Massacre tracks three intersecting narratives during and after a fictionalized recounting of the infamous Virginia Tech massacre. In each characters’ search of individual re-creation and autonomy, they encounter the failings of their person, their families, their institutions, and their country. Formed by the great and impossible trauma that bound them, massacre survivors Connor and Tara navigate the tricky and deceitful terrain of a marriage that should never have been.

Youth gun crime is an important public health issue that affects many communities in the United States. Since 2012, there were over 30,000 gun-related deaths in the United States. Gun violence remains the leading cause of death for young people ages 15-24. This phenomenological study examined single female parents' attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of the influences and causes of youth gun crimes. The purposive sample drew from 10 single female parents of youth ages 14-17 charged with gun crimes. Sutherlands' (1974) differential association theory provided the theoretical framework for the study. The mothers participated in a series of in-depth, face-to-face interviews; these data were analyzed via inductive and emergent analysis. Results of the study indicated that these 10 parents were attempting to convey the correct message to their children to avoid gun violence. This message did not resonate due to environmental peer influence. One finding was the perception that peer influence and environmental factors favorable to gun violence hampered the impact of the parents in getting the message to youths to avoid youth gun violence. The study findings suggest that curtailing gun violence will require collaboration amongst community members. In addition, mothers need to be armed with resources that address the issues of peer pressure and community violence. The results of the study can impact positive social change by informing parents to be more empowered to seek resources to combat peer pressure and gun crimes. For this reason, the study should provide information useful for individual families in curtailing youth gun violence, thus impacting the community and the lives of many.

The primary goal of this diploma thesis is to analyze online and social media communication of the Czech gun-owner platforms. The online space is where these platforms are able to gather support for their cause and influence the mainstream opinion on firearms, use of guns and gun laws. This thesis presents a case study of online posts and articles of analyzed actors vis-à-vis European mass shooting incidents. Such events usually spark debates about stricter gun control which the Czech gun-owner platforms naturally oppose. The analysis is underpinned by the theory of framing and uses a methodological design proposed by the scholars Dennis Chong and James Druckman. Firstly, a basic set of frames is identified. Secondly, these frames are tested against a collection of posts and articles by one of the analyzed groups. It is concluded that most of the texts are explicitly framed using one of the identified communication frames. However, the usage of these frames varies based on the motives behind a given mass shooting. It also differs in the case of Czech incidents. Lastly, this work investigates whether and in what way the frames of gun-owner platforms are adopted by elites and the mainstream media and. In this case, a surprising conclusion is made: Despite the ideal framing environment - given the absence of...

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Gun-free zones have the potential to increase or decrease the risk of gun crime and active shootings that occur within their borders. People who assume that gun-free zones increase gun related outcomes believe that the lack of the ability for law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm, and thus an inability to engage in defensive gun use if a threat presented itself, makes gun-free zones a soft target for crime. Those that assume gun-free zones decrease gun related outcomes believe the absence of firearms eliminates the risk of an escalation of violence to gunfire. Up until this point, there has been no quantitative research on the effectiveness of gun-free zones, despite the topic being highly controversial. This dissertation was therefore the first to: create and describe a dataset of active shootings in the United States, and assess the extent to which defensive gun use occurs during these events (Aim 1); conduct a cross-sectional ecological analysis for the in St. Louis, Missouri (2019), both city and county, comparing the proportion of crimes committed with a firearm that occur in gun-free school zones compared to gun-allowing zones immediately surrounding the gun-free zone to quantify the effectiveness of gun-free school zones and (Aim 2); conduct a spatial ecological case-control study in the United States where cases are the locations or establishments of active shootings between 2014 and 2020, to quantify the impact of gun-free zones on active shootings, and assess if active shooters target gun-free zones (Aim 3). The results of Aim 1 of this study suggested that defensive gun use during active shootings was rare, usually does not stop the attack, and does not decrease the number of casualties compared to active shootings without defensive use. Aim 1 also thoroughly described the novel active shooting dataset. I found in Aim 2 that gun-free school zones had fewer crimes committed with a firearm than corresponding gun-allowing zones in St. Louis, MO in 2019. There were 13.4% fewer crimes involving a firearm in gun-free school zones, with a confidence interval ranging from 23.6% fewer to 1.8% fewer (p-value: 0.025). Aim 3 determined that the conditional odds of an active shooting in an establishment that was gun-free were 0.375 times the odds of an active shooting in a gun-allowing establishment with a confidence interval ranging from 0.193 to 0.728 (p-value<0.01), suggesting that gun-free zones did not attract active shooters, and may even be preventative. In conclusion, gun-free zones did not appear to increase gun related outcomes and may even be protective against active shootings. Efforts across the United States to repeal laws related to gun-free zones, due to the belief that gun-free zones are targeted for violence, are therefore not backed by data. However, these are the first quantitative studies ever conducted on the effectiveness of gun-free zones, so more research is needed to build on the results of this dissertation.

