Showing papers on "Gun control published in 2017"

Public Opinion About Gun Control Post–Sandy Hook:

Abstract: I use data from a national public opinion poll conducted 4 months after the mass shooting of teachers and students in Sandy Hook Elementary School to analyze the content and predictors of public op...

Mass Shootings and Public Support for Gun Control

Abstract: The recent spate of mass public shootings in the United States raises important questions about how these tragic events might impact mass opinion and public policy. Integrating research on focusing events, contextual effects and perceived threat, this article stipulates that residing near a mass shooting should increase support for gun control by making the threat of gun violence more salient. Drawing upon multiple data sources on mass public shootings paired with large-N survey data, it demonstrates that increased proximity to a mass shooting is associated with heightened public support for stricter gun control. Importantly, the results show that this effect does not vary by partisanship, but does vary as a function of salience-related event factors, such as repetition, magnitude and recency. Critically, the core result is replicated using panel data. Together, these results suggest a process of context-driven policy feedback between existing gun laws, egregious gun violence and demand for policy change.

Testing Theories of Gun Policy Preferences Among Blacks, Latinos, and Whites in America*

Abstract: Objective Research examining the factors shaping gun policy attitudes has focused on the general population or whites. Little is known about how self-interest, political values, or racial prejudice shape the gun policy preferences of minorities. We seek to assess the effect of self-interest, political values, and racial prejudice on the gun policy attitudes of whites, Latinos, and blacks. We also introduce a measure of prejudice difference in group violence—which has not been previously used in the literature on gun policy opinion. Methods We use data from a new survey (2015) and analyze whites, blacks, and Latinos separately. Results We find that many of the drivers of support for gun control found in the general population apply to minorities as well, but the substantive effects vary across groups. Similar to prior general population findings, we find that for all groups concern about crime is associated with more support for gun control, and that gun ownership, being the victim of a crime, and conservative political values are associated with less support. Conclusion In contrast, we find that racial prejudice is negatively correlated with support for gun control among whites and Latinos, while one type of racial prejudice—racial resentment—increases support for gun control among blacks.

Academic Public Health and the Firearm Crisis: An Agenda for Action

Abstract: The authors reflect on the need for members of the academic public health community in America to develop a social action strategy for dealing with a firearms-related crisis in the U.S. as of 2017, and it mentions gun control initiatives, business plans, and statistics regarding firearms-related deaths and suicides in America since 1900. U.S. President Donald Trump's views about gun rights are examined, along with collaborations and firearm research and scholarship in the country.

The impact of the Orlando mass shooting on fear of victimization and gun-purchasing intentions: Not what one might expect

Abstract: Mass public shootings are typically followed by a spike in gun sales as well as calls for stricter gun control laws. What remains unclear is whether the spike in gun sales is motivated by increased threat perceptions or by concerns about gun control, or whether the sales are mainly driven by non-owners purchasing guns or gun owners adding to their collection. Two surveys of gun owners and non-owners, conducted immediately before and after the Orlando shooting, allowed us to assess its impact on threat perceptions and on gun-purchasing intentions. Although there was a minor impact on threat perceptions of non-owners, neither group reported any increased gun-purchasing intentions or an increased need of a gun for protection and self-defense. We suggest that these responses are representative for the majority of Americans and, therefore, people who are influenced by mass shootings to buy guns are probably an atypical minority.

Addressing the Wicked Problem of American Gun Violence: Consumer Interest Groups as Macro-social Marketers

Abstract: Building on work on social and macro-social marketing, we provide an empirical account of ways in which American gun violence prevention groups (GVPGs) act as macro-social marketers as they address the wicked problem of gun violence, which they define as deaths and injuries with firearms. We find that, as a collective, GVPGs attempt to change the culture related to guns by targeting up-, mid-, and downstream agents. We contribute to theory by (1) expanding the concept of macro-social marketing beyond government entities to include consumer interest groups and collectives; (2) introducing internal marketing as a macro-social marketing tool critical for macro-social marketers dependent largely on volunteers; (3) elucidating ways that macro-social marketers can accomplish upstream changes indirectly, by encouraging consumers and citizens to influence policy makers; and (4) revealing marketing tactics that can be leveraged across up-, mid-, downstream, and internal efforts.

