Annually firearms kill more than 30,000 individuals and injure more than 50,000 individuals, resulting in costs of $45 million to over $1 billion in the United States. Traditionally firearms were addressed as a criminal justice problem, but for more than 30 years, public health and injury prevention specialists have worked to address the problem of firearm injuries through surveillance, education, research, and laws. Firearm legislation is multijurisdictional across the federal, state, and local governments, but the majority of activity is at the state levels. Firearm injury prevention efforts must navigate a politically diverse arena dominated by social regulatory politics in order to affect change. This study presents newly analyzed data on seven firearms laws: child access prevention, minimum age to purchase/possess a handgun, stand your ground, large capacity ammunition limits, Saturday night specials and assault weapons bans. A goal of the study was to create a 50 states longitudinal dataset in order to investigate the relationship between internal state political and demographics characteristics and firearm policy diffusion. The study findings are presented across three manuscripts, which address the trends of enactment of the laws, the analysis of the six gun control laws, and an analysis of one permissive firearm law (stand your ground laws). A panel data set was created from publicly available sources for each state from 1993 to 2010. General Estimating Equations (GEE) were used to evaluate the impact of citizen pressures, lobby pressures, legislative characteristics, and demographic data on the adoption of the seven selected laws. Study findings identified waves of adoption of the firearm laws across politically and demographically similar states in the early study years (1993-94) and the later study years (2005-10). States with Democratic state governments were more likely to pass gun control laws while states with Republican state governments were more likely to pass stand your ground laws. Poverty was also a statistically significant variable for the passage of the laws: states with lower poverty levels were more likely to pass gun control laws while states with higher poverty levels were more likely to pass stand your ground laws. However, aside from legislation to ensure consistency with federal law, most states are not responding to the public call for regulation as measured by the enactment of the selected laws. Instead, a trend of permissive firearms laws is rapidly spreading across the 50 states. Firearm injury prevention advocates should not be deterred by political environments. Rather, they should respond to cues to optimize change for injury prevention. Understanding mechanisms for firearm policy adoption, such as the role of legislative characteristics may help researchers and firearm injury prevention advocates focus limited resources to introduce bills in policy-friendly states. This dissertation contributes to the firearm injury prevention literature by applying policy diffusion theories and analysis techniques to firearm injury prevention efforts. Findings support the literature that internal state political and demographic characteristics guide the adoption of firearm laws. / Public Health

Community firearm violence in the United States (US), defined as intentional fatal and nonfatal shootings that result from interpersonal violence, has a disproportionately negative impact on racialized and minoritized groups. Recent research indicates that areas with limited economic prospects, higher concentrations of poverty, and residential instability tend to experience increased firearm violence. These factors are commonly recognized as social determinants of health. It is hypothesized that these determinants are symptoms of deeper upstream factors, including structural racism and longstanding structural disinvestment. This dissertation aims to deepen the understanding of current trends in community firearm violence, especially in relation to the historical context of structural racism. This will be achieved through a systematic review of existing literature and comprehensive empirical research. This dissertation is divided into five chapters, beginning with an introductory overview. The second chapter presents a systematic review of the literature, focusing on various methodologies for measuring structural racism and estimating its association with community firearm violence (Aim 1). Chapters 3 and 4 involve empirical analyses. In Chapter 3, I develop and apply a structural racism index to study its relationship with community firearm violence in U.S. cities (Aim 2). This investigation spans three distinct historical periods of structural racism, testing its long-term impact on the risk of community firearm violence. Chapter 4 examines the impact of hot spot policing specifically through the use of stop, question, and frisk (SQF) on community firearm violence (Aim 3). It is posited that SQF perpetuates structural racism by disproportionately targeting minority communities, thereby contributing to the cyclical nature of violence within these neighborhoods. The aim is to determine if there is a measurable relationship between this single aspect of structural racism and the occurrence of community firearm violence in New York City. The final chapter, Chapter 5, synthesizes the research findings and situates them within the wider epidemiological discourse on firearm violence. The results from Aim 1 of this study highlight a range of methods used to measure structural racism, all consistently demonstrating a positive association between structural racism and the incidence of community firearm violence. The Aim 2 findings demonstrate a statistically significant association between historical structural racism and increased incidence of community firearm violence in cities. Notably, the study identified significant associations between each of the three historical periods under study and a heightened risk of community firearm violence over time. Finally, Aim 3 reveals that stop, question, and frisk practices are statistically significantly associated with an increase in community firearm violence in block groups in New York City, even after controlling for additional indicators of structural racism and spatial dependencies. In conclusion, this dissertation demonstrates a consistent and significant relationship between historical structural racism and the incidence of community firearm violence. Structural racism has a long-standing and widespread influence on community firearm violence, evident across various cities and scales, from broad systems of inequality to individual neighborhoods. This reality necessitates comprehensive, well-targeted interventions by policymakers and community leaders to tackle the deep-rooted causes of violence.

