Showing papers on "Gun control published in 2001"

Assessing the Democratic Debate: How the News Media Frame Elite Policy Discourse

Abstract: This article examines the way in which the news media frame public policy issues and the extent to which other political players (e.g., interest groups, politicians) influence this issue framing process. Our analysis focuses on the issue of gun control, comparing the rhetoric generated by interest groups and public officials on the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban with actual network news coverage of this legislation from 1988 to 1996. Results indicate that both sets of political players employed several interpretative issue frames and worked hard to put their preferred themes on the agenda. However, at times, the media intervened in the framing process, especially as the debate matured. Specifically, the news media (a) structured the overall tone of the gun control debate, (b) adopted a distribution of framing perspectives different from that of politicians and interest groups, and (c) packaged policy discourse more often than not in terms of the "culture of violence" theme. These findings point toward...

More Statistics, Less Persuasion: A Cultural Theory of Gun-Risk Perceptions

Abstract: What motivates individuals to support or oppose the legal regulation of guns? What sorts of evidence or arguments are likely to promote a resolution of the gun control debate? Using the survey methods associated with the cultural theory of risk, we demonstrate that individuals' positions on gun control derive from their cultural world views: individuals of an egalitarian or solidaristic orientation tend to support gun control, those of a hierarchical or individualist orientation to oppose it. Indeed, cultural orientations so defined are stronger predictors of individuals' positions than is any other fact about them, including whether they are male or female, white or black, Southerners or Easterners, urbanites or country dwellers, conservatives or liberals. The role of culture in determining attitudes towards guns suggests that econometric analyses of the effect of gun control on violent crime are unlikely to have much impact. As they do when they are evaluating empirical evidence of environmental and other types of risks, individuals can be expected to credit or dismiss empirical evidence on "gun control risks" depending on whether it coheres or conflicts with their cultural values. Rather than focus on quantifying the impact of gun control laws on crime, then, academics and others who want to contribute to resolving the gun debate should dedicate themselves to constructing a new expressive idiom that will allow citizens to debate the cultural issues that divide them in an open and constructive way.

Violence, Guns, and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract: Violence rates differ dramatically across countries. A widely held view is that these differences reflect differences in gun control and/or gun availability, and certain pieces of evidence appear consistent with this hypothesis. A more detailed examination of this evidence suggests that the role of gun control/availability is not compelling. This more detailed examination, however, does not provide an alternative explanation for cross‐country differences in violence. This paper suggests that differences in the enforcement of drug prohibition are an important factor in explaining differences in violence rates across countries. To determine the validity of this hypothesis, the paper examines data on homicide rates, drug prohibition enforcement, and gun control policy for a broad range of countries. The results suggest a role for drug prohibition enforcement in explaining cross‐country differences in violence, and they provide an alternative explanation for some of the apparent effects of gun contro...

Reducing Gun Violence:: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising

Abstract: The objective of this article is to review what research we do have, what research we do not have, and how we can use what research we do have to reduce gun violence. It is also suggested how we can use new legislation to do more of the research we desperately need. For while we can conduct many experiments in enforcement strategies without new legislation, we cannot adequately test most legislative proposals without actually passing legislation. In cybernetic terms, it is `smart' policy to treat new legislation as experiments, and to design it in ways that will optimize our ability to learn from each new law.

The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservatism

Abstract: Examining the interconnectedness of the Christian Right and the radical right, this study looks at such issues as abortion, gay rights, and gun control. It argues that the American right is divided over how to advance an anti-liberal agenda.

Armed : new perspectives on gun control

Abstract: The gun control debate is often obscured by strong emotions and unproven assumptions According to conventional wisdom accidents with handguns account for a significant number of deaths among children, gun owners endanger themselves more than they ward off potential criminal assailants, and there is a widespread legal consensus that the Second Amendment does not support the individual right to bear arms All of these assumptions, and many others, say researchers Gary Kleck and Don Kates, are contradicted by the weight of criminological and legal evidence Hoping to disentangle myth from reality, the authors summarize the results and policy implications of recent state-of-the-art research on guns and violence in accessible, nontechnical language Among the topics addressed are media bias in coverage of gun issues, the distorting effects that a covert prohibitionist agenda has on the debate over more moderate measures for reducing gun violence, the frequency and effectiveness of the defensive use of guns, and a close analysis of the Second Amendment This well-argued and scrupulously researched volume is essential for any full understanding of the complex gun issue

Policy- and System-Level Approaches to Health Promotion in Australia

Abstract: This issue of Health Education & Behavior presents articles from researchers and practitioners in Australia who are working to create supportive political and social environments for health. Much of what happens in health promotion in Australia at the individual, workplace, group, or community level shares similarities with interventions conducted by colleagues across the world. What differs, and what visitors to Australia often remark on, is the high degree of public acceptance of, and legislative-level support for, promotive and protective health practices. At a national level, these include, for example, extensive regulation of smoking in public spaces, vehicle passenger safety restraints, blood alcohol restrictions for drivers supported by random breath testing, bicycle helmet laws, private swimming pool fencing regulations, gun control legislation, and laws preventing the use of hand-held mobile phones in moving vehicles. In this editorial, we briefly describe the Australian context, give a brief overview of the articles in this special issue, and attempt to account for how and why health promotion in Australia has developed a strong policy and system-level focus. 1 Australia is roughly the size of the United States with a population of 19 million people. The population is culturally and linguistically diverse. Indigenous Australians make up 2% of the population. Currently, 8 million residents were born overseas or have parents who were born overseas. More than 280 languages are spoken, including 170 Australian indigenous languages. A language other than English is spoken at home by 16% of the population. Universal access to publicly funded health care has been provided through

