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Pages 255-288

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From page 255...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 255 6 Firearms and Violence An analysis of violence in the United States would be incomplete without a discussion of firearms, which are involved in about 60 percent of all homicides. The most widely debated methods of preventing gun violence involve legal restrictions on firearm owners or licensed dealers.
From page 256...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 256 the empirical basis for alternative strategies for reducing the incidence and consequences of violent firearm use. PATTERNS AND TRENDS IN FIREARM OWNERSHIP AND VIOLENT USE Firearms are widely owned and widely available in the United States.
From page 257...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 257 people. Figure 6-1, which displays 1989 age distributions for homicide victims in five-year intervals, shows that the largest fraction of nonfirearm homicide victims was in the 25-29 age range; the largest fraction of firearm homicide victims was slightly younger, in the 20-24 age range.
From page 258...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 258 only 1,163 to 547, because whites are so much more numerous in the population (unpublished data from the National Vital Statistics system, 1992)
From page 259...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 259 or white males of the same age, or among older black males ages 25-29 (Figure 6-3) .1 And between 1987 and 1988 nonfirearm homicides actually declined for black male teenagers, from 10.8 per 100,000 to 9.5, essentially the 1984 level.
From page 260...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 260 The risks of violent gun use are not evenly distributed across type of gun. Of all guns in the United States, approximately one-third are handguns and twothirds are long guns -- a heterogeneous category that includes, for example, both small-caliber and large-caliber rifles, shotguns, and semiautomatic and automatic rifles.
From page 261...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 261 estimate is less than 2 to 1 (Curtis, 1974, reported in Wright et al., 1983; Vinson, 1974)
From page 262...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 262 well be the nearest available object that can project force, and it seems likely that instrumentality rather than intent contributes most of the firearm's lethal effect. Police and court records make clear that neither these scenarios nor countless others should be ignored in debates over firearms policy.
From page 263...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 263 These findings indicate that, even in violent felonies, firearms are sometimes fired without a premeditated intent to kill. Consequently, a problem for future research is to measure what fraction of the difference in lethality between firearms and other weapons is due to instrumentality rather than intent.
From page 264...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 264 The Bureau of Justice Statistics (1986: Table 12) reported, by weapon type, the distribution of injury outcomes for violent victimizations of all types, based on National Crime Survey data for the period 1973-1982.
From page 265...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 265 criminals in the course of their crimes -- recall that in Wright and Rossi's sample of incarcerated felons, 48 percent of those who fired guns cited self-defense as a motive. Police report anecdotally hearing "It was him or me" as an increasingly common excuse offered by alleged youthful killers with guns.
From page 266...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 266 and the uncertainties surrounding Kleck's sources and adjustments, the discrepancy about how and how often guns are used for self-defense remains approximately 80,000 to 700,000. Some of it can be accounted for by Kleck's adjustment factors.
From page 267...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 267 with assailants, even experienced owners of firearms can find their weapons turned against them. Between 1984 and 1988, 93 percent of all law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty died of gunshot wounds.
From page 268...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 268 and suicides as a proxy measure for gun availability (Cook, 1979, 1985) ; crossnational comparisons of gun availability measures and gun crimes (van Dijk et al., 1990)
From page 269...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 269 Sources of Firearms According to recent estimates, only about one firearm of every six used in crimes was legally obtained. The high rate of handgun murders in cities such as New York and Washington, which have highly restricted legal access to handguns, is further evidence that guns are often obtained illegally, as is the recent increase in firearm homicides among black males ages 15-19, since minors are legally prohibited nearly everywhere from owning handguns.
From page 270...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 270 without a license" that were closed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms during 1974-1976; these were virtually all the cases closed in seven regional offices. According to these files, the trade is of small scale: the majority of traders had no inventories at the time of arrest, only 10 percent had more than 20 guns on hand, and the majority sold fewer than 5 guns per month.
From page 271...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 271 carefully controlled evaluations of interventions that reduce firearms availability. This principle is true not only of interventions to modify the availability of firearms, but also of interventions to modify their uses, their allocation across owner categories, and their lethality.
From page 272...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 272 TABLE 6-1 Evaluation Status of Strategies and Interventions for Reducing Gun Violence Strategy and Intervention Evaluated? Effective?
From page 273...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 273 Strategy and Intervention Evaluated? Effective?
From page 274...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 274 firearms for personal use or for off-the-books sales to others (Isikoff, 1991)
From page 275...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 275 the allocation or availability of firearms may be circumvented by illegal markets, to an extent that cannot be known in advance. Therefore, carefully controlled evaluations represent the only way of ascertaining intervention effects.
From page 276...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 276 sentence increase for felonies in which a gun is used. This approach has been evaluated in six jurisdictions, and a meta-analysis of the findings concludes that the sentence enhancements decreased gun homicides, left nongun homicide levels unchanged, and produced no consistent effect on gun robberies or assaults (McDowall et al., 1992a, b)
From page 277...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 277 Strategy 2: Change the Allocation of Firearms Of the tactics for changing the allocation of firearms, we could find a rigorous evaluation of only one: the provision of the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 that prohibits gun dealers from selling to certain categories of persons designated "dangerous." This provision seems to have had no significant effect on firearms injuries or deaths. Because this law focused on interstate transactions, its effects on handgun use in assaults and homicides should have been evident in New York and Boston, where the incentives for out-of-state purchases were high because of unusually restrictive local license requirements.
From page 278...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 278 special restrictions on these weapons, has complicated the problem of drafting legislation. There is controversy over how much more lethal assault weapons are than other rifles and pistols (Kleck, 1991)
From page 279...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 279 that local restrictive licensing laws, when enforced, may reduce firearm homicides and warrant evaluations in other communities. RESEARCH AND EVALUATION NEEDS Violence involving firearms exacts a large toll in terms of deaths, injuries, and monetary costs.
From page 280...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 280 reduce violent uses of at least some types of guns to an extent that is not offset by substitution of other more lethal weapons. It is not clear in advance whether this condition would be met for any policy focused on handguns.
From page 281...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 281 Forum on Youth Violence in Minority Communities (Centers for Disease Control, 1991)
From page 282...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 282 ages 10-14; from 63 to 104 (65%) for ages 20-24; from 70 to 90 (29%)
From page 283...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 283 unlikely that the rates for assaults and robberies are as high as those for residential burglaries, in which self-defense with a gun is generally legal. 8 Based on a multivariate analysis, Cook (1979)
From page 284...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 284 Crime and Justice: A Review of Research.
From page 285...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 285 Kleck, G 1984 The relationship between gun ownership levels and rates of violence in the United States.
From page 286...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 286 Pierce, G.L., and W.J. Bowers 1979 The Impact of the Bartley-Fox Gun Law on Crime in Massachusetts.
From page 287...
... FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE 287 1975 Firearms and federal law: The gun control act of 1968. Journal of Legal Studies 4:133-198.

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