Stricter Gun Control Research Articles

Armed to Kill: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Examining the Links between Firearms Availability, Gun Control, and Terrorism Using the Global Terrorism Database and the Small Arms Survey

ABSTRACT According to the Global Terrorism Database, the use of firearms in terrorist attacks has been on the rise, and firearms-based attacks are the most lethal. In the aftermath of mass-casualty attacks perpetrated with firearms, policymakers across the world advocate tightened gun control to restrict terrorists’ access to both licit and illicit guns. However, academic research on the linkages between firearms availability, gun control legislation, and terrorism is scarce. This study fills this research gap by conducting a systematic cross-sectional analysis of the linkage between gun control, licit and illicit stocks of firearms, and terrorist attacks in 2015–2019, based on a novel dataset incorporating the Global Terrorism Database and the Small Arms Survey. Our estimation using OLS regression shows a strong relationship between the availability of firearms and the incidence of gun-based terrorism, especially for lone wolf attacks. Furthermore, terrorists in stable, democratic countries are comparatively more likely to select firearms as their weapon of choice. Conversely, strict gun control only slightly alleviates the overall risk of terrorism in stable countries but does not impact weapon selection. In unstable countries in the grip of intrastate conflict, gun control significantly reduces lone wolf-style attacks, while organized multi-perpetrator attacks are not deterred.

일제강점기 총기 규제 정책 연구

This thesis is a review of gun control policies before and after the annexation. of Korea by Japan. Securing firearms and ammunition was essential in the armed struggle of Righteous Armies. Therefore, during this period, Righteous Armies used various methods to obtain and supply firearms and ammunition. There were several methods of securing firearms, such as requisition from the people, seizing weapons from the army or police station, smuggling from foreigners, manufacturing or modifying firearms, and so on. The weapons of them came as a great threat to the Japan trying to annex Korea. To prevent this, Japan enacted the Guns and Gunpowder Control Act and introduced strong firearms regulations in Korea. After this, an ordnance committee was established nationwide, and firearms of the korean government and civilians were confiscated. Through this process, private ownership of firearms in Korea became almost impossible. The strict gun control in korea continued even after the annexation. In 1912, the Governor-General enacted a new Guns and Gunpowder Control Act. In addition to the existing strict gun control laws, this law contained stricter regulations than previous laws, such as a strict ban on the manufacture of military firearms and gunpowder in Korea. In addition, in order to restrict the possession of firearms by Koreans, gun regulations were newly introduced only for Koreans. A typical example is the so-called ‘Internal Discipline Article 18’. The regulation contains a number of strong restrictions on gun licenses for Koreans. The first clause stipulated the types of Koreans who could obtain gun licenses, and the third clause limited the number of gun licenses. The fourth clause restricted the types of firearms that Koreans could possess. These regulations made it impossible for Koreans to own firearms except for a small number of professional hunters and verified pro-Japanese groups. In addition, even after obtaining permission for firearms, the Japanese placed them in a surveillance network and monitored them periodically. This consistent and strong gun control is a tangible example that clearly shows Japan''s intention to suppress the struggle for independence in Korea by blocking the possession of guns by Koreans.

Armed and academic: Perceptions of college students on concealed carry on campus policies

ABSTRACTFollowing the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, policymakers have sought ways to improve safety on college and university campuses nationwide. Among the more recent proposals is to permit concealed handgun licensees to carry on campus. To date, eight states have enacted legislation implementing this measure. A limited body of research considers the perceptions of students and other members of the campus community about these laws and their passage. The present study seeks to offer a new perspective, assessing student opinions about the recently passed legislation in Texas and whether they would support such a law in a state with strict gun control measures in place. The results indicate that while students collectively did not support concealed carry on their campus, males, Republicans, and gun owners were significantly more likely to express attitudes favorable of the law. Policy implications for its implementation, as well as limitations of the study, are considered.

Policy Spillover and Gun Migration: The Interstate Dynamics of State Gun Control Policies*

ObjectiveIn this article, we examine state policy spillover by examining how differences between state gun control policies affect the migration of guns between states with lax regulatory environments for gun purchasing and licensing to states with relatively strict regulatory environments.MethodWe test our hypothesis using data from 2007 to 2013 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the presence of criminal guns and from the Brady Campaign on state gun control laws.ResultsOur results suggest that a large proportion of criminal guns in states with strict gun control laws were originally purchased in states with fewer regulations. There is a direct correlation between where criminal guns were originally purchased, where criminal guns are uncovered, and the strength of state gun laws.ConclusionState gun control laws appear to make purchasing a gun through legal frameworks more difficult and shift the “market” for criminal guns to purchasing locations across state borders where purchasing is easier. Gun control laws appear, therefore, to be affected by policy spillover.