Crime and Partisanship: How Party ID Muddles Reality, Perception, and Policy Attitudes on Crime and Guns*

Abstract: Objective In this article we theorize that partisanship is such a strong filter of information that it can affect how individuals make sense of their lived environment and how the geographic experience informs policy attitudes. As a result, although “independents” tend to be less politically knowledgeable and have less developed policy opinions, their policy attitudes on gun control are more informed by their lived experience than partisans. Methods We use data from an original survey of American adults about crime and gun control linked to crime statistics from the FBI. Results We find that stronger partisanship leads to resistance to information from the lived environment in the development of policy attitudes about gun control. Conclusion Democrats and Republicans have very different views about guns and, generally, these priorities are relatively unaffected by contextual experience; however, gun policy attitudes of independents are highly correlated with the level of gun crime in their geographic context.

The National Context of Wicked Problems: Comparing Policies on Gun Violence in the US, Canada, and Australia

Abstract: Scholars and practitioners have always been dogged by problems that are so complex that no practical solution appears to be possible. These have been referred to in the academic literature as “wicked” problems. However, it is possible that a problem’s “wickedness” depends in part on its context and on the vantage point of the observer, meaning that at least some aspects of wickedness can be thought of as being relative rather than absolute. In this article, the complex policy problem of gun control is examined across multiple national contexts to show how a problem that is perceived as being wicked in one jurisdiction can be seen as manageable in another.

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

Abstract: Objective In 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. Method We 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. Results Our 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. Conclusion State 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.

Project safe neighborhoods in Chicago: Looking back a decade later

Abstract: Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a federally funded initiative that brings together federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce gun violence in urban centers. In Chicago, PSN implemented supply-side gun policing tactics, enhanced federal prosecution of gun crimes, and notification forums warning offenders of PSN’s heightened criminal sanctions. Prior evaluations provide evidence that PSN initiatives have reduced crime in the first few years of their operation. But over a decade after the program was established, we still know little about whether these effects are sustained over an extended period of time. This Article examines PSN Chicago, an anti-violence program in operation since 2002. Consistent with a previous evaluation, we find that several program components were associated with reductions in violence in the initial target

From depression to youth school gun carrying in America: Social connectedness may help break the link

Abstract: School shootings are a serious US problem. Except for restricting the access to firearms, previous research has not identified mediating factors that block the pathway leading from adolescent depression to gun carrying and violence. Our examination of 1,878 adolescents in Boston public schools finds that adolescent depression is associated with carrying guns to school and that social connectedness—positive relationships between the youth and adults—may serve as a mediator between adolescent depression and taking guns to school. Parallel to gun control policy, reinforcing social connectedness may be an effective strategy to prevent mentally distressed youths from taking guns to school.

Concealed Ownership: Americans’ Perceived Comfort Sharing Gun Ownership Status with Others

Abstract: While much is known about how Americans feel about guns and gun control policy, less is known about how Americans perceive gun owners, or how gun owners and nonowners view themselves. The present study examines how comfortable individuals feel disclosing their gun ownership status with family, friends, coworkers, employers, doctors, teachers, police, and strangers. This article uses stigma theory as a guiding framework. Data were obtained from a nationwide survey conducted in February 2016 of more than 250 current gun owners and more than 250 nonowners. Analyses utilize ordered logistic regression. Findings show that whites, older Americans, and those with more pro-gun attitudes express more comfort sharing whether they own a gun. Respondents also indicate that familiarity with the individual requesting gun ownership information and concern over how that person might react are key factors that affect comfort with disclosure. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights

Abstract: I INTRODUCTION In its important and controversial 2008 decision on the meaning of the Second Amendment, District of Columbia v. Heller, (1) the Supreme Court ruled that average citizens have a constitutional right to possess handguns for personal self-protection in the home. (2) Yet in establishing this right, the Court also made clear that the right was by no means unlimited, and that it was subject to an array of legal restrictions, including: "prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." (3) The Court also said that certain types of especially powerful weapons might be subject to regulation, (4) along with allowing laws regarding the safe storage of firearms. (5) Further, the Court referred repeatedly to gun laws that had existed earlier in American history as a justification for allowing similar contemporary laws, (6) even though the court, by its own admission, did not undertake its own "exhaustive historical analysis" of past laws. (7) In so ruling, the Court brought to the fore and attached legal import to the history of gun laws. This development, when added to the desire to know our own history better, underscores the value of the study of gun laws in America. In recent years, new and important research and writing has chipped away at old myths to present a more accurate and pertinent sense of our gun past. (8) Researchers and authors including Saul Cornell, Alexander DeConde, Craig Whitney, and Adam Winkler have all published important work making clear that gun laws are by no means a contemporary phenomenon. (9) Yet even now, far too few understand or appreciate the fact that though gun possession is as old as America, so too are gun laws. But there's more: gun laws were not only ubiquitous, numbering in the thousands, but also spanned every conceivable category of regulation, from gun acquisition, sale, possession, transport, and use, including deprivation of use through outright confiscation, to hunting and recreational regulations, to registration and express gun bans. For example, the contemporary raging dispute over the regulation of some semi-automatic weapons that began in late 1980s was actually presaged seven decades earlier, when at least seven states banned such weapons entirely--a fact that seems to have been unknown to modern analysts until now. A vast newly compiled dataset of historical gun laws reveals that the first gun grabbers (as contemporary gun rights advocates like to label gun control proponents) were not Chablis-drinking liberals of the 1960s, but rum-guzzling pioneers dating to the 1600s. This historical examination is especially relevant to the modern gun debate because, at its core, that debate is typically framed as a fierce, zero-sum struggle between supporters of stronger gun laws versus supporters of gun rights (who, of course, largely oppose stronger gun laws--or so it is said). The zero-sum quality of this struggle posits that a victory for one side is a loss for the other, and vice versa. Yet history tells a very different story--that, for the first 300 years of America's existence, gun laws and gun rights went hand-in-hand. It is only in recent decades, as the gun debate has become more politicized and more ideological that this relationship has been reframed as a zero-sum struggle. The plethora of early gun laws herein described establish their prolific existence, but also validate the argument that gun rules and gun rights are by no means at odds. If the Supreme Court was indeed serious in saying that the provenance of gun regulations is relevant to the evaluation of contemporary laws, then this examination advances the Court's stated objective. The common notions that gun laws are largely a function of modern, industrial (or post-industrial) America, that gun laws are incompatible with American history and its practices or values, and that gun laws fundamentally collide with American legal traditions or individual rights, are all patently false. …

Gun owners, ethics, and the problem of evil: A response to the Las Vegas shooting

Abstract: This article examines the ways in which American gun owners deploy a particular ethical system in their responses to instances of mass gun violence. I argue that anthropology is uniquely situated to provide a better understanding of how this ethical system is produced, thereby allowing us to move beyond the falsely dichotomous terms of the gun control debate. Recently returned from a period of fieldwork with a gun rights activist community in San Diego, California, I use ethnographic data to show that owning a firearm brings with it an ethical system that makes the prospect of giving up guns in the aftermath of a mass shooting even less attractive to my informants. Furthermore, this article focuses on what has been called “the problem of evil” by demonstrating how my informants order the world into “good guys” and “bad guys.” This opposition becomes personified into a more general notion of good versus evil, thereby placing particular people in the category of the human and others in the category of the inhuman, or monstrous.

Rampage Shootings and Gun Control: Politicization and Policy Change in Western Europe

Abstract: The author sets out to unravel the factors that facilitate or impede the access of gun control to the political agenda in the wake of rampage shootings and analyses why some political debates lead to profound shifts of the policy status quo, while others peter out without any legislative reactions. In so doing, the book not only contributes to the theoretical literature on crisis-induced policy making, but also provides a wealth of case-study evidence on rampage shootings as empirical phenomena. In particular, the extent to which gun control gets politicized as a policy failure can either result from a bottom-up process (event severity and media pressure) or from a top-down logic (issue ownership and the electoral cycle). Including 12 case studies on the rampage shootings which have triggered a debate over the appropriateness of the affected countries´ gun policies, it illustrates that the way political processes unfold after rampage shootings depends strongly on specific causal configurations and draws comparisons between the cases covered in the book and the way rampage shootings are typically dealt with in the United States.

