Proliferation of Gun Rights Legislation: A Political Mediation Model

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Mobilization and Participation in Right Wing Movements

Abstract

Since the 1970s, gun rights in the United States have seen significant gains at the state level, while at the same time gun control efforts have been stymied. Despite the fact that many have examined how changes in gun control or gun rights legislation may affect rates of firearm violence, none have examined how these laws change or come into existence to begin with. This paper examines two types of gun rights legislation and their sociological determinates: firearms preemption laws and shall-issue concealed carry weapons laws. I use a political mediation model to theorize the enactment of these two types of gun rights legislation. Discrete time event history models are used with state-year level data collected from a variety of aggregate sources. Findings show that components of a political mediation model can account for gun rights legislation enactment, specifically with regard to grass roots membership in the gun rights movement, political opportunity in a state’s legislature, gun ownership, state urbanicity, and interactions between state urbanicity and crime rates. The findings also indicate that gun rights legislation is not enacted because of campaign contributions by organizations like the National Rifle Association. I conclude that the widespread enactment of gun rights legislation at the state level has hamstrung the efforts of gun control advocates by forcing any new gun control laws to either confront preemption and concealed carry laws at the state level, or to work for national level change in gun laws that are historically unlikely.

Author

• Trent Taylor Steidley, The Ohio State University