Social unrest and the Highway Beautification Act of 1965

ABSTRACTThe recent series of very senseless shootings of both African American males and police officers are chilling visual demonstrations of the current degree of racial tension and social unrest in the United States. Stricter gun control laws are critically important but only part of the issue. Basic human and civil rights are at the heart of the issue. We must move toward a society in which individuals from varied backgrounds are valued, respected, and included. We must all accept the fact that we are all human beings and very much alike. This will require a national effort very similar to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. We must adopt and implement policies that will specifically address multiple issues (discrimination, racism, marginalization, exclusion, implicit bias, and the lack of economic mobility) serving as drivers of our current social state. A key component should be increased investment in the educational system (starting in primary school) resulting in an increased college graduation rate and the development of curricula on race and racism and supporting cultural sensitivity and implicit bias training from kindergarten through professional schools.

Where have all the gun deaths gone?

The low number of firearm assaults and overall assault-related deaths in Statistics South Africa's death notification reports is incongruous with other recently released data, including police crime statistics. We conducted a review of all gunshot injuries recorded in death notifications from 1997 to 2013, including all cases in which the underlying cause of death was ascribed to cause-specific codes in the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) that referred to a gunshot injury. We identified 105 694 gunshot-related injury deaths over the 17-year period, an average of 6 217 per annum. The total annual number of gunshot injuries increased from 1997 to 2000, at which point firearm-related deaths peaked at 9 540 recorded cases. Thereafter there was a steadily decreasing trend (interrupted only in 2006 and 2008) until 2011, when 3 793 deaths were attributed to gunshot-related injuries as the underlying cause - a decrease of >60% from the peak in 2000. The cause-specific profile for gunshot injury deaths in this study indicated extensive misclassification, which explained the near-absence of these injuries among assault cases. However, the trend in gunshot-related injury deaths irrespective of intent provides further support for the hypothesis that stricter gun control, coinciding with the implementation of the Firearms Control Act of 2000, accounts for this decrease.

Do fewer guns lead to less crime? Evidence from Australia

The 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) in Australia introduced strict gun control laws and facilitated the buyback of over 650,000 firearms. While several studies have investigated the effect of the NFA on firearm deaths, none has looked at its impact on crimes. In this paper we adopt the difference-in-difference identification approach to examine the impacts of the NFA on crimes. We find that one and two years after the NFA was enacted, there were significant decreases in armed robbery and attempted murder relative to sexual assault, with weaker evidence in relation to unarmed robbery.

Self-inflicted fatal shotgun wound from a homemade weapon

A case of suicide, a male shot in the abdomen using a homemade weapon, is described herein. Postmortem examination revealed bleeding into the thoracic and abdominal cavities, a collapsed liver and other organs with numerous pellets. The contact-shot wound was not noticed during the initial investigation at the scene, but it was elucidated during autopsy. A simple launcher had been assembled from pipes of a clothes rack frame made for home use. The deceased had once owned a shotgun, but his firearm license had been relinquished 5 years prior. A shotgun shell that he had kept was used. Presumably, the injuries from the homemade weapon were not noticed initially because of strict gun control rules in Japan.

On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars

Say the words to many pro-gun Americans and you are likely to hear that one of the first things that Hitler did when he seized power was to impose strict gun registration requirements that enabled him to identify gun owners and then to confiscate all guns, effectively disarming his opponents and paving the way for the Holocaust. One of the more curious twists in the historical debate, though, is that the most vocal opponent of this argument is also pro-gun. It is the National Alliance, a white supremacist organization. According to them, Firearms legislation under Hitler, far from banning private ownership, actually facilitated the keeping and bearing of arms by German citizens by eliminating or ameliorating restrictive laws which had been enacted by the government preceding his. So which pro-gunner should we believe? Following Germany's defeat in World War I, the Weimar Republic passed very strict gun control laws in an attempt both to stabilize the country and to comply with the Versailles Treaty of 1919 - laws that in fact required the surrender of all guns to the government. These laws remained in effect until 1928, when the German parliament relaxed gun restrictions and put into effect a strict firearm-licensing scheme. These strict licensing regulations foreshadowed Hitler's rise to power. If you read the 1938 Nazi gun laws closely and compare them to earlier 1928 Weimar gun legislation - as a straightforward exercise of statutory interpretation - several conclusions become clear. First, with regard to possession and carrying of firearms, the Nazi regime relaxed the gun laws that were in place in Germany at the time the Nazis seized power. Second, the Nazi gun laws of 1938 specifically banned Jewish persons from obtaining a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. Third, approximately eight months after enacting the 1938 Nazi gun laws, Hitler imposed regulations prohibiting Jewish persons from possessing any dangerous weapons, including firearms. The difficult question is how to characterize the Nazi treatment of the Jewish population for purposes of evaluating Hitler's position on gun control. Truth is, the question itself is absurd. The Nazis sought to disarm and kill the Jewish population. Their treatment of Jews is, in this sense, orthogonal to their gun-control views. Nevertheless, if forced to take a position, it seems that the Nazis aspired to a certain relaxation of gun registration laws for the law-abiding German citizen - for those who were not, in their minds, enemies of the National Socialist state, in other words, Jews, Communists, etc. Here, then, is the best tentative and bizarre conclusion: Some of the pro-gunners are probably right, the Nazi-gun-registration argument is probably wrong. What is clear, though, is that the history of Weimar and Nazi gun laws has not received enough critical attention by historians. What we really need now is more historical research and reliable scholarship.

