Gun Dealer Motivations for Complying with the Law: Lessons from the Australian Experience of Gun Control

Gun reform after a major mass shooting in Australia has largely been heralded as a success. However, understanding how compliance is encouraged among the gun owning community with a history of opposing regulation is currently limited in systematic sociological research. Gun dealers in particular app...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological perspectives 2022-02, Vol.65 (1), p.154-176
Main Author: Fay, Suzanna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Community
Compliance
Enforcement
Firearm laws & regulations
Firearms
Gun violence
Mass murders
Motivation
Shooting
Sociological research
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Gun reform after a major mass shooting in Australia has largely been heralded as a success. However, understanding how compliance is encouraged among the gun owning community with a history of opposing regulation is currently limited in systematic sociological research. Gun dealers in particular appear to be important for understanding levels of compliance and possibilities for promoting compliance, as they are simultaneously involved in the compliance process and subject to its enforcement as members of the gun owning community. This paper positions gun dealers as street-level bureaucrats responsible for implementing gun regulations and uses a Compliance Motivation framework to explore the possible motivations for compliance and their role in promoting compliance within the gun owning community. Findings are based on 28 in-depth interviews with gun dealers across Australia and demonstrate the challenging but important role that gun dealer’s play in enacting gun control policy.
ISSN:0731-1214
1533-8673
DOI:10.1177/07311214211021127