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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:23 am
Time: 3:23 am
Results for gun laws
3 results foundAuthor: Gerney, Arkadi Title: Assault Weapons Revisited: Policy Options for Regulating Rifles, Shotguns, and Other Firearms 20 Years After the Passage of the Assault Weapons Ban Summary: 20 years after President Bill Clinton signed the federal assault weapons ban into law in September 1994 and a decade after Congress allowed that law to lapse - the question of whether and how to regulate particularly lethal firearms is no longer the primary focus of the national gun debate. While the question of what to do about the proliferation of certain military-style rifles - so-called "assault weapons" - remains open, advocates for stronger gun laws have recently focused on the question of who may possess guns, rather than which type of guns should receive heightened regulation. In the wake of the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, President Barack Obama, congressional leaders, and gun-violence prevention advocates alike made deterring dangerous people from accessing guns the top legislative priority with a proposal for comprehensive background checks for all gun sales. In April 2013, while the Senate also considered a new assault weapons ban that only mustered 40 votes, the Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks garnered 55 votes. This shift in focus to prevent dangerous people from accessing guns is appropriate: A broad set of research suggests that such measures are effective in reducing gun violence. Additionally, there is overwhelming support in opinion polls for expanding background checks and similar measures aimed at restricting dangerous people from accessing guns. But the debate persists about whether and how to best regulate assault rifles and other types of firearms that may pose heightened risks to public safety. For more than 20 years, there has generally been only one policy solution offered in this debate: a ban on assault weapons. This report considers how gun laws have evolved to address different classes of firearms and looks more broadly at how federal and state laws treat rifles and shotguns differently than handguns and whether all of those distinctions continue to make sense. It also examines data on the changing nature of gun violence and the increasing use of long guns and assault rifles by criminals, with a focus on Pennsylvania as a case study. Additionally, this report offers a new framework for regulating assault weapons and other special categories of guns that balances the desire of law-abiding gun owners to possess these guns with the need to protect public safety from their misuse in dangerous hands. These policies include: - Require background checks for all gun sales - Require dealers to report multiple sales of long guns - Equalize interstate sales of long guns and handguns - Require federal firearms licenses for individuals that manufacture guns using 3D printers - Bar possession and use of machine guns by individuals under the age of 16 - Require a permit for possession of assault weapons Twenty years after the successful passage of the federal assault weapons ban and 10 years after its expiration, the push for a federal ban on these guns seems stuck in neutral. But much more can be done to strengthen regulation of particularly dangerous guns and to ensure that laws regulating handguns and long guns make sense in today's context. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2014. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 18, 2014 at: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AssaultWeapons-report.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AssaultWeapons-report.pdf Shelf Number: 133375 Keywords: Assault WeaponsFirearmsGun ControlGun Control PolicyGun LawsGun-Related Violence (U.S.)Guns |
Author: Manski, Charles Title: How Do Right-To-Carry Laws Affect Crime Rates? Coping With Ambiguity Using Bounded-Variation Assumptions Summary: Despite dozens of studies, research on crime in the United States has struggled to reach consensus about the impact of right-to-carry (RTC) gun laws. Empirical results are highly sensitive to seemingly minor variations in the data and model. How then should research proceed? We think that policy analysis is most useful if researchers perform inference under a spectrum of assumptions of varying identifying power, recognizing the tension between the strength of assumptions and their credibility. With this in mind, we formalize and apply a class of assumptions that flexibly restrict the degree to which policy outcomes may vary across time and space. Our bounded variation assumptions weaken in various respects the invariance assumptions commonly made by researchers who assume that certain features of treatment response are constant across space or time. Using bounded variation assumptions, we present empirical analysis of the effect of RTC laws on violent and property crimes. We allow the effects to vary across crimes, years and states. To keep the analysis manageable, we focus on drawing inferences for three states - Virginia, Maryland, and Illinois. We find there are no simple answers; empirical findings are sensitive to assumptions, and vary over crimes, years, and states. With some assumptions, the data do not reveal whether RTC laws increase or decrease the crime rate. With others, RTC laws are found to increase some crimes, decrease other crimes, and have effects that vary over time for others. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper No. 21701: Accessed March 18, 2016 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21701.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21701.pdf Shelf Number: 138332 Keywords: Gun LawsGun PolicyGun-Related ViolenceProperty CrimesRight-to-Carry |
Author: Rosenthal, Lawrence Title: The Constitutional Case for Limiting Public Carry Summary: Perhaps the single most important question arising in the wake of the Supreme Court's holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, even for purposes unrelated to service in an organized militia, is whether the Constitution permits limitations on the ability to carry firearms in public. For high-crime, unstable urban neighborhoods, an absolute constitutional right to carry firearms would likely cripple the type of problem-oriented, preventative policing that has successfully driven guns and drugs off of many urban streetscapes and has produced concomitant reductions in violent crime. This Issue Brief addresses the constitutional status of laws that endeavor to facilitate preventative policing by limiting the right to carry firearms in public. Details: Washington, DC: American Constitution Society, 2014. 18p. Source: Internet Resource: Issue Brief: Accessed May 5, 2016 at: https://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Rosenthal_-_The_Constitutional_Case_for_Limiting_Public_Carry_.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Rosenthal_-_The_Constitutional_Case_for_Limiting_Public_Carry_.pdf Shelf Number: 138954 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Control PolicyGun LawsPreventative policingSecond Amendment |