Gun violence is a pandemic problem in the United States, resulting in over two thirds of all homicides each year. Consequently, gun related policies have been fiercely debated within the political spectrum, with the 20th century seeing a dramatic increase in gun control legislation. Gun-free zones are designated areas that strictly prohibit all private citizens from carrying a firearm, even those with concealed weapon permits. The statistics indicate that numerous instances of gun related mass shootings have occurred within the confines of these gun-free zones (schools, movie theatres, government installations, etc.). However, little research exists to understand whether citizens actually feel any safer when they are in a gun-free zone. The purpose of this study was to explore citizens’ perceptions about gun control policies, specifically about using gun-free zones, who resided in the five states with the highest rates of gun violence per capitain descending order, these included Virginia, Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Connecticut. Moreover, these five states were the locations of the top five deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history to date. The researcher also discovered how residents felt about pro-gun areas, where responsible citizens could legally carry firearms, as well as determine whether gun-free zones influenced their likelihood of visiting a prescribed location. Finally, the study sought to understand residents’ perceptions regarding using gun-free zones pertaining to their impact on reducing incidents of mass shootings. The researcher filled the gap in the literature regarding knowledge pertaining to citizens’ perceptions about using specific gun control measures, such as gun-free zones, and the influence that the historical evidence had on their perceptions. The answer to RQ1 (do residents associate using gun-free zones with feelings of safety or feelings of concern?) was that participants were twice as likely to associate using gun-free zones with feelings of concern rather than feelings of safety. The answer to the first part of RQ2 (whether participants believed that gun-free zones reduced gun-related violence) was no, based on a 2-to-1 ratio. Responses to the impact of gun control measures on reducing gun violence were closely matched to perceptions of the role of gun-free zones in reducing gun violence. The answer to the second part of RQ2 (do residents believe that gun-free zones lower the occurrences of mass shooting incidents?) was no, again based on a 2-to-1 ratio. The answer to the third and final part of RQ2 (whether participants’ perceptions correlated to the historical/empirical evidence of the location of mass shootings as primarily inside of or outside of gun-free zones) was yes for participants from Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Connecticut and no for participants from Virginia.

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Syftet med projektet var att ta fram en rekylsimulator till användning vid torrträning i skidskytte för att tillföra mer realism till träningsformen. Projektet hade som mål att testa ut komponenter till simulatorn, designa ett fäste samt att både genom mätningar och användartester verifiera den framtagna simulatorns validitet. För att med god reliabilitet testa de ingående komponenterna byggdes en testrigg där upprepade tester kunde utföras. Ett fäste togs även fram och itererades på tills en slutgiltig lösning erhölls. De två verifieringsstegen hann ej utföras och de ingående komponenterna uppvisade ej heller egenskaper som är nog väl överensstämmande med uppmätta värden för att garantera goda chanser till en lyckad simulering. I testerna förekom det även problem med den sensor som användes vilket innebar en viss osäkerhet kring erhållna värden. Över lag krävs mer arbete för att finna bättre komponenter, men även för att testa löningsprincipen och dess giltighet / The purpose of the project was to develop a recoil simulator for use in dry training in biathlon to add more realism to the practice. The project aimed to evaluate components of the simulator, design a mounting for the rifle and to verify the validity of the developed simulator through both measurements and user tests. In order to test the constituent components with good reliability, a test rig was constructed where repeated reliable measurements could be performed. A mounting was also designed and iterated upon until a final solution was obtained. The two verification steps were not performed, due to time constraints and the components also did not show properties that were well enough in accordance with measured values to guarantee good chances of a successful simulation. In the tests, there were also problems with the sensor used, which meant there was some uncertainty about the obtained values. In general, more work is required to find better components, but also in order to test the principle and its validity. / <p>2022-07-01</p>

There is a lack of data-driven training instructions for sports shooters, as instruction has commonly been based on subjective assessments. Many studies have correlated body posture and balance to shooting performance in rifle shooting tasks, but most of them have focused on single aspects of postural control. This thesis has focused on finding relevant rifle shooting factors by examining the entire body over sequences of time. We performed a data collection with 13 human participants who carried out live rifle shooting scenarios while being recorded with multiple biometric sensors, including several body trackers. An experiment was conducted to identify what aspects of rifle shooting could be predicted and explained using these data. We employed a pre-processing pipeline to produce a novel skeleton sequence representation, and used it to train a transformer model. The predictions from this model could be explained on a per sample basis using the attention mechanism, and visualised in an interactive format for humans to interpret. It was possible to separate the different phases of a shooting scenario from body posture with a high classification accuracy (81%). However, no correlation could be shown between shooting performance and body posture from our data. Future work could focus on novel feature engineering, and on examining alternative machine learning approaches. The dataset and pre-processing pipeline, as well as the techniques for generating explainable predictions presented in this thesis has laid the groundwork for future research in the sports shooting domain.

The ‘91 Roos is a sports documentary focused in Killeen, Texas. exploring the 1991 Killeen Kangaroos high school football team and their journey to their city's one and only state championship in football. Killeen is a small central Texas town that is directly adjacent and provides support to Ft Hood, one of the world's largest military bases. With the Persian Gulf War raging in 1991, soldiers that lived in Killeen were being sent off to fight, leaving the city almost like a ghost town. In October 1991, the Luby's Massacre occurred in Killeen, bringing the already depleted city further down by tragedy. At the time, this was the worst mass shooting in US history. This high school football team went on a fairy tale type of run during their 1991 season, resulting in winning a state title and bringing big hope back to a small town in need. Using direct interviews, narration and archival footage, this film provides an emotional yet inspirational look at a small town football team and their improbable season.

Deciding to use lethal force with a firearm is a critical decision that has major implications within society. In order to investigate racial bias in shooting decisions, the current dissertation uses the First-Person Shooter Task (FPST). Previous literature has shown that shooting decisions in this task are made faster and more often towards Black targets when compared to White targets. The relationship between this shooting bias and individual differences in cognitive ability is explored. The FPST was presented in three different conditions, each with trial proportions that varied in level of stereotype congruency (i.e., trials that are congruent with racial stereotypes). A Baseline condition presented an even distribution of Black Armed, Black Unarmed, White Armed, and White unarmed targets. A Mostly Congruent condition presented most (80%) of the Black targets as armed and most (80%) of the White targets as unarmed. A Mostly Incongruent condition presented most of the Black targets as unarmed and the White targets as mostly armed. Working memory, theoretically represented as a system of three separate components, was related to shooting behavior in these FPST conditions. The attentional control component of working memory was shown to be more related to shooting bias when compared to the capacity-related components, especially in the Mostly Incongruent condition (where most trials required making shooting decisions that go against racial stereotype). Study 2 used Confirmatory Factor Analysis to test whether attentional control ability was separate from proactive and reactive control strategy usage. Results showed that the attentional control ability was independent from which attentional control strategy was used. Finally, relating attentional control ability and attentional control strategies to shooting behavior, results showed that people with high attentional control and high proactive control usage were more likely to correctly adjust their expectations of threat in the Mostly Incongruent condition when compared to people with lower ability. People with low attentional control and high proactive control usage were more likely to adjust their expectations of threat based on racial stereotypes. Overall, these findings provide new insight into how cognitive ability interacts with shooting decisions in order to produce racial shooting bias.

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