Suchergebnisse

Suggests that handguns on college campuses would create problems for police and that concealed handgun training does not adequately prepare the license holder to interact during a crime in progress or a traffic stop.

ObjectiveLaws reducing hurdles to legally carrying concealed firearms are argued to have a deterrent effect on crime by increasing its perceived costs. This argument rests on the assumption that these policies will either directly or indirectly increase the perceived distribution of firearm carriers, an assumption that is as yet untested. This article tests this assumption and, in so doing, suggests testing the necessary conditions of policy can be useful when assessing outcomes is difficult.MethodsI collect survey data on the perceived number of firearm carriers across the United States and then use a hierarchical regression model to assess the impact of concealed carry policies on these perceptions, controlling for several contextual and individual‐level factors.ResultsThe data suggest that there is no statistically discernible relationship between concealed carry policies and the public's perceptions of the number of firearm carriers. Indeed, the data suggest that the perceived density of firearm carriers is similarly uncorrelated to the number of active concealed carriers.ConclusionThe link between concealed carry policy and people's beliefs about the number of firearm carriers in their community is unidentifiable in the data. The rationale for concealed carry deterrence, however, depends on such a link existing: it assumes that potential assailants are aware of the distribution of firearm carriers in the potential victim population, but the empirical evidence presented here suggests that that assumption simply does not hold. Because beliefs over the distribution of firearm carriers are impervious to permitting policies and do not respond positively to the true distribution of carriers, the data suggest easing concealed carry cannot deter crime.

As of March 2012, students with concealed carry permits attending public colleges and universities in the state of Colorado may carry their weapons on campus. Colorado is one of six states with legal provisions permitting guns on public campuses. An additional twenty-two states leave it up to the governing bodies of individual colleges and universities to determine their institution's gun policy, while twenty-two states ban concealed weapons on campuses.[1] The NRA often asserts that 'an armed society is a polite society.' They and those who favorably quote them take this as a positive result of an armed citizenry. People won't be rude. They won't argue. They won't say anything offensive, for fear of being shot. And that may be right. But we do not want a polite campus. If an armed campus is a polite campus, then students at such campuses will miss a fundamentally important aspect of their college experience. Students ought to be able to voice their opinions, to argue with others, and to test new ideas without fear. The threat of violence that guns create challenges the most fundamental liberty we have: the freedom of speech.[2]. Adapted from the source document.

This Article confronts the growing tension between increasingly permissive concealed carry firearms legislation and police authority to conduct investigative stops and protective frisks under Terry v. Ohio. For decades, courts upheld stops based on nothing more than an officer's observation of public gun possession, on the assumption that anyone carrying a gun in public was doing so unlawfully. That assumption requires reexamination. All fifty states and the District of Columbia authorize their citizens to carry concealed weapons in public, and forty-two states impose little or no conditions on the exercise of this privilege. As a result, officers and courts can no longer reasonably assume that "public gun possession" equals "criminal activity." Courts and scholars have begun addressing discrete aspects of this dilemma, and this Article makes three contributions to the existing literature. First, it corrects the oft-repeated misconception that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment jurisprudence has altered the Fourth Amendment's reasonable suspicion standard. Second, it articulates the need for a "gun possession plus" reasonable suspicion standard to initiate a Terry stop for a suspected firearms violation. Third, it defends the right of officers to conduct automatic frisks of suspects after a lawfully-initiated stop when firearms are present, in recognition of the inherent and unique dangerousness of these weapons. The Article concludes with a recognition of the risks presented by a proposed "automatic frisk" regime, particularly for over-policed communities of color. In doing so, it suggests law enforcement would be well served to consider community policing alternatives to stop and frisk that respect the rights of firearms carriers in marginalized communities while protecting officers on the beat.

In the United States, school shootings are a common social problem and frequently occur on both K-12 and college campuses. High profile school shootings have resulted in a growing number of state governments legalizing "concealed carry" on college campuses, increasing the presence of guns in classrooms. This research study employs qualitative autoethnography to present the author's experiences teaching on a campus where concealed carry was implemented in 2014. Through autoethnographic narratives, the author describes her lived experiences. This paper analyses these narratives using intersectional feminist theory and situates the narratives within the broader socio-cultural context of gun culture in the Pacific Northwestern USA. The author spent four years immersed in the culture of concealed carry, and has written multiple narratives detailing these experiences. Two narratives are presented in this work. Important findings in this work include examinations of: how the presence of guns in college classrooms shapes power dynamics; the use of fear-based curricula in active-shooter survival trainings; the cultural construction of the "good guy with a gun"; and the implications of the author's positionalities within gun culture. This research study encourages the reader to engage with and learn from the lived experiences of the author.