How gun control policies evolve: Gun culture, ‘gunscapes’ and political contingency in post-Soviet Georgia
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480618822832 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | Eugene Slonimerov,Matthew Light |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
822832TCR0010.1177/1362480618822832Theoretical CriminologyLight and Slonimerov
research-article2019
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(4) 590 –611
How gun control policies
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
evolve: Gun culture,
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480618822832
DOI: 10.1177/1362480618822832
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
‘gunscapes’ and political
contingency in post-Soviet
Georgia
Matthew Light
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Eugene Slonimerov
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
Abstract
We analyse the influence of gun culture and exogenous political events on gun regulation
in post-Soviet Georgia. While neighbouring states retain restrictive Soviet-era gun laws,
in Georgia, state failure, armed conflict and proliferation of weapons during the 1990s
all impelled recent governments towards moderate gun policies, including liberal rules
on handgun ownership, strict rules on gun carriage and a national gun registry. We
conceptualize gun policy as the product of relatively durable institutional legacies and
underlying social attitudes—in this case, a distinctive post-communist ‘gunscape’—which
constrain future policy development; and specific political conjunctures, which provide
opportunities for limited policy experimentation. While Georgian gun owners desire
weapons for self-defence, sport and the affirmation of masculinity, they do not seek
to defy the state or replace its role in collective security, leading to a moderate ‘harm
reduction’ approach to regulation that may be applicable in other post-conflict societies.
Keywords
Conflict, firearms, guns, police and policing, post-communism, regulation, Republic of
Georgia, vigilantism
Corresponding author:
Matthew Light, University of Toronto, 14 Queen’s Park Crescent West, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3K9,
Canada.
Email: matthew.light@utoronto.ca
Light and Slonimerov
591
A surprising equilibrium
Visitors to the Republic of Georgia notice the lack of obtrusive security visible in many
post-Soviet countries. Yet, in the early 1990s, Georgia’s territory was divided among
armed groups, and was awash in weapons. Indeed, hotels in the capital, Tbilisi, posted
signs asking guests not to bring guns inside.1 Now, guns have been removed from public
spaces, and gun policy has reached a moderate equilibrium. Georgia’s gun2 policies since
1994 are puzzling. First, they are uncontentious, despite recent civil war. Current policies
took shape in 2003, and evolved only modestly over three regimes since then. Second,
they are historically and regionally anomalous. Unlike the Soviet Union and neighbour-
ing Soviet successor states, Georgia3 licenses both hunting guns and handguns, in unlim-
ited numbers, with minimal storage and training requirements.
In this article, we analyse how guns went from Georgia’s bane to policy footnote.
Georgia illustrates how a state with a recent history of armed conflict can reduce demand
for private security. It also reveals how regional ‘gunscapes’ displaying particular
assumptions about the role of weapons—here, a post-communist gunscape—can evolve,
but within limits. Finally, it illustrates an undertheorized dimension to gun policy debates,
namely, intensity or salience.
Contrary to the paradigmatic US case, in Georgia, gun policy presents a modus
vivendi accommodating both some regulation and some harms from gun ownership,
while eliciting little controversy. Below, after reviewing relevant scholarship, we pre-
sent Georgia’s gun policies, their history and their regional distinctiveness. We argue
that in Georgia guns have not come to represent defiance of authority, or rejection of
a stigmatized ‘suspect population’ (Jones, 2007: 853), as in the United States. Georgia
illustrates how gun cultures, ‘gunscapes’ and gun policies influence and constrain one
other.
Situating Georgia: Security governance, gun polices, gun
cultures
In our analysis, we engage scholarly literatures on security governance, gun policies and
gun cultures. The first concerns how public and private actors pursue security, including
through weapons; see, for example, Jones (2007), McDowall and Loftin (1983),
Springwood (2007b) and Wood and Dupont (2006). Where people perceive collective
security as adequate, demand for private alternatives is low, but where they see it as
deficient, they seek private solutions, even to the detriment of collective security
(McDowall and Loftin, 1983). Latin Americans’ mass acquisition of guns in response to
pervasive crime exemplifies this argument (Sanjurjo, 2019). Likewise, research on
‘nodal governance’ argues public and private security are becoming highly intertwined
(Shearing, 2006). Some studies suggest such pluralistic security is beneficial (Jones,
2007), whereas others advocate a leading role in security for the state (Loader and
Walker, 2006; Marks and Goldsmith, 2006; Sanjurjo, 2017). In theory, one can posit a
point of ‘optimal security’ where investments in collective security meet citizens’ needs
without waste (Johnston, 2006).