Absolutist politics in a moderate package: prohibitionist intentions of the gun control movement

Abstract: The gun control debate is carried out at two levels: (1) the overt debate over whatever moderate regulatory control is currently being considered, and (2) the subterranean or background debate over prohibition measures that are not even under formal consideration. To stop the overt debate from being distorted by the subterranean debate, prominent gun control organizations claiming to support only moderate "commonsense" measures will have to formally, and convincingly, commit themselves to permanent opposition to any future "control" measures that would disarm most of the American population.

Gun Violence in America: The Struggle for Control

Abstract: Few Social Issues Have produced more exaggerated claims and contention among Americans than the struggle to control gun violence. Fueling the emotional fire in debates between firearm groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun control advocates is the dispute over the importance of guns in American culture. Is the fondness for firearms truly part of a venerable American tradition, one to be observed with very few limits? In this fascinating inquiry, Alexander DeConde delves into the myths and politics regarding gun keeping, as well as the controversies over gun use, crime, and policing from the early days of the republic to the present. The fact that the second amendment to the constitution appears to protect the right of the citizenry to keep and bear arms has led many Americans to assume that our forebears were uniformly a gun-loving people. By the early 1900s, the image of the American pioneer building the nation with gun in hand had become a widely recognized symbol of virtue, self-reliance, and the fight against tyranny. This glorified perspective of civilian gun keeping, maintains DeConde, offered an appealing reason for allowing private citizens easy access to firearms. It also often intimidated those who deplored their lethal use. The nation's early gun control advocates do not figure prominently in the history books, but despite their small numbers, they created a political legacy as impassioned as that of their pro-gun neighbors. DeConde shows that far from being a recent development, the gun control movement gained momentum among private citizens as an increasingly urbanized and industrialized country expanded westward and as small firearms became more numerous and deadly. In addition, he shows that local authorities increasingly sought to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. In response, gun owners banded together, forming a strong lobby capable of silencing these dissenting voices for their affront to the assumed American spirit. DeConde's in-depth analysis challenges the folklore surrounding gun use and brings balance to the debates about gun control. It also explains why the United States, with all its resources, fails repeatedly to confine gun violence to the same low levels achieved by other advanced democracies.

The gun control debate : you decide

Abstract: At the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, highly publicized gun massacres, especially in schools, have maintained 'gun control' as a hotly contested, peculiarly American, political and cultural debate. Featuring selections from historians, criminologists, social scientists, public health specialists, and jurists, Dr Nisbet offers an in-depth analysis of the central questions involved in America's debate concerning the further restriction or even prohibition of presently legally owned guns.Providing a set of critical-thinking questions that focus on key issues in the gun control debate, Nisbet helps readers to evaluate gun control issues more deeply and thoroughly than is possible using the popular media's portrayal of the controversy. Among the questions addressed are: Does the availability of guns influence levels, patterns, and concentrations of violent crime? If so, how, and with what policy implications? Does more guns equal more or less crime? Do guns kept for self-defense menace gun owners and their families more than protect them? Is mass media coverage of gun control issues biased? If so, how, and in what direction? How should we interpret the Second Amendment? Does the gun debate reflect an underlying cultural conflict between groups who detest each other's values and lifestyles?Containing twenty-nine new articles and an entirely new section on the media entitled 'The Gun Control Debate in the Age of (Mis)information', this new edition provides the most up-to-date research on a hotly contested topic. The contributors include: B. Bruce-Briggs, Phillip J. Cook, Barry Glassner, Gordon Hawkins, Richard Hofstadter, Don B. Kates Jr., Gary Kleck, David Kopel, John Lott, Joyce Malcolm, Garry Wills, Franklin E. Zimring, and many more. No matter what side of the debate you're on, this outstanding collection of articles will help you understand the complexities of this intensely controversial issue.

