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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for gun control
76 results foundAuthor: Association of Chief Police Officers Title: Gun Crime and Gangs: Response to the Home Secretary Summary: In August 2007 the U.K. Home Secretary requested a situation report following a number of gun-related tragedies. The ACPO responded with an assessment on the phenomenon of guns and gangs, with particular reference to young people. This document defines and examines the key issues emerging from knowledge of the problem and invites further consideration for what more may be done across government and law enforcement to address the issues described. Details: London: ACPO, 2007. 57p. Source: Year: 2007 Country: United Kingdom URL: Shelf Number: 118104 Keywords: Firearms and CrimeGangsGun ControlGuns |
Author: Children's Defense Fund Title: Protect Children, Not Guns 2009 Summary: This report presents key findings on child gun deaths including firearm deaths of children and teens by: manner, state, race/Hispanic origin, year and age group. The report also provides suggests various means that can be taken to protect children and teens from gun violence. Details: Washington, DC: Children's Defense Fund, 2009. 22p. Source: Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 117337 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Violence |
Author: Heemskerk, Tony Title: A Report on the Illegal Movement of Firearms in British Columbia Summary: This report was commissioned because of concerns with the proliferation of illegal firearms and dramatic increase in firearms related violence, particularly with respect to organized criminal gangs who are more frequently settling disputes with guns. The report provides information on the current situation regarding the regulatory framework for firearms control; the illegal movements of firearms; the use of illegal firearms to support criminal activity; the agencies involved in regulation and enforcement and their current activities; and makes recommendations regarding changes to impact the illegal movement of firearms. Details: Victoria, BC: British Columbia Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, 2008. 89p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2008 Country: Canada URL: Shelf Number: 114639 Keywords: Firearms and CrimeGang ViolenceGangsGun ControlGun ViolenceIllegal Firearms (Canada) |
Author: Leigh, Andrew Title: Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data Summary: In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth. Using differences across states in the number of firearms withdrawn, this study tests whether the reduction in firearms availability affected firearm homicide and suicide rates. The study found that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 percent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks, and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate. Details: Bonn, Germany: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2010. 55p. Source: Internet Resource; IZA Discussion Paper No. 4995 Year: 2010 Country: Australia URL: Shelf Number: 118790 Keywords: FirearmsFirearms (Australia)Gun Buyback ProgramsGun ControlHomicideSuicide |
Author: Van Vleet, Russell K. Title: Evaluation of Utah Project Safe Neighborhoods: Final Report Summary: This report evaluates the Utah Project Safe Neighborhoods program, a comprehensive, multi-agency intervention designed to reduce gun crime. The evaluation determined the effectiveness of PSN Partnerships, examined successful gun prosecutions, evaluated changes in felony firearm use, and measured the effectiveness of the public awareness campaign, training, and outreach programs. Details: Salt Lake City, UT: Criminal and Juvenile Justice Consortium, College of Social Work, University of Utah, 2005. 154p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2005 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 111247 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceJuvenile OffendersPartnershipsPublicity CampaignsViolent Crime |
Author: Wintemute, Garen Title: Inside Gun Shows: What Goes on When Everybody Thinks Nobody's Looking Summary: Gun shows are surrounded by controversy. On the one hand, they are important economic, social and cultural events with clear benefits for those who attend. On the other, they provide the most visible manifestation of a largely unregulated form of gun commerce and, partly for that reason, are an important source of guns used in criminal violence. The intent of this report is to document the broad range of what actually takes place at gun shows, with an emphasis on activities that appear to pose problems for the public’s health and safety. Inside Gun Shows combines a review of existing research with direct observations and photographic evidence. The data were gathered at 78 gun shows in 19 states, most of them occurring between 2005 and 2008. It was important to avoid a Hawthorne effect: change in what is being observed introduced by the process of observation itself. For that reason conversation was kept to a minimum; no attempts were made to induce the behaviors that are depicted; criminal activity, when observed, was not reported; the camera was kept hidden. Details: Sacramento: Violence Prevention Research Program, Department of Emergency Medicine, UC Davis School of Medicine, 2009. various pagings Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 24, 2010 at: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp/pdf/IGS/IGScoverprefweb.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp/pdf/IGS/IGScoverprefweb.pdf Shelf Number: 116201 Keywords: Gun ControlGunsWeapons |
Author: Mayors Against Illegal Guns Title: A Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns: Regulation, Enforcement, and Best Practices to Combat Illegal Gun Trafficking Summary: For many years, leaders of the gun lobby have urged law enforcement professionals to “enforce the laws on the books.” Elected officials of all political stripes have joined that call. While the 450-plus members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns believe that Congress needs to close major gaps in federal laws, we believe with equal strength that the executive branch needs to more effectively enforce existing gun laws. The coalition has identified 40 opportunities in six areas where the Administration could enhance enforcement of existing laws without Congressional action. These recommendations would dramatically improve law enforcement’s ability to keep guns out of the hands of criminals – and, in doing so, save innocent lives, including the lives of police officers. Details: S.L.: 2009. 57p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 2, 2010 at: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/blueprint_federal_action.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/blueprint_federal_action.pdf Shelf Number: 117623 Keywords: Gun ControlGun TraffickingGunsIllegal Guns |
Author: Title: Illicit Arms in Indonesia Summary: A bloody bank robbery in Medan in August 2010 and the discovery in Aceh in February 2010 of a terrorist training camp using old police weapons have focused public attention on the circulation of illegal arms in Indonesia. These incidents raise questions about how firearms fall into criminal hands and what measures are in place to stop them. The issue has become more urgent as the small groups of Indonesian jihadis, concerned about Muslim casualties in bomb attacks, are starting to discuss targeted killings as a preferred method of operation. The Indonesian government could begin to address the problem by reviewing and strengthening compliance with procedures for storage, inventory and disposal of firearms; improved vetting and monitoring of those guarding armouries; auditing of gun importers and gun shops, including those that sell weapons online; and paying more attention to the growing popularity of “airsoft” guns that look exactly like real ones but shoot plastic pellets. The problem needs to be kept in perspective, however. It is worth addressing precisely because the scale is manageable. Indonesia does not have a “gun culture” like the Philippines or Thailand. The number of people killed by terrorist gunfire in Indonesia over the last decade is about twenty, more than half of them police, and most of the deaths took place in post-conflict central Sulawesi and Maluku. The nexus between terrorism and crime is not nearly as strong as in other countries. There have been a few cases of bartering ganja (marijuana) for guns – and one case of trading endangered anteaters – but in general, narco-terrorism is not a problem. Jihadi use of armed robberies as a fund-raising method is a more serious issue, with banks, gold stores and ATMs the favourite targets. As of this writing it remained unclear who was behind the Medan robbery – although criminal thugs remain the strongest possibility – but jihadi groups have robbed Medan banks before, most notably the Lippo Bank in 2003. Such crimes constitute a miniscule proportion of the country’s robberies, but it is still worth looking at where the guns come from when they occur. The problem may increase as the larger jihadi groups weaken and split, particularly those that once depended on member contributions for financing day-to-day activities. Recruitment by jihadis of ordinary criminals in prisons may also strengthen the linkage between terrorism and crime in the future. There are four main sources of illegal guns in Indonesia. They can be stolen or illegally purchased from security forces, taken from leftover stockpiles in former conflict areas, manufactured by local gunsmiths or smuggled from abroad. Thousands of guns acquired legally but later rendered illicit through lapsed permits have become a growing concern because no one has kept track of them. Throughout the country, corruption facilitates the circulation of illegal arms in different ways and undermines what on paper is a tight system of regulation. Details: Jakarta/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2010. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Briefing; Asia Briefing No. 109: Accessed September 7, 2010 at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-east-asia/indonesia/B109-illicit-arms-in-indonesia.aspx Year: 2010 Country: Indonesia URL: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-east-asia/indonesia/B109-illicit-arms-in-indonesia.aspx Shelf Number: 119762 Keywords: Firearms and CrimeGun ControlGun ViolenceGunsIllicit FirearmsSmugglingWeapons |
Author: Mayors Against Illegal Guns Title: Issue Brief: The Movement of Illegal Guns Across the U.S.-Mexico Border Summary: In recent years, the escalating drug cartel violence in Mexico has claimed tens of thousands of lives, fueled in part by thousands of guns illegally trafficked from the United States. In fact, 90% of guns recovered and traced from Mexican crime scenes originated from gun dealers in the United States. This report relies primarily on previously unreleased trace data provided by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) to Mayors Against Illegal Guns to describe which states are the predominant suppliers of those guns recovered and traced in Mexico. This new data shows that four in ten of the U.S. guns recovered in Mexico between 2006 and 2009 were originally sold by gun dealers in Texas. The three other states that share a border with Mexico – Arizona, California, and New Mexico – were the source for another one-third of the U.S. guns. To better understand the flow of guns into Mexico, this report also studies the rate at which states supply Mexican crime guns by controlling for population. When using this control, gun dealers in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas each supply crime guns to Mexico at rates at least 169% greater than any other state and at a rate more than three times as high as the fourth border state, California. In addition to proximity to the border, relatively lax gun laws in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas may contribute to that disparity. Additionally, the time between the original sale of guns at U.S. gun dealers and the recovery of those guns at Mexican crime scenes is decreasing – a sign of ever more sophisticated gun trafficking. Details: (S.l.): Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2010. 5p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 8, 2010 at: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/issue_brief_mexico_2010.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Mexico URL: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/issue_brief_mexico_2010.pdf Shelf Number: 119893 Keywords: Drug CartelsGun ControlGun TraffickingGun ViolenceIllegal Guns |
