Showing papers on "Gun control published in 1997"

Criminal Justice: A Peacemaking Perspective

Abstract: All chapters include "Key Terms." Dedication. Preface. 1.The Nature of Crime in the United States. Defining Crime. Types of Crime. Crime Trends. Crime and the Media. Crime and Freedom. 2.War on Crime Perspective. War as a Metaphor. Costs of the War on Crime. 3.The Peace Perspective. Peacemaking Traditions. Peacemakers Who Challenged Injustice. Peacemaking Pyramid Paradigm (P3). Rationale for the Peacemaking Alternative. Government Policy as a Model of Behavior. 4.Criminal Justice as a System. Overview of the Criminal Justice System. Rule of Law. The Victim and the Criminal Justice System. 5.Police and Peacemaking. The Paramilitary Nature of Police Institutions. Community Policing. What Are the Limitations of the Community Policing Concept? Community Policing and the Police. 6.Courts and Justice. The Criminal Court Process. Discretion in the Courts. Plea Bargaining and Justice. Sentencing and Sentence Disparity. Peacemaking in the Court System. 7.Corrections and Peacemaking. Deterrence. Incapacitation. Rehabilitation. Foucault and Social Control. Forms of Corrections. Resources and Rehabilitation. Token Treatment. Treatment as Social Control. 8.Drugs. A History of Drug Use in the United States. The War on Drugs. Peacemaking and the War on Drugs. Toward a More Sane Drug Policy. 9.Violence. History of Violence in the United States. Socialization into Violence. Institutional Support for Violence. Violence as a Solution to Problems. Responding to Violence. Prevention of Homicide. Safe Streets and Empty Streets. Serial Killers and Mass Murderers. 10.Gun Control. Legacy of Firearms in the United States. Arguments for Gun Control. Arguments against Gun Control. Realistic Gun Control. Peacemaking and Guns. 11.Capital Punishment. History of Capital Punishment. Arguments for Capital Punishment. Arguments against Capital Punishment. Costs of Capital Punishment. Peacemaking and Capital Punishment. 12.Youth and Gangs. Youth Culture in the United States. Youth Crime. Youth Violence. The Great High School Fight. Peacemaking for Youth. 13.Crime from a Global Perspective. A Note on Ethnocentrism. Crime and Justice in Saudi Arabia. Crime in Africa. Organized Crime in Russia. Crime Control in China. Sex Tourism. 14.Give Peace a Chance. Appendix A. Criminal Justice as a Career. Appendix B. Crime and Justice on the World Wide Web. Glossary. Bibliography.

Weapon-Carrying and Youth Violence

Abstract: Weapons, and firearms in particular, are widely available in the United States and are at the heart of youth violence. Many schools and communities throughout the nation have identified weapon-carrying among youth as a substantial health, educational, and social problem. In fact, one of the national health objectives for the year 2000 is to substantially reduce the incidence of weapon-carrying among adolescents. This paper reviews the prevalence of weapon-carrying by youth, reasons they carry weapons, ways that firearms are obtained, firearms and violence (especially youth violence), and the controlling of weapons in schools.

The impact of gun control on suicide and homicide across the life span

Abstract: One tactic which has been suggested to prevent suicide and homicide is to restrict the availability of lethal means for these acts. The effectiveness of this tactic over the life span was explored by examining the impact of the passage of gun control legislation in Canada in 1977 (Bill C-51). The results indicated that, while the use of firearms for suicide was reduced a little after passage of this Act, this effect was not apparent for those over the age of 65. However, for homicide, the effect of the passage of the gun control legislation was stronger for victims over the age of 55. Several suggestions were made for future research on this topic.

The Effects of the Media on Federal Criminal Justice Policy

Abstract: This article examines the news media's role in federal criminal justice policy-making. Specifically, we examine how news coverage of cele brated events affected the gun control policy-agenda over a twenty-five year period by linking the presentation of gun issues in the New York Times to corresponding changes in the number of congressional hearings on gun control. Moreover, we examine the implementation of two pieces of federal gun legislation as case studies to more clearly identify the role of the media in federal criminal justice policy-making. Our results indi cate that the media affect the federal policy process in three ways: first, the media can open a window of opportunity to consider policy change; second, the media can promote a limited range of policy alternatives; and third, the media can promote the interests of policy entrepreneurs.