Introduction: The public often believes that ‘mentally ill’ individuals are more prone to dangerous and criminal behavior and more inclined towards gun violence. These misperceptions have negative consequences on justice-involved individuals with a mental illness who are reintegrating into society post-incarceration. Media is often cited as a reason for the spread of misperceptions, but these results may not apply to rural communities. Rather, in rural areas, social support is essential to success due to lack of modern technology, no/lacking public transportation, limited mental health services, employment opportunities, and available housing, and may play a more significant role in perception development. Misperceptions held by rural residents can exacerbate existing environmental barriers. Aims: This thesis examines how rural residents’ beliefs and perceptions regarding the association between mental illness and gun violence may be differentially impacted by: (1) media consumption, (2) social relationships, and (3) personal experiences. Method: 32 rural residents were recruited to participate in an open-ended qualitative interview. The qualitative interview examined the extent to which social relationships, personal experiences, and media consumption impacted development of beliefs and misperceptions regarding the association between mental illness and gun violence and beliefs about gun control. Analytical Plan: Using methods from both directed and traditional qualitative content analysis, codes were developed to analyze influential social relationships, personal experiences and media consumption on belief and perception development regarding mental illness and gun violence, along with gun control. These codes were then used to organize and analyze relevant aspects of participant interviews in order to create insight into emergent themes. Results: The most prominent emergent theme was idiosyncrasy, suggesting rural residents are a heterogeneous population. For example, participants reported that interpersonal contact both increased and decreased misperceptions, depending on the participant. While idiosyncrasies is a major thematic emergence, much more emerged beyond this. Participants displayed widely varying definitions of what a mental illness is, conflating mental illness with things such as mental retardation and lupus; this lack of an understanding of what a mental illness is, is reflected in another result – that misperceptions surrounding mental illness are prevalent in this rural sample. Participants also displayed distrust in the media and the way they portray mental illness and gun violence in particular. Other minor sub-themes and thematic emergences manifested within the data. Implications: The results of this thesis contribute to a better understanding of the role of factors such as: misunderstandings of what mental illness is, the lack of a role of relationship closeness, and the importance of personal experience, and how these may promote or reduce misconceptions regarding gun violence and mental illness in rural communities. This expanded understanding allows for the development of effective, culturally competent psychoeducation targeted specifically towards rural residents, which will ideally be accomplished by incorporating the effects on (mis)perception development of the aforementioned influences. This is imperative, as findings in extant literature may be differentially relevant in rural communities.