The Second Amendment is a particularly challenging constitutional provision to judge as to what it protects and what it does not. I propose that the Militia Clause, the object of the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment, provides insight as to the minimum scope of the right, as opposed to maximum scope cautioned against by the Court in Heller. Combining a joint reading of the Second Amendment and Militia Clause with current precedent through Bruen, I construct a five-stage process for evaluating firearms laws consistent with history, text, and tradition, as mandated by Bruen. This process is illustrated by comparing and contrasting eighteen types of firearms laws from twelve states, three per census region, and a test of the five-stage process on a select law from each set of three states, comparing the current precedent with the five-stage approach (Militia-Clause-Added, MCA) for potential variation in conclusion if select laws were subjected to judicial review. A truly historical evaluation is foregone in favor of further defining what history is governing, the five-stage evaluative method providing a formula to input relevant factors including appropriate history, and providing structure to the evaluation of firearms laws and regulations in lieu of the informal scrutiny standards outmoded by Bruen.

Recently, empirical attention has been directed toward understanding public opinion about gun control laws. Despite this focus, three gaps are evident in extant scholarship. First, few current examinations have relied on recently collected, national data to explore predictors of public attitudes. Second, relatively little work systematically investigates whether type of weapon bans (e.g. handgun versus semi-automatic weapon) affects public support for a given gun control initiative. Third, and importantly, the general focus in prediction support for gun control measures has been on social and demographic factors. Little is known from a theoretical perspective about how other variables - such as knowledge of Constitutinal issues or perceptions of the U.S. Supreme Court - affect public attitudes toward gun control. Using national poll data collected in 2011 by Time magazine, this study addresses these research gaps by estimating several logistic regression analyses. Research and policy implications are discussed. / by Elizabeth Borkowski. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Dans ce mémoire, les armes à feu impliquées dans la commission de crimes sont étudiées à partir de leur mobilité spatio-temporelle. Afin d’opérationnaliser cette mobilité, deux mesures spécifiques ont été créées, soit le « temps-au-recouvrement » et la « distance-au-recouvrement ». Ces mesures permettent d’analyser les répercussions des armes à feu en circulation illégale sur la formation du marché illégal dans le territoire québécois. Des analyses descriptives ont d’abord été effectuées dans cette étude à partir de trois segments de la banque de données québécoise des armes à feu recouvrées : la banque complète, les armes à feu impliquées dans la commission de crimes et les armes volées. Le sous-groupe de 501 d’armes à feu volées est le seul qui a été soumis à des analyses de régressions multiples sur la mobilité puisque ces armes sont les seules permettant d’avoir plus d’informations sur leur mouvement antérieur au recouvrement par les autorités policières. Les résultats montrent qu’il y a une mobilité spatio-temporelle plus importante chez les armes de poing, celles impliquées dans les crimes de marché, les armes non-enregistrées ainsi que celles sans restriction. Afin de mieux comprendre la dynamique des armes volées, le statut de l’enregistrement s’avère la variable la plus importante puisqu’elle permet de déterminer à quel point ces armes vont être enracinées dans le marché illégal au Québec. Effectivement, les armes volées non-enregistrées sont plus susceptibles de converger vers les marchés criminels, ce qui augmente considérablement leur « durée » de vie et leur mobilité dans la province. / In this study, the spatial and temporal mobility of crime guns in the province of Quebec are examined. This study proposes two new measures to assess the mobility of stolen firearms: time-to-find and distance-to-recovery. These new measures allow an assessment of the impacts of guns that were in illegal circulation in regards of the constitution of the illegal firearms market in the province of Quebec. Descriptive analyzes were first conducted in this study on three segments of the data set obtained from la Banque de données québécoise sur les armes à feu recouvrées : the complete data set, the crime guns and stolen firearms. The spatial and temporal mobility analyzes were only applied to the subgroup of 501 stolen firearms because these guns have more detailed characteristics of their movement before their recovery by judicial authorities. Results show that stolen firearms that have greater mobility in time and space in the province of Quebec are handguns, firearms involved in market crimes, non-registered and non-restricted firearms. However, in order to better understand the dynamics of stolen firearms in the territory, the registration status of a stolen firearm is the most important indicator of the mobility because, to some extent, it determines how these guns will be rooted in the illegal market. The non-registered stolen firearms in this study are in fact more likely to concentrate in the criminal markets, which significantly increase their "lifecycle” and mobility in the province of Quebec.

