Gun Violence and Gun Policy in the United States: Understanding American Exceptionalism

• Published date: 01 November 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231174162
• Author: Kerri M. Raissian,Jennifer Necci dineen,Cassandra Crifasi
• Date: 01 November 2022

ANNALS, AAPSS, 704, November 2022 7

DOI: 10.1177/00027162231174162

Gun Violence

and Gun Policy

in the United

States:

Understanding

American

Exceptionalism

By

KERRI M. RAISSIAN,

JENNIFER NECCI DINEEN,

and

CASSANDRA CRIFASI

1174162ANN The annals of the american academyGun violence and gun policy in the U.S.

research-article2023

America has both the highest gun death rate (12 per

100,000 persons) and the highest gun circulation rate

(about 121 firearms in circulation for every 100 per-

sons) of any developed country. Taken together, these

statistics might lead one to assume that high gun death

rates in America are all but a certain outcome. However,

gun death rates vary substantially across America sug-

gesting that a range of solutions to reduce gun death

and injury exist. This transdisciplinary volume contains

a novel collection of articles that overview the evolution

of American gun policy, presents evidence on the effi-

cacy of both policy and non-policy interventions, and

provides insight on where we go from here given

American culture, norms, and legal structures.

Keywords: gun violence prevention; evidence; trans-

disciplinary

The U.S. has the highest gun death1 rate

(13.6 per 100,000 persons; Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2023)

of any developed country (Leach-Kemon and

Sirull 2022). We also have the highest gun

Correspondence: kerri.raissian@uconn.edu

Kerri M. Raissian is an associate professor of public

policy in the School of Public Policy at the University of

Connecticut and director of UConn’s ARMS Center for

Gun Injury Prevention. Raissian’s interdisciplinary

research focuses on child and family policy with an

emphasis on understanding how policies affect family

violence.

Jennifer Necci Dineen is an associate professor in resi-

dence in the University of Connecticut School of Public

Policy and associate director of UConn’s ARMS Center

for Gun Injury Prevention. Dineen is a survey method-

ologist whose research focuses on understanding stake-

holder attitudes as mechanism for intervention uptake

and policy change.

Cassandra Crifasi is an associate professor of health

policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg

School of Public Health and serves as the codirector of

the Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Crifasi’s

research focuses on gun violence and policy and atti-

tudes on gun violence solutions.