Fundamental Rights and the Right to Bear Arms

Abstract: Part of what is at issue in the dispute between advocates and opponents of gun control is the nature and status of the right to bear arms. Opponents of gun control tend to see the right to bear arms as, in some sense, fundamental, whereas proponents tend to see the right to bear arms as not fundamental. In what follows I consider Wheeler's and LaFollette's interpretations of the notion of a fundamental right. Against Wheeler and in support of LaFollette, I argue that the right to bear arms is not fundamental. But first two clarificatory comments are called for. (1) Following LaFollette, I use "gun control" as an umbrella term to cover a variety of regulations that dictate what types of guns can be owned by which citizens under what conditions. I take it that advocates of gun control believe that only a few types of guns (say, hunting rifles) may be owned by certain citizens (say, mentally competent adults who are not felons) under limited conditions (say, provided the citizen has a license, the weapon is registered, and the citizen is not permitted to conceal the weapon or carry it in certain settings). Opponents of gun control, on the other hand, oppose many or most of these regulations. (2) What is at stake in the dispute concerning the fundamental or nonfundamental status of the right to bear arms is the ease with which restrictions may be justified. Fundamental rights are less vulnerable to regulation than nonfundamental rights. If one can establish that a right is fundamental, one has thereby established that restrictions on that right can be justified only by very compelling reasons. Hence one particularly strong--though certainly not the only--way to argue against restrictions on gun ownership is to show that the right to own guns is fundamental. In his essay "Arms as Insurance," Samuel Wheeler defends Charlton Heston's assertion that the right to bear arms is not only a but the fundamental right. (1) On Wheeler's interpretation of Heston, what makes it the fundamental right, is that the right to own guns is "a condition for the practical existence of other rights." (2) By "practical existence of a right," I take it that Wheeler intends something like "the ability in practice to exercise one's right." Assuming that what is at issue are moral rights, there is a prima facie implausbility about this claim regarding the status of the right to bear arms. For instance, it seems quite unlikely that this right is a necessary condition for the practical existence of our moral right to not be deceived. The claim is more plausible if our constitutional rights are at issue: if the constitutional right to bear arms is our only insurance against tyranny--a claim that Wheeler supports--then that right is necessary to prevent the government from violating all of our other legal rights. The constitutional right to bear arms, then, guarantees the safety of our other legal rights by allowing citizens to resist government incursions upon those rights and by making it less likely that governments will attempt such incursions. In this respect, the right to bear arms is what Wheeler calls a "meta-right." Yet many of our legal rights, especially our constitutional rights, are underwritten by moral rights. The right to worship as one pleases, the right to own property, and the right to express oneself are all legal rights. They are instituted so that citizens (in democratic regimes) may preserve their moral rights as persons. So, if the right to bear arms is practically necessary for the protection of citizens' legal rights, it is also practically necessary for the protection of those moral rights that are preserved by means of legal rights. It follows that the right to bear arms must itself be a moral right, for one is morally entitled to protect one's moral rights. And indeed this is born out by Wheeler's defense of the claim that the right to bear arms is the fundamental right. He claims that the right to bear arms is "a special, technology-dependent case of the more general right to be able to resist unjust coercion by whatever means avail able. …

Homicide among adolescents in the Americas: a growing epidemic.

Abstract: Editor -- The article by Falbo, Buzzetti, & Cattaneo (1) in the last issue of the Bulletin highlights the growing epidemic of adolescent homicide in Brazil and in the Americas in general One-third of all deaths due to homicides in the region are among adolescents aged 10-19 years (2) In addition, according to PAHO/WHO, homicide is the second leading cause of death among young males aged 15-24 in 10 out of 21 countries with populations greater than one million, the highest rates being in Colombia (267 per 100 000 in 1994), Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Brazil (72/100 000) The USA is considered to have an intermediate homicide rate; at 38 per 100 000 it is four times higher than the next highest rate noted among 21 industrialized countries (3) Registered homicide rates for Colombia, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Venezuela among males aged 15-24 are increasing (2) In the last ten years the rate has doubled among adolescents in these countries; similar increases are occurring in Brazil (1) Income inequality has been cited as a primary factor associated with homicide, particularly in the Americas (4, 5) Falbo and colleagues examined the risk factors for adolescent homicide in a case-control study that included all identified homicides in Recife, Brazil This approach allowed a dissection of risk factors beyond the usual demographic information available in death certificates, national databases, or ecological approaches Use of illicit drugs and prior police record were two of the more important risk factors Education, religious observance, and having a father in the home were the primary protective factors identified These findings, along with the fact that most homicides are a result of firearms, provide definable risk factors and protective factors that can be addressed through public health policy Income inequality and social inequity, although theoretically appealing, are a step too far removed from direct public health action in the fight to reduce adolescent homicide Gun control has been shown to be effective in reducing the homicide rate During periods when bans on firearms were implemented in Bogata and Cali, Colombia, the homicide rate fell significantly (6) Gun storage laws have not clearly demonstrated a reduction in homicides; however, they reduce dramatically rates of unintentional shooting deaths in children (57) At least two of the protective factors can be addressed from a public health policy perspective: education and the presence of fathers in the home, though the latter may be more difficult to improve In Brazil, for example, 21% of the households are run by females and over 1% by someone under the age of 20 Also in Brazil, which has an illiteracy rate of 116%, 22% of the population have less than one year of schooling Improving access to education and assuring that adolescents complete their education is pivotal to addressing the epidemic; achieving such a goal will require diverting funds from other items, such as militant expenditures A number of interventions have been suggested to decrease youth homicide For example, Holinger et al (8) have suggested eight primary prevention strategies: improvement of economic conditions for the poor, including job creation; education of the public about the youth homicide problem; improvement of conflict resolution skills; creation of community and school enrichment programmes; improvement and stabilization of family systems; reduction of factors that enhance impulsiveness, such as alcohol; firearms control; and strengthening of ethnic identity …

