Citation

Norman ER. World Affairs 2022; 185(3): 436-441.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, World Affairs Institute, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/00438200221110716

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

At the time of writing this Editor's Note, it has been but a few weeks since the horrifying school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022, that killed 19 children and two teachers, and the supermarket massacre of ten people in Buffalo, New York ten days earlier. Both lone gunmen were 18 years old and both used legally acquired AR-15-style weapons (Edmondson 2022). The events catapulted gun control debates again into the headlines and culminated in swift legislation proposals in Congress. On June 8, 2022, a bitterly divided House--voting largely along party lines--approved a stricter gun control bill package by 223 to 204 votes but also revealed the partisan chasm that continues to afflict passing effective firearms control legislation in the United States. Among other things, the bill would ban under-21s from legally purchasing semiautomatic rifles, increase requirements for gun storage in private households, and prohibit the sale of magazines holding over 15 rounds (Edmondson 2022). The acrimonious arguments in the House were predictably partisan with Democrats focusing on protecting children from gun violence while Republicans highlighted that the proposal would violate Second Amendment rights. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH; cited in Edmondson 2022), opined that protecting children "is important--it sure is. But this bill doesn't do it. What this bill does is take away Second Amendment rights, God-given rights, protected by our Constitution, from law-abiding American citizens."

Edmondson (2022) noted on June 8 that the evenly divided Senate is unlikely to approve the bill unless in a vastly moderated form. On June 12, two days before the time I am writing, Senate negotiators announced a bipartisan deal on a narrower array of gun safety rules that may find its way through the Senate (Cochrane and Karni 2022). If it does, at least two critical questions remain: will it be effective in reducing gun violence? And what non-emotive tools can scholars, policy practitioners, politicians, and the public use to evaluate its effectiveness now and in the future?

Language: en

Keywords

Canada; China; Climate Change; Evidence; Firearms Policy; Foreign Policy; Gun Control; Gun Violence; Internally Displaced People; International Law; MENA; Middle East and North Africa; Mobile Money Innovations; Narrative Policy Framework; North Korea; NPF; Smart Power; South Africa; Southeast Asia; United States