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Gun control

About: Gun control is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1211 publications have been published within this topic receiving 16516 citations. The topic is also known as: firearms control & gun law.


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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined patterns in gun sales following the passage of gun legislation and high profile mass shootings, using statewide data on gun transactions in Massachusetts from 2006 to 2016, and found that significantly larger increases occurred among first-time handgun buyers.
Abstract: Although gun control laws are intended to reduce exposure to gun violence in communities across the country, the passage of gun control laws is often linked to a substantial rise in the number of guns sold in the U.S. National polls indicate that most individuals purchase firearms for protection, but some cite the fear of gun-buying restrictions as the main reason for purchasing a gun. It is unclear what impact gun legislation has on patterns of gun sales, as mass shootings continue to bring the U.S. gun debate to the forefront. Using statewide data on gun transactions in Massachusetts from 2006 to 2016, we examined patterns in gun sales following the passage of gun legislation and high profile mass shootings. Specifically, we used three events to test and refine the argument during this time period: (1) the Newtown shooting, (2) the San Bernardino shooting, and (3) the passage of the 2014 Massachusetts Gun Violence Reduction Act. Results from these time-series analyses indicated different patterns in handgun sales, with significantly larger increases occurring among first-time handgun buyers. Our findings complement prior work explaining the impact of mass shootings and gun control laws on the exposure to guns in communities.

2 citations

01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago as mentioned in this paper, courts and scholars remain deeply conflicted not only about the specific rules of Second Amendment doctrine, but about what even counts as a Second Amendment argument.
Abstract: In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller 1 and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 2 courts and scholars remain deeply conflicted not only about the specific rules of Second Amendment doctrine, but about what even counts as a Second Amendment argument. An advocate might defend a particular gun control law on the basis that it effectively prevents violent deaths, only to be told that such a “freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach” is forbidden. 3 So the advocate might switch tacks and emphasize the law’s similarity to the kinds of historically well-established restrictions approved in Heller, 4 only to learn that it would be “weird” if a law’s constitutionality depended on its age. 5

2 citations

22 Dec 2000
TL;DR: Sung et al. as mentioned in this paper argue that despite the superiority of modern firearms as a means of self defense, citizens in different countries, indeed in the 50 states of the United States, face a wide variety of obstacles to buying, owning, or using guns.
Abstract: Experiments in tightening gun-control laws have eroded the right ofself defense and failed to stop serious crime. Reliable, durable, and easy to operate, modern firearms are the most effective means of self-defense ever devised. They require minimal maintenance and, unlike knives and other weapons, do not depend on an individual's physical strength for their effectiveness. Only a gun can allow a 110-pound woman to defend herself easily against a 200-pound man. Yet despite the superiority of firearms as a means of self defense, citizens in different countries, indeed in the 50 states of the United States, face a wide variety of obstacles--from restrictive licensing to outright bans--to buying, owning, or using guns. Two competing philosophies govern the private ownership of firearms. In nations where government has historically derived its powers from the consent of the governed, as in the United States and Switzerland, guns have been relatively lightly regulated and are owned by sizeable segments of the population. In nations where a central authority grants privileges to people, by history or custom, private firearms are subject to strict control or banned entirely. Because it is impossible to abolish crime, governments that make guns illegal force law-abiding citizens to chose between protecting themselves and their loved ones or obeying the law. Jeffrey R. Snyder, author of "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun," [1] argues that In countries with strict bans on firearms, when people choose to disregard the law and carry guns for self-defense, governments trying to enforce the law tend to turn political disagreements into theater by characterizing this violation of the law as a moral failing. This threatens individual liberty. As the authors of The Black Book of Communism document, Communist states invariably degenerated into blood-soaked terror because those who ran them had the power to exclude those who did not agree with them. Anyone who did not agree with the reigning ideology was a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly. [2] When it's illegal to possess the means to protect one's family, the needs of individuals are subordinated to the political wishes of the government. first labeled an enemy, and then declared a criminal, which leads to his exclusion from society. Exclusion very quickly turns into extermination... .After a relatively short period, society passes from the logic of political struggle to the process of exclusion, then to the ideology of elimination, and finally to the extermination of impure elements. At the end of the line, there are crimes against humanity. [3] Fudging Facts Many governments are currently experimenting with stricter controls over the purchase, possession, and use of firearms. While these countries have little in common politically or economically with Communist states, they share a tendency of Communist countries to demonize one segment of society: gun owners. Their gun-control programs portray gun owners as the enemy, criminalize their behavior, and paint those who would defend themselves as beyond the moral pale. Moreover, these governments energetically suppress facts showing that gun possession does reduce crime and that gun control fails to do so. In the late 1990s, the Canadian Department of Justice, for example, squelched an independent report it had commissioned on the efficacy of Canadian gun law because the data from its own report proved that Canadian gun laws had not reduced crime. And in 1996, after a gunman armed with a semiautomatic handgun shot and killed 16 children in a schoolyard in Dunblane, Scotland, the British Home Office misled the Dunblan e Enquiry commission with false claims about comparative rates of international gun violence. …

2 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202356
202294
202139
202043
201950
201860