Guns, Crime, and Safety: Introduction*

Abstract: IT seems every newspaper or local or national television news broadcast has stories about guns used in crimes. The costs of guns seem too obvious to ignore. On the other hand, with recent surveys indicating that 46 percent of Americans own a gun and another 5 percent plan to purchasing one, a substantial portion of Americans apparently believe that guns provide significant benefits.1 While the political debate over gun control has been hotly contested for years, unfortunately, more serious academic research-with large panel data sets and careful attempts to account for a large number of independent variables-has been conducted over only the last half dozen years. The controversial debate involves deterrence versus harm. Arguments and evidence exist on either side. Guns make it easier to kill people (whether by intent or by accident), but they also make it easier for people to defend themselves. The question that concerns everyone is, What is the net effect? The papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference cosponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy at Yale Law School during December 1999 and are part of the ongoing process to determine the net effect of guns on people's health and safety. They fall into three broad categories: (1) the impact of individual gun laws on crime, accidental gun death, or suicide rates; (2) the relationship between private security employment and crime rates; and (3) an extensive and critical examination of earlier work on socalled right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, which set up objective rules that applicants must follow to get a permit to carry. There is a vigorous debate over the relationship between guns and crime, with some pointing to the positive relationship between sales of a gun magazine, Guns & Ammo, and murder rates and others pointing to a negative relationship between survey data on gun ownership and various violent crime rates or the lack of a relationship between the sales of other gun magazines * Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute.

An analytic approach to the study of gun control policies

Abstract: This paper explores the theoretic and policy implications of the assumption that the objective of gun ownership is to enhance the security of gun owners and their associates. Security is defined as the probability of not being victimized in a criminal assault and not suffering accidental injury or death in a gun-related incident. An elementary mathematical model is constructed and analyzed. This model and controversial data currently available lead to the conclusion that the percentage of the population owning guns should be larger than now it is. This result does not imply that gun ownership should be made more accessible. Gun ownership may be one possible way to reduce crime. Other ways to achieve this objective are better police control, education, socio-economic justice, etc. The possibility that these alternatives are more effective crime deterrents is not explored in this paper, nor in the studies that provided the data. This evaluation is needed before deciding whether increased gun ownership is the policy that should be adopted in order to reduce crime.

Guns, Crime, and Academics: Some Reflections on the Gun Control Debate*

Abstract: This comment on Thomas Marvell's “The Impact of Banning Juvenile Gun Possession” analyzes Marvell’s empirical findings and their policy implications for gun control legislation. While Marvell’s article stresses the absence of any finding favorable to juvenile gun bans, this comment points out that the statistical results actually support the stronger finding that some of the juvenile gun bans are associated with a statistically significant increase in homicides nationwide. Under either finding, the juvenile gun bans are welfare reducing because of the inherently costly nature of conventional gun control legislation. The concluding discussion argues that the failure to draw appropriate policy conclusions from methodologically sound findings on controversial subjects such as gun control undercuts the value of academic research as compared with competing influences in the public debate.

Firearms Prohibitions and Domestic Violence Convictions: The Lautenberg Amendment

Abstract: This report provides an overview of the provisions of the Lautenberg Amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968, which establishes a scheme prohibiting the possession of firearms by individuals who have been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act: Lessons in the Development and Implementation of Federal Policy

Abstract: The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (P.L. 103-159) was implemented in a two-stage process beginning in March 1994. During the act's 57-month interim phase, from March 1, 1994, to November 30, 1998, chief law enforcement officers in the United States conducted nearly 13 million handgun background checks, providing documentation that would prevent 312,000 sales to convicted felons and others who were ineligible to purchase firearms. Since November 30; 1998, when the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System became operational, thousands more firearm sales to ineligible buyers have been prevented. This article explores some of the issues surrounding the passage, implementation, and ramifications of this landmark legislation.

Public health and gun control --- a review (Part II): gun violence and constitutional issues

Abstract: Another favorite view of the gun control, public health establishment is the myth propounded by Dr. Mark Rosenberg, former head of the NCIPC of the CDC, who has written: "Most of the perpetrators of violence are not criminals by trade or profession. Indeed, in the area of domestic violence, most of the perpetrators are never accused of any crime. The victims and perpetrators are ourselves --- ordinary citizens, students, professionals, and even public health workers." That statement is contradicted by available data, government data. The fact is that the typical murderer has had a prior criminal history of at least six years with four felony arrests in his record before he finally commits murder. The FBI statistics reveal that 75 percent of all violent crimes for any locality are committed by six percent of hardened criminals and repeat offenders. Less than 2 percent of crimes committed with firearms are carried out by licensed (e.g., concealed carry permit holders) law-abiding citizens. Violent crimes continue to be a problem in the inner cities with gangs involved in the drug trade. Crimes in rural areas for both blacks and whites, despite the preponderance of guns in this setting, remain low. Gun availability does not cause crime. Prohibitionist government policies and gun control (rather than crime control) exacerbates the problem by making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, their families, and their property. In fact, there was a modest increase in both homicide and suicide after prohibition and passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. As to how one can protect oneself from assailants when the police, as more often than not, are not around, National Victims Data suggests that "while victims resisting with knives, clubs, or bare hands are about twice as likely to be injured as those who submit, victims who resist with a gun are only half as likely to be injured as those who put up no defense." Of particular interest to women and self-defense, "among those victims using handguns in self-defense, 66 percent of them were successful in warding off the attack and keeping their property. Among those victims using non-gun weapons, only 40 percent were successful. The gun is the great equalizer for women when they are accosted in the street or when they, particularly single mothers, are defending themselves and their children at home.

