Intervening in gun markets: an experiment to assess the impact of targeted gun-law messaging

The objective of this study was to assess whether targeting new gun buyers with a public safety message aimed at improving gun law awareness can modify gun purchasers’ behaviors. Between May 2007 and September 2008, 2,120 guns were purchased in two target neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles. Starting in August 2007, gun buyers initiating transactions on odd-numbered days received a letter signed by prominent law enforcement officials, indicating that law enforcement had a record of their gun purchase and that the gun buyer should properly record future transfers of the gun. The letters arrived during buyers’ 10-day waiting periods, before they could legally return to the store to collect their new gun. Subsequent gun records were extracted to assess the letter’s effect on legal secondary sales, reports of stolen guns, and recovery of the gun in a crime. An intent-to-treat analysis was also conducted as a sensitivity check to remedy a lapse in the letter program between May and August 2007. The letter appears to have no effect on the legal transfer rate or on the short-term rate of guns subsequently turning up in a crime. However, we found that the rate at which guns are reported stolen for those who received the letter is more than twice the rate for those who did not receive the letter (p value = 0.01). Those receiving the letter reported their gun stolen at a rate of 18 guns per 1,000 gun-years and those not receiving the letter reported their gun stolen at a rate of 7 guns per 1,000 gun-years. Of those receiving the letter, 1.9% reported their gun stolen during the study period compared to 1.0% for those who did not receive the letter. The percentage of guns reported stolen in these neighborhoods is high, indicating a high rate of true gun theft, a regular practice of using stolen-gun reports to separate the gun buyer from future misuse of the gun, or some blend of both. Simple, targeted gun law awareness campaigns can modify new gun buyers’ behaviors. Additional follow-up or modifications to this initiative might be needed to impact the rate at which guns enter the illegal gun market and ultimately are recovered in crimes.     

Routine activities and victimization at school: the significance of gender

Routine activities theory has not fully considered the role of gender in shaping victimization and yet, the research literature clearly demonstrates that gender is associated with an individual's risk of victimization. In addition to the pervasive effect of gender on victimization, gender shapes an individual's daily routines and thus may create a gender-specific relationship with victimization. This article explores the importance of gender in understanding the relationship between student's participation in extracurricular routine activities (e.g., student government, clubs, sports, and etc.) and the risk of victimization. From the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, a sample of 10th-grade students was drawn for analyses. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling was employed to explore the role of gender in the relationship between extracurricular routine activities and victimization at school. The results reveal that students' gender indeed interacts with several of the extracurricular routine activities creating gender-specific risks of victimization. This article highlights the importance of gender in explaining victimization and suggests researchers should consider how gender may interact with other routine activities and victimization.     

Phencyclidine: a 5-year retrospective review from the New York City Medical Examiner's Office

We report here a 5-year retrospective review of autopsy cases from the New York City Medical Examiner's Office that demonstrated phencyclidine (PCP) in the blood. There were a total of 138 cases. There were 52 deaths because of mixed drug intoxication: the blood PCP concentrations in these cases ranged from <1 to 598 ng/mL. There were 80 violent deaths in which PCP was quantified in the blood but was unrelated to the cause of death. There were five nonviolent deaths in which PCP exclusively was detected. In four of these, there were preexisting medical conditions that could also have contributed to death. In these, the highest PCP concentration was 361.3 ng/mL, a concentration lower than seven of the individuals in our violent death category. This suggests that lower concentrations may be fatal with comorbid conditions.     

Through thick or thin? The performance and operation of firms and the institutional thickness model

The idea that “institutional thickness” is an important component for the resilience of local economies continues to attract attention several years after the seminal work on the subject by Amin and Thrift (1994). In Melbourne's northern suburbs, one manufacturing sector has recently seen significant job growth. Coinciding with this trend is the emergence of regional economic development bodies. Have they influenced the performance and operation of firms? Results from interviews with firm managers suggest not, with non-institutional factors predominating. This “business as usual” scenario suggests local economic development strategies have limitations.     

Separated Powers in the United States: The Ideology of Agencies,Presidents, and Congress

Government agencies service interest groups, advocate policies, provide advice to elected officials, and create and implement public policy. Scholars have advanced theories to explain the role of agencies in American politics, but efforts to test these theories are hampered by the inability to systematically measure agency preferences. We present a method for measuring agency ideology that yields ideal point estimates of individual bureaucrats and agencies that are directly comparable with those of other political actors. These estimates produce insights into the nature of the bureaucratic state and provide traction on a host of questions about American politics. We discuss what these estimates reveal about the political environment of bureaucracy and their potential for testing theories of political institutions. We demonstrate their utility by testing key propositions from Gailmard and Patty's (2007) influential model of political control and endogenous expertise development.     

The Use of the Adult Attachment Scale with Domestically Violent Men

Empirical evidence highlights the utility of examining attachment styles in exploring the etiology of intimate partner violence perpetration, with insecure attachment styles regularly identified as underscoring domestically violent men. This study applied the 18-item self-report Adult Attachment Scale (Collins & Read, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(4), 644–663 1990) to 176 men entering a domestic violence perpetration counseling program. Factor analyses failed to result in the three factor model of the AAS. Subsequent item analyses indicated participants’ random and contradictory response style negated the possibility of any coherent factor structure. The results of this study caution investigators on the validity of self-report data with domestically violent men and offers both research and clinical/conceptual implications.     

BNFL National Stakeholder Dialogue: a case study in public affairs

This case study explores the very early days of the British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) National Stakeholder Dialogue. The dialogue is arguably the most intensive, consistent and difficult engagement with stakeholders ever undertaken by a UK company. It involves a wide range of individuals and organisations interested in or concerned about nuclear issues and aims to inform BNFL's decision‐making process around the improvement of their environmental performance in the context of their overall development. The process is designed and convened by The Environment Council, an independent third party with expertise in stake‐holder dialogue. The aim of this paper is to examine how the dialogue came about, why stakeholder dialogue was used as a process, some of the problems encountered by the process and the link that can exist between public affairs and stakeholder dialogue. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications