Effects of Policies Designed to Keep Firearms from High-Risk Individuals

This article summarizes and critiques available evidence from studies published between 1999 and August 2014 on the effects of policies designed to keep firearms from high-risk individuals in the United States. Some prohibitions for high-risk individuals (e.g., those under domestic violence restraining orders, violent misdemeanants) and procedures for checking for more types of prohibiting conditions are associated with lower rates of violence. Certain laws intended to prevent prohibited persons from accessing firearms -- rigorous permit-to-purchase, comprehensive background checks, strong regulation and oversight of gun dealers, and requiring gun owners to promptly report lost or stolen firearms -- are negatively associated with the diversion of guns to criminals. Future research is needed to examine whether these laws curtail nonlethal gun violence and whether the effects of expanding prohibiting conditions for firearm possession are modified by the presence of policies to prevent diversion

The Detection and Policing of Gun Crime: Challenges to the Effective Policing of Gun Crime in Europe

Despite a shared understanding across the EU that access to firearms by the general public should be restricted, detailed legislation regarding the ownership, use and trade of firearms varies between EU member states. It is unclear however, how such variations impact on the policing of gun enabled crime. By using qualitative data generated from interviews with police, policy and decision makers from thirteen European countries, the authors of this article aim to determine how stakeholders perceive that national variations in firearms legislation impact on the policing of gun enabled crime within and across EU countries. Four main themes were identified from the qualitative data: disparities in Legislation, disparities in Priority given and the Resources allocated to investigations into gun enabled crime as well as Interventions. Due to the aforementioned disparities, cross-national investigations into incidents of gun crime are at risk of remaining impaired in their effectiveness. Therefore, more legislative coherency as well as sustainable long-term interventions will be needed to successfully reduce ownership and use of firearms in the criminal world. In this context, a departure from an exclusive use of an economic model of gun crime is recommended to allow for a better understanding of the dynamics of the black gun market

Racism, gun ownership and gun control: Biased attitudes in US whites may influence policy decisions

Objective: Racism is related to policies preferences and behaviors that adversely affect blacks and appear related to a fear of blacks (e.g., increased policing, death penalty). This study examined whether racism is also related to gun ownership and opposition to gun controls in US whites. Method: The most recent data from the American National Election Study, a large representative US sample, was used to test relationships between racism, gun ownership, and opposition to gun control in US whites. Explanatory variables known to be related to gun ownership and gun control opposition (i.e., age, gender, education, income, conservatism, anti-government sentiment, southern vs. other states, political identification) were entered in logistic regression models, along with measures of racism, and the stereotype of blacks as violent. Outcome variables included; having a gun in the home, opposition to bans on handguns in the home, support for permits to carry concealed handguns. Results: After accounting for all explanatory variables, logistic regressions found that for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism there was a 50% increase in the odds of having a gun at home. After also accounting for having a gun in the home, there was still a 28% increase in support for permits to carry concealed handguns, for each one point increase in symbolic racism. The relationship between symbolic racism and opposition to banning handguns in the home (OR1.27 CI 1.03,1.58) was reduced to non-significant after accounting for having a gun in the home (OR1.17 CI.94,1.46), which likely represents self-interest in retaining property (guns). Conclusions: Symbolic racism was related to having a gun in the home and opposition to gun control policies in US whites. The findings help explain US whites' paradoxical attitudes towards gun ownership and gun control. Such attitudes may adversely influence US gun control policy debates and decisions

Homicide and geographic access to gun dealers in the United States

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Firearms are the most commonly used weapon to commit homicide in the U.S. Virtually all firearms enter the public marketplace through a federal firearms licensee (FFL): a store or individual licensed by the federal government to sell firearms. Whether FFLs contribute to gun-related homicide in areas where they are located, in which case FFLs may be a homicide risk factor that can be modified, is not known.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Annual county-level data (1993–1999) on gun homicide rates and rates of FFLs per capita were analyzed using negative binomial regression controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. Models were run to evaluate whether the relation between rates of FFLs and rates of gun homicide varied over the study period and across counties according to their level of urbanism (defined by four groupings, as below). Also, rates of FFLs were compared against FS/S – which is the proportion of suicides committed by firearm and is thought to be a good proxy for firearm availability in a region – to help evaluate how well the FFL variable is serving as a way to proxy firearm availability in each of the county types of interest.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In major cities, gun homicide rates were higher where FFLs were more prevalent (rate ratio [RR] = 1.70, 95% CI 1.03–2.81). This association increased (p < 0.01) from 1993 (RR = 1.69) to 1999 (RR = 12.72), due likely to federal reforms that eliminated low-volume dealers, making FFL prevalence a more accurate exposure measure over time. No association was found in small towns. In other cities and in suburbs, gun homicide rates were significantly lower where FFLs were more prevalent, with associations that did not change over the years of the study period. FFL prevalence was correlated strongly (positively) with FS/S in major cities only, suggesting that the findings for how FFL prevalence relates to gun homicide may be valid for the findings pertaining to major cities but not to counties of other types.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Modification of FFLs through federal, state, and local regulation may be a feasible intervention to reduce gun homicide in major cities.</p

Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

Wicked policy problems are often said to be characterized by their ‘intractability’, whereby appeals to evidence are unable to provide policy resolution. Advocates for ‘Evidence Based Policy’ (EBP) often lament these situations as representing the misuse of evidence for strategic ends, while critical policy studies authors counter that policy decisions are fundamentally about competing values, with the (blind) embrace of technical evidence depoliticizing political decisions. This paper aims to help resolve these conflicts and, in doing so, consider how to address this particular feature of problem wickedness. Specifically the paper delineates two forms of evidentiary bias that drive intractability, each of which is reflected by contrasting positions in the EBP debates: ‘technical bias’ - referring to invalid uses of evidence; and ‘issue bias’ - referring to how pieces of evidence direct policy agendas to particular concerns. Drawing on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology, the paper explores the ways in which competing interests and values manifest in these forms of bias, and shape evidence utilization through different mechanisms. The paper presents a conceptual framework reflecting on how the nature of policy problems in terms of their complexity, contestation, and polarization can help identify the potential origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias leading to intractability in some wicked policy debates. The discussion reflects on whether being better informed about such mechanisms permit future work that may lead to strategies to mitigate or overcome such intractability in the future

Physical attractiveness as a mediator of the impact of early pubertal changes for girls

The present study examined the effects of early pubertal development and physical attractiveness on the popularity, body image, and self-esteem of over 200 sixth-grade girls. Two rival hypotheses were explored. The first suggests that physically attractive girls, because of their more favorable social environment, will exhibit fewer psychosocial difficulties than unattractive girls during pubertal development. The second hypothesis argues that attractive girls will exhibit greater difficulty during pubertal transition because their self-image is more intimately connected with their physical appearance. Although there were no significant interactions between attractiveness and pubertal development for either popularity or body image, the second hypothesis was supported with respect to self-esteem. Specifically, developing attractive girls exhibited lower self-esteem than their unattractive counterparts. The results are discussed in terms of the relative vulnerability to bodily changes of girls differing in physical attractiveness.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45265/1/10964_2005_Article_BF02088640.pd