun carrying at school. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

County Variation in Intimate Partner Homicide: A Comparison of Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Victims.

Over the past 5 years, intimate partner homicides have increased among Hispanic women, although ethnicity has rarely been brought into macro-level research on intimate partner homicide. These trends have occurred alongside many macro-level changes in the United States. Although both Hispanic and non-Hispanic women are most likely to die at the hands of a partner via a firearm, no study to date has examined the importance of licensed firearm dealer availability in addition to leading macro-level correlates of intimate partner homicide. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Violent Death Reporting System, the current study explores the role of licensed firearm dealer availability, economic disadvantage, and other features of counties to explore ethnic-specific variation in intimate partner homicides from 2010 to 2016. Results from multilevel negative binomial models revealed consistency in the estimated effects of the rate of licensed firearm dealers and divorce on partner homicides across all models, although the significant association of gun stores and intimate partner homicide was witnessed in urban counties for total and non-Hispanic (both Black and White) models only. Important variation also exists across racial and ethnic groups, including well-established correlates of overall intimate partner homicide (i.e., economic disadvantage, rurality, non-intimate homicide rate, and state policies).

The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use.

Guns that are used in crime and recovered by the police typically have changed hands often since first retail sale and are quite old. While there is an extensive literature on "time to crime" for guns, defined as the elapsed time from first retail sale to known use in a crime, there is little information available on the duration of the "last link"-the elapsed time from the transaction that actually provided the offender with the gun in question. In this article, we use data from the new Chicago Inmate Survey (CIS) to estimate the duration of the last link. The median is just 2months. Many of the gun-involved respondents to the CIS (42%) did not have any gun 6months prior to their arrest for the current crime. The CIS respondents were almost all barred from purchasing a gun from a gun store because of their prior criminal record-as a result, their guns were obtained by illegal transactions with friends, relatives, and the underground market. We conclude that more effective enforcement of the laws governing gun transactions may have a quick and pervasive effect on gun use in crime.

Licensed firearm dealer availability and intimate partner homicide: A multilevel analysis in sixteen states

This paper investigates the association between legal access to firearms in the community through licensed dealers and homicides perpetrated by intimate partners (IPH). We conducted a series of multilevel negative binomial models to assess the relationship between the rate of county-level federally licensed firearm dealers and intimate partner homicides, by gender and age, controlling for leading macro-level correlates of IPH. The rate of county-level federally licensed firearm dealers is significantly associated with intimate partner homicides in urban counties, regardless of gender and age. Although data cannot discern that the rate of licensed firearm dealers is linked to greater legal firearm access, our findings focus attention on the role of community factors, including gun stores, as significant risk factors for violence. Policies to reduce legal options to purchase firearms, especially for those with prior domestic violence offenses, may help to decrease intimate partner homicide, but better data tracking is needed to help us understand how guns move from purchase into the hands of IPH perpetrators.

Federal Circuit Second Amendment Developments 2017–2018

This Article surveys federal circuit court of appeals cases on the Second Amendment from August 1, 2017, through July 31, 2018. The decisions of the last year continue the post-Heller approach of upholding all provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and of the National Firearms Act of 1934. As usual, the prohibited persons cases were easy under Heller and post-Heller circuit doctrine. However, one case was too glib, and earned a dissent: the Sixth Circuit’s decision upholding a lifetime gun ban for a misdemeanor committed decades previously. Restrictions on firearms commerce were easy as applied to unlicensed persons willfully selling arms to sketchy characters. But Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding the ban on handgun sales by federally licensed firearms dealers to residents of consenting other states had questionable reasoning. Far worse was the superficial analysis and shoddy history in the Ninth Circuit’s opinion upholding a county’s ban on all new gun stores. Nullification of the right to bear arms remains a continuing problem in a few states. In the Second Circuit, treating the Second Amendment as a second-class right would actually be an improvement from the current jurisprudence. There, New York City has been allowed to continue its mean-spirited policy of preventing handgun owners in Staten Island from practicing gun safety in New Jersey, prohibiting residents of the Bronx from participating in target competitions in Connecticut, and forbidding New York City residents to take their registered handguns from one home to another. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court failed to act when Ninth Circuit allowed California to nullify the right to bear arms. Hawaii’s similar nullification has been cast into doubt by a recent panel opinion from the Ninth Circuit, but whether that decision will survive en banc is uncertain. Also uncertain in the long term is California’s effort to confiscate standard magazines holding more than ten rounds. For the present, the confiscation is still enjoined. Although residents of the fifty States may not pay much attention to U.S. Territories, the citizens of the Territories are American citizens, and their rights are just as important as other citizens’. Accordingly, the final demise of the racial ban, handgun ban, and self-defense ban in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a welcome development.

