Ethics of Violence Prevention: Firearms versus Dynamite

Purpose: We believe you can use students and courses in a wide variety of areas to investigate injury and injury prevention.  Here we provide preliminary data from an ethics course on one issue, the moral culpability of stealing various dangerous items.

Methods: Case studies were given to 218 students. Students were randomly given a case study asking questions about ethical situations related to either firearms or dynamite. Case studies and questions were otherwise identical. Students ranked their responses on a scale from -100 (i.e., completely morally reprehensible behavior) to 100 (i.e., completely moral behavior). Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed. The dependent variable questioned the ethics of thieves stealing the weapon; the predictor of interest is whether they received the case for firearms or dynamite. Multivariate analyses controlled for semester they took the course, course instructor, age, and sex.

Results: Those who received the firearms case study ranked thieves stealing weapons as more immoral than those who received the dynamite case. There was a 12.8 point difference (p=0.01) between groups. After controlling for model covariates, those receiving the firearm case were more likely to report thieves stealing the weapon as 11.6 points more immoral than those receiving the dynamite case (p=0.02). Controlling for other covariates, females ranked weapon stealing as 19.7 points more immoral than males (p<0.0001).  

Conclusion: Data collection is ongoing. Future analyses will include additional questions. Better understanding respondents’ assessment of ethical behaviors related to weapons is important for those working in violence prevention.