Citation

Vizzard WJ. Public Adm. Rev. 1995; 55(4): 341-347.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, American Society for Public Administration, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Why has gun control lingered at the margins of the American political agenda without resolution for years? William Vizzard argues that the policy history reveals more about policy process than about our romance with guns. A political environment skewed in favor of individualism, incrementalism, and pluralism has produced a form of stalemate that, in effect, resembles an iron triangle with symbolic conflict. This stalemate shifts attention from crafting functional policy to efforts at controlling language and paradigms. The result is poorly crafted and ineffectual policy, the implementation of which accomplishes little except generating conflict that feeds back into the policy debate.