Why some states bring more laws to the gunfight

Abstract

Firearm laws impact rates of injuries and crimes in U.S. states. Researchers, however, seldom examine the factors that influence state-level enactment of restrictive firearm law provisions (FLPs) over time. This study builds on economic threat and group threat scholarship, explaining variation in the number of restrictive FLPs in effect across U.S. states from 1992 to 2019. Analyzing annual state-level panel data using longitudinal negative binomial regression, results indicate that economic threat, group threat, political partisanship, and region are particularly relevant to explaining this phenomenon. I situate this study in the sociological discourse on state-level firearm legislation and provide suggestions for future research.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the thorough and supportive comments and suggestions from Chad A. Malone, Kelley J. Sittner, Bin Liang, and Joshua Jansa as well as the Editor-in-Chief, Kevin Breault, and anonymous reviewers at Sociological Spectrum on earlier versions of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The South and West region variables are not lagged because they are time-invariant.

2 The State Firearm Laws database is maintained by researchers in Boston University’s School of Public Health, and it is funded through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Evidence for Action Program and the National Institute of Justice.

3 Table A1 displays the 14 categories used to differentiate the FLPs.

4 Graphs provided in Figure A1 further illustrate FLP counts per state by year.

5 Coefficients for black threat terms outside the South and West have a joint statistical significance of p = 0.059.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jericho R. McElroy

Jericho R. McElroy received his PhD in sociology from Oklahoma State University and is an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Illinois College. His research focuses on green criminology and carceral environmental justice; the determinants of firearm legislation in U.S. states; and campus activism at U.S. colleges and universities.