A Resolution for Physicians: Time to Focus on the Public Health Threat of Gun Violence

The Editors discuss how physicians, who have long been powerful voices in discussions of issues that threaten public health, should draw on similar motivations and strategies to promote sensible, e...

From fieldwork to facts to firearms control: Research and advocacy towards stricter firearm control legislation in South Africa

Children have special protection under the South African constitution, including the right to safety, health and an environment conducive to their wellbeing and optimal development. Yet, firearms contribute significantly to the high incidence of deaths and injuries among South African children and in young males in their late teens. This case study is about the participation of the Child Health Policy Institute (CHPI) in a law reform process ultimately aimed at reducing firearm injuries and deaths in the country by exercising stricter gun control through legislation and other reforms. This feature briefly describes the political context in which the project was initiated, the research on firearm injuries and deaths in children conducted by the CHPI, and the dissemination of the research findings. The role of the CHPI as an academic institution within the Gun Control Alliance is also examined as are the lessons learnt in trying the bridge the gap between research and law reform.

Firearm fatalities in the Transkei region of South Africa, 1993-2004.

Firearms are a causative factor in much violence-related morbidity and mortality, including suicide. Interventions focus on stricter gun control. In South Africa multisectoral collaboration is needed in this regard. To determine the incidence of firearm-related deaths in the Transkei region and to understand the underlying causative factors. A record review was undertaken of 10,860 medicolegal autopsies performed between 1993 and 2004 at Umtata General Hospital. Between 1993 and 2004 10,860 autopsies were performed on patients who died as a result of trauma and other causes at Umtata General Hospital. The average number of gunshot related-deaths during this period was 48.4 per 100,000 of the population per year. The rate increased from 27/100,000 in 1993 to 42/100,000 in 2004. Firearm-related deaths accounted for 29% of all traumatic deaths, and males (82%) outnumbered females 4.6:1, although there is an increasing incidence among females. About 50% of these deaths were in the 21-40-year age group. Interpersonal violence, poverty, and use of drugs and alcohol were common underlying factors. There is a high incidence of firearm-related deaths in Transkei. Stricter gun control is required.

Treating gun violence before the 911 Call*1

Treating gun violence before the 911 Call*1

The production of criminal violence in America: is strict gun control the solution?

“Strict gun control”(SCG) has no clear meaning,so it is necessary to clarify it.I define SGC as an array of legally sanctioned restrictions designed to impose firearm scarcity on the general population. SGC’s public policy goal, gun scarcity, commonly rests on the predicates that “dangerous criminal control” is not the central problem for reducing the problem of criminal gun violence but rather that it is the social prevalence of the distinctively-lethal instruments (guns) by which both supposedly “good citizens” as well as violent criminals inflict a staggeringly high percentage of injury and death.Professor Zimring (who also has an essay published in this issue) is one SGC’s most distinguished, prolific and comprehensive theorists. He has advocated for handgun scarcity among the general population since at least 1969.

Rethinking the Political Participation Paradigm

Abstract Political-participation studies have paid too little attention to the cognitive and emotional motivations for citizen engagement. This study uses a natural experiment in issue-centered mobilization, a women's march for stricter gun control, to construct a fuller model of political participation, one that focuses on the interaction between individuals and issues. I find that reframing political issues to resonate with social roles and responsibilities-in this case, reframing gun control as a child-protection issuelegitimizes participation by new groups of people-in this case, women. The more citizens internalize these frames, the more intensively they participate over time.

