1,721,034 research outputs found
Legal Frameworks
Full text linkIn many ways, the production, ownership and transfer of firearms is regulated in the same way as the production, ownership and transfer of any other commodity, but the regulations have always been tighter when concerning firearms. Earlier in this book, we saw that both the legal and illicit manufacturing, acquisition, trafficking and criminal misuse all physically take place on the soil of a sovereign State. This means that that State must develop regulations and laws designed to prevent or reduce these illicit activities. Modern national legal frameworks are constructed under the umbrella of different extra-national legislative measures that have been developed to prevent and reduce illicit activities involving firearms. However, as this chapter will demonstrate, these instruments are generally of a guiding nature, and will not be successful unless States implement the regulations and policies agreed to in the instruments. The chapter will discuss the development of these supra-national frameworks, and consider how States develop these regulations and measures. It will cover elements such as stockpile management, purchasing and ownership restrictions, law enforcement and standards on collecting and destroying firearms. For reach of the supranational elements, examples will be given of how these are put into place at a national level
Conclusion:Where we are, and where do we go from here?
No full textMany academics argue that the world is full of tired old clichés. From the First World War (Cranfield, 2012) and metaphysics (Moore, 2011) to brand management (Kapferer, 2008) and political realism (McQueen, 2020), they would seem to be present in many areas of study, and usually linger despite being proven to be groundless. Studies in the area of firearms are no exception to this, and we are often confronted with the statement that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” (see, for example Stroud (2020); Goldsmith et al (2020)). Pitt (2014) argues in favour of the value neutrality thesis – the idea that guns are neither good nor bad, and that the “the values of the people doing the building are not in the artefacts” (2014: 89) and, while there is value in that argument, this conclusion will explore the different aspects of this statement in light of the discussions in the earlier chapters of the book
Firearms, Terrorism and Organised Crime
No full textThis Chapter focuses on the nexus between organized criminal groups (OCGs), terrorist groups and firearms. It explores the strategic role and importance that firearms play in the race for power of these groups, and how in-depth investigations into arms trafficking can provide essential elements to investigate and combat the groups. It will also address the possession, use and transfer of firearms to, from and between OCGs and terrorist groups. Increasingly, we are seeing a nexus, or series of connections, between organized criminal groups and terrorist groups, both in terms of firearms movement and in broader terms – such as “commodity swaps” where firearms are exchanged for other licit or illicit products. The question which underpins the chapter is the extent to which legislative and policy efforts can and should take into account the links between firearms in the context of serious crimes such as organised crime and terrorism, as opposed to less serious offences. For example, the issues of whether a person is in illegal possession of a firearm, or committing an acquisitive crime using a firearm should be punished differently by the criminal justice system depending on their possible membership of an OCG or Terrorist group
The Global Legal Market in Firearms
No full textIn contrast to the remainder of this book, which focuses rightly on illicit patterns of firearms movement, this chapter considers the development and operation of the legal market in firearms. The rationale for this is clear – almost no firearms are de facto illegal at the time of production. The exception to the first part of this is firearms which are manufactured in a manner which contravenes the law – either because they are manufactured in breach of copyright, because they are made in breach of a prohibition in force, or because they are “craft made” or “artisanal” firearms. Furthermore, most firearms remain in legally-authorised possession for their entire existence. Some are “diverted” from the lawful to unlawful sphere by accident (theft, loss) others by design (knowingly or negligently transferring firearms in a way that contravenes the law – either because of the transferor’s status or because of national embargoes etc.). What this means in practice is that almost every firearm that has been trafficked illicitly, was produced legitimately. This legitimate to illegitimate, or what Florquin and King (2018) from the Small Arms Survey calls “legal to lethal” shift happens in a number of ways in addition to diversion, mentioned above. Organised theft of firearms from police, military and government stockpiles, and the illegal reactivation of deactivated weapons will be covered elsewhere in the book. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the legitimate international trade in firearms. An understanding of the size, nature and development of the legitimate market will clarify the context into which the illegitimate market can be placed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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