Close Range: Adolescent Predictors of Adult Firearms Ownership in the United States

Abstract: The goal of this study was to assert that gun ownership in the United States is partially explained by the transmission of a “gun culture” from one generation to the next. Using longitudinal data from the highlyregarded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we also make a contribution to the dated nature of the literature on the predictors of adult firearms ownership. This paper examines a model of adult gun ownership that includes measures of adolescent firearms access, the presence of adult males in the household, rural residency, age, race, and gender. Generally, adolescents who are African American, male, and living in rural areas were more likely to live in homes with firearms at Waves One and Two. Adolescents living in rural areas also demonstrated the likelihood of owning firearms as adults at Wave Three. As expected, access to firearms at Wave One increased the likelihood of access at Wave Two. Living with an adult male at Wave One had no effect on adolescent access to guns at Wave Two or Wave Three adult ownership. Adolescent access to guns at Waves One and Two increased the likelihood that they would own firearms as adults. Adolescent access to guns at Waves One and Two increased the likelihood that they would own firearms as adults at Wave Three. Findings suggest that cultural experiences surrounding gun ownership as adolescents increases the likelihood that firearms are owned as adults. ________________________________________________________________________

Guns, Crime, and Dangerous Minds: Assessing the Mental Health Turn in Gun Policy Discourse

Abstract: In the wake of recent, high profile mass shootings, the “deranged mind” has become a common discursive ground for policy makers, pundits, gun enthusiasts, and gun control advocates alike. Intereste...

A blockchain solution to gun control

Abstract: Blockchain technology can help reduce firearm related morbidity and mortality by improving background checks, gun registration, and decreasing economic pressures that increase interpersonal violence and suicides. In the US, firearm related deaths have reached epidemic levels. Suicides were the 10th leading cause of death and homicides the 17th leading cause of death in 2014, with the majority of these due to firearm injury [1] . The level of morbidity and mortality due to firearm injuries in the US is not showing a significant decline in spite of advances in medical care and technology. Death from firearms rightly has been recognized as a public health crisis [2] .

Since Sandy Hook: Strategic Maneuvering in the Gun Control Debate

Abstract: In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre President Barack Obama and Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association, engaged in a critical discussion on the future of gun reform. Obama started by assuming that guns are the cause of violence, thus advocating for more gun control. LaPierre argued for more guns to stop violence, assuming that guns are passive instruments without agency. Yet, despite the public outcry for action, the gun debate continues unabated. Using strategic maneuvering as an analytic framework, we assess both parties’ “reasonableness” in the public discussion and uncover the moves that preclude resolution. Neither Obama nor LaPierre was reasonable because they ignored the other’s starting point. We propose cross arguing, or arguing from an interlocutor’s starting point, as a method to move this and other intractable debates forward.

Unpacking Heat: Dueling Identities and Complex Views on Gun Control among Rural Police†

Abstract: Using 20 semistructured interviews with police officers from a rural sheriff's department, we present what we believe is the first in-depth examination of US rural officers’ views on gun control We find that officers possess complex views about gun control, reflecting their multiple identities as both gun-oriented rural citizens and police who seek to control the situations they encounter at work Specifically, we observed that rural police officers: (1) embrace a rural identity that implies support of gun rights over gun control; (2) report that police work experiences have caused them to embrace their police identity and to distance themselves from some gun-related aspects of rural identity (eg, they have lost interest in guns over time and have increasingly dissociated from gun-enthusiast peers); and (3) have learned to incorporate aspects of both identities into their views on gun control, universally advocating for some gun control measures in the name of community safety, but rejecting others as part of rural ideological views about personal freedom We discuss research and policy implications and suggest that policymakers must better appreciate the nuances and culture of rural places in order to gain rural citizens’ and rural police officers’ support for gun control legislation

The Past and Future of the Individual’s Rights to Arms

Abstract: The most recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada is now the deadliest mass shooting in modern United States history. In light of this tragedy, the call for stronger and reformed gun control has made its way to the forefront of political discussion. The desire for stricter gun laws, however, must be appropriately balanced against an individual’s right under the Second Amendment to bear arms. A 1996 *Georgia Law Review* Article by Nelson Lund examines the Second Amendment right and, particularly, how a court should go about examining which weapons are protected by the Second Amendment and which are not.

