Kristin Anne Goss
· Susan B. King Distinguished Professor of Public PolicyVerifiedDuke University · Public Policy Studies
Active 1999–2023
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 authorCorrespondingIn 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.
Harvard Dataverse · 2023-03-28 · 1 citations
datasetOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThis 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).
Political Science Today · 2021
- Computer Science
- Computer Science
- Advertising
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The Value of Guns for Personal and Collective Defense
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23
book-chapterSenior authorWhy 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...
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.
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23
book-chapterSenior authorWhat 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,...
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.
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23
book-chapterSenior authorWho 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...
Manufacture and Marketing of Guns
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23
book-chapterSenior authorHow 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...
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020-06-23
book-chapterSenior authorWhat 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...
Frequent coauthors
- 26 shared
Eric W. Fleegler
Boston Children's Hospital
- 25 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
- 16 shared
Megan Bair‐Merritt
- 16 shared
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