Country-level firearm availability and terrorism: A new approach to examining the gun-crime relationship

Abstract

Objectives: This study examines the association between a country's gun availability and firearm-related terrorism. Methods: Employing data from 140 countries, we assess the possible relationship between a country's rate of suicide by firearm and their count of terrorist attacks involving a firearm through a series of structural equation models. Results: Collectively, we find that there is a positive relationship between gun availability and firearm-related terrorism in 2016 and 2017. However, this result fails our robustness check and is sensitive to the inclusion of the U.S. Conclusion: With important caveats, we believe the U.S. to be unique in terms of both gun availability and terrorism.

Gaining masculine power through guns? The impact of masculinity threat on attitudes toward guns

“…Additionally, it is desirable to know whether our theoretical reasoning generalizes to societies other than the United States. Indeed, the firearm culture in the United States seems to be relatively unique compared to other countries ( Carson et al, 2022 ) which probably has a particular influence on United States men compared to men from other countries. However, it is possible that similar mechanisms apply to men in other Western cultures, or that they generally apply to all men, due to similar fundamental socio-cultural and psychological mechanisms of humans (but see Valved et al, 2021 , for cultural differences in masculinity threat).…”

The Theorizing of Terrorism within Criminology

“…Sensitivity tests can be used to examine whether variations in definitions impact the substantive findings of any analysis, though this presents additional research hurdles including the potential for large-scale empirical endeavors to be dismissed out of hand (Forst 2017). This has been a feature of recent studies of terrorism within criminological journals that have assessed sensitivity to temporal periods (Behlendorf, LaFree, and Legault 2012;Carson, Dierenfeldt, and Fisher 2022), international contexts (LaFree, Morris, and Dugan 2010;Fisher and Becker 2021;Fisher and Dugan 2021), subnational contexts (LaFree, Dugan, and Xie 2012;Varaine 2020;Fisher and Lee 2019), measurement strategies and datasets (Chermak et al 2012), and replication of treatment (Carson 2014;2017). Despite these efforts, these concerns are compounded by the covert nature of both terrorism and responses to terrorism alike.…”

The Theorizing of Terrorism Within Criminology

“…Sensitivity tests can be used to examine whether variations in definitions impact the substantive findings of any analysis, though this presents additional research hurdles including the potential for large-scale empirical endeavors to be dismissed out of hand (Forst 2017). This has been a feature of recent studies of terrorism within criminological journals that have assessed sensitivity to temporal periods (Behlendorf, LaFree, and Legault 2012; Carson, Dierenfeldt, and Fisher 2022), international contexts (LaFree, Morris, and Dugan 2010; Fisher and Becker 2021; Fisher and Dugan 2021), subnational contexts (LaFree, Dugan, and Xie 2012; Varaine 2020; Fisher and Lee 2019), measurement strategies and datasets (Chermak et al 2012), and replication of treatment (Carson 2014, 2017). Despite these efforts, these concerns are compounded by the covert nature of both terrorism and responses to terrorism alike.…”