The Second Amendment Rights of Young Adults

This Article examines the Second Amendment rights of young adults, ages 18 to 20. Part I examines what the Supreme Court has said, explicitly and implicitly, about the Second Amendment rights of such persons. Parts II and III survey colonial and founding-era sources. Part II begins with a glossary of various terms that were used in militia statutes. These show some of the arms and accoutrements that Americans were required to possess. The various items illustrate that the right to arms does not include only firearms and ammunition. The right also includes, for example, edged weapons and gun-cleaning equipment. Part II also describes the arms culture of early America, where it was a point of national pride that people were trained to arms “from their infancy.” Part III then surveys all the militia statutes from the earliest colonial days through 1800. The survey pays particular attention to two issues. First is the age for militia service or for other forms of mandatory arms possession. The statutes demonstrate that arms possession was mandatory not only for militiamen, but for many other categories of people. In some colonies, for example, every head of a house, regardless of gender, had to possess arms. So did men who were too old for militia service. The most common ages for mandatory militia service were from 16 to 60. But by the end of the eighteenth century, the militia mandate had been narrowed in most states to 18 until 45 or 50. The second issue in Part III is the types of arms that militiamen—and the many other people required to possess arms—were supposed to possess. Part III tracks the evolution of these laws, as they become more specific about requiring various accoutrements, such as gun cleaning equipment, holsters, and ammunition storage devices, and the laws’ attempt to ensure that the public possesses modern arms. Part IV describes federal laws regarding the ages for arms possession. These include the 1792 statute making 18-year-olds into members of the federal militia (a rule that remains federal law at present), the 1968 Gun Control Act setting age limits on purchases in gun stores, and the 1994 federal law restricting handgun possession by persons under 18. Part V covers the five leading post-Heller federal circuit court cases on age limits for exercising Second Amendment rights. Two of these cases relied heavily on cases and statutes from the nineteenth century; so in the course of discussing the cases, we survey the nineteenth century developments. By the end of the century, there were a substantial minority of states that placed some restrictions on handgun acquisition by persons under 21. Finally, Part VI describes some of the present-day state laws that limit firearms acquisition or possession by young adults (18 to 20). Part VI also considers the various past and present age limits in American law for various activities, such as voting, vices (e.g., alcohol, gambling), marriage, and the right to keep and bear arms. In conclusion, the article finds that there is some historical precedent for extra regulation for handgun acquisition by young adults, and very little for extra restrictions on long gun acquisition. Pursuant to Heller, extra regulations for young adults may be permissible, but prohibitions or quasi-prohibitions are not. The Second Amendment rights of young adults certainly include the core right affirmed in Heller: acquiring and keeping a handgun in the home for lawful self-defense.

Lessons learned from surface wipe sampling for lead in three workplaces

ABSTRACTSurface wipe sampling in the occupational environment is a technique widely used by industrial hygienists. Although several organizations have promulgated standards for sampling lead and other metals, uncertainty still exists when trying to determine an appropriate wipe sampling strategy and how to interpret sampling results. Investigators from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Health Hazard Evaluation Program have used surface wipe sampling as part of their exposure assessment sampling strategies in a wide range of workplaces. This article discusses wipe sampling for measuring lead on surfaces in three facilities: (1) a battery recycling facility; (2) a firing range and gun store; and (3) an electronic scrap recycling facility. We summarize our findings from the facilities and what we learned by integrating wipe sampling into our sampling plan. Wiping sampling demonstrated lead in non-production surfaces in all three workplaces and that the potential that employees were taking lead home to their families existed. We also found that the presence of metals such as tin can interfere with the colorimetric results. We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of colorimetric analysis of surface wipe samples and the challenges we faced when interpreting wipe sampling results.

Sources of guns to dangerous people: What we learn by asking them

Gun violence exacts a lethal toll on public health. This paper focuses on reducing access to firearms by dangerous offenders, contributing original empirical data on the gun transactions that arm offenders in Chicago. Conducted in the fall of 2013, analysis of an open-ended survey of 99 inmates of Cook County Jail focuses on a subset of violence-prone individuals with the goal of improving law enforcement actions.Among our principal findings:*Our respondents (adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby) obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft.*Only about 60% of guns in the possession of respondents were obtained by purchase or trade. Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others.*About one in seven respondents report selling guns, but in only a few cases as a regular source of income.*Gangs continue to play some role in Chicago in organizing gun buys and in distributing guns to members as needed.*The Chicago Police Department has a considerable effect on the workings of the underground gun market through deterrence. Transactions with strangers and less-trusted associates are limited by concerns over arrest risk (if the buyer should happen to be an undercover officer or a snitch), and about being caught with a “dirty” gun (one that has been fired in a crime).

Violence Risk, Not Mental Illness, Should Guide Gun Access

Researchers, clinicians, and others maintain that assessment of multiple risk factors for violence must guide standards for allowing purchase or possession of firearms.

