Gun Control

With public perception of gun violence at an all-time high, the Encyclopedia of Gun Control and Gun Rights is the perfect resource for any library. Providing 300-plus entries of in-depth coverage (each entry is from 700 to 1,000 words), this encyclopedia is exceptional for its unbiased approach to this controversial issue. Arranged in an A-Z format with numerous cross-references, this encyclopedia is especially easy to use.

Few schisms in American life run as deep or as wide as the divide between gun rights and gun control advocates. Awash in sound and symbol, the gun regulation debate has largely been defined by forceful rhetoric rather than substantive action. Politicians shroud themselves in talk of individual rights or public safety while lobbyists on both sides make doom-and-gloom pronouncements on the consequences of potential shifts in the status quo. In America today there are between 250 and 300 million firearms in private hands, amounting to one weapon for every American. Two in five American homes house guns. On the one hand, most gun owners are law-abiding citizens who believe they have a constitutional right to bear arms. On the other, a great many people believe gun control to be our best chance at reducing violent crime. While few--whether gun owner or anti-gun advocate--dispute the need to keep guns out of the wrong hands, the most important question has too often been dodged: What gun control options does the most heavily armed democracy in the world have? Can gun control really work? The last decade has seen several watersheds in the debate, none more important than the 1993 Brady Bill. That bill, James B. Jacobs argues, was the culmination of a strategy in place since the 1930s to permit widespread private ownership of guns while curtailing illegal use. But where do we go from here? While the Brady background check is easily circumvented, any further attempts to extend gun control--for instance, through comprehensive licensing of all gun owners and registration of all guns--would pose monumental administrative burdens. Jacobs moves beyond easy slogans and broad-brush ideology to examine the on-the-ground practicalities of gun control, from mandatory safety locks to outright prohibition and disarmament. Casting aside ideology and abstractions, he cautions against the belief that there exists some gun control solution which, had we the political will to seize it, would substantially reduce violent crime. In Can Gun Control Work?, James B. Jacobs, one of our most fearless commentators on intractable social problems, has given us the most sober and even-handed assessment of whether gun control can really be made to work.

Leitzel develops the logic underlying the connections between breaking the rules and making the rules. Approaching policy issues from the point of view of rule circumvention, the text provides a perspective that illuminates a wide variety of phenomena.

No area of public policymaking is more hotly debated than the use of governmental authority to institute certain enforceable standards of behavior in areas that have been the subject of moral controversy. Such issues as abortion, for example, are debated not on grounds of economic calculus but rather the moral and normative concerns of citizens, and typically evoke a reversal of the liberal-conservative division of views on the appropriateness of government interventionism. In Theodore Lowi's words, the politics of such issues is "more ideological, more moral, more directly derived from fundamental values, more intense, less utilitarian, more polarized, and less prone to compromise."

This volume examines eight social regulatory policy issues: abortion, pornography, death penalty, gun control, affirmative action, church-state separation, official English, and gay rights. Each case study examines:
-- the relevant issues and arguments;
-- policy shifts over time;
-- the roles of key political an institutional actors, including lobbies and interest groups; public opinion: the bureaucracy; the president, Congress, the judiciary; and state and local authorities.

This is a study of a part of American history that deals not just with gun control as such, but with basic concepts of personal liberty, government responsibility, and the fear of tyranny. All three of these influenced the people who took up arms in the American Revolution and who, for decades afterward, resisted every effort of the central government to substitute a standing army for the armed militia of the states. As the nation grew in size and population, the need for a standing army became apparent, and the nature of the militia changed from that of a purely state organization to an adjunct of the regular army. Still, the view that private individuals were entitled to purchase and keep firearms for their personal use persisted. That this was not a constitutional right was made clear by the Supreme Court in a series of cases beginning as early as 1876. Federal restrictions on the sale and possession of some firearms were introduced during Prohibition when illegal "rumrunners" battling for territorial rights commonly used machine guns to destroy the opposition. More sweeping legislation was not passed until 1968, and from that time on the struggle has been between pro- and anti-control forces, with more controls created at state and local levels than at the federal level. However, the mood in Washington has turned, and the question now is how the country can be weaned from the violence that pervades every aspect of living, from lawlessness to literature, entertainment, and even children's toys.