The AAP and Gun Control

Abstract: To the Editor — I am certainly not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. Thomas Jefferson Letter to George Washington January 4, 1786: “This plan…” The expression “children killing children” is becoming all too common. The recent killings at Santana High School in Santee, California, and Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, illustrate the terrible impact easy access to firearms has on our society’s children. Unfortunately, these horrific events are not isolated incidents. We in the United States have watched school shootings occur in Springfield, Oregon; Fayetteville, Tennessee; Pomona, California; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Paducah, Kentucky; and Bethel, Alaska. And the school shootings, as spectacular as they are in the media, are only the tip of the iceberg. While approximately 40 children die per year in schools in the United States, almost 4200 others die from homicide on the streets of our cities and …

Examining the Lautenberg Amendment in the Civilian and Military Contexts: Congressional Overreaching, Statutory Vagueness, Ex Post Facto Violations, and Implementation Flaws

Abstract: INTRODUCTION Imagine a court reducing a domestic violence felony to a misdemeanor because the judge does not want to give a "noncriminal" (1) male a felony conviction merely for attacking his wife. (2) Imagine further that as a result of this judicial reluctance, the court sentences the defendant to serve his time only on weekends. The defendant is then released. Subsequently, he goes home and attacks his wife again. This time he attacks her with a gun. This time he kills her. Now imagine this man is a police officer or soldier who has sworn an oath to protect you, (3) or perhaps a next door neighbor, or a stranger you pass on the street. When Congress passed the Lautenberg Amendment (4) to the Gun Control Act of 1968 ("Lautenberg Amendment" or "the Amendment") in September 30, 1996, it was with the express purpose of reducing scenarios like this one, of preventing that police officer, soldier, neighbor, or stranger from committing gun-related domestic violence. (5) The Lautenberg Amendment states that: it shall be unlawful for any person ... who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce. (6) Citing national domestic violence statistics including the percentage of domestic violence homicides involving firearms each year, (7) Senator Lautenberg intended to close a dangerous loophole in the Gun Control Act enabling domestic violence offenders to evade an additional felony conviction for gun possession by getting domestic violence felony charges reduced to misdemeanors. (8) Senator Lautenberg sought to secure the same protection for the family of a domestic violence misdemeanant as was theoretically provided the family of a domestic violence felon through existing law. (9) The Lautenberg Amendment, therefore, subjects domestic violence misdemeanants to the same restrictions (10) faced by prior convicted felons, making it a felony for domestic violence misdemeanants to ship, transport, or possess a weapon in or affecting interstate commerce. (11) However, while the Lautenberg Amendment mirrors the Gun Control Act in making gun possession a felony, its scope is broader. The Lautenberg Amendment precludes the Gun Control Act's public interest exception (12) exempting governmental agencies from the Gun Control Act. (13) Therefore, the Amendment applies to, and has great potential to impact both police and the military. (14) With the Lautenberg Amendment, Congress rightly prioritized the need to reduce gun-related domestic violence nationwide. However, while this underlying idea is fundamental to domestic safety, the Lautenberg Amendment is possibly unconstitutional. (15) Congress may have impermissibly abused its Commerce Clause authority in passing the Lautenberg Amendment. (16) This conclusion is supported by the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Morrison, (17) where the Court struck down the civil remedies provision of the Violence Against Women Act (18) due to an impermissible overstepping by Congress under the Commerce Clause. (19) In light of Morrison, a rebirth of suits challenging the constitutionality of the Lautenberg Amendment could occur. Due to the definitional vagueness of the terms in the Lautenberg Amendment, the statute may also violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. (20) Further, in the military setting, the Lautenberg Amendment possibly constitutes an impermissible ex post facto law because of its solely punitive effects. (21) Even if the Lautenberg Amendment is constitutional, the Amendment's definitional vagueness and inherent structural and implementational flaws render it ineffective. (22) Part I of this Comment examines the Commerce Clause (and Tenth Amendment) challenges (23) to the Lautenberg Amendment. …

b'Firearms Prohibitions and Domestic Violence Convictions: The Lautenberg Amendment'

Abstract: This report provides an overview of the provisions of the Lautenberg Amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968, which establishes a scheme prohibiting the possession of firearms by individuals who have been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

Guns and the Politics of History

Abstract: The debate over the safety and legality of private gun ownership in the United States has intensified over the last decade. The emergence of a heavily armed militia movement in 1995 and a wave of schoolyard shootings in 19981999 have heightened public demands for tighter gun control legislation. During the same period, legal scholars advanced the argument that the right to keep and bear arms recognized in the Second Amendment extends to individuals as well as to the collective military forces of the states. In response, early American historians have stepped forward to challenge the individual rights interpretation. As an outgrowth of research on the role of guns in early American culture, Michael Bellesiles published essays in 1996 and 1998 presenting evidence of gun scarcity and the pervasive state regulation of firearms in early America. He has joined Saul Cornell, Don Higginbotham, and Garry Wills in a number of collective efforts to debunk the "myths" that they believe underpin the individual rights interpretation. Most recently, Bellesiles, Cornell, and Higginbotham signed an amicus curiae brief written by David Yassky and filed in the case United States v. Emerson, a gun control case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.1 It is from this context that Arming America springs. The book represents research into colonial laws, militia muster rolls, gun censuses, and thousands of probate inventories. For the research project alone, Bellesiles deserves credit. Bellesiles brings a variety of methodologies to bear on these records. The book is at once an analysis of material culture, a history of the arms industry, a military history, and a survey of the place of guns in AngloAmerican law.

