Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

In 2008, the Supreme Court announced its decision in the landmark Second Amendment case, D.C. v. Heller. In its decision, the Court construed the scope of the right to bear arms for the first time. To that end, the Court found that the right to arms is an individual right, unconnected with military service. In this essay, I use the opinion of the Court and the dissents thereto as a lens by which to view the history and historiography of the right to bear arms, as well as the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on the subject. In the course of this analysis, I argue that there are numerous problems with the Court's reasoning, as well as that of the dissents. Further, complications and ambiguities in the historical record have contributed to the misunderstanding of the original meaning of the Second Amendment and its appropriate interpretation as part of the Constitutional text. I argue that the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment is one that construes the right as robust and individual, worthy of its place in the Bill of Rights, but certainly subject to reasonable regulation.

This thesis analyzes the policy effects of several state gun control restrictions in the United States. The study employs the data of gun related crimes and gun control restrictions from Statistical Abstract of Criminal Justice Handbook through five years (from 1995 to 2000). Although many scholars have studied previously gun control policy effects on crimes, they always focus on the total violence level and ignore to compare the policy effects of different gun control laws. The present study examines intensively gun related crimes and compares several gun control policies. Pooled data is employed to access the effects of gun control restrictions, and it is another advancement based on previous studies, which always use cross-sectional or time series designs. These findings partially reject the previous conclusions that gun control laws have no effects on violence and for gun related homicides and robberies; several gun control restrictions like registration, license, and waiting period show some significant policy effects. Contrary to the past study, the permit to purchase, which has been regarded as the most efficient law, produces no significant policy effects. Sale report to police and certain firearm prohibited also have no significant effects. Among control variables, race and urban population exert the obvious influences on the gun violence, and specifically, the density of population affects the gun related homicides and high school graduates affects the gun related robberies. Implications of these findings and potential for future research are discussed.

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This thesis determined the feasibility of developing a 16-inch, gun-launched anti-satellite weapon. The general performance capability of rocket-and scramjet-boosted, gun-launched vehicles is examined with regards to propelling a miniature homing vehicle to a satellite intercept altitude. Rocket and scramjet boost vehicle performance is modeled and optimum trajectories are determined. A low gun elevation at launch and a pop-up manuever are required to maximize the scramjet boost vehicle acceleration potential. The rocket boost vehicle is capable of intercepting a low altitude satellite without a pop-up manuever from a gun elevation of 45 degrees. Both boost methods provide apogees consistent with the intercept of known Soviet Electronic Intelligence Ocean Reconnaissance satellites, EORSAT, and Radar Ocean Reconnaissance satellites, RORSAT.

specialcollections@tulane.edu / Wheelchair Life: Disability and Black Survival in the Afterlife of Gun Violence is about how gunshot survivors in New Orleans manage their lives and shape their identities after being shot and paralyzed. Following a group of wheelchair users with gunshot induced spinal cord injuries who self-organized into a social network around their devotion to New Orleans parading traditions, this ethnography explores how disability identities are mobilized within the existing stakes of Black survival in the United States. In the racially segregated city of New Orleans, urban gun violence and the wider traumas that are experienced in its aftermath are an immeasurable disruption to Black lives and Black futures. A focus on gun homicides has ignored the life worlds of the injured, particularly those of young Black men, whose experiences are obscured by the legacies and continued violence of anti-Black racism and criminalization of the urban poor, which renders gunshot survivors as guilty or deserving of the violence that happened to them. What does it mean to survive when your survival is a problem both in the sense that you were not expected to survive and your status (as a survivor and a victim) is unacknowledged? “Wheelchair Life” details the varied ways spinal cord injured gunshot survivors contend and contest these realities of social neglect and invisibility, by claiming new forms of mobility and disabled embodiments in public space and forging new modes of caretaking and relationships that enable the “wheelchair life” to be about more than just surviving. / 1 / Daniella Santoro

Thesis (M.M. (Security))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, 2013. / This study is about the challenges inherent in the implementation of the firearms control policy in the management and control of Estate Firearms. The interest in the phenomenon emerged in the midst of the recently developed new Firearms Control Act, 2000 (Act No. 60 of 2000). Amongst other things, this policy sought to facilitate the prevention of the proliferation of firearms that in most instances eventually become available for the commission of violent crimes. Despite this development, a gap has been identified that firearms owned and left by deceased persons are not properly managed and controlled. In order to unravel the challenges the South African Police Service is confronted with in implementing the firearms control policy the study resorted to using the qualitative. An interpretive approach blended with descriptive study was used in order to generate deeper understanding of issues investigated. The research environments were the South African Police Service, the Department of Home Affairs and the Department of Justice & Constitutional Development within the Master of the High Court: South Gauteng. The research established that although some measures were put in place to implement the firearms control policy, there still are many challenges such as: monitoring and evaluation, poor management of systems, insufficient outreach and awareness rousing and the lack of enforcement by all the role players as identified in the study. A Inter-Agency Co-creation Model is also proposed as a means to consolidate suggestions that were presented by respondents. Further research is recommended into: • A quantitative study be done on the same topic. • The management of the EFRS and its impact on the implementation of the Firearms Control Policy.

The transverse emittance is one of the most important quantities which characterize the quality of an electron source. For high quality experiments low beam emittance is required. By means of theoretical considerations and simulation calculations we have studied how the emittance of the Rossendorf superconducting radio-frequency photoelectron source (SRF gun) can be minimized. It turned out that neither a solenoid magnet nor the effect of space charge forces is needed to create a pronounced emittance minimum. The minimum appears by just adjusting the starting phase of the electron bunch with respect to the RF phase of the gun in a suitable way. Investigation of various correlations between the properties of the beam particles led to an explanation on how the minimum comes about. It is shown that the basic mechanism of minimization is the fact that the longitudinal properties of the particles (energy) are strongly influenced by the starting phase. Due to the coupling of the longitudinal and transverse degrees of freedom by the relativistic equation of motion the transverse degrees of freedom and thereby the emittance can be strongly influenced by the starting phase as well. The results obtained in this study will be applied to minimize the emittance in the commissioning phase of the SRF gun.