Indicators of aggressive behaviour : report to the Minister of Health and Family Services and the Minister for Family Services from an Expert Working Group, Canberra, August 1996

Abstract: As one of the Government's responses to the massacre at Port Arthur in 1966, an Expert Working Party was asked by the Federal Government to examine current evidence and determine whether causal links exist between aggressive and self-harmful behaviour on the one hand and a rang of health, social and legal factors on the other. This report reviews available information and identifies: areas in which policy responses are feasible (including issues related to firearms legislation); policy options; gaps in existing knowledge; and topics for future research.

Firearm-related violence in Australia

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to identify the use of firearms in the context of all violent deaths in Australia over the last ten years, the relative place of firearms as the means of suicide and homicide, the difficulties of assessing the impact of firea rm control on the level of violence, and to suggest avenues to overcome these difficulties Graphs and tables trace these trends

The Gun Control Debate: A Documentary History

Abstract: Series Foreword Introduction Historical Background: The Constitution and the Second Amendment Modern Views on the Second Amendment Second Amendment Goes to Court The National Rifle Association Legislative Responses to Gun Violence A Nation Divided: Public Opinion Law Enforcement's Role The Public Health Community Enters the Debate Guns as Self-Defense Security 1990s: Debate Takes Center Stage Conclusion Appendix I: State Constitutional Provisions on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Appendix II: State Firearms Laws Appendix III: Summary of Major U.S. Firearms Laws Appendix IV: Provision of Brady II Appendix V: Resource List Appendix VI: Statements From Some Organizations on Gun Control Issues

Toward an Annotated Bibliography of the Second Amendment

Abstract: This article summarizes the treatment of the Second Amendment in law journals in the last decade and offers the author’s analysis of the merits of some of the more important articles. Of the more than sixty law review articles treating the Second Amendment that have appeared since 1980, only a handful argue that the Amendment is a right pertaining to state militias rather than to individuals. The individual right literature so completely dominates the scholarship in this field that even vehemently anti-gun academics now recognize the individual right view as the “standard model” among scholars writing on the Amendment. Unlike articles promoting the states’ right view, articles endorsing the standard model are authored by preeminent constitutional scholars, regardless of their attitude toward firearms, and appear in top journals. Opponents of the individual right view tend to see the Amendment’s purpose as allowing the armed people to overthrow a tyrannical government. Also, the literature is broadly divisible into historical versus philosophical versus legal treatments (though many articles reach all three categories).

Guns and Commerce in Dialectical Perspective

Abstract: The dialectical method of logic, commonly named the Hegelian dialectic, is founded upon the reconciliation of opposites: one concept or event (thesis) inevitably produces its opposite (antithesis), and the tension between these opposites generates a new category (synthesis). The Supreme Court's decision in Lopez v. United States marks the intersection of two dialectical progressions, one judicial and one legislative. This article identifies and analyses both of these progressions from which the Lopez synthesis emerges, and upon this basis, predicts a new movement toward the recognition of the virtues of local governance, similar to the values underpinning the European principle of subsidiarity. The Lopez case raises the issue of the extent of the United States federal government's legislative power, which is delegated to the Congress by virtue of article 1 section 1 of the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution stresses that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Thus, the power of the federal government to legislate gun control relies on its inclusion into one (or more) items of its catalogue of legislative powers. Even though commentators were almost universal at the time in opining that that the right to bear arms was not a personal right but rather a right enjoyed by each state to arm a militia, the starting point is simply that the individual's right to possess a firearm is absolute (thesis). The antithesis to firearm freedom finally emerged with the 1988 machine gun banning amendment to the Firearm Owners' Protection Act. The Brady Bill enacted in 1993, requiring a five-day waiting period before buying a weapon, can be viewed in Hegelian terms as a synthesis of the two approaches, i.e., the unification of opposites (absolute freedom and prohibition). The early, narrow judicial approach regarding the reach of the interstate commerce clause as a source of federal jurisdiction presupposed a geographical transborder element (thesis). Following the announcement of President Roosevelt's “Court Packing Plan,” the Supreme Court began backing down from its protection of the supremacy of the states in economic matters. The reach of the commerce clause expanded to all activity – even intrastate – if it had some conceivable, albeit only cumulative, effect on an interstate transaction (antithesis). The new approach seemed not to limit Congress's legislative prerogative in any way, as since the New Deal of the 1930s not a single piece of commerce clause legislation had been held unconstitutional for lack of jurisdiction. The Lopez case marks a turning point and can be viewed as a synthesis of the two approaches: the jurisdiction of Congress under the interstate commerce clause is limited to economic activity with a substantial interstate effect. If Congress wished to revive the Gun-Free School Zones Act or enact more expansive gun control legislation, it could follow one of three paths: persuade the states to agree to amend the constitution, fit the legislation into one of the three Lopez categories (channels of commerce, instrumentality, or substantial effect of economic activity on interstate commerce), or entice the states into enacting legislation by offering incentives. Due to the fact that the magnitude of the gun control problem – and, indeed, whether or not it really is a problem – is subject to serious controversy, the author argues that what is lacking is the political will, not the legislative jurisdiction. The author concludes that the political forces that arouse legislative activity are too weak and diffuse to sire vigorous antithetical action by Congress in the near future.