Dans ce mémoire, les armes à feu impliquées dans la commission de crimes sont étudiées à partir de leur mobilité spatio-temporelle. Afin d’opérationnaliser cette mobilité, deux mesures spécifiques ont été créées, soit le « temps-au-recouvrement » et la « distance-au-recouvrement ». Ces mesures permettent d’analyser les répercussions des armes à feu en circulation illégale sur la formation du marché illégal dans le territoire québécois. Des analyses descriptives ont d’abord été effectuées dans cette étude à partir de trois segments de la banque de données québécoise des armes à feu recouvrées : la banque complète, les armes à feu impliquées dans la commission de crimes et les armes volées. Le sous-groupe de 501 d’armes à feu volées est le seul qui a été soumis à des analyses de régressions multiples sur la mobilité puisque ces armes sont les seules permettant d’avoir plus d’informations sur leur mouvement antérieur au recouvrement par les autorités policières. Les résultats montrent qu’il y a une mobilité spatio-temporelle plus importante chez les armes de poing, celles impliquées dans les crimes de marché, les armes non-enregistrées ainsi que celles sans restriction. Afin de mieux comprendre la dynamique des armes volées, le statut de l’enregistrement s’avère la variable la plus importante puisqu’elle permet de déterminer à quel point ces armes vont être enracinées dans le marché illégal au Québec. Effectivement, les armes volées non-enregistrées sont plus susceptibles de converger vers les marchés criminels, ce qui augmente considérablement leur « durée » de vie et leur mobilité dans la province. / In this study, the spatial and temporal mobility of crime guns in the province of Quebec are examined. This study proposes two new measures to assess the mobility of stolen firearms: time-to-find and distance-to-recovery. These new measures allow an assessment of the impacts of guns that were in illegal circulation in regards of the constitution of the illegal firearms market in the province of Quebec. Descriptive analyzes were first conducted in this study on three segments of the data set obtained from la Banque de données québécoise sur les armes à feu recouvrées : the complete data set, the crime guns and stolen firearms. The spatial and temporal mobility analyzes were only applied to the subgroup of 501 stolen firearms because these guns have more detailed characteristics of their movement before their recovery by judicial authorities. Results show that stolen firearms that have greater mobility in time and space in the province of Quebec are handguns, firearms involved in market crimes, non-registered and non-restricted firearms. However, in order to better understand the dynamics of stolen firearms in the territory, the registration status of a stolen firearm is the most important indicator of the mobility because, to some extent, it determines how these guns will be rooted in the illegal market. The non-registered stolen firearms in this study are in fact more likely to concentrate in the criminal markets, which significantly increase their "lifecycle” and mobility in the province of Quebec.