Author: Mayors Against Illegal Guns Title: Trace the Guns: The Link Between Gun Laws and Interstate Gun Trafficking Summary: Every year, tens of thousands of guns make their way into the hands of criminals through illegal trafficking channels. These firearms contribute to the more than 12,000 gun murders in the United States each year. This report seeks to explain where crime guns originate, where they are recovered in crimes, and whether state gun laws help curb the flow of these illegal weapons. Details: S.l.: Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2010. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 13, 2010 at: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/trace_the_guns_report.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/trace_the_guns_report.pdf Shelf Number: 119944 Keywords: Gun ControlGun TraffickingGun ViolenceIllegal GunsIllegal Weapons |
Author: SEESAC (South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons) Title: 'The Rifle Has the Devil Inside': Gun Culture in South Eastern Europe Summary: SALW (Small Arms and Light Weapons)control stakeholders and practitioners within South Eastern Europe (SEE) are often told that weapon registration and collection programmes are ineffective because guns are an intrinsic part of ‘cultures’ in the region. In addition, international and local observers often explain high levels of gun ownership and use in SEE by stating there is a strong ‘gun culture’. In contrast, survey results on the public’s perception of guns, suggest that ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ are not principal reasons for gun ownership in the region. Thus, it is a matter of continued debate to what extent and which types of gun ownership and use are rendered acceptable and legitimate by certain cultural beliefs and practices. This report examines how cultural beliefs and practices influence gun ownership and use in SEE, and how these might affect SALW control interventions. An anthropological approach was taken to better understand the reasons for civilian gun ownership and use, and the ways in which society represents these behaviours, in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro (including the UN Administered Territory of Kosovo). A wide variety of research tools were used including household surveys (HHS) conducted by SEESAC and UNDP, focus group transcripts, secondary literature searches, statistical data, anthropological field studies, the Internet, print and electronic media. The report concludes that the motivations and reasons for gun ownership and use in SEE are complex and suggests that cultural practices and beliefs do not play a central role in justifying gun ownership and use in SEE. There are pockets of culturally motivated gun related behaviours, in very localised areas, which have historical roots, such as celebratory gunfire in the mountainous areas of the peninsula (parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Northern Albania). However, more important are the ways that ‘traditional’ customs and values have interplayed with other factors such as the political or socio-economic situation, or the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. People’s behaviours involving guns, and their perceptions of guns, are more to do with the relatively widespread availability of weapons, weak and ineffective law enforcement and the reinvention of history and folklore for political means. Over the years guns have been associated with masculinity and have been a means of defining male attributes but they are not so significant now for ideas of masculinity although gun related activities remain male-oriented. The way guns are represented today, and how society perceives them is largely influenced by the media and how it portrays gun owners and gun use, especially the actions of high profile organizations or individuals who are associated with guns, such as the police, politicians and prominent business people. In general, ‘traditional’ and ‘cultural’ motivations for gun ownership and use in SEE are unlikely to be the principal barriers to SALW control interventions. Security considerations are much more likely to play a significant role with many people unwilling to give up their weapons, which they perceive as providers of security and protection, until they are satisfied that the state can be trusted to provide for their needs. Whilst there are still relatively high crime levels, the unresolved status of territory i.e. the UN Administered Territory of Kosovo, uncertain futures and interethnic distrust (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Southern Serbia and to some extent in Montenegro and Moldova) there will be people who feel that they are justified in keeping their guns. Details: Belgrade: SEESAC, 2006. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 13, 2010 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/portal/spotlight/country/eu_pdf/europe-regional-2006-b.pdf Year: 2006 Country: Europe URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/portal/spotlight/country/eu_pdf/europe-regional-2006-b.pdf Shelf Number: 119948 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGunsHomicidesIllegal Guns |
Author: Aguirre, Katherine Title: Assessing the Effect of Policy Interventions on Small Arms Demand in Bogota, Colombia Summary: In Bogotá, some 50,000 people died in firearm-related events between 1979 and 2009. This constitutes roughly 8% of the total number of deaths, by natural or external causes, registered in the Colombian capital. While the impact of firearms in Bogotá is smaller than in Colombia as a whole, where approximately 11% of deaths have been attributed to firearms, Bogotá contributed 10% of all firearms deaths in Colombia over the period 1979 to 2009. In Bogotá as in the rest of Colombia, homicides are the primary event through which firearms deaths occur (more than 90% of cases). In 2009, there were over 15,000 homicides registered in Colombia. Despite an impressive reduction since 2002 (26.8%), and this figure being the lowest in more than 20 years, the homicide rate in Colombia continues to rank as one of the highest in the world, if not the highest. Improvements in the city of Bogotá have contributed substantially to the overall reduction in homicides. The city has experienced an impressive reduction of homicide violence since its peak in 1993, when the number of homicides rose from 3,000 in 1992 to almost 4,500, a 33% increase. According to the National Police, the figure of 2009 of Bogotá was 1,327 a reduction of around 70% with respect to the 1993 level. The current homicide rate of 18 per 100,000 inhabitants is still quite high, but contrasts with the rate of 1993 of 80 per 100.000. The contribution of Bogotá to the total number of homicides of the country has not declined at the same speed as the level of homicides. For the 2007, the Ministry of Defence says that the capital contribute with 32.7 per cent in the decrease of the homicides in the whole country. Violence in Colombia is a result of two interconnected complex social phenomena. The first is the prevalence of entrenched criminal organisations, mainly involved in the production and transport of illegal narcotics. The second is the three-sided armed conflict between the government, guerrilla groups and paramilitary groups. The situation in Bogotá is influenced more by common urban delinquency by conflict dynamics. In this document, we assess the market associated with the criminal use of firearms. Recent academic studies highlighted demand for firearms for violent use. This assessment will distinguish demand for firearms along two main axes: the markets in which they can be obtained (legal and illegal markets) and how individuals use them (criminally and non-criminally). Specifically, we will explore the impact that active antigun policies and other security interventions, established in the mid-1990s, had on reducing firearm-related homicides in Bogotá. After reviewing the general context, we will introduce the policies that have been implemented by local administrations during the period in which the homicide rate fell drastically. We then use a variety a statistical methods to assess the impact of gun-carrying and violence reduction interventions on homicide in Bogotá. Details: Bogota, Colombia: CERAC - Centro de Recursos para el Analisis de Conflictos, 2009. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: Documentos de CERAC, No. 14: Accessed October 19, 2010 at: http://www.cerac.org.co/pdf/CERAC_WP_14_DemandBogotaFinal.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Colombia URL: http://www.cerac.org.co/pdf/CERAC_WP_14_DemandBogotaFinal.pdf Shelf Number: 120022 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGunsHomicidesOrganized CrimeViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Siebel, Brian J. Title: No Check. No Gun. Why Brady Background Checks Should be Required For All Gun Sales Summary: Since the Brady Bill was passed in 1994, Brady background checks have prevented 1,631,000 attempts by criminals and other dangerous people to purchase guns. Of these 1.6 million denied attempts to purchase, 51.6% were denied for felony charges, 14.5% had a history of domestic violence, and 4.2% were fugitives from justice. While Brady background checks likely contributed to lowering gun violence across the country, an estimated 40% of gun purchases still do not require background checks. Requiring background checks at all sales at gun shows is popular among the American public: a 2008 poll revealed that 87% of people favor requiring everyone who purchases a gun at a gun show to undergo a criminal background check with 83% of gun owners agreeing. As 95% of all background checks are completed within several minutes, this process does not inconvenience law-abiding citizens. Background checks should be required for all purchases. Details: Washington, DC: Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2009. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 19, 2010 at: http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/no-check-no-gun-report.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/no-check-no-gun-report.pdf Shelf Number: 119969 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGunsViolent Crime |
