Law confidence in collective security contributes to the need for and the resistance to gun control policies. Time-series data on legal gun demand in Detroit from 1951 to 1977 are consistent with a model in which individuals respond to high violent crime rates, civil disorders, and police strength. (Author/RM)

Examines the rise and fall of media coverage of the issues of gun control and political conflict in Australia after an incident of mass murder in April 1996. Aims to reveal the issue management process that occurred and the hidden agendas that motivated the political and media activity. Demonstrates the media's role in the creation of issue…

Discusses the relationship of familial influence, victimization, gun ownership, and attitudes toward gun control. Victims whose parents owned guns are much more likely to own guns and oppose legislation. (JMF)

Noting that in Wisconsin, 146 children have died as a result of gunfire in the preceding 5 years [1996-2000], this report provides a detailed look at the issue of handgun safety from the perspective of citizens living in Wisconsin. Participating in the state-wide telephone interviews were 600 adult residents representative of the adult state…

Identifies and discusses divergent synecdochal representations of the handgun as vital to both the construction and maintenance of competing social realities (handgun as threatened liberty and handgun as threatened life) in the debate over the Brady Bill. Demonstrates how such representations serve as divergent rhetorical constructs for competing…

Federal law prohibits the purchase or possession of a firearm by persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence and those under certain domestic violence restraining orders. The purpose of this investigation is to examine public sentiment about the removal of firearms in the absence of a restraining order or misdemeanor conviction following…

Batterers with access to firearms present a serious lethal threat to their partners. The purpose of this exploratory study is to estimate the prevalence of and risk markers for gun possession among Massachusetts men enrolled in batterer intervention programs. The authors found that 1.8% of the men reported having a gun in or around their home.…

In recent years, communities across the country have struggled to develop effective solutions to the problem of gun violence. Many have approached the United States Department of Justice for help in identifying solutions. This publication was developed in response to these requests. It is designed to provide state and local elected officials,…

The Maryland Gun Violence Act, enacted into law in 1996, explicitly authorized courts to order batterers to surrender their firearms through civil protective orders. It also vested law enforcement with the explicit authority to remove guns when responding to a domestic violence complaint. In order to assess how these laws were implemented, we…

An April 2000 telephone survey queried a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, including 283 parents of children ages 5 to 17 years, concerning school violence and other issues in the news. The vast majority of those surveyed said they believe it is the responsibility of parents to ensure that school shootings, such as occurred at Columbine High…

The role of content validity in policy-relevant research is illustrated in a study contrasting results of surveys concerning public opinion toward gun control. Inadequate content validity threatened inferences about the overall level of support for gun control, but not about opinion difference between sexes or respondents of varying political…

Studies firearms behaviors among 835 criminally active male, mostly urban, youth and 1,653 male and female innercity high school students in 4 states. It is evident that the large urban environment encourages youth to be armed and that enforcement activities alone will not be enough to alleviate the problem. (SLD)

Focus group methods for studying opinions and perceptions of school violence are effective for understanding differences among individuals, but cannot report these differences in a concise manner. Traditional quantitative methods for analyzing data from school violence perception surveys allow for the concise reporting of data, but cannot…