The effect of perceived risk and victimization on plans to purchase a gun for self-protection

Purposes

To determine if perceived risk of criminal victimization, and past criminal victimization experiences, increases the likelihood of a person owning a gun for self-protection, and to determine if defects in past research concerning the way gun ownership was measured had obscured such effects.

Methods

We analyzed data on over 2,500 U.S. adults, using different ways of measuring gun ownership, and also analyzed future plans (among persons who did not own a gun at the time of the survey) to acquire a gun for self-protection. The latter procedure avoids the causal order problem attributable to the possibility that acquiring a gun might affect victimization risks and perceived risks, as well as the reverse.

Results

The estimated effect of perceived risk and prior victimization changed from being nonsignificant when household gun ownership was the dependent variable (as in most prior research) to being increasingly strong, and statistically significant, when gun ownership of the individual respondent for defensive reasons was measured. Further, once the causal order issue was side-stepped, risk and victimization showed even stronger, significant positive effects on planning to get a gun.

Conclusions

Crime affects gun ownership, in addition to any effects that gun ownership may have on crime.     

Catching the Bad Guy: Morphing Composite Faces Helps

Composite faces built by eyewitnesses commonly are poor likenesses of the target face. When there are multiple witnesses, however, an opportunity exists to morph the composites. Morphs were rated as more similar to the target face than were the mean ratings of the individual composites. However, as hypothesized, the morph also came to resemble non-target faces more than the individual composites did (a prototype effect). This prototype effect was so strong that the morphs resembled non-targets more than the individual composites resembled the targets. In addition, morphing composites produced an attractiveness bias, which made the morphing of composites less effective for less attractive targets. Even when the prototype effect and the attractiveness bias were controlled for, however, a true morph-superiority effect continued to exist. The author won the Psi Chi/APS Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award in 2005--2006 for this study.     

Ventilatory and metabolic demands during aggressive physical restraint in healthy adults

We investigated ventilatory and metabolic demands in healthy adults when placed in the prone maximal restraint position (PMRP), i.e., hogtie restraint. Maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV) was measured in seated subjects (n=30), in the PMRP, and when prone with up to 90.1 or 102.3 kg of weight on the back. MVV with the heaviest weight was 70% of the seated MVV (122+/-28 and 156+/-38 L/min, respectively; p<0.001). Also, subjects (n=27) were placed in the PMRP and struggled vigorously for 60 sec. During the restrained struggle, ventilatory function (V(E)/ MVV) was 44% of MVV in the resting PMRP. While prone with up to 90.1 or 102.3 kg on the back, the decrease in MVV was of no clinical importance in these subjects. Also, while maximally struggling in the PMRP, V(E) was still adequate to supply the ventilatory needs.     

Using Gas Chromatography with Ion Mobility Spectrometry to Resolve Explosive Compounds in the Presence of Interferents*

Abstract: Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is a valued field detection technology because of its speed and high sensitivity, but IMS cannot easily resolve analytes of interest within mixtures. Coupling gas chromatography (GC) to IMS adds a separation capability to resolve complex matrices. A GC‐IONSCAN^® operated in IMS and GC/IMS modes was evaluated with combinations of five explosives and four interferents. In 100 explosive/interferent combinations, IMS yielded 21 false positives while GC/IMS substantially reduced the occurrence of false positives to one. In addition, the results indicate that through redesign or modification of the preconcentrator there would be significant advantages to using GC/IMS, such as enhancement of the linear dynamic range (LDR) in some situations. By balancing sensitivity with LDR, GC/IMS could prove to be a very advantageous tool when addressing real world complex mixture situations.     

Understanding how sexual offenders compare across psychiatric and correctional settings: examination of Canadian mentally ill sexual offenders

Abstract

Much of what is known about sexual offenders is based on correctional samples and then applied across settings based on the assumption that this group is homogeneous. In this study, 149 files were compared, including 108 cases from the forensic mental health system (FMH) and 41 cases from the correctional system (COR). Although many similarities were observed between the FMH and COR groups, the results also revealed important differences. The FMH group was characterised by more frequent hospitalisations, higher rates of major mental illness and single status. The COR group was characterised by a history of physical and sexual abuse, family history of addictions, more intrusive sexual offences and higher rates of offending. These results highlight different profiles for sexual offenders in forensic mental health and correctional settings and challenge us to consider the implications for assessment, treatment and risk management of this unique group of sexual offenders.     

Book Reviews

Jarol B. Manheim, All of the People all the Time: Strategic Communication and American Politics (New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991), 255 pp. $25.00.

Harry C. Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1991), pp. 236.

Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 293 pp. $24.95.     

Regional prosperities compared: Massachusetts and Baden-Württemberg in the 1980s

This article compares the relationship between economic development and public policy in two of the most prosperous regions of the 1980s: Massachusetts in the United States and Baden-Württemberg in West Germany. Beginning with a critique of the theory of the product life-cycle, the article examines the rise and fall of traditional industries in Massachusetts and their survival in Baden-Württemberg. It then goes on to consider the rise–but also the vulnerability–of the high-tech and financial firms in Massachusetts, as well as the more robust, though almost invisible growth of these sectors in Baden-Württemberg. The burden of the argument is that there are, strictly speaking, no ‘mature’ industries and public policies aimed at stimulating innovation are most successful when the latter is integrated into the local industrial structure as a whole rather than isolated into a distinct high-tech sector.     

Simulating commercial policy in a small,open dual economy with urban unemployment: A general equilibrium approach

A two‐sector numerical general equilibrium model calibrated on Kenyan data is used to consider second‐best tariff policy in an economy with a distorted market for urban‐industrial labour and urban unemployment. The results illustrate the sensitivity of second‐best policy to the way the administered urban wage is determined (whether it is fixed primarily in terms of food or the manufactured good), and to the degree of inter‐sectoral mobility of capital. Efficiency gains from moving to a second‐best policy are shown to be small in comparison with the gains from eliminating the wage distortion in the first place.