Research 3 - Literature Assessment

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LITERATURE ASSESSMENT Helms School of Government, Liberty University. PADM 700: Public Administration Ethics, Statesmanship, and Governance. Professor: Dr. Scott Stenzel. September 2023. Author Note I have no known conflict of interest to disclose. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Email: @libe r ty.edu LITERATURE ASSESSMENT 1

LITERATURE ASSESSMENT 2 THEMES, ASSUMPTIONS, AND APPROACHES Gun violence and control have been ambiguous subjects in the United States for decades, especially as more active shootings erupt regularly. As the leading cause (per statistics) of untimely death in the United States, gun violence has penetrated every look and cranny of our nation. Between 2000 and 2001, about 86,000 yearly injuries arose from gun violence, leading to the death of many more Americans. As many advocate that stricter gun laws will mitigate this menace and checkmate a dispute or conflict from turning violent, others belong to the "school of thought" that the Second Amendment guarantees them the inalienable right to own and bear arms. While all the authors had a different title for their study, they all had a common theme, focus, subject matter, and/ or thesis: "The Impact of Gun Control through Stricter Gun Laws/ Policies/ Regulations," irrespective of the level of government these laws originate. These authors' multifaceted approach to the same thesis suggests that even though the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects Americans' right to possess weapons to protect themselves, their rights, and their property, man lives in a very dynamic world and always has the need to periodically make or have dynamic policies, laws, or regulations by periodically introducing new policies, reviewing and overhauling existing ones. Sadly, America lives in a dynamic world without dynamic firearm laws, policies, or regulations. Blocher's study assumed that increasing firearm violence had birthed a passionate drive for more stringent firearm legislation(s). His study aimed to determine the "relationship between firearm legislation(s) and firearm-related injuries across states in the United States (Blocher, 2021)." Bloch's quantitative approach to his study involved conducting a " retrospective analysis of all trauma-related hospitalization " utilizing the 2011 National Inpatient Sample database, which

LITERATURE ASSESSMENT 3 showed the statistics of patients with firearm-related injuries. He also dichotomized states into "strict firearm laws (SFL) states" or "non-strict firearm laws (Non-SFL) states" before performing a linear regression analysis. In BMJ's study, the author believed that firearm regulations have the possibility of controlling mass shootings and argued that there are limited federal firearm laws, giving rise to different state firearm regulations. The author's study aimed to resolve whether "restrictiveness- permissiveness of state gun laws or gun ownership are associated with mass shootings in the United States (BMJ, 2019)." The author's quantitative approach to this study first involved the utilization of the "1998-2015 edition of the Traveler's Guide to the Firearms Laws of the Fifty States" to acquire the independent variable of the study, which is each state's annual restrictiveness-permissiveness scale of United States firearm regulations. Other data sources include the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports, which primarily provided the Uniform Crime Reports from 1998-2015; covariates were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau; and incarceration rate, obtained from the Federal Bureau of Justice's database. The other authors' assumptions and study approach were:  Pearson-Merkowitzz and Coates' assumed that many illegal firearms in states with stringent firearm regulations were purchased in states with less stringent firearm laws and adopted a quantitative approach to their study.  Like Blocher's study, Jehan et al . also assumed that increasing firearm violence had birthed a passionate drive for more stringent firearm legislation(s), and their study aimed to determine the "relationship between firearm legislation(s) and firearm-related injuries across states in the United States utilizing a quantitative approach.

LITERATURE ASSESSMENT 4  Kennedy, in his study, points out that he could not comprehend why people argue about the points below, and he adopted a qualitative study approach to proving his assumption (laws limit the supply of guns, thus reducing violent crime): o Gun control cannot limit the supply of guns enough to reduce violence. o The Constitution protects the citizen's right to bear arms. o There is no need to ban guns because guns are not killers; people do the killing. o Criminals will always find a way to obtain guns. Thus, controls will only disarm those who obey the law. o Registration and licensing procedures are so cumbersome and inconvenient that they would create unfair burdens for legitimate gun owners.  Kwon et al . assumed that past studies on the "effectiveness of firearm control legislation" have been melded, and his study aimed at positing the past analysis by utilizing a quantitative study approach.  In Ludwig's qualitative analysis/ article, he discusses Luca et al . assertion that adopting firearm laws and regulations like mandatory waiting periods for firearm acquisitions decreases firearm homicides by approximately 17% but, at the same time, exaggerates the extent of the impact of these mandatory waiting periods on firearm homicides.  In this quantitative study ("State Gun-Control, Gun-Rights, and Preemptive Firearm-Related Laws Across 50 U.S. States for 2009–2018"), Pomeranz et al. assume that most states in the U.S. that preempt state gun laws are simply retaining state control by using preemption as a tool to support their policy frameworks to favor firearm rights.

LITERATURE ASSESSMENT 5  Seitz's assumption in his quantitative research/ analysis is that firearm control legislation effectively decreases the cases of homicide, and it is not evident if firearm control is the only way to curb violence in society. STUDY WEAKNESSES, LIMITATIONS, ERRORS, AND OVERSIGHTS While all the authors' studies and analyses were relatively concise, they also had some common weaknesses and/ or limitations, varying from a small sample size to limited past empirical research to limited data access to sampling errors. Other limitations and/ or weaknesses observed include subjective methodological approaches like qualitative approaches, unclear/ undefined research problems, scope of discussion, conceptualization of research goals, application of data collection process, identifying research constraints and their impact on the study, and stating the possibility for future studies. One potential constraint of Blocher's analysis is that it did not address the constitutional setbacks that state preemption regulations may encounter in court. A good number of researchers have debated that these regulations infringe the "home rule doctrine," which gives local governments some level of independence and self-governance within their jurisdiction. Other scholars have proposed that preemption laws may violate state citizens' rights to partake in the free/ democratization process and pass laws that mirror their choices and values. Another likely weakness of Blocher's study is that it did not consider the possible advantages of state preemption regulations for firearm owners and rights activists. Many advocates of these regulations debate that they encourage uniformity and transparency in the legal context for firearms, which decreases discrepancies and uncertainty for law-abiding residents who desire to exercise their Second Amendment rights. They also argue that preemption laws discourage local

LITERATURE ASSESSMENT 6 governments from setting illogical and random limitations on firearm privilege and use, which may violate individuals' constitutional rights and liberties. Some of the constraints of the BMJ's analysis on "state gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the U.S." was that using an index to measure the restrictiveness-permissiveness of state gun laws is biased and does not include the impacts of specific laws. Another weakness was the prospect of reverse causation, where firearm ownership and laws may change in response to active shootings and other crimes. The absence of correction for sequential correlation may bias the standard errors and significance tests, thus posing another limitation. The other weakness of the study was that the omission of state-fixed impacts may control for unobserved heterogeneity across states, and firearm suicide is valid for longitudinal analysis. These constraints imply that the study's determinations should be analyzed cautiously. Further study is imminent to understand better the causal connection between "state gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings." Coates and Pearson-Merkowitzz's study did not consider the "demand-side factors" that may influence firearm movement between states and the variation in crime, population, development, income differences, or culture that impact the demand for firearms in various states. These factors may impact the supply-side factors, giving rise to problematic patterns of firearm smuggling and violence. Coates and Pearson-Merkowitzz's analysis did not also consider the total capacity of the "policy spillover and gun migration" phenomenon. Another potential constraint is that the analysis leaned on data from the ATF for criminal firearms, and it did not represent all firearms that cross the state's borderline. The ATF database only includes firearms traced by law enforcement after being retrieved from crime locations or suspects. Thus, the ATF

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