Firearm fatalities. A preliminary study report from Iran

During the one-year period from March 2002 to March 2003 there were 89 firearm fatalities investigated by the Legal Medicine Organization of Iran in Tehran. We determined the characteristics of these 89 firearm deaths which comprised 0.83% of all postmortem examinations. Of these, 60.7% were homicides, 30.3% suicides, 4.5% accidental, and 4.5% unclassifiable. Most victims were young male. Military rifles were responsible for almost all suicides, whereas in homicide handguns were the preferred weapons. The most common site of entrance wounds in suicides were the under the chin (37%) and chest (25.9%). In homicide group, 42.6% of entrance wounds were located in the head. The suicidal gunshots were fired from contact/near contact range in 84.6% while this was the case in only two cases of the homicides. All but one of the suicides were committed at the garrisons or police stations. The unique pattern of suicide that was found in this series was not similar to that reported in earlier studies. We believe our pattern of firearm fatalities must be in great part due to the Iran’s strict gun control regulations and cultural background.

Is School Prayer the Answer?

Long after the students have returned to the hallways of Columbine High School, the nation continues to look for answers to the problems of violence and killing in our public schools. Shootings in towns like West Paducah, Jonesboro, Edinboro, Springfield, and Littleton have forced the nation to search for someone or something to blame for the vicious killings and the pure disregard for human life. At one time or another, weak gun control laws, the breakdown of the family, the entertainment industry, and school gangs and cliques have all served as scapegoats for the violence in today’s young adults. But as we wait and watch for the next shooting, we engage in a time of soul searching and wrestling with this incomprehensible violence. Many have concluded that the solution is legislation calling for stricter gun control laws and stiffer penalties for the offenders, while others call for metal detectors, meshed book bags, armed police, and other security measures in an attempt to make schools and students safer. Because parents are often targeted for blame when students have problems, some have suggested that parents be held accountable for their children’s behavior or that social agencies provide help for families and parents with troubled teens. Conservative Christian groups, among others, have called for a school prayer amendment, sparking as much controversy as the violence itself. The idea of school prayer as a means to curb violence forces us to ask

Source Material: Presidents and Polling: Politicians, Pandering, and the Study of Democratic Responsiveness

The authors review what is known about the relationship between public opinion and presidential policy making. While American presidents have paid increasing attention to public opinion with the institutionalization of polling and public opinion analysis in the White House, it should by no means be presumed that policy making has become more responsive to public opinion. Recent political developments have provided presidents and both parties in Congress increasing incentives and opportunity to attempt to lead or manipulate public opinion. Evidence from the Clinton years most strikingly demonstrates this. We are only now beginning to learn about the relationship between presidents and the polling and public opinion analysis that has gone on in presidential administrations since the 1960s. The working hypothesis is that the Reagan years are pivotal in understanding recent and future developments regarding the relationship between public opinion and presidential behavior.

A ten year audit of surgery for vascular trauma in a British teaching hospital

Vascular trauma is uncommon in the U.K. with the exception of Northern Ireland. In marked contrast to North America, gunshot wounds are rare and stabbings are infrequent. A 10 year audit was carried out in a regional vascular referral unit to determine the mechanisms, treatment and outcome of vascular injuries. Forty-seven patients were operated on during the period. The median age was 26 years (range 7-85 years); two-thirds were men. Road traffic accidents accounted for 21 (45%) of injuries, other accidents 15 (32%) and stabbings 11 (23%). There were no gunshot wounds. Most injuries were penetrating with no associated fracture. Commonly injured vessels were the brachial (30%) and superficial femoral (15%) arteries. Fifty-three primary operations were performed, 10 were vein interpositions and 21 were bypass grafts. There were three primary amputations (6%). Eleven patients suffered a complication including one death. One graft occluded requiring a further bypass. Two patients required fasciotomy as a secondary procedure. Median follow-up was 6 months. Eighty-one percent of patients were symptom free at last follow-up. There were no late vascular complications. Our experience is likely to represent that of other vascular units in countries with strict gun control legislation, little civil violence and modest levels of road traffic accidents.

Firearms and Crime in the Netherlands: A Comparison with the United States of America

ABSTRACT The role of firearms in crime has become a critical issue in crime prevention in recent years (see Lester, 1983). As firearms come under increasing control through registration of weapons and licensing of owners, there is a corresponding increase in offenses under these firearms control statutes. Furthermore, firearms are used by those committing crimes, and a great deal of consideration is being focussed on efforts to reduce the involvement of firearms in criminal acts through such measures as mandatory sentencing for felonies involving firearms and stricter gun control laws. The present paper explores the legislation concerning firearms in the Netherlands and presents comparative data from the USA.