Author: Aneja, Abhay Title: The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy Summary: For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on crime of laws that grant citizens the presumptive right to carry concealed handguns in public - so-called right-to-carry (RTC) laws. In 2005, the National Research Council (NRC) offered a critical evaluation of the "more guns, less crime" hypothesis using county-level crime data for the period 1977-2003 15 of the 16 NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existing research was inadequate to conclude that RTC laws increased or decreased crime. One member of the NRC panel concluded that the NRC panel data regressions supported the conclusion that RTC laws decreased murder, while the 15-member majority responded that the scientific evidence did not support that conclusion. We evaluate the NRC evidence and show that, unfortunately, the regression estimates presented in the report appear to be incorrect. We improve and expand on the report's county data analysis by analyzing an additional six years of county data as well as state panel data for the period 1977-2006. While we have considerable sympathy with the NRC's majority view about the difficulty of drawing conclusions from simple panel data models, we disagree with the NRC report's judgment that cluster adjustments to correct for serial correlation are not needed. Our randomization tests show that without such adjustments the Type 1 error soars to 4'270 percent. In addition, the conclusion of the dissenting panel member that RTC laws reduce murder has no statistical support. Our paper highlights further important questions to consider when using panel data methods to resolve questions of law and policy effectiveness. We buttress the NRC's cautious conclusion about right-to-carry legislation's impact by showing how sensitive the estimated impact of RTC laws is to different data periods, the use of state versus county data, particular specifications, and the decision to control for state trends. Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime. It will be worth exploring whether other methodological approaches and or additional years of data will confirm the results of this panel-data analysis. Details: Paper presented at the 5th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 2, 2011 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632599 Year: 0 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632599 Shelf Number: 120681 Keywords: Crime ControlGun ControlGunsRight-to-Carry LawsWeaspons |
Author: Karp, Aaron Title: Surplus Arms in South America: A Survey Summary: The data in this report is derived from country submissions when possible, and estimates when necessary. Estimates are extrapolated from each country’s identified procurement, highest modern personnel totals, and strategic doctrine. Except where noted, the military small arms and light weapons data presented here is not official, comprehensive, or conclusive; it is for general evaluation and comparison only. The complete methodology used here is described in Chapter 2 of the Small Arms Survey 2006. Small arms are state-owned handguns, submachine guns, rifles, shotguns, and light and medium machine guns. Firearms are civilian-owned handguns, submachine guns, rifles, and shotguns. Long at the forefront of international small arms issues, public debate and activism in South America have largely focused on matters surrounding civilian firearms, estimated here to total between 21.7 and 26.8 million. The reasons for this civilian preoccupation are principally linked to chronic gun violence. South America has 14 per cent of the global population, and roughly 3.5 to 4 per cent of the world’s civilian firearms, but it suffers from roughly 40 per cent of all homicides committed with firearms. Military small arms are rarely part of public debate, largely because of a strong culture of national security secrecy in South America. But military small arms policy has attracted much closer scrutiny in recent years, especially as military small arms and light weapons are diverted to criminals and guerrillas, fuelling insurgencies and civil violence. This report focuses primarily on issues surrounding surplus military small arms and light weapons in the region. Law enforcement and civilian firearms inventories and issues are recognized here as well, to ensure a balanced overall perspective. The region’s military establishments do not have a strong record of identifying or eliminating their surplus small arms, light weapons, or ammunition. South America holds some of the world’s largest military small arms and light weapons surpluses. Military inventories are not exceptionally large in absolute terms, but they are a major element in global surplus problems. Among the 12 independent countries of South America, there are an estimated 3.6 million military small arms as of 2007, 1.5 per cent of the global total. Of these, approximately 1.3 million, more than one-third, are surplus. Summary recommendations include: • The formal small arms and light weapons requirements of South American active-duty forces should be available to national civilian leaders and the public. • Inventories of military small arms and light weapons, including obsolescent small arms, and ammunition should be made publicly available. • Reserve forces should be kept at the lowest levels possible to avoid exaggerating military small arms and light weapons requirements. • Excess military small arms, light weapons, and ammunition should be destroyed under civilian supervision and public scrutiny. • Countries where surplus military small arms destruction is a special priority include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guyana, Paraguay, and Peru. • Older-generation man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) should be destroyed. Storage of newer MANPADS should be made highly secure and accountable. • Countries where MANPADS destruction is a special priority include Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru. Details: Geneva: Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 2009. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 7: Accessed February 8, 2011 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP7-Surplus-Arms-in-South-America.pdf Year: 2009 Country: South America URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP7-Surplus-Arms-in-South-America.pdf Shelf Number: 120719 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceHomicideWeapons |
Author: Kessler, Jim Title: Missing Records: Holes in Background Check System Allow Illegal Buyers to Get Guns Summary: This report, issued in the wake of the nation’s worst-ever mass shooting at Virginia Tech, updates a 2002 look at the records in background check system. We conclude that the system has improved in the last five years, but as evidenced by Seung-Hui Cho’s ability to pass two firearms purchase background checks, major holes remain. For example, 91% of those who should be barred by virtue of their mental illness (like Cho) are not in the system. Details: Washington, DC: The Third Way, 2007. 11p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 15, 2011 at: http://content.thirdway.org/publications/69/Third_Way_Report_-_Missing_Records_-_Holes_in_the_Background_Check_System_-_How_They_Allow_Illegal_Buyers_to_Get_Guns.pdf Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: http://content.thirdway.org/publications/69/Third_Way_Report_-_Missing_Records_-_Holes_in_the_Background_Check_System_-_How_They_Allow_Illegal_Buyers_to_Get_Guns.pdf Shelf Number: 121362 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGunsIllegal Guns |
Author: Frandsen, Ronald J. Title: Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2009: Federal and State Investigations and Prosecutions of Firearm Applicants Denied by a NICS Check in 2009 Summary: The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Act) requires criminal history background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and state agencies on persons who attempt to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer. In 2009, the FBI and state agencies denied a firearm to nearly 133,000 persons due to National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) records of felonies, domestic violence offenses, and other prohibiting factors. Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2009 reports on investigations and prosecutions of persons who were denied a firearm in 2009. The report describes how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) screens denied-person cases and retrieves firearms that were obtained illegally. Statistics presented include charges most often filed against denied persons by United States Attorneys and results of prosecutions. Investigation statistics from two states are also presented. Key statistics are compared for the years 2009 and 2008. Statistical highlights are presented in the body of the report and complete details are included in an Appendix. Details: St. Louis, MO: Regional Justice Information Service, 2011. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 21, 2011 at: Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 121470 Keywords: Brady ActCriminal Background ChecksGun ControlIllegal Weapons |
Author: Diaz, Tom Title: The Militarization of the U.S. Civilian Firearms Market Summary: This study identifies the major force driving the criminal cross-border gun traffic: the gun industry’s cynical militarization of the U.S. civilian gun market. “Today, militarized weapons--semiautomatic assault rifles, 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifles, and armor-piercing handguns--define the U.S. civilian gun market and are far and away the ‘weapons of choice’ of the traffickers supplying violent drug organizations in Mexico” the study, "The Militarization of the U.S. Civilian Firearms Market" finds. The study also finds that the gun industry has become so dependent on militarized product lines that 11 of the top 15 gun manufacturers now market assault weapons, adding that “...the gun industry designs, manufactures, imports, and sells firearms in the civilian market that are to all intents and purposes the same as military arms. It then bombards its target market with the message that civilian consumers--just like real soldiers--can easily and legally own the firepower of militarized weapons.” The study documents a deliberate gun industry design and marketing strategy, begun in the 1980s, that has resulted in the easy availability and shockingly weak regulation of guns that are — •Identical to sophisticated battlefield weapons used by the armed forces of the United States and other countries, such as the Barrett 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifle. •Slightly modified variants of military firearms that would otherwise be illegal to sell on the civilian market, including semiautomatic versions of military assault weapons, such as civilian AR-15 and AK-47 assault rifle models. •Weapons capable of defeating body armor, specially designed for police and counter-terrorism units, such as the FN Herstal Five-seveN 5.7mm pistol. “Your grandfather’s shotgun has no place in today’s civilian gun market,” said the study’s author, VPC Senior Policy Analyst Tom Diaz. “The gun industry has created a unique American civilian firearms bazaar which arms thousands of criminals, dangerous extremists, and drug traffickers throughout the world. If Congress wants to find the real causes of the gun traffic to Mexico, it needs to look upstream to the gun industry’s callous transformation of the American gun market into one more suited to warfare than sport. The world’s bad guys come here for their guns because they are cheap and plentiful.” The study describes how, plagued by declining gun ownership and the explosion of recreational alternatives such as electronic games, the faltering gun industry has relied on creating demand by designing and selling increasingly lethal military-style firepower. Details: Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2011. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 27, 2011 at: http://www.vpc.org/studies/militarization.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.vpc.org/studies/militarization.pdf Shelf Number: 121832 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Violence (U.S.)GunsTrafficking in WeaponsWeapons |