Preventing school violence: A time for “hard, solid thinking”

Abstract: On my office wall hang several quotes from the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. That is probably not surprising, considering that much of my work involves the prevention of youth violence. No one in American history has spoken more passionately or eloquently than Dr King on the evils of violence. One of the quotes from Dr King on my wall, however, is not found in books of famous quotations, nor has it become part of the lexicon of American history as have so many of his words. Yet, as I work on youth violence prevention, this is often the quote I find most inspirational: Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. At times of crisis, it is especially important to listen to Dr King's message. For US schools, never had there been a crisis on the scale of what happened in Columbine High School last year. On April 20, 1999, two students at this high school in Colorado killed 12 students and 1 teacher and injured 21 others before committing suicide. This followed several school shootings during the previous school year. After the tragedy at Columbine, parents, government officials, and the news media called for immediate solutions to school violence. Proposed solutions included restricting access to campuses so that students and others could not enter or leave during the school day, posting armed police officers in schools, increasing the use of metal detectors, tightening gun control legislation, and trying young perpetrators in adult courts. Loud cries were heard for the development of “warning signs” to identify students who might perpetrate such crimes in the future. Security companies began offering their services to “profile” possible school shooters. It is understandable that the public would want easy answers and quick solutions in the face of extreme violence such as that at Columbine. We all are concerned for the safety of children at school. But as scientists concerned about young people, we are responsible for doing “hard, solid thinking” rather than accepting these easy and quick solutions. To implement solutions that work, we must first understand the nature of school violence and the characteristics of effective interventions. The problem is more one of youth violence than school violence. While school shootings like the one at Columbine High School have increased public attention to violence associated with schools, the fact remains that most American schools are safe places. Less than 1% of all homicides and suicides among school-aged children (5-19 years of age) occur at school or on the way to or from school.1 Nonetheless, homicide is not rare among American children. It is the 4th leading cause of death among Americans aged 10 to 14 years and the 2nd leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 24 years. In 1997, 283 children aged 10 to 14 years and 6,146 adolescents aged 15 to 24 years were murdered. The US child homicide rate, 2.57 per 100,000 for children younger than 15 years, is 5 times that of 25 other industrialized countries combined.2 Violence is not amenable to easy or quick solutions. Behavioral, biological, social, and environmental factors all are associated strongly with the development of violent behavior. These factors have been addressed, using many primary and secondary prevention approaches, by the fields of criminal justice, social services, mental health, education, social sciences, and public health. No single discipline alone can prevent violence. A complex problem such as violence must be prevented through a combination of approaches. In the week after the shootings at Columbine High School, US government agencies met to develop a coordinated research agenda for preventing youth violence. At the same time, agency staff working on youth violence prevention were inundated with urgent requests from higher ranking officials, legislators, the press, and the public for new projects, studies, and announcements regarding school violence. It soon became clear that no one understood what each agency was already doing to address youth violence. Without this knowledge, it was impossible to prevent duplicative work, create new partnerships, or develop better interventions. As a result of the meeting, an inventory of federal activities that address violence in schools was developed. Each agency listed its activities related to school violence and recommended other agencies to contact for additional activities. The agencies described activities that directly seek to prevent or respond to violence that occurs on school property, on the way to or from school, or at school-related events. They also described activities that indirectly address school violence by focusing on precursors of violence, factors associated with violence, or mechanisms for preventing violent behavior. The inventory includes more than 100 activities involving some 10 federal departments and more than 25 agencies, including those targeting health, mental health, education, justice, labor, and housing and urban development. The activities are grouped into several categories: surveillance, evaluation research, other research, research synthesis, programmatic activities, resources, and technical assistance centers. The inventory was published in April 2000 in the Journal of School Health3 and posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web site: www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash/violence/index.htm. Schools, community groups, national organizations, and state and local agencies can use the inventory to find school violence prevention resources and to get accurate information about federal violence prevention and research activities. By describing the breadth and depth of current activities, the inventory may provide a base for planning future violence prevention research and practice. A wide variety of activities are under way. The sponsoring agencies understand that these activities might generate a greater return on investments if funds were pooled rather than used for multiple similar interventions. Fewer than a third of the projects listed in the inventory name collaborators. Most collaborations involve sharing advice, information, data, or access to constituents. Only a few projects involve joint funding. A close examination of current federal activities can help us understand those aspects of violence development and prevention that might be better addressed jointly and direct funding toward those areas. More intensive collaboration can be hampered by the lack of a common vocabulary. We need to understand that people from different backgrounds have different vocabularies. Vocabulary differences need to be described and understood by all parties for them to collaborate effectively. A good example is the term “surveillance.” Ask a person trained in public health to define it, and the response will approximate the official CDC definition of public health surveillance: “the ongoing and systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data in the process of describing and monitoring a health event.”4 On the other hand, ask someone involved in criminal justice, and you might hear something like “the surreptitious collection of information about an individual or organization.” Although sometimes comical, conversations between public health and justice agency staff about “improving surveillance of school-associated violence” can be frustrating and confusing to the point of breaking down collaborations if we do not make an effort to communicate better. Developing a shared logic framework is an excellent way to examine differences in vocabulary and define areas of responsibility. In the United States, the White House Council on Youth Violence is leading an activity to map federally sponsored projects onto an agreed-upon logic framework of violence causation and prevention. The clusters and gaps identified will point toward areas of possible duplication of effort and areas where we can increase collaboration across agencies. One example of a cross-agency activity that made the effort to develop a shared logic framework is the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative.5 This initiative brings together various agencies within the departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services. Staff from each agency has been assigned to work together on Safe Schools/Healthy Students. Funding streams have been combined. Although it took nearly a year, the definitional and turf issues of collaborative work have been addressed. This exciting new project is funding more than 70 communities across the United States to implement activities such as school and community-based mental health services, police support in schools, and educational activities directed at reducing school violence and increasing opportunities for healthy childhood development. The pooling of funds also has allowed for the development of a national evaluation and a technical assistance center to support local projects. It has been more than 30 years since Dr King, who spoke so eloquently in support of nonviolence, was himself a victim of homicide. In the years since, many hundreds of interventions have been developed and implemented in isolation from one another. The time has come to recognize that successful violence prevention involves multiple interventions and multiple partners. It is time for those from all fields of study interested in violence prevention to come together and do the hard work of thinking through a comprehensive solution.