Temporal Association between Federal Gun Laws and the Diversion of Guns to Criminals in Milwaukee

The practices of licensed gun dealers can threaten the safety of urban residents by facilitating the diversion of guns to criminals. In 2003, changes to federal law shielded gun dealers from the release of gun trace data and provided other protections to gun dealers. The 14-month period during which the dealer did not sell junk guns was associated with a 68% reduction in the diversion of guns to criminals within a year of sale by the dealer and a 43% increase in guns diverted to criminals following sales by other dealers. The laws were associated with a 203% increase in the number of guns diverted to criminals within a year of sale by the gun store, which was the focus of this study. Policies which affect gun dealer accountability appeared to influence the diversion of guns to criminals.

Bewilderingly, Forcefully

There is something unsettling about the of Gilles Deleuze, not in a social, historical, or religiously moral sense, judging the act itself, but rather in a philosophical and a singular sense, his in particular, Deleuze's act. It is perhaps troubling specifically to those who think with his philosophy, a philosophy as much of as for life. trouble arises immediately from the difficulty in readily assimilating appears to be an obvious paradox in general--a and a philosophy of life. Nor is one immediately able to resist seem to be natural impulses of synthesis and identification (not to go as far as interpretation): Deleuze the man and Deleuze the philosopher, Deleuze as an act of and Deleuze as thought of life. And yet, these are unsynthesizable poles particularly because of the ways in which Deleuze conceptualizes suicide, because of the function or the figure of in his philosophical movements. Unlike Michel whose words have been, in one way or another, used to explain acts in which he allegedly engaged and have been made to equal a death drive, (1) Deleuze appears to treat unambiguously and consistently as a failed line of flight, as a botched experiment. Nevertheless, when he invokes Foucault's thought in A Portrait of Foucault, (2) Deleuze conceptualizes the figure with intensity closely akin to an embrace, though cautious and resistant to its draw. His thinking through the line Outside, through drawing the line, is particularly compelling and illuminating to an inquiry into one of the significant theoretical divergences between the two thinkers, namely their conceptions of desire and pleasure. My essay extends this inquiry not in order to settle but rather to mobilize the figure of as a line of flight, souci de soi, in terms of desire and pleasure. (3) It is rather a movement towards engaging Foucault's and Deleuze's conceptions of through the significance of the notion to their philosophies of living. While it is the drawing of an interlocution, it is also an effort to desubjectify and speak of it, in a way, between Deleuze and as a movement, an acceleration, and a techne. To ask what is presents an ontological query that perhaps is not the appropriate approach to the question vis-a-vis Foucault's program. But, literally and conventionally, in terms of common sense, how does one think the concept suicide? More often than not, it finds itself integrated in the medical discourse (though its itinerary meanders through religious and legal discourses), linked with morbidity, clinical depression, despair, renunciation, an obsession or fascination with or a death-drive, a loss of interest in or value of life, even with a lack of morality. (4) In a variety of ways, James Miller's Passion of Michel considered to be one of the four major biographies of the thinker, (5) seems to both draw and build on these connections, interpreting and deducing the subject of his portrait, from shards of thought and fragmented utterances. This approach reinforces the commonplace opposition of to life, a dichotomy that Foucault collapses. Deleuze approaches the portrait of Foucault through affects and percepts, experimenting and thinking with, which allows for an opening and a drawing of new plateaus. In the same sense, I seek to let Foucault break suicide open, especially by considering his question How had the subject been compelled to decipher himself in regard to was forbidden? (6) It is a question that permits an unfolding of the way in which the line of flight is implicated in suicide, in the art of life and both in politics. In a curious text titled The Simplest of Pleasures, Foucault envisions a gun store clerk who helps a person select the most apposite style of for them. He commences the text by denying that he would be yet another to debate the making of either legal or moral, but the text seems to both subvert and perhaps on a certain level do just that. …

Effects of undercover police stings of gun dealers on the supply of new guns to criminals

Objective: To assess the effects of undercover police stings and lawsuits against gun dealers suspected of facilitating illegal gun sales in three US cities (Chicago, Detroit, Gary) on the flow...

Effects of a Gun Dealer's Change in Sales Practices on the Supply of Guns to Criminals

Licensed gun dealers are a major conduit for gun trafficking. Prior to May 1999, a single gun store sold more than half of the guns recovered from criminals in Milwaukee, WI, shortly following retail sale. On May 10, 1999, the store stopped selling small, inexpensive handguns popular with criminals, often called "Saturday night specials." The purpose of this study was to estimate the effect of this gun store's changed sales practices on criminals' acquisition of new guns. We used an interrupted time-series design with comparisons to test for changes in the number of guns that police recovered from criminals within a year of retail sale following the gun dealer's new sales policy. The dealer's changed sales policy was associated with a 96% decrease in recently sold, small, inexpensive handguns use in crime in Milwaukee, a 73% decrease in crime guns recently sold by this dealer, and a 44% decrease in the flow of all new, trafficked guns to criminals in Milwaukee. The findings demonstrate the substantial impact that a single gun store's sales practices can have on the supply of new guns to criminals. Proposed anti-gun-trafficking efforts in other cities could benefit from targeting problem retail outlets.

Kids, guns, and killing fields

Kids, guns, and killing fields