Gun Control: Will it Work?

Abstract: This article is from an address given by the author to the 98th Session of the St. James Literary Society, on October 17, 1995. In the speech, Dr. Buckner summarizes the results of recent research regarding Canadian attitudes towards firearms and firearms control. The research suggests that much of the motivation for gun control may be hostility to the ownership of firearms, rather than a rational expectation that gun misuse will decrease.

The perversion of science and medicine (Part II): Soviet science and gun control

Abstract: The lessons of history clearly demonstrate to those of us who care to look that whenever science and medicine have come to be under the heavy hand of government, political pressures, or subordinated to the state, the results have been as perverse as they have been disastrous. Towards this end, I would like to share with you an egregious chapter on the perversion of science in the name of politics and ideology that has come down to us from the recent historic record. Although, I will now be referring to the role of science in the former Soviet Union, particularly during the period of the 1930s through the 1950s; as you will see later in this article in reference to the research being carried out by the public health establishment and published in the medical journals, this role could very well become applicable to the U.S. in the not-too-distant future. The goal of gun control research promulgated by the AMA/CDC/NCIPC axis is designed to promote conformity, that is, the idea that guns (even for self and family protection) are socially unacceptable; and to promote uniformity, that is, in citizen disarmament. The lessons of history sagaciously reveal that whenever and wherever science and medicine have been subordinated to the state and individual will has been crushed by tyranny, the results have been as perverse as they have been disastrous, as the examples of Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union so aptly testify. Beyond the abolition of freedom and dignity, the perversion of science and medicine becomes the vehicle for the imposition of slavery and totalitarianism.

Reviewing the Firearms Control Debate

Abstract: The purpose of this short essay is to review the criminological content in the British 'gun control' debate following the Dunblane killings. At first sight it might be thought that any such review would not take very long. The debate, however, which surrounded and summarily overwhelmed first the Home Affairs Committee and later the Cullen Report itself and formed the vital context for the Commons vote on the government's package of gun controls, did have its criminological moments. Yet one of the interesting issues in the whole series of commentaries and interventions following the Dunblane massacre was the relative absence of any dear or consistent criminological contributions and the comparative ease with which those which emerged were pushed aside. This is not the place to review, in detail, the precise statistical analyses employed; the article is more concerned with the parameters within which the debate was largely confined.

Regulating firearm advertisements

Abstract: To the Editor. —Dr Vernick and colleagues 1 seem to have a recurrent problem confusing their minority opinions as gun control advocates with consensus. In 1993, Vernick and Teret 2 wrote that it was "well established" among scholars that the US Supreme Court had disparaged an individual's right to keep and bear arms while confirming that the Second Amendment only protected the right of states to form a militia. 2 A search of the peer-reviewed legal literature revealed that of 50 articles on the subject, 47 found that the Supreme Court affirms the individual's rights and only 3 supported the militia-only view. Now, in their 1997 article apparently critical of both the First and Second Amendments, Vernick et al 1 proffer that there is a consensus that "the best available scientific evidence contradicts the advertising message that a gun in the home is, on balance, protective." Kleck and Gertz 3

Gun Control in Australia: Recent Policies and Responses

Abstract: I, along with millions of others, followed with keen interest the political and social consequences of the atrocity of April 28,1996, when a young man killed 35 people in a matter of an hour or so in Port Arthur, Tasmania with legally obtained highpowered rifles. Within a matter of months there was in place in Australia a new, comprehensive and highly restrictive firearms policy. In addition, the gun control debate had begun in earnest again. As usual, it was inflamed by over-stated cases from advocates of both sides. I put this paper together in an attempt to present a fair ‘middle ground’ position on the current state of research in the field. Notwithstanding a dearth of research data, however, I believe that reasonable and democratic restrictions on gun availability should be seen not as somehow threatening freedom and liberty or favoring the criminal element, but rather as a facilitator of more peaceful communities. Although little is known or understood about the connections between guns and peaceful societies, it ought to be incumbent on those who favor fewer restrictions on gun ownership to justify their claims. In the current political climate in Australia, if not elsewhere, gun control opponents appear to have lost the high ground they may have formerly held, and have not made out a case to wrest public opinion back to their fold.