Trends and Patterns of Concealed Handgun License Applications: A Multistate Analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harel Shapira ◽  
Katherine Jensen ◽  
Ken-Hou Lin

Recent waves of legislation have made it much easier for gun owners to obtain a Concealed Handgun License (CHL) and thereby carry their guns in public except when explicitly prohibited. Because data are difficult to access, our understanding of who seeks and obtains such licenses remains limited. Using data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, this article fills this empirical gap by describing demographic trends and characteristics of applicants for CHLs in five states: Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, and Utah. The results establish that (1) applications for CHLs are growing at fast rates; (2) there are significant gender and racial disparities in terms of who applies for CHLs, with men 2.9 to 5.5 times more likely to apply than women, and whites 1.3 to 2.0 times more likely to apply than blacks; (3) in Florida and Utah, these demographic gaps have widened over time; and (4) there are significant racial disparities in terms of application outcomes, with black applicants being 3.3 to 5.5 times more likely to be denied a license than white applicants. Moreover, we do not find the patterns in Massachusetts, a may-issue state, to be significantly different from the shall-issue states in our sample.

Author(s):  
Kevin M. Baron

Executive privilege (EP) as a political tool has created a grey area of constitutional power between the legislative and executive branches. By focusing on the post-WWII political usage of executive privilege, this research utilizes a social learning perspective to examine the power dynamics between Congress and the president when it comes to government secrecy and public information. Social learning provides the framework to understand how the Cold War's creation of the modern American security state led to a paradigm shift in the executive branch. This shift altered the politics of the presidency and impacted relations with Congress through extensive use of EP and denial of congressional requests for information. When viewed through a social learning lens, the institutional politics surrounding the development of the Freedom of Information Act is intricately entwined with EP as a political power struggle of action-reaction between the executive and legislative branches. Using extensive archival research, this historical analysis examines the politics surrounding the modern use of executive privilege from Truman through Nixon as an action-reaction of checks on power from the president and Congress, where each learns and responds based on the others previous actions. The use of executive privilege led to the Freedom of Information Act showing how policy can serve as a congressional check on executive power, and how the politics surrounding this issue influence contemporary politics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762097056
Author(s):  
Morgana Lizzio-Wilson ◽  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
Winnifred R. Louis ◽  
Brittany Wilcockson ◽  
Catherine E. Amiot ◽  
...  

Extensive research has identified factors influencing collective-action participation. However, less is known about how collective-action outcomes (i.e., success and failure) shape engagement in social movements over time. Using data collected before and after the 2017 marriage-equality debate in Australia, we conducted a latent profile analysis that indicated that success unified supporters of change ( n = 420), whereas failure created subgroups among opponents ( n = 419), reflecting four divergent responses: disengagement (resigned acceptors), moderate disengagement and continued investment (moderates), and renewed commitment to the cause using similar strategies (stay-the-course opponents) or new strategies (innovators). Resigned acceptors were least inclined to act following failure, whereas innovators were generally more likely to engage in conventional action and justify using radical action relative to the other profiles. These divergent reactions were predicted by differing baseline levels of social identification, group efficacy, and anger. Collective-action outcomes dynamically shape participation in social movements; this is an important direction for future research.


2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (7) ◽  
pp. 965-981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmi Schooler ◽  
Leslie J Caplan ◽  
Pakuy Pierre Mounkoro ◽  
Chiaka Diakité

We examine the effects of socio-environmental change on personality in Mali in three ways, using data from a longitudinal two-wave (1994, 2004) survey conducted in rural Mali. Firstly, we compare the between-wave personality stability of Anxiety, Self-confidence, Mastery/Fatalism, and Authoritarianism with that in USA, Japan, Poland, and Ukraine. Secondly, we examine socio-economic hardship and political instability in pre-industrial Mali. Thirdly, we examine patterns of psychological reaction to political and social change during the study period. Our findings have implications for comparisons and generalizations across times and cultures about the contribution of socio-environmental conditions to over-time change in personality.


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