3D-Printed Firearms, Do-It-Yourself Guns, & the Second Amendment

Abstract: I INTRODUCTION In December 2012, Cody Wilson, a law student and self-described anarchist, (1) posted to the Internet free software that instructs a three-dimensional (3D) printer (2) to make plastic gun parts and a functional gun. At a demonstration widely covered by the media, Wilson fired a single bullet from a 3D-printed gun called "the Liberator." (3) He also posted to Kim Dotcom's website (4) the software (computer numerical code) that directs the printing. (5) Wilson and his supporters hailed this technological breakthrough as a giant step toward making firearms more publicly accessible and unsusceptible to regulation. (6) According to Wilson, "[I]n this world, in the world we want to create, anyone who wants access to a firearm can have access. Because we believe that is a right that no one should be allowed to infringe. Especially political actors.... Gun rights are human rights." (7) Wilson's demonstration was excoriated by gun control advocates because a 3D-printed plastic gun evades metal detection and is not traceable to its maker. (8) The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), the U.S. State Department's unit in charge of administering and enforcing the Arms Export Control Act, advised Wilson to remove his 3D firearm printing software from the Internet (9) because it "might" violate the Act as interpreted by the State Department's International Traffic in Arms Regulations. (10) The Regulations require State Department permission to export "defense articles." (11) Export means: (1) "sending or taking a defense article out of the United States in any manner, except by mere travel outside of the United States by a person whose personal knowledge includes technical data," and (2) "disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad." (12) "Defense article" means articles and items on the U.S. Munitions List. (13) The list includes "technical data," defined as "information in the form of blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation" and "software directly related to defense articles." (14) Therefore, posting to the Internet technical data related to manufacturing defense articles constitutes arms exporting under the Act. Wilson complied with DDTC's request. However, in the few days before he removed the software from the Internet, it was downloaded more than 100,000 times (15) and reposted to other websites. (16) Moreover, neither DDTC nor any other government agency prohibited Wilson from selling or giving his software away on a flash drive or via email as long as it is distributed in the United States. He formed a company, Defense Distributed, to sell 3D printers programmed to print firearms and firearms parts to Americans within the United States. Thus, anyone in the United States could easily obtain Wilson's 3D firearms printing software and hardware from Wilson himself, and a foreign person or entity could easily obtain these products through a willing U.S. intermediary, or from a foreign person who downloaded the software either from Wilson's website before he removed it from the Internet or from another website. (17) Wilson sought to overturn the removal order by obtaining a "commodity jurisdiction determination" (18) from DDTC. (19) Consequently, Wilson, on behalf of Defense Distributed, submitted ten "commodity jurisdiction requests" pertaining to his software for 3D printing firearms. (20) On September 25, 2014, (21) while its commodity jurisdiction requests were pending, Defense Distributed sought prepublication approval from the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (22) to publish on the Internet computer numerical control (23) files for producing "Ghost Gunner," a computer-instructed machine that mills a metal block--or, "blank"--into a lower receiver for an AR-15. (24) Uncertain as to whether Ghost Gunner was subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the Office of Prepublication and Security Review decided not to provide an opinion. …

Effects of Permit-to-Purchase Laws on State-Level Firearm Murder Rates

Abstract: The purpose of the present study is to determine if permit-to-purchase laws are significantly related to firearm murder rates. There has been very little research done on the effect of this particular gun control measure on crime. The present study differs from prior research in two ways. First, a large longitudinal data set is used, and data for all 50 states for the period 1980 to 2011 are examined. Second, a fixed effects model, controlling for both state and year effects is used. Results suggest that permit-to-purchase laws have no statistically-significant effect on state-level firearm murder rates. These results are contrary to the results found in prior studies on this topic.

Did Australia's ban on semiauto firearms really reduce violence? A critique of the Chapman et al. (2016) study

Abstract: In 1996 Australia implemented arguably the most ambitious gun control effort ever attempted, banning all semiauto rifles and shotguns and all pump-action rifles and shotguns, and buying the banned guns already in circulation. Chapman, Alpers, and Jones (2016) produced what is arguably the most extensive evaluation, concluding that the measure was a success. In fact, their own data indicated that the effort failed to reduce homicides, suicides, or unintentional firearms deaths. It is even questionable whether the effort reduced mass shootings, the problem that had triggered the gun control effort in the first place.

The Ethics of ‘Gun-Free Zones’

Abstract: I argue that location-specific gun bans (commonly known as “gun-free zones”) are typically unjust. If there is a right to carry firearms outside of one’s home, then the state cannot prohibit gun owners from carrying their firearms into certain areas without assuming a special duty of protecting those whom it coercively disarms. This task is practically impossible in most of the areas where guns are commonly banned. Gun owners should therefore be allowed to carry their guns in most public places, including college campuses.

Why So Silent? The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment Debate After DC v. Heller

Abstract: In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) the Supreme Court appeared to give to gun rights activists what they had campaigned for since the 1970s: a ruling that the Second Amendment encompassed an individual right to bear arms for the purposes of self-defence. But as the debate about gun rights returned to the top of the political agenda in the United States as a result of a series of high profile mass shootings in 2015 and the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, two things became clear: that Heller had not ended the political or legal debate about Second Amendment rights and that the Supreme Court had been noticeably absent from the debate since applying the Heller ruling to the states in McDonald v. Chicago in 2010. This article argues that, far from the success claimed by gun rights supporters, the consequences of Heller fundamentally undermined some of their key arguments and forced a shift in the nature of the debate. Both worked to keep the Supreme Court away from the debate at a time when greater clarity about the meaning of Heller was needed.

Firearm "Rights" in Canada: Law and History in the Debates over Gun Control

Abstract: This article explains why and how some Canadians have asserted a right to possess firearms from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It demonstrates that several late-nineteenth-century politicians asserted a right to arms for self-defence purposes based on the English Bill of Rights. This “right” was forgotten until opponents of gun control dusted it off in the late twentieth century. Firearm owners began to assert such a right based upon the English Bill of Rights, William Blackstone, and the English common law. Their claims remained judicially untested until recent cases finally undermined such arguments.

A Blockchain Solution to Gun Control

Abstract: Blockchain technology can be utilized to improve gun control without changing existing laws. Firearm related mortality is at epidemic levels in the United States and not only has a significant impact upon public health, it also creates a large financial burden. Suicide is the most common way guns kill. Through better gun tracking and improved screening of high risk individuals, this technological advance in distributed ledger technology will improve background checks on individuals and tracing of guns used in crimes.

Chapter 12 Descriptions of Gun Violence

Abstract: Homicide—the vast majority of it from gunfire—is the leading cause of death for black males aged 15–34. Very often, both the victim and perpetrator are young black men. During the late 1960s, political assassinations, civil unrest, and race riots swept the country. African Americans, long-tired of discrimination, inequality, and police brutality, rioted in cities across the nation. Out of this discontent, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense arose in California and spread nationwide. The Panthers, who opposed gun control, policed their communities openly carrying weapons as permitted by California state law. After a lengthy period of gun rights restrictions, pro-gun rights efforts have been ascendant and in response Congress has gradually weakened gun control laws. In 1986, Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which weakened regulation, oversight, and accountability of federally licensed gun owners (Winkler, 2011). In addition to hobbling a federal agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, gun sale law violation penalties were reduced. The National Rifle Association, now a powerful lobby against gun control, is financed in large part by gun manufactures. Its most generous gun industry backer is MidwayUSA, a distributor of high-capacity magazine clips. We identified several themes in the HPTN 064 participants’ descriptions of gun violence. For one, women talked about the frequency of gun violence in their communities. They also described it as occurring very near where they were, e.g., just outside one of their windows at home. War analogies were used to describe these women’s neighborhoods. Reasons for shootings were often included in the stories, as were methods used to avoid harm.