Machine Gun Politics: Why Politicians Cooperate with Criminal Groups

Why do politicians cooperate with organized criminal groups? Existing accounts explore such groups’ incentives to cooperate, but largely treat politicians as either victims of violence or passive bribe takers. This paper considers why politicians may seek criminals’ help to get votes. I argue that some politicians win by using an electoral strategy called criminal clientelism. Politicians hire criminal groups as brokers to deliver votes through two mechanisms: (1) corralling mobilizes groups of residents to the polls and (2) gatekeeping prevents rival candidates from accessing voters. I use a natural experiment that leverages exogenous variation in voter assignment to ballot boxes and a novel dataset on criminal governance to test my theory in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I show that corralling increases turnout and influences vote choice, and gatekeeping restricts the candidate pool. Together, the mechanisms underpinning criminal clientelism decrease competitiveness and increase the probability of victory for criminally allied candidates.

Gun Studies and the Politics of Evidence

This review is about scholarly contributions to a hotly debated issue—gun policy. Teasing apart the politics of evidence within gun politics, it examines both how research agendas shape gun policy and politics as well as how gun policy and politics shape research agendas. To do so, the article maps out two waves of gun research, Gun Studies 1.0 and Gun Studies 2.0. Gun Studies 1.0 emphasizes scientific evidence as a foundation for generating consensus about public policy, and it includes criminological studies aimed at addressing guns as criminogenic tools, public health work aimed at addressing guns as public health problems, and jurisprudential scholarship aimed at adjudicating guns as legal objects. Reviewing how these approaches incited popular debates and public policies that, in turn, shaped subsequent conditions of gun scholarship, the article then turns to Gun Studies 2.0. Instead of taking evidence as self-evident, this body of scholarship tends to prioritize the meaning-making processes that make meaningful—or not—evidence surrounding gun policy. Accordingly, Gun Studies 2.0 unravels the political and cultural conditions of the contemporary US gun debate and broadens inquiries into gun harm and gun security. In addition to discussing areas for future study, this study concludes by encouraging gun researchers to attend to the politics of evidence as they mobilize scholarship not just to inform the gun debate but also to transform it.

Safer with a gun

Chapter 4 examines people’s feelings about gun safety and the connection to gun policy preferences. Those who feel safe around guns are strong supporters of gun rights legislation. Those who feel threatened and not safe around guns prefer strict gun regulations. Personal experiences with guns and the prevalence of guns in people’s social lives are key factors that influence whether people perceive guns as dangerous and a threat to their well-being or safe and a means of protection. Feelings about personal safety or threat are palpable and animate the gun debate in American politics. Given the strong ties between such feelings and gun policy preferences, it is not surprising gun politics are often heated and end in stalemate.

A Qualitative Analysis of the Vulnerability Narratives of Student Gun Rights Advocates

In recent years, colleges and universities in the United States have considered allowing concealed firearms on their campuses. Yet, substantive research on why a minority of students’ desire to arm themselves is scarce. Addressing this gap in the literature, this study examines 30 interviews with chapter presidents of a national student gun rights organization. Using racialized narratives, participants express intense feelings of vulnerability on campus and in the larger society. Extending Feagin’s theory of systemic racism to gun politics, I argue respondents’ belief that they must be armed to co-exist with people of color reproduces racial inequality and poses a potential threat to students, faculty, and staff of color.

Book Review: Gun Politics in America: Historical and Modern Documents in Context

Gun Politics in America: Historical and Modern Documents in Context is an affordable two-volume set comprised of eight chapters ranging from the early eighteenth century to President Obama’s first term. Each chapter is made up of about fifteen primary source documents covering major periods in firearms and politics in the United States, with 134 sources total. In addition, each chapter has a roughly ten-page introduction that provides an overview of the social and cultural climate of the period covered by the chapter, with the focus on how the period connects with gun control and the politics surrounding firearms. The chapter introductions do an excellent job of connecting themes in gun control such as race relations, crime rates, organized crime, drugs, and other specific issues related to gun control such as the right to self-defense and concealed carrying of firearms.