592
Theoretical Criminology 24(4)
Other studies analyse how guns are regulated, used and interpreted. While a few mod-
ern regimes, discussed below, nearly prohibited private guns, most permit some civilian
ownership, but vary as to which weapons are permitted; who can be licensed, for what
purpose and through what procedures; and how ownership is recorded (Parker, 2011). In
the developed world, lax gun policies make the United States an outlier, with European
states converging around similar principles (Vernick et al., 2007), encouraged by the
European Union (Duquet and Van Alstein, 2015). One can distinguish between ‘moder-
ate’ and ‘extensive’ gun control regulatory regimes (DeGrazia, 2014); below we term
Georgia’s policies ‘moderate’. One could also ask how well gun policies are enforced.
Thus, in some developing countries, strict regulations are flouted (Sanjurjo, 2019), an
issue we explore in the post-Soviet context.
We also consider regional differences in gun use, captured in the concept of the ‘gun-
scape’ (Springwood, 2007a). While both the United States and Latin America feature
widespread gun ownership, quasi-sexual fascination with guns in certain US circles
(King, 2007), contrasts with Latin Americans’ utilitarian attitudes (Sanjurjo, 2019: 17).
Likewise, motivations for gun ownership influence people’s receptivity towards regula-
tion. Whereas guns in Brazil are sought from fear of severe crime, and voters rejected a
referendum proposal to restrict gun ownership (Goldstein, 2007), in the Balkans, guns
only became more widespread during 1990s ethnic conflicts, thus facilitating regulation
once order was restored (Sanjurjo and Kožina, 2018); we situate the Balkans and Georgia
in a post-communist ‘gunscape’.
Like the study of ‘gunscapes’, research on ‘gun culture’ examines international and
regional variation. Thus, gun culture may influence gun fatalities after controlling for
other differences across countries (Lemieux, 2014). As we primarily analyse policy for-
mation, not crime rates, we instead ask why people want guns in different political and
social contexts. Harcourt (2006) identifies functional motivations, such as self-defence;
as well as symbolic ones, relating to personal identity and gender. Likewise, Sheptycki
(2010) argues, in certain ‘pistolized’ societies, gun ownership signifies self-worth among
men; see also Springwood (2007a: 20). For Felson, Paré and colleagues, gun culture in
the US South differs from regions where gun ownership or carrying simply responds to
life-threatening aggression in the environment (Felson and Paré, 2010a, 2010b; Paré and
Korosec, 2014; for a contrasting case, see Heinze, 2014). However, in some developing
countries during or after armed conflicts, traditional honour codes interact with chronic
insecurity to produce stronger affect for guns, which Carr (2008) terms a ‘Kalashnikov
culture’. In Africa, some Cold War-era conflicts produced an attachment to weapons that
persisted after the conflicts were resolved (Mburu, 2007). In short, widespread gun pos-
session does not indicate whether guns are crucial to identity, or hold purely instrumental
value, nor does it reveal whether people accept stricter regulation.
According to some studies, gun carrying conveys a different attitude towards state
authority from mere ownership. Unlike someone who keeps a gun at home, one who
carries a gun in public assumes a public protection role (Felson and Paré, 2010b:
1359–1361). In Carlson (2015), the growing number of white middle- and working-
class American men licensed to carry concealed guns reflects their disdain for police
and other institutions and racialized feelings of loss of status; see also Springwood
Light and Slonimerov
593
(2007a: 20). Finding this model robust across the United States, South Africa and
India, Carlson (2014: 348) recommends further ‘empirically driven, comparative anal-
yses of global gun cultures’.
Carlson also highlights the need to theorize how gun culture influences policy.
Although the US National Rifle Association promoted state laws authorizing ‘con-
cealed carry’, she argues such legislation also reflects a genuine social movement. By
extension, while closed authoritarian regimes such as the USSR, or racial oligarchies
such as Apartheid South Africa, implemented (respectively) full or racially selective
gun confiscation...
To continue reading
Request your trial