Author: Issa, Darrell E. Title: The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents Summary: In the fall of 2009, the Department of Justice (DOJ) developed a risky new strategy to combat gun trafficking along the Southwest Border. The new strategy directed federal law enforcement to shift its focus away from seizing firearms from criminals as soon as possible — and to focus instead on identifying members of trafficking networks. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) implemented that strategy using a reckless investigative technique that street agents call “gunwalking.” ATF’s Phoenix Field Division began allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns. The purpose was to wait and watch, in the hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case. This shift in strategy was known and authorized at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Through both the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona and “Main Justice,” headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Department closely monitored and supervised the activities of the ATF. The Phoenix Field Division established a Gun Trafficking group, called Group VII, to focus on firearms trafficking. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed “Operation Fast and Furious,” and expanded dramatically. It received approval for Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) funding on January 26, 2010. ATF led a strike force comprised of agents from ATF, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The operation’s goal was to establish a nexus between straw purchasers of assault-style weapons in the United States and Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. Straw purchasers are individuals who are legally entitled to purchase firearms for themselves, but who unlawfully purchase weapons with the intent to transfer them into the hands of DTOs or other criminals. Operation Fast and Furious was a response to increasing violence fostered by the DTOs in Mexico and their increasing need to purchase ever-growing numbers of more powerful weapons in the U.S. An integral component of Fast and Furious was to work with gun shop merchants, or “Federal Firearms Licensees” (FFLs) to track known straw purchasers through the unique serial number of each firearm sold. ATF agents entered the serial numbers of the weapons purchased into the agency’s Suspect Gun Database. These weapons bought by the straw purchasers included AK-47 variants, Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, .38 caliber revolvers, and the FN Five-seveN. During Fast and Furious, ATF frequently monitored actual transactions between the FFLs and straw purchasers. After the purchases, ATF sometimes conducted surveillance of these weapons with assistance from local police departments. Such surveillance included following the vehicles of the straw purchasers. Frequently, the straw purchasers transferred the weapons they bought to stash houses. In other instances, they transferred the weapons to third parties. The volume, frequency, and circumstances of these transactions clearly established reasonable suspicion to stop and question the buyers. Agents are trained to use such interactions to develop probable cause to arrest the suspect or otherwise interdict the weapons and deter future illegal purchases. Operation Fast and Furious sought instead to allow the flow of guns from straw purchasers to the third parties. Instead of trying to interdict the weapons, ATF purposely avoided contact with known straw purchasers or curtailed surveillance, allowing guns to fall into the hands of criminals and bandits on both sides of the border. Though many line agents objected vociferously, ATF and DOJ leadership continued to prevent them from making every effort to interdict illegally purchased firearms. Instead, leadership’s focus was on trying to identify additional conspirators, as directed by the Department’s strategy for combating Mexican Drug Cartels. ATF and DOJ leadership were interested in seeing where these guns would ultimately end up. They hoped to establish a connection between the local straw buyers in Arizona and the Mexico-based DTOs. By entering serial numbers from suspicious transactions into the Suspect Gun Database, ATF would be quickly notified as each one was later recovered at crime scenes and traced, either in the United States or in Mexico. The Department’s leadership allowed the ATF to implement this flawed strategy, fully aware of what was taking place on the ground. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona encouraged and supported every single facet of Fast and Furious. Main Justice was involved in providing support and approving various aspects of the Operation, including wiretap applications that would necessarily include painstakingly detailed descriptions of what ATF knew about the straw buyers it was monitoring. This hapless plan allowed the guns in question to disappear out of the agency’s view. As a result, this chain of events inevitably placed the guns in the hands of violent criminals. ATF would only see these guns again after they turned up at a crime scene. Tragically, many of these recoveries involved loss of life. While leadership at ATF and DOJ no doubt regard these deaths as tragic, the deaths were a clearly foreseeable result of the strategy. Both line agents and gun dealers who cooperated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns about that risk, but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above. They told gun dealers not to worry because they would make sure the guns didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, ATF never achieved the laudable goal of dismantling a drug cartel. In fact, ATF never even got close. After months and months of investigative work, Fast and Furious resulted only in indictments of 20 straw purchasers. Those indictments came only after the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The indictments, filed January 19, 2011, focus mainly on what is known as “lying and buying.” Lying and buying involves a straw purchaser falsely filling out ATF Form 4473, which is to be completed truthfully in order to legally acquire a firearm. Even worse, ATF knew most of the indicted straw purchasers to be straw purchasers before Fast and Furious even began. In response to criticism, ATF and DOJ leadership denied allegations that gunwalking occurred in Fast and Furious by adopting an overly narrow definition of the term. They argue that gunwalking is limited to cases in which ATF itself supplied the guns directly. As field agents understood the term, however, gunwalking includes situations in which ATF had contemporaneous knowledge of illegal gun purchases and purposely decided not to attempt any interdiction. The agents also described situations in which ATF facilitated or approved transactions to known straw buyers. Both situations are even more disturbing in light of the ATF’s certain knowledge that weapons previously purchased by the same straw buyers had been trafficked into Mexico and may have reached the DTOs. When the full parameters of this program became clear to the agents assigned to Group VII, a rift formed among Group VII’s agents in Phoenix. Several agents blew the whistle on this reckless operation only to face punishment and retaliation from ATF leadership. Sadly, only the tragic murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry provided the necessary impetus for DOJ and ATF leadership to finally indict the straw buyers whose regular purchases they had monitored for 14 months. Even then, it was not until after whistleblowers later reported the issue to Congress that the Justice Department finally issued a policy directive that prohibited gunwalking. This report is the first in a series regarding Operation Fast and Furious. Possible future reports and hearings will likely focus on the actions of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, the decisions faced by gun shop owners (FFLs) as a result of ATF’s actions, and the remarkably ill-fated decisions made by Justice Department officials in Washington, especially within the Criminal Division and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. This first installment focuses on ATF’s misguided approach of letting guns walk. The report describes the agents’ outrage about the use of gunwalking as an investigative technique and the continued denials and stonewalling by DOJ and ATF leadership. It provides some answers as to what went wrong with Operation Fast and Furious. Further questions for key ATF and DOJ decision makers remain unanswered. For example, what leadership failures within the Department of Justice allowed this program to thrive? Who will be held accountable and when? Details: Washington, DC: United States Congress, 2011. 51p. Source: Internet Resource: Joint Staff Report: Accessed July 20, 2011 at: http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-06-14-11-Joint-Issa-Grassley-report-on-agent-findings.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-06-14-11-Joint-Issa-Grassley-report-on-agent-findings.pdf Shelf Number: 122129 Keywords: Border SecurityDrug CartelsGun ControlGun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)Illegal GunsOrganized CrimeTrafficking in Weaspons |
Author: Knight, Brian G. Title: State Gun Policy and Cross-State Externalities: Evidence from Crime Gun Tracing Summary: This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of cross-state externalities associated with gun regulations in the context of the gun trafficking market. Using gun tracing data, which identify the source state for crime guns recovered in destination states, we find that firearms in this market tend to flow from states with weak gun laws to states with strict gun laws, satisfying a necessary condition for the existence of cross-state externalities in the theoretical model. We also find an important role for transportation costs in this market, with gun flows more significant between nearby states; this finding suggests that externalities are spatial in nature. Finally, we present evidence that criminal possession of guns is higher in states exposed to weak gun laws in nearby states. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series; Working Paper 17469: Accessed October 3, 2011 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17469 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17469 Shelf Number: 122964 Keywords: Gun ControlGun TraffickingGuns (U.S.)Trafficking in Weapons |
