Showing papers on "Gun control published in 1984"

The Polls: Gender and Attitudes Toward Violence

Abstract: CONSIDERABLE attention in the media and social science community has been focused on the gender gap in President Reagan's popularity. In large part this gap may come from underlying differences between men and women toward violence and the use of force. Women and men differ both in their use of violence and in their approval of violence across a wide range of social conditions including foreign affairs, social control and law enforcement, and interpersonal relations, and the difference is reasonably stable across time. Looking at 285 data points we found that men were more supportive of the violent or forceful option in over 87 percent of the readings. 1 The results were ambiguous in 7 percent of the cases, with men more in favor of both the most and least forceful response and women leaning toward a middle alternative. Finally, in only just over 5 percent of the cases did women favor the forceful response more than men. The tendency of men to back violent options is moderately strong, averaging over 9 percentage points and ranging up to over 30 percentage points. The difference is largest on topics that are closely linked to major differences in socialization, including gun ownership, hunting, gun control attitudes, and attitudes toward boxing. Differences averaging about 10 percentage points are found on most questions dealing with law enforcement and criminal punishments-such as questions on the approval of the death penalty, television violence, and on a wide range of questions asking about the use of the military in international relations and support for America's involvement in wars. Differences tend to be somewhat smaller when dealing indirectly with

The effect of gun control laws on suicide rates

Abstract: This paper has analyzed a number of gun control laws in different states and found that as a group the laws were significantly correlated with the suicide rates in those states. In other words, strict gun control may have a preventive effect on suicidal behavior, a conclusion supportive of Boyd's view.

The Current Relevancy of Keeping and Bearing Arms

Abstract: The Framers of the United States Constitution considered the right to keep and bear arms so important that the second amendment to the Bill of Rights guarantees, ''A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.''It is well known that gun control is a vehemently debated political issue. It is also well known that a guarantee in the Bill of Rights ''was not intended to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages...''Following a brief look at the history of the second amendment, the current relevancy of this guarantee, as well as its application to the states, will be demonstrated.Recent commentary has revealed that the right to keep and bear arms was an important right at common law. Nevertheless, it should be noted that ''in England the authority of the Parliament runs without limits, and rises above control...[T]here is no written constitution...In America the case is widely different: Every State in the Union has its constitution reduced to written exactitude and precision...[T]he Constitution is the sum of the political system, around which all Legislative, Executive and Judicial bodies must revolve.''The state conventions ratifying the United States Constitution were faced with deciding whether a Bill of Rights was necessary. The Anti-federalists demanded a Bill of Rights and proposed 186 amendments. ''The Constitution was ratified in the belief, and only because of the belief, encouraged by its leading advocates, that, immediately upon the organization of the Government of the Union, articles of amendment would be submitted to the people, recognizing those essential rights of life, liberty, and property...''The Framers could not enumerate all the specific rights they enjoyed and wished to protect because the Constitution could not take on the prolixity of a civil code. Only its great outlines should be marked. The Bill of Rights is the condensed progeny of the ideas enunciated in the cumbersome 186 proposals. To carry out its spirit, liberal construction is required.To understand the scope and meaning of the right to keep and bear arms, it is necessary to review proposals on arms in the state conventions for they serve as the roots of the second amendment.