Thèse : Histoire : Paris 4 : 1990.

The research project investigated the impact of the Firearms Control Act (FCA) 60 of 2000 in restricting gun ownership for at-risk individuals in the Pretoria North Firearm Registration Centre (FRC) policing area and identified prevention strategy as well as specific factors that contributed to this problem. Secondary prevention focuses on situational factors that reduces the means and opportunity for at-risk people to commit crime and can be applied in restricting firearms from at-risk individuals. One hundred and thirteen legal firearm owners in the Pretoria North FRC policing area responded to the questionnaire schedule. Data was also collected through interviews with Designated Firearm Officers (DFO) and court officials in that area. Specific factors have been identified that contribute to firearms landing in the hands of at-risk individuals in the Pretoria North FRC policing area. They are among others, poor administration of some sections of the FCA like background checks and section 102 and 103 unfitness declarations. The role of the DFO in continuous public education program on the FCA is also invaluable. The same goes to the general public s involvement in the identification of at-risk individuals. The South African Police Service management needs to address issues within the police service such as additional trained personnel, allocation of sufficient logistical resources like vehicles, computers and scanners to ensure effectiveness in restricting firearms from at-risk individuals. Several secondary role players have been identified that should work closely with the primary role players to address this problem. The recommendations drawn from conclusions as well as the inter-departmental role of all the different role players may assist in restricting firearms from at-risk individuals. / Police Practice / M.Tech. (Policing)

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for a Master's Degree in Technology: Business Administration, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / The purpose of this research is to compare the firearm legislation between South Africa and selected countries and to determine if multiple firearm owners and firearm dealers are affected in terms of economics, and changes to their business environment by the new Firearms Act, 60 of 2000.The sub-objectives of this study are as follows: - To compare firearm regulations between countries that were affected by access to firearms and deaths as a result thereof; - To evaluate the economic effect of the legislation on a firearm dealer/dedicated hunter/dedicated sportsman/collector of firearms; - To evaluate the economic effect of the restrictions on the number of firearms an owner may legally possess; - To evaluate the economic impact of the cost involved for re-licensing a firearm; - To establish how the firearm business environment is affected according to the political, economic, social, technological and ecological influences on business strategies. The research does not include firearm owners with hand weapons or individuals with fewer than four firearms. It also excludes South African Police Service and South African Defence Force weapons, as these are not usually provided to the public. The aim of this research is to establish if there is an effect on the dealers and hunters in the firearm industry in South Africa with the advent of the Firearms Control Act 60 of 2000. The world trend changed firearm legislation world-wide and South Africa followed. In the following chapter the global and South African issue is discussed with some of the arguments on why the firearm legislation had to change.

How does body armor and posture affect Soldier marksmanship? The Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) has significantly improved Soldier combat survivability, but in what ways does it change rifleman lethality? Moreover, can we model these effects so as to develop better tactics and operational plans? This study quantifies the effects of Soldier equipment on lethality through multi-factor logistic regression using data from range experiments with the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), at Fort Riley, Kansas. The designed experiment of this study estimates the probability of a qualified US rifleman hitting a human target. It uses the rifleman's equipment, posture, Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), and experience along with the target's distance, time exposure and silhouette presentation as input factors. The resulting family of mathematical models provides a Probability of Hit prediction tailored to a shooter-target scenario. The study shows that for targets closer than 150 meters, Soldiers shot better while wearing body armor than they did without. Body armor had a negative effect for targets farther than 200 meters, and this could significantly impact the employment of the Squad Designated Marksman. The study also shows that the kneeling posture is an effective technique and recommends standardized training on this method of firing.