Public health and gun control --- a review (Part I): The benefits of firearms

Abstract: I have related previously (Medical Sentinel, Spring and Summer 1997) how the 1991 American Medical Association¹s (AMA) campaign against domestic violence launched for public relation consumption went hand in hand with the public health establishment¹s 1979 stated objective of eradication of handguns in America, beginning with a 25 percent reduction by the year 2000. Towards that objective, in the 1980s, hundreds of articles describing politicized, biased, result-oriented research funded at taxpayers expense were published in the medical journals. One of the principle investigators was Dr. Arthur Kellermann, who now heads the Emory University School of Public Health. A significant portion of the gun control agenda, not only of the public health but the entire health advocacy establishment, in fact, comes from Dr. Kellermann's landmark articles, particularly "Gun Ownership As a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home," published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 1993. And yet, much of the methodology, not to mention conclusions in the article have been questioned by numerous investigators. Since at least the mid-1980s, Dr. Kellermann (and associates), whose work had been heavily-funded by the CDC, published a series of studies purporting to show that persons who keep guns in the home are more likely to be victims of homicide than those who don't. In a 1986 NEJM paper, Dr. Kellermann and associates, for example, claimed their "scientific research" proved that defending oneself or one's family with a firearm in the home is dangerous and counter productive, claiming "a gun owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder." In a critical review and now classic article published in the March 1994 issue of the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (JMAG), Dr. Edgar Suter, Chairman of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research (DIPR), found evidence of "methodologic and conceptual errors," such as prejudicially truncated data and the listing of "the correct methodology which was described but never used by the authors." Moreover, the gun control researchers failed to consider and underestimated the protective benefits of guns. Dr. Suter writes: "The true measure of the protective benefits of guns are the lives and medical costs saved, the injuries prevented, and the property protected ' not the burglar or rapist body count. Since only 0.1 - 0.2 percent of defensive uses of guns involve the death of the criminal, any study, such as this, that counts criminal deaths as the only measure of the protective benefits of guns will expectedly underestimate the benefits of firearms by a factor of 500 to 1,000." In 1993, in his landmark and much cited NEJM article (and the research, again, heavily funded by the CDC), Dr. Kellermann attempted to show again that guns in the home are a greater risk to the victims than to the assailants. Despite valid criticisms by reputable scholars of his previous works (including the 1986 study), Dr. Kellermann ignored the criticisms and again used the same methodology. He also used study populations with disproportionately high rates of serious psychosocial dysfunction from three selected state counties, known to be unrepresentative of the general U.S. population. For example, 53 percent of the case subjects had a history of a household member being arrested, 31 percent had a household history of illicit drug use, 32 percent had a household member hit or hurt in a family fight, and 17 percent had a family member hurt so seriously in a domestic altercation that prompt medical attention was required. Moreover, both the case studies and control groups in this analysis had a very high incidence of financial instability. In fact, in this study, gun ownership, the supposedly high risk factor for homicide was not one of the most strongly associated factors for being murdered. Drinking, illicit drugs, living alone, history of family violence, living in a rented home were all greater individual risk factors for being murdered than a gun in the home. One must conclude there is no basis to apply the conclusions of this study to the general population.