Author: Diaz, Tom Title: Target: Law Enforcement. Assault Weapons in the News, March 1, 2005 - February 29, 2007 Summary: Semiautomatic assault weapons are civilian versions of automatic military assault rifles like the AK-47 and the M-16. The civilian guns look the same as their military brethren because they are identical functionally, except for one feature: military assault rifles are machine guns. A machine gun fires continuously as long as its trigger is held back—until it runs out of ammunition. Civilian assault rifles, in contrast, are semi-automatic weapons. The trigger of a semiautomatic weapon must be pulled back separately for each round fired. Because federal law has banned the sale of new machine guns to civilians since 1986 and heavily regulates sales to civilians of older model machine guns, there is virtually no civilian market for military assault weapons. Nonetheless, civilian semiautomatic assault weapons have proven every bit as deadly as their military counterparts. This study is a snapshot of the effect of America’s laissez-faire policy toward assault weapons. Based on reports of assault weapons in the news over a two-year span, it makes clear that assault weapons are frequently used in crime and confiscated from criminals. Moreover, it demonstrates that the number of incidents in which law enforcement officers are reported to have been confronted with assault weapons rose dramatically in the two-year period monitored. Details: Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2011? 17p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 21, 2011 at: http://www.vpc.org/studies/targetle.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.vpc.org/studies/targetle.pdf Shelf Number: 123079 Keywords: Assault Weapons (U.S.)Gun ControlGun ViolenceGuns |
Author: The World Bank. Central America Unit, Poverty Reduction Title: Crime and Violence in Central America: Volume II Summary: Central America‘s hopes for a rebirth following the resolution of the region‘s civil wars have been marred by the torrent of violence which has engulfed El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and begun to threaten Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. In addition to the pain and suffering experienced by victims, crime and violence exacts high costs, diverting investment, reducing economic growth, and undermining confidence in the region‘s fragile democracies. Among the key drivers of crime and violence in the region are drug trafficking, youth violence and gangs, the widespread availability of guns, and weak criminal justice institutions. Proven evidence-based prevention measures coupled with criminal justice reform can reduce crime and violence. Key messages and recommendations from the report include the following: 1) Crime and violence should be understood as a development issue. The high rates of crime and violence in the region have direct effects on human welfare in the short-run and long-run effects on economic growth and social development. Estimates of the effect on violence on growth imply that reducing crime could substantially boost growth in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. 2) The strongest single explanation for the high rates of violence in the region—and their apparent rise in recent years—is drug trafficking, principally the transport of cocaine from producer nations in the south to the consumer market in the United States. The drug trade contributes to the widespread availability of firearms, generates violence within and between drug cartels, and spurs further lawlessness by undermining criminal justice institutions. Controlling for other factors, areas with intense levels of drug trafficking in Central America have homicide rates 65 percent higher than other areas in the same country. Murder rates are also higher in areas with greater shares of female-headed households and larger populations of young men. Overall crime victimization rates are at their most extreme in the region‘s capitals and other large cities. 3) The countries of the region have under-invested in prevention approaches which have proven effective in reducing crime and violence elsewhere. A public expenditure analysis on crime and violence prevention undertaken for this study in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama shows that spending has been modest for crime prevention measures. Crime prevention through environmental design and urban renewal programs can generate rapid decreases in property crime and inter-personal violence. Integrated citizen security approaches, combining modern methods of policing with prevention interventions by both government and non-governmental organizations, have seen initial success in El Salvador and should be tried elsewhere. The public health approach, which focuses on addressing risk factors for violent conduct, is especially promising for addressing violence against women and youth violence. 4) The criminal justice systems of several countries in the region have been deeply corrupted by drug trafficking, enabling traffickers to take advantage of existing institutional weaknesses, and the mano dura (―iron fist‖) approach has proven largely ineffective and possibly counterproductive. In some countries, the police have largely lost the trust of citizens; nearly half of Salvadorans and Hondurans and 2 out of 3 Guatemalans believe their local police are involved in crime. Clearly, improving criminal justice systems is essential. This includes reforming the judiciary, attorneys generals offices, and police forces. An especially urgent priority is ensuring strong accountability of the criminal justice system to citizens. This should be done through an inter-institutional approach, focusing on transparent selection, promotion, and sanctioning mechanisms. The optimization of court administration and case management with internal processes reengineering—such as the development of management information systems and performance indicators—provide important mechanisms to better diagnosis problems, track system outputs, monitor reform programs, and rationalize resources. 5) There are multiple possible entry points to integrate violence and crime prevention into policy. In one instance, the most promising approach may be in the context of a slum upgrading or municipal development project. In another, it may be in the context of reform of the health service. In a third, it may be in the context of reform of the criminal justice system. There is no one ―ideal‖ approach. The common denominator is that successful interventions are evidence-based, starting with a clear diagnostic of types of violence and risk factors and ending with a careful evaluation of the intervention‘s impact to inform future actions. 6) Drug trafficking poses a major challenge to Central American governments. The experiences of Mexico and Colombia, economic theory, and the historical record in the United States all suggest that an escalation of interdiction efforts—at any scale the Central American governments could mount, even with assistance from abroad—would most likely increase levels of violence without diminishing the capacities of drug traffickers. Consequently, marginal funds are more likely to reduce violence if devoted to crime prevention efforts and criminal justice reforms. 7) Gun ownership is an outgrowth of the drug trade and the history of civil conflict in some countries. Within these environments, which promote the demand for weapons, reducing gun ownership is a difficult undertaking. Regional and international evidence shows that the implementation and enforcement of firearms legislation, such as a ban on carrying firearms, combined with supply-side measures, such as controlling secondary firearms markets, are the most promising to reduce availability of firearms and reduce armed violence. National firearms policies are unlikely to reduce the availability of weapons unless they are undertaken as part of a regional approach with international efforts to stem the flow of contraband weapons from abroad, particularly Mexico and the United States. 8) The victims and perpetrators of violent crime are largely young men. In Central America as in the rest of the world, men age 15-34 account for the overwhelming majority of homicide victims, and they also comprise the membership of youth gangs. While gangs are doubtless a major contributor to crime in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the very limited evidence indicates they are responsible for only a minority share of violence; multiple sources suggest perhaps 15 percent of homicides are gang-related. To address issues of youth violence, policy makers in the short run should borrow from the evidence-based toolkit of programs from other regions, such as early childhood development and mentoring programs, interventions to increase retention of high-risk youth in secondary schools, and opening schools after-hours and on weekends to offer youth activities to occupy their free time. While many programs to reduce youth violence have been introduced in the region, few if any have been subject to rigorous impact evaluation. Impact evaluations should systematically document what works in youth violence prevention in Central America. 9) Major data gaps hinder policy making. Several countries of the region have made substantial progress in recent years in improving their mechanisms for recording crime, particularly homicides. Such efforts should be continued and paired with expanded use of crime information systems, which experience in other areas has shown can be a valuable tool to direct criminal justice efforts. Details: Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2010. 187p. Source: Internet Resource: Report No. 56781-LAC: Accessed October 26, 2011 at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLAC/Resources/Eng_Volume_II_Crime_and_Violence_Central_America.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Central America URL: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLAC/Resources/Eng_Volume_II_Crime_and_Violence_Central_America.pdf Shelf Number: 123152 Keywords: Criminal CartelsDrug PolicyDrug TraffickingGang ViolenceGun ControlHomicidesViolent Crime (Central America) |
Author: Cook, Philip J. Title: Gun Control After Heller: Litigating Against Regulation Summary: The “core right” established in D.C. vs. Heller (2008) is to keep an operable handgun in the home for self-defense purposes. If the Court extends this right to cover state and local jurisdictions, the result is likely to include the elimination of the most stringent existing regulations – such as Chicago’s handgun ban – and could also possibly ban regulations that place substantial restrictions or costs on handgun ownership. We find evidence in support of four conclusions: The effect of Heller may be to increase the prevalence of handgun ownership in jurisdictions that currently have restrictive laws; Given the best evidence on the consequences of increased prevalence of gun ownership, these jurisdictions will experience a greater burden of crime due to more lethal violence and an increased burglary rate; Nonetheless, a regime with greater scope for gun rights is not necessarily inferior – whether restrictive regulations would pass a cost benefit test may depend on whether we accept the Heller viewpoint that there is a legal entitlement to possess a handgun; In any event, the core right defined by Heller leaves room for some regulation that would reduce the negative externalities of gun ownership. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 15431: Accessed November 1, 2011 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15431.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15431.pdf Shelf Number: 123208 Keywords: Gun ControlGun OwnershipGun ViolenceGuns |
