Guns, violent crime, and suicide in 21 countries

Killias, Martin; Kesteren, John van; Rindlisbacher, Martin

doi:10.3138/cjcrim.43.4.429

Cited by 82 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Possession of rifles may have been admitted by many former scouts and those who had attended training at target shooting before joining the army, thus introducing many particularly conformist youth into this category. The finding that rifles are negatively related to assault with injury in this study and simultaneously contribute to suicide and homicide of females in an international perspective (Killias et al, 2001) may not necessarily be contradictory. In fact, 20-year-old soldiers usually are unmarried and therefore have no opportunity to assault spouses.…”

Section: Multivariate Analysesmentioning

confidence: 51%

The Role of Weapons in Violent Acts

Killias¹,

Haas

2002

J Interpers Violence

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Killias, Haas / WEAPONS IN VIOLENT ACTSThe role of guns and other weapons in violent acts has often been a subject of debate. The present study is based on a sample of 21,314 valid interviews with 20-year-old Swiss men, representing more than 70% of this cohort. The results show a much higher frequency of violence among owners of handguns and other weapons, but not of rifles. Gun owners also have been injured more often and they suffer more often from psychiatric symptoms. A considerable proportion of violent gun owners had previous police contacts and court appearances, suggesting that policies designed to confiscate guns would be feasible. In a multivariate model, which considered a great number of conventional criminological variables (such as delinquent friends) and indicators of psychopathology, ownership of handguns and other weapons (but not rifles) turned out to be a very important factor in explaining violence leading to bodily injury.

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Section: Multivariate Analysesmentioning

confidence: 51%

The Role of Weapons in Violent Acts

Killias¹,

Haas

2002

J Interpers Violence

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“…The present results indicate that almost all of the measures used in cross-sectional research, and all of those used in longitudinal studies, are apparently invalid measures of gun levels. Thus, with the exception of the few studies that used PSG (or indexes including PSG) or direct survey measures in cross-sectional research (e.g., Cook 1979;Killias et al 2001;Kleck and Kovandzic 2001;Kleck and Patterson 1993), the supposed gun-crime associations estimated in nearly all past research must be regarded as uninterpretable on the simple grounds that gun levels were not adequately measured and many of the proxies used were measuring some violence-related concept other than gun levels. Even ignoring severe problems in identification and model specification, most past research, and all longitudinal research, has generated meaningless findings on gun effects because the proxies used cannot be legitimately interpreted as measures of gun availability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measures of Gun Ownership Levels for Macro-Level Crime and Violence Research

Kleck

2004

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

121

118

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Valid measures of macro-level gun levels are essential to assessing the impact of gun levels on crime and violence rates, yet almost all prior research on this topic uses proxies that are either invalid or whose validity has been assumed rather than demonstrated. The present study uses city, state, cross-national, and time series data to assess the criterion validity of over two dozen gun indicators. The criterion measures used are primarily direct survey measures of household gun prevalence. The results indicate that (1) most measures used in past research have poor validity, making past findings uninterpretable, (2) the best measure for cross-sectional research is the percentage of suicides committed with guns, and (3) there are no known measures that are valid indicators of trends in gun levels, making credible longitudinal research on the subject impossible at present.

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“…The majority of studies that examine trends in firearm deaths evaluate a single country or state/province, before and after significant epochs of legislative reform, and the results and conclusions vary considerably (Killias, Van Kesteren, & Rindlisbacher, 2001). This level of inconsistency was reflected in a recent metareview of U.S. firearms legislation research, which came to the conclusion that "the evidence available from identified studies was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed singly or in combination" (Hahn et al, 2005, p. 40).…”

Section: Abstract Community Violence Criminology Homicidementioning

confidence: 99%

Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long-Term International Comparisons?

McPhedran

Baker

Singh

2010

J Interpers Violence

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Although firearm homicide remains a topic of interest within criminological and policy discourse, existing research does not generally undertake longitudinal comparisons between countries. However, cross-country comparisons provide insight into whether "local" trends (e.g., declines in firearm homicide in one particular country) differ from broader, international trends. This in turn can improve knowledge about the role of factors such as policing practices and socioeconomic variables in the incidence of lethal violence using firearms. The current study compares long-term firearm homicide trends in three countries with similar social histories but different legislative regimes: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Using negative binomial regression, the study found that the most pronounced decline in firearm homicide over the past two decades occurred in New Zealand. Connections between social disadvantage, policing policy, and violence are discussed.

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Guns, violent crime, and suicide in 21 countries

Cited by 82 publications

References 0 publications

The Role of Weapons in Violent Acts

The Role of Weapons in Violent Acts

Measures of Gun Ownership Levels for Macro-Level Crime and Violence Research

Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long-Term International Comparisons?

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