Ian Taylor Remembered

Abstract: IAN TAYLOR WAS A KEY FIGURE IN THE POLITICALLY COMMITTED SOCIOLOGY THAT emerged in the 1960s. Radicalized, like so many intellectuals of his generation by the political flux of the time, he worked prolifically in the fields of criminology, politics, urban studies, sport, and popular culture. He was a polymath: he wrote on a wide array of subjects: soccer hooliganism, gun control, the Hillisborough disaster, glam rock, and money laundering among them; his most recent work included an article and consultancy on the Italian village planned in Manchester and his last piece, written from his hospital bed for the Times Literary Supplement, was on Canadian populism and the "common sense revolution." It is perhaps as a criminologist that he was best known. He was a founding member of the National Deviancy Symposium, that irreverent, anarchistic bunch of sociologists who got together in the late 1960s, rehearsing many of the themes and controversies later to be associated with postmodernism and revolutionizing criminology out of recognition. In 1973, he co-authored The New Criminology, which remains in print today, and in 1981, while a lecturer at Sheffield University, he published Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism, which forcefully argued the need for parties of the Left to take seriously the problems of crime, prefiguring much of the present shift in policy and debate. In the 1980s, while working in Canada, he began to develop a criminology that firmly rooted the problem of crime within the wider political economy -- a position that became the hallmark of his later work. But his interests were not solely theoretical. In recent years, following the Dunblane massacre, he became active both politicall y and as a researcher in the campaign to control gun ownership. Numerous packages containing bullets, used syringes, and decaying meat arrived at his address at Salford University. Ian was unperturbed and suggested to the police that it was obviously from a distraught member of the gun lobby. They, for their part, with characteristic aplomb asked whether he had thought of the possibility that the packages might emanate from a disgruntled colleagues or perhaps his wife! The police eventually came round to his point of view, intercepting and searching all his mail and finally arresting the irate gun enthusiast. Ian Taylor's latest book, and to my mind the best, is Crime in Context, published in 1999. In this he traces not only how market societies generate crime, but also how crime itself can be seen as operating as a marketplace. The book received widespread critical acclaim and was awarded the prestigious Michael J. Hindelang award of the American Society of Criminology. Ian Taylor was born in 1944 in Sheffield and educated at the Universities of Durham and Cambridge, returning to Durham to complete his Ph. …

Should Physicians Routinely Inquire about Guns?: No: This inquiry is an invasion of privacy

Abstract: This sort of inquiry, on a routine basis, is not part of science or medicine but the overt promotion of a political agenda on the part of physicians who wittingly or unwittingly are functioning as agents of the state rather than as advocates for their patients.1 Physicians participating in this political campaign will be breaching medical ethics and committing boundary violations by using their authority to violate their patients' privacy and advance a political agenda. As Timothy Wheeler explained,2 A patient who seeks medical or psychiatric treatment is often in a uniquely dependent, anxious, vulnerable, and exploitable state. In seeking help, patients assume positions of relative powerlessness in which they expose their dignity, and reveal intimacies of body or mind, or both. Thus compromised, the patient relies heavily on the physician to act only in the patient's interest and not the physician's. From time immemorial, patient privacy has been an ethical concept that, up until now, was fundamental to the patient-doctor relationship. With the problems we have seen in terms of preserving the confidentiality of medical records in the electronic age, asking about guns will be received by patients with great concern and trepidation. Patients may ultimately become reluctant to seek medical care and to talk candidly with their physicians; this reluctance, in turn, may be detrimental to their physical and mental health. The other side, I'm sure, will respond by reciting a litany of gun-violence statistics, including accidental, tragic shootings of children; yet, supporters of gun control refuse to acknowledge effective gun-safety programs such as the National Rifle Association's Eddie Eagle, which simply instructs children, “If you see a gun: Stop! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.” As a result of such programs, since 1930, the annual number of fatal firearm accidents has declined by more than half, even though there are twice as many people and 4 times as many firearms today.3 The number of gun crimes has also fallen, despite an increase in gun ownership. Gun availability does not cause crime—criminal minds do! And what about risk management? Are physicians going to also inquire about the storage of household cleaning agents, or matches, and about swimming pools? If not, why not? More youngsters die annually of poisoning, fires, and drowning than of firearm injuries. According to the ethics of Hippocrates, ethics that have served the medical profession well for 2,500 years, physicians must place the interest of their individual patients above that of the collective, whether it is the state, “the greater good of society,” or any political campaign hatched by their professional organizations. This campaign is gun control politics at work, promulgated by organized medicine to score public relation points at the expense of their patients' privacy. It is a low point for the medical profession in general and medical ethics in particular.4 Physicians should have learned the lessons from medical history. In Medical Science Under Dictatorship, Leo Alexander, the chief US medical consultant at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, examined “the process by which the German medical profession became a willing and unquestioning collaborator with the Nazis.” Medicine, more than any other profession, was heavily represented in the Nazi Party, which German physicians joined in droves. The first step taken by German doctors was to collect data on their patients and then release it to the state. “Corrosion,” Alexander wrote, “begins in microscopic proportions.” From small beginnings, the values of an entire society may be subverted, leading to the horrors of a police state.5 Have organized medicine and rank-and-file physicians learned the lessons of history? To our peril, apparently not!