Author: Mayors Against Illegal Guns Title: Fatal Gaps: How Missing Records in the Federal Background Check System Put Guns in the Hands of Killers Summary: Since its creation in 1999, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has blocked more than 1.6 million permit applications and gun sales to felons, the seriously mentally ill, drug abusers and other dangerous people who are prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms. Completing the necessary paperwork for a background check takes a gun buyer mere minutes, and more than 91 percent of these electronic screens are completed instantaneously. And, amidst a polarized national debate about gun control, the background check system enjoys nearly universal public support. Despite its relative success, NICS has serious gaps and limitations that still allow firearms to be sold to dangerous people, including some of the nation’s worst mass murderers. The NICS database can access the names of individuals who are barred from possessing guns due to citizenship status and other prohibiting factors with relative ease. That data is regularly and efficiently shared among government and law enforcement agencies. But, for complex legal and logistical reasons discussed in this report, records about the kinds of serious mental health and drug abuse problems that disqualify people from gun ownership have proven more difficult to capture. In 2007, Seung Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech before taking his own life. More than a year earlier, a judge had found Cho to be mentally ill—a determination that should have barred him for life from possessing a firearm. But the records documenting his profound mental illness were never submitted to NICS, and Cho was able to pass several background checks before buying the guns he used in the mass shooting. On January 8, 2011 Jared Loughner shot and killed six people and critically wounded 13 others in Tucson, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Media reports indicated that Loughner had a troubled past that included a drug-related arrest, an admission of drug use to the U.S. Army and suspension from community college for a pattern of disturbing behavior. He nevertheless passed background checks and bought firearms on two separate occasions, including the Glock 19 he used in his attempt to assassinate Congresswoman Giffords. News accounts suggested that Loughner’s admission of drug use should have barred him from purchasing his first gun, an assertion the government has never confirmed. After the Tucson mass shooting, Mayors Against Illegal Guns conducted an investigation to discover why critical mental health and drug abuse records are missing from the NICS database. We obtained Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data on the number of records states and federal agencies have shared with the system, analyzed related state and federal policies and interviewed more than 60 government officials responsible for NICS record collection and submission in 49 states and the District of Columbia. Based on our analysis and FBI data released on October 31, 2011, we drew the following conclusions: Millions of records identifying seriously mentally ill people and drug abusers as prohibited purchasers are missing from the federal background check database because of lax reporting by state agencies. • Many state mental health records are still missing: Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the federal database. Seventeen states have submitted fewer than ten mental health records, and four states have not submitted any records at all. • State substance abuse records are also underreported: Forty-four states have submitted fewer than ten records to the controlled substance file in the NICS Index, and 33 have not submitted any records at all. Even though federal regulations and policy establish that a failed drug test, single drug-related arrest or admission of drug use within the past year temporarily disqualify a person from possessing a gun, the vast majority of states are unaware that these records should be shared with NICS. • While still inadequate, mental health record reporting by the states has improved: From August 2010 to October 2011, the number of state-submitted mental health records in the federal background check database increased by 35.4 percent. • States with the highest rates of mental health record submission have typically enacted policies that require or permit reporting of records: Nine of the ten states that submit the most mental health records per capita have adopted laws or policies that mandate or permit the sharing of mental health records with NICS, while just two of the ten states that submit records at the lowest rates have such laws or policies. • States with access to federal funding tend to submit more records: From August 2010 to October 2011, the nine states that received NICS Act Record Improvement Program (NARIP) grants to improve NICS submission increased their rate of mental health record sharing by nearly twice as many records per capita as states with no federal funding. • Leadership makes a difference: In each state that has significantly improved at sharing records with the federal database, one or more state actors have taken the lead in identifying and surmounting the logistical, legal and political obstacles to compliance. Federal agencies are not reporting records to NICS despite a federal law requiring all federal agencies to report “any record of any person” who is prohibited from purchasing firearms to the FBI. • Federal agencies have shared very few mental health records: 52 of the 61 agencies for which the FBI keeps relevant data have reported no mental health records to NICS. The vast majority of federal records were submitted by just one agency—the Department of Veterans Affairs. • Most federal agencies have not submitted any substance abuse records: Only three federal agencies—the FBI, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency (CSOSA)—have shared any substance abuse records with NICS, with the vast majority submitted by CSOSA. • A Clinton-era policy directive may discourage federal reporting: Federal agencies may continue to rely on a policy memorandum issued in 1994 by former Attorney General Janet Reno that instructs federal agencies not to submit certain substance abuse records to NICS. Details: S.l.: Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2011. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 15, 2011 at: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/maig_mimeo_revb.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/maig_mimeo_revb.pdf Shelf Number: 123362 Keywords: Background ChecksCriminal RecordsGun ControlIllegal Guns |
Author: Cramer, Clayton E. Title: Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens Summary: The ostensible purpose of gun control legislation is to reduce firearm deaths and injuries. The restriction of access to firearms will make criminals unable to use guns to shoot people. Gun control laws will also reduce the number of accidental shootings. Those are the desired effects, at least in theory. It is important, however, for conscientious policymakers to consider not only the stated goals of gun control regulations, but the actual results that they produce. What would be the effect of depriving ordinary, law-abiding citizens from keeping arms for self-defense? One result seems certain: the law-abiding would be at a distinct disadvantage should criminals acquire guns from underground markets. After all, it is simply not possible for police officers to get to every scene where they are urgently needed. Outside of criminology circles, relatively few people can reasonably estimate how often people use guns to fend off criminal attacks. If policymakers are truly interested in harm reduction, they should pause to consider how many crimes—murders, rapes, assaults, robberies—are thwarted each year by ordinary persons with guns. The estimates of defensive gun use range between the tens of thousands to as high as two million each year. This paper uses a collection of news reports of self-defense with guns over an eight-year period to survey the circumstances and outcomes of defensive gun uses in America. Federal and state lawmakers often oppose repealing or amending laws governing the ownership or carrying of guns. That opposition is typically based on assumptions that the average citizen is incapable of successfully employing a gun in self-defense or that possession of a gun in public will tempt people to violence in “road rage” or other contentious situations. Those assumptions are false. The vast majority of gun owners are ethical and competent. That means tens of thousands of crimes are prevented each year by ordinary citizens with guns. Details: Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 2012. 58p. Source: White Paper: Internet Resource: Accessed on February 3, 2012 at http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/WP-Tough-Targets.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/WP-Tough-Targets.pdf Shelf Number: 123938 Keywords: Armed ViolenceFirearmsGun ControlGun ViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Parker, Sarah Title: Handle with Care: Private Security Companies in Timor-Leste Summary: In the wake of several highly publicized and troubling incidents involving private security companies (PSCs) in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, scholars and the media have increasingly focused on the role of PSCs in providing security in conflict and post-conflict settings. Th international debate surrounding the engagement of private security providers is becoming increasingly important in Timor-Leste, where two developments have influenced the local discussion. Firstly, the number of PSCs operating in Timor-Leste has increased since independence. Secondly, the government is considering legislation authorizing non-state security personnel (and other civilians) to carry and use firearms in the course of their duties. In parallel with the debate on the roles and regulation of private security providers, there is an emerging body of standards and best practices covering the activities of security firms, many of which originate within the industry itself. These standards should inform the development of regulations and/or codes of conduct governing the selection, licensing, and activities of private security personnel in Timor-Leste. The use of arms by private security personnel poses special challenges for Timor-Leste, where government capacity to appropriately regulate, monitor, and enforce weapons possession laws remains in question. If the Timorese government does proceed to adopt legislation allowing private security personnel to carry and use firearms, strong regulations should be carefully considered, such as strict restrictions on carrying and a prohibition on storing guns at home after hours. The aims of this paper are to: explore what is meant by 'private security' and the status of private security personnel; provide an overview of the PSCs operating in Timor-Leste; analyse efforts to regulate the private security industry at the national and international levels, with a special focus on the access to and use of arms by private security personnel; and explore some of the negative impacts of the use of armed private security in other countries. Details: Geneva, Switzerland: Timor-Leste Armed Violence Assessment, Small Arms Survey, Undated. 19p. Source: TLAVA Publication: Internet Resource: Accessed February 3, 2012 at http://www.timor-leste-violence.org/pdfs/Timor-Leste-Violence-Private-Security-Companies.pdf Year: 0 Country: International URL: http://www.timor-leste-violence.org/pdfs/Timor-Leste-Violence-Private-Security-Companies.pdf Shelf Number: 123949 Keywords: FirearmsGun ControlPrivate Security (Timor-Leste)Weapons |
Author: Ozdemir, Habib Title: Zero Tolerance in Implementation of Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1995 in the USA Summary: The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1995 aimed to provide a safe environment to children in building their and nation's future. However, the harsh discipline suggested by this act may cause severe negative outcomes for kids‟ psychologies and judgment skills, especially by mandatory expulsions. Since the act decreased the illegal gun possession at schools and outlying areas, this paper proposes to continue the implementation of the act with some amendments. A suggested network comprised of educators, police, families, peer/youth organizations is assumed to improve the results of the act while promoting the role of teachers in the eyes of students and sharing their responsibilities with the courts in expelling students through court verdicts. In this project, police is the major institution in dealing with delinquency within schools and surroundings with specialized units. Families and peer/youth organizations are silent but more constructive units of this network. It is projected that there will a strong commitment and information sharing within the network components. Details: International Police Executive Symposium (IPES) and the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF) and COGINTA., 2011. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: IPES/DCAF Working Paper No 32; Accessed February 6, 2012 at: http://www.ipes.info/WPS/WPS_No_32.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.ipes.info/WPS/WPS_No_32.pdf Shelf Number: 123993 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGun-Free School ZonesSchool CrimeSchool SafetyZero Tolerance |
Author: Lowy, Jonathan Title: Exporting Gun Violence: How Our Weak Gun Laws Arm Criminals in Mexico and America Summary: Mexico has strong gun laws, requiring registration and restrictions on lethality. The United States has weak federal laws and weak state laws in Texas and Arizona. As a result, high firepower weapons from the United States are supplying Mexican drug cartels and causing carnage. This report provides examples of Mexican crimes committed with guns purchased in the United States because our weak gun laws make it easy to traffic guns. Details: Washington, DC: Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2009. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 29, 2012 at http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/exporting-gun-violence.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/exporting-gun-violence.pdf Shelf Number: 114348 Keywords: Arms SmugglingArms Trafficking (Mexico) (U.S.)Firearms and Violence (Mexico) (U.S.)Gun ControlGuns |
Author: Cano, Ignacio Title: Living Without Arms? Evaluation of the Arms-Free Municipalities Project: An Experience in Risk-Tasking in a Risky Contect Summary: In El Salvador, it is estimated that around half a million firearms are in circulation—arms that cause 80 of every 100 murders that take place in one of the most homicide-prone countries in Latin America, with a rate of over 55 for every 100,000 inhabitants. With exceedingly lax legislation and a segment of the population imbued of an arms culture that considers their need to be armed an indisputable right, few are the practical initiatives undertaken in an attempt to correct this situation. The National Council on Public Security (CNSP), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), put its stakes on a project that was aimed at improving human development in two pilot municipalities—San Martín and Ilopango—through a reduction in armed violence. The project had been conceived of with a dual strategic perspective: on the one hand, to serve as a model to other municipalities, particularly within the country, but also abroad, and on the other, to stimulate greater debate in favour of putting legal limits on the carrying of firearms at the national level. Two years later, several things have shifted in El Salvador regarding the controversial topic of arms. All public opinion polls concur in pointing toward greater public rejection of the carrying of arms in public places (now around 90%), and even of the possession of firearms. The Firearms Law was just amended by the Legislative Assembly at the behest of the National Commission on Citizen Security and Social Peace, created recently by the President of El Salvador, where different political forces, university rectors, churches and private enterprise are represented. The amendment broadened the prohibition on carrying arms to include plazas, parks and petrol stations, and now provides the option of decreeing spatial and temporal moratoriums in determined places and municipalities. The National Commission also recommended that the President analyze the possibility of, at a minimum, extending the Arms- Free Municipalities Project to the 20 localities in the country with the highest rates of violence and crime. No doubt these are small steps, but significant ones, on the road toward prohibiting the carrying of firearms by civilians in public places in El Salvador. Has the Arms-Free Municipalities project been a total success? Although we do not conceal our pride at the results attained by this pilot project, it would be imprudent, even presumptuous, to attribute to this initiative all the progress made over the last two years in building public awareness and in limiting firearms in El Salvador. No, the Arms-Free Municipalities project, with its bright spots and dark spots, its hits and its misses, is not the only thing responsible for these achievements. But, no doubt it has contributed to sparking new local and national debate, not only on the proliferation of firearms, but also on the right way to design the approach to a problem—escalating violence, crime and insecurity—whose magnitude already borders on the tragic. Likewise, it has also contributed to progress in other essential aspects, such as local management of citizen security. The implementation of this initiative and, especially, the astonishing finding of a notable reduction in homicides (47%) in San Martín, in an almost generalized context of mounting lethal violence, has encouraged other localities such as Santa Tecla, Santa Ana and, lately, San Salvador, the capital, to undertake similar initiatives. The people governing these municipalities, against the current in a strongly centralized and centralist country, where the vision and resources for local management of security are almost nonexistent, have begun to take the reins of a politically sensitive issue. Details: San Salvador, El Salvador: United Nations Development Programme, 2008. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 27, 2012 at: http://www.pnud.org.sv/2007/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,19/Itemid,56/?mosmsg=Est%E1+intentando+acceder+desde+un+dominio+no+autorizado.+%28www.google.com%29 Year: 2008 Country: El Salvador URL: http://www.pnud.org.sv/2007/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,19/Itemid,56/?mosmsg=Est%E1+intentando+acceder+desde+un+dominio+no+autorizado.+%28www.google.com%29 Shelf Number: 125071 Keywords: Gun ControlGunsHomicidesViolence (El Salvador) |
Author: Issa, Darrell Title: Memorandum: Update of Operation Fast and Furious Summary: Since February 2011, the House Oversight and Government and Government Reform Committee has been conducting a joint investigation with Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of reckless conduct in the Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious. The committee has held three hearings, conducted twenty-four transcribed interviews with fact witnesses, sent the Department of Justice over fifty letters, and issued the Department of Justice two subpoenas for documents. The Justice Department, however, continues to withhold documents critical to understanding decision making and responsibility in Operation Fast and Furious. This memo explains key events and facts in Operation Fast and Furious that have been uncovered during the congressional investigation; remaining questions that the Justice Department refused to cooperate in helping the Committee answer; the ongoing relevance of these questions; and the extent of the harm created by both Operation Fast and Furious and the Department’s refusal to fully cooperate. The memo also explains issues for Committee Members to consider in making a decision about holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his Department’s refusal to provide subpoenaed documents. Attached to this memo for review and discussion is a draft version of a contempt report that the Committee may consider at an upcoming business meeting. Details: Washington, DC: United States Congress, 2012. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 21, 2012 at http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Update-on-Fast-and-Furious-with-attachment-FINAL.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Update-on-Fast-and-Furious-with-attachment-FINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 126084 Keywords: Border SecurityDrug CartelsGun ControlGun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)Illegal GunsOrganized CrimeTrafficking in Weaspons |
Author: Aneja, Abhay Title: The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report: The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy Summary: For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on crime of laws that grant citizens the presumptive right to carry concealed handguns in public – so-called right-to-carry (RTC) laws. In 2005, the National Research Council (NRC) offered a critical evaluation of the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis using county-level crime data for the period 1977-2000. 17 of the 18 NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existing research was inadequate to conclude that RTC laws increased or decreased crime. One member of the panel, though, concluded that the NRC's panel data regressions supported the conclusion that RTC laws decreased murder. We evaluate the NRC evidence, and improve and expand on the report’s county data analysis by analyzing an additional six years of county data as well as state panel data for the period 1977-2006. We also present evidence using both a more plausible version of the Lott and Mustard specification, as well as our own preferred specification (which, unlike the Lott and Mustard model used in the NRC report, does control for rates of incarceration and police). While we have considerable sympathy with the NRC’s majority view about the difficulty of drawing conclusions from simple panel data models, we disagree with the NRC report’s judgment that cluster adjustments to correct for serial correlation are not needed. Our randomization tests show that without such adjustments the Type 1 error soars to 44 – 75 percent. In addition, the conclusion of the dissenting panel member that RTC laws reduce murder has no statistical support. Our paper highlights some important questions to consider when using panel data methods to resolve questions of law and policy effectiveness. Although we agree with the NRC’s cautious conclusion regarding the effects of RTC laws, we buttress this conclusion by showing how sensitive the estimated impact of RTC laws is to different data periods, the use of state versus county data, particular specifications, and the decision to control for state trends. Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from both the state and county panel data models conducted over the entire 1977-2006 period with and without state trends and using three different specifications is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime. It will be worth exploring whether other methodological approaches and/or additional years of data will confirm the results of this panel-data analysis. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012. 93p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper No. 18294: Accessed September 5, 2012 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18294 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18294 Shelf Number: 126259 Keywords: Crime ControlGun ControlGunsRight-to-Carry LawsWeaspons |