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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

This dissertation analyzes the relationships between four state gun laws—universal background checks, waiting periods, may-issue permitting, and violent misdemeanor prohibitions—and firearm homicide and suicide rates among Blacks and Whites in the United States. Using eighteen years of publicly available data, the study examined relationships employing a generalized difference-in-difference linear regression model with fixed effects for states and years. The results indicate that state gun laws in the United States frequently affect mortality rates among Blacks and Whites in different ways. Waiting periods, for example, are associated with large reductions in firearm homicide rates among Blacks but not Whites; may-issue permitting is associated with moderate reductions in firearm homicide rates among Whites but not among Blacks. The study also identifies several statistically significant interactive effects between gun laws and factors such as poverty, police presence, and the density of federally licensed firearm dealers. The dissertation concludes by discussing the value of these findings for informing both public policy and scholarly research in policy analysis and public administration. Most importantly, I argue that policymakers and gun violence researchers must increase their efforts to frame and analyze gun violence in the United States through the lens of social equity. / Doctor of Philosophy / The rates at which Blacks and Whites in the United States die as the result of gun violence differ markedly. This dissertation uses statistical analysis of eighteen years of data collected from governmental and scholarly sources to examine whether four different types of state gun law—universal background checks, waiting periods, may-issue permitting, and violent misdemeanor prohibitions—are related to gun death rates for Blacks and Whites and whether and how these relationships vary between the two. The results suggest that gun laws often affect mortality rates among Blacks and Whites differently. For instance, waiting periods appear to lead to fewer gun homicides among Blacks, while may-issue permitting is associated with fewer gun homicides among Whites. Relationships between different gun laws and the number of gun deaths Blacks and Whites experience also vary depending on levels of poverty, police presence, and the number of federally licensed gun dealers in specific geographic areas. The dissertation concludes by discussing how these findings might help policymakers and suggest topics for future research. Most importantly, the dissertation argues that researchers and policymakers should discuss gun violence in the United States in terms of its disproportionate impacts on different groups.

The U.S. Army has recently developed cutting edge designs for gun barrels, projectiles, and propellants that require testing. This includes measuring the internal pressure during fire. There are concerns with the current method of drilling to mount pressure transducers near the breech and chamber of the gun barrel where pressure is highest. An alternative, non-intrusive strain measurement method is introduced and discussed in the present work. This focuses on determining the feasibility and accuracy of relating tangential strain along the sidewall of a gun barrel to the drastic internal pressure rise created during combustion. A transient structural, numerical modal was created using ANSYS of a 155 mm gun barrel. The pressure gradient was derived using a method outline in IBHVG2 (Interior Ballistics of High Velocity Guns, version 2), and the model was validated using published experimental tangential strain testing data from a gun of the same caliber. The model was used to demonstrate the ideal location for strain measurement along the sidewall of the chamber. Furthermore, three different pressure ranges were simulated in the model. The behavior of the tangential strain in each case indicates a similar trend to the internal pressure rise and has oscillation due to a dominant frequency of the barrel. A method to predict internal pressure from external tangential strain was developed. The internal pressure predicted is within 4% of the pressure applied in the model. A sensitivity study was performed to determine the primary factors affecting tangential strain. The study specifically looked at material properties and geometry of the gun barrel. The thickness and elastic modulus of the gun barrel were determined the most relevant. Overall, the present work helps to understand tangential strain behavior on the sidewall of a large caliber gun barrel and provides preliminary work to establish an accurate prediction of internal pressure from external tangential strain. / Master of Science / Innovative technology for large gun systems require testing to evaluate safety and performance. The most recent designs from the U.S. Army for long range artillery require higher pressures. Currently, large gun barrels are drilled to mount pressure transducers for internal pressure testing, but the new generation of weapons require a way to measure internal pressure of the gun without introducing these high stress locations. External strain offers a means to measure displacement of the barrel caused by the internal pressure change with minimal alteration to the gun barrel. The present work focuses on modelling a large gun barrel using finite elements to understand the behavior of strain on the external surface due to internal pressure during fire. Measurements were taken near the chamber of the gun barrel model. The strain behavior is comprised of two components, a linear change due to a pressure increase and vibrations introduced due to the sharp pressure increase over a short amount of time. Three cases were evaluated at different pressure ranges and a method was developed to predict internal pressure from the tangential strain with a maximum error of 4% for all cases studied. The model also indicates that the strain results are most sensitive to a change in thickness and the elastic modulus of the gun barrel material.