About

Kristin Anne Goss is the Susan B. King Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She serves as a professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy and is the Director of Duke in DC, Policy, Leadership & Innovation, as well as the Director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism. Additionally, she holds faculty appointments in Political Science and is an affiliate in several centers including the Hart Leadership Program, the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism, the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Center for Firearms Law. Her research includes examining how the gun control movement became a significant force in American politics, with a focus on the role of money in shaping political influence. Her work has been featured on the Ways & Means podcast, highlighting her expertise in the intersection of policy, philanthropy, and political influence.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Computer Science
• Criminology
• Medicine
• Advertising
• Gender studies
• Political economy
• Public administration
• Business
• Engineering
• World Wide Web
• Law and economics
• Mathematics
• Finance

Selected publications

• Why Do Issues “Whose Time Has Come” Stick Around? Attention Durability and the Case of Gun Control

  Perspectives on Politics · 2023-07-17 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In any healthy democracy, myriad policy issues compete for the public’s attention. Most remain on the periphery of politics, either because they achieve salience only in narrow communities of interest or because they grab headlines only for brief periods of time. But sometimes issues become what we term “durable attention items”—they capture public attention and sustain it over many years. Why? We focus on one such newly durable issue—gun control in the United States. Using an original dataset of roughly 4,500 letters to the editor over a 40-year period, we demonstrate that this once-episodic issue, long dominated by a narrow constituency of pro-gun advocates, has become a mainstay of mass politics. We show that the gun issue’s growing agenda status is due entirely to pro-regulation people mobilized by a combination of contextual factors, namely regularized mass shootings and efforts to relax gun policy, working in tandem with partisan polarization. Besides offering novel evidence of a fundamental shift in American gun politics, the study contributes to our theoretical understanding of how episodic issues come to command consistent political engagement over the long term.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication Data for "Why Do Issues “Whose Time Has Come” Stick Around? Attention Durability and the Case of Gun Control"

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-03-28 · 1 citations

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This project examines trends in gun-related political participation from 1930-2019, with a focus on 1980-2019. The datasets cover 1) letters to the editor of four geographically diverse newspapers (original datasets compiled by the authors), and 2) gun-related contacting (NORC and Pew datasets - publicly accessible).

  PublisherDOI

• 2020 Fiscal Year Contributors

  Political Science Today · 2021

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Advertising

  An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  DOI

• The Value of Guns for Personal and Collective Defense

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  Why Is Self-Defense Central to the Debate over Gun Control? Personal safety is a vital matter, and self-protection is a more compelling rationale for owning guns than recreation. We can all conjure up the nightmare scenario of being defenseless in a violent confrontation with...

  PublisherDOI

• Do Courts Change Politics? Heller and the Limits of Policy Feedback Effects

  Emory law journal · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Law
  • Sociology

  District of Columbia v. Heller was a landmark ruling in which the Supreme Court established that citizens have a constitutional right to possess firearms in their homes for self-protection. The 5-4 decision—along with the Court’s subsequent ruling in McDonald v. Chicago—upended the prevailing wisdom that the Second Amendment protected the right of the states to assemble militias for collective security. In this Article, we examine the effects of these rulings on gun regulation in the United States and, more to the point, on gun politics. We situate our analysis within several related theoretical frameworks, most notably those focused on policy feedback and on the role of courts in producing social change. We argue that the effects of Heller (together with the parallel decision in McDonald) have been rather limited. We examine the rulings’ first-order effects on pre-existing gun control laws, as well as second-order effects on a number of related outcomes. We find that Heller and its progeny have had generally small or non-existent impacts on gun policy, on the organizational capacities and political strategies of pro-gun and pro-regulation groups, and on public attitudes toward gun regulation. Our findings support a constrained view of the Court’s ability to drive social and political change. We conclude, however, by noting that recent developments—particularly hints that some Supreme Court Justices are eager to develop Second Amendment jurisprudence—have the potential to alter these conclusions.

  Publisher

• The Gun Rights Movement

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  What Is the Gun Rights Movement? The gun rights movement consists of several hundred local, state, and national organizations that seek to promote a positive view of firearms in public life and to prevent and remove restrictions on gun ownership and use. Generally speaking,...

  PublisherDOI

• The Gun Debate

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  No topic is more polarizing than guns and gun control. From a gun culture that took root early in American history to the mass shootings that repeatedly bring the public discussion of gun control to a fever pitch, the topic has preoccupied citizens, public officials, and special interest groups for decades. In this thoroughly revised second edition of The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know® noted economist Philip J. Cook and political scientist Kristin A. Goss delve into the issues that Americans debate when they talk about guns. With a balanced and broad-ranging approach, the authors thoroughly cover the latest research, data, and developments on gun ownership, gun violence, the firearms industry, and the regulation of firearms. The authors also tackle sensitive issues such as the impact of gun violence on quality of life, the influence of exposure to gun violence on mental health, home production of guns, arming teachers, the effect of concealed weapons on crime rates, and the ability of authorities to disarm people who aren’t allowed to have a gun. No discussion of guns in the U.S. would be complete without consideration of the history, culture, and politics that drive the passion behind the debate. Cook and Goss deftly explore the origins of the American gun culture and the makeup of both the gun rights and gun control movements. Written in question-and-answer format, this updated edition brings the debate up-to-date for the current political climate under Trump and will help readers make sense of the ideologically driven statistics and slogans that characterize our national conversation on firearms. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in getting a clear view of the issues surrounding guns and gun policy in America.

  PublisherDOI

• Causes of Gun Violence

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  Who Can Be Trusted with a Gun? A simplistic but common understanding of crime is that the population can be divided neatly into two groups, good guys and bad guys. In this view, the bad guys commit crime unless they are locked up, and...

  PublisherDOI

• Manufacture and Marketing of Guns

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  How Large Is the Gun Industry in America? The gun industry itself is rather small by traditional measures. Only a handful of companies produce a significant number of firearms in the United States, and at most 150,000 people are employed in the industry—about 1...

  PublisherDOI

• Gun Control in America

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23

  book-chapterSenior author

  What Are the Basics of the US System of Gun Regulation? Gun regulations have a long history, stretching back to the colonial era. By and large, the laws have been enacted to secure the common defense, to protect individuals from harm, to assist law-enforcement...

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Eric W. Fleegler

  Boston Children's Hospital

  26 shared

• Sandro Galea

  Boston University

  25 shared

• Bindu Kalesan

  25 shared

• Michael Siegel

  Tufts University

  25 shared

• Ziming Xuan

  Boston University

  25 shared

• Craig S. Ross

  Animal and Plant Health Agency

  25 shared

• Megan Bair‐Merritt

  16 shared

• C. Díez

  16 shared