Author: Koper, Christopher S. Title: Police Strategies to Reduce Illegal Possession and Carrying of Firearms: Effects on Gun Crime Summary: Criminal misuse of firearms is among the world’s most serious crime problems. Strategies to reduce gun violence include efforts to restrict the manufacture and sale of firearms, interrupt the illegal supply of guns, deter gun possession, reduce gun carrying in public places, toughen responses to illegal gun use, reduce demand for firearms, promote responsible ownership of guns, and address community conditions that foster gun crime. In this review, we examine research on the effectiveness of selected law enforcement strategies for reducing gun crime and gun violence. This review examines the impacts of police strategies to reduce illegal possession and carrying of firearms on gun crime. Examples include gun detection patrols in high-crime areas, enhanced surveillance of probationers and parolees, weapon reporting hotlines, consent searches, and other similar tactics. Details: Oslo, Norway: Campbell Collaboration, 2012. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Campbell Systematic Reviews 2012:11: Accessed September 13, 2012 at: www.campbellcollaboration.org Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 126329 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceIllegal GunsPolicing |
Author: Frandsen, Ronald J. Title: Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2010: Federal and State Investigations and Prosecutions of Firearm Applications Denied by a NICS Check in 2010 Summary: The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Act) requires criminal history background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and state agencies on persons who attempt to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer. In 2010, the FBI and state agencies denied a firearm to nearly 153,000 persons due to National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) records of felonies, domestic violence offenses, and other prohibiting factors. Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2010 reports on investigations and prosecutions of persons who were denied a firearm in 2010. The report describes how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) screens denied-person cases and retrieves firearms that were obtained illegally. Statistics presented include charges most often filed against denied persons by United States Attorneys and results of prosecutions. Investigation statistics from two states are also presented. Key statistics are compared for the five-year period from 2006 to 2010. Statistical highlights are presented in the body of the report and complete details are included in an Appendix. Details: St. Louis, MO: Regional Justice Information Service, 2012. 18p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 8, 2012 at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/239272.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/239272.pdf Shelf Number: 126647 Keywords: Brady ActCrime StatisticsCriminal Background ChecksGun ControlIllegal Weapons |
Author: Webster, Daniel W. Title: The Case For Gun Policy Reforms In America Summary: Each year, more than 31,000 people in the United States die as a result of gunshot wounds. In 2010, firearms were used in almost 338,000 nonfatal violent crimes and more than 73,000 people were treated for gun injuries. But, the true toll of gun violence is not measured in numbers. The victims of gun violence are young people who die too soon, families left to grieve, and community members who feel unsafe in their neighborhoods. According to The Case for Gun Policy Reforms in America, a new report from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, gun violence in America can be prevented with common sense policy solutions that are widely supported by the American public. The report summarizes existing gun policy research by Johns Hopkins and other institutions. Among several recommendations, the report argues that ownership restrictions should be broadened to include adults convicted of misdemeanors and juveniles convicted of serious crimes in juvenile court – two groups that are more likely to use a gun to commit a crime in the future. Background checks should be required of all gun purchasers to ensure that prohibited persons do not gain access to dangerous weapons. Under current federal law, 40 percent of gun sales are not subject to background checks. Better regulation and oversight of gun dealers can also prevent firearms from being resold illegally to criminals. The nature of guns is also changing. Better regulation and oversight of military-style assault weapons and large capacity magazines – magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition – can lessen the impact of mass shootings, in which the perpetrator is more likely to use an assault weapon and high-capacity magazine. There is broad public support for improved gun policies to restrict gun ownership by potentially dangerous people. A recent Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Luntz Global poll showed that 82 percent of gun owners supported mandatory background checks for all firearm sales. Another poll showed board support for measures to either expand current gun prohibitions for potentially dangerous people or enhance accountability, so that prohibited individuals cannot access a firearm. The same poll found that 58 percent of adults surveyed supported a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines. Details: Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2012. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 26, 2012 at: http://www.joycefdn.org/assets/1/7/WhitePaper102512_CGPR.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.joycefdn.org/assets/1/7/WhitePaper102512_CGPR.pdf Shelf Number: 126808 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Violence (U.S.)GunsViolent Crime |
Author: Violence Policy Center Title: Bullet Buttons The Gun Industry’s Attack on California’s Assault Weapons Ban Summary: California’s assault weapons ban—the toughest in the nation—is under attack by America’s gun industry. Following a series of high-profile mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s, California led the nation in protecting its citizens from the proliferation of military-style assault weapons. Assault weapons are a discrete class of firearm that incorporate specific design characteristics to enhance lethality. Civilian assault weapons are derived from their full-auto military counterparts developed by the Nazis during World War II to allow German soldiers to spray a wide geographic area with bullets to combat advancing troops. Chief among the characteristics that make assault weapons so lethal compared to other firearms is their ability to accept a detachable, high-capacity ammunition magazine, which, after being emptied, can be replaced with a new fully-loaded ammunition magazine in seconds. In 1989, California passed the Roberti-Roos Act, the first statewide law in the nation designed to ban assault weapons. Soon after its passage however, the firearms industry made minor cosmetic changes to many banned assault weapons—evading the intent of the law and allowing their continued sale. In 1999, after intense media attention, California legislators moved to update the law to address the industry’s actions. Now, the gun industry is once again working to undermine California’s assault weapons ban. And if no action is taken by California policymakers to address this newest attack, the state’s longstanding ban on assault weapons will be eviscerated. Details: Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2012. 11p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 11, 2013 at: http://www.vpc.org/studies/bulletbuttons.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.vpc.org/studies/bulletbuttons.pdf Shelf Number: 127581 Keywords: Assault WeaponsFirearmsGun ControlGun ViolenceGuns (California) |
Author: Hinton, Rachael Title: Armed Violence Monitoring Systems Summary: There is increasing global awareness that accurate and reliable data on the scope, scale, and causes of all forms of armed violence is vital for shaping policy, developing programmatic responses, and monitoring progress. Armed violence is strongly associated with negative development outcomes and slow progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2011, p. 145).1 Over the past few years the realization that the development and security of a wide range of countries, cities, and citizens were threatened by armed violence led to a global agenda for the prevention and reduction of such violence (OECD, 2011, p. 11). This agenda identified a number of entry points and resulted in the engagement of an increasingly diverse spectrum of actors and players, including, for example, in the areas of conflict prevention, peacebuilding, crime prevention, and public health. In the context of their own agendas, various stakeholders acknowledge the importance of applying evidence-based policy-making through the improved measurement and monitoring of armed violence. Some have established mechanisms and tools for monitoring and research, such as observatories (on crime and violence) or armed violence monitoring systems (AVMSs) to better understand the extent and distribution of armed violence in a variety of geographic settings in low-, middle-, and high-income countries (Gilgen and Tracey, 2011). Details: Geneva, SWIT: Small Arms Survey, 2013. 4 p. Source: Internet Resource: Small Arms Survey Research Notes • Number 27: Accessed April 5, 2013 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-27.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-27.pdf Shelf Number: 128283 Keywords: Armed ViolenceGun ControlGun ViolenceGunsViolent Crimes |
Author: New York City Council. Task Force to Conmbat Gun Violence Title: A Report to: New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn Summary: This report calls for a comprehensive community-based response to gun violence, including recommendations for programs that the City can fund in neighborhoods with the most gun violence as well as state and federal legislation that will make New York and all Americans safer. We are pleased that, under your leadership, over $4 million has already been allocated to begin implementing the Task Force’s recommendations. Details: New York: New York City Council, 2012. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 1, 2013 at: http://council.nyc.gov/html/pr/gvtfreport.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://council.nyc.gov/html/pr/gvtfreport.pdf Shelf Number: 128586 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Violence (New York City, U.S.)GunsViolent Crime |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: America Under the Gun: A 50-State Analysis of Gun Violence and Its Link to Weak State Gun Laws Summary: In the aftermath of mass shootings and other gun-related tragedies, there is often a surge of interest on the part of community leaders, social-science researchers, and elected officials to root out the causes of gun violence in an effort to prevent such tragedies from occurring again. Any study into the causes of gun violence is necessarily complicated, however, as there are innumerable factors that contribute to the nature and prevalence of gun-related violence in any community. Despite this complex web of factors that influence the rate of gun violence, this report finds a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher, in fact—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws. The data analyzed in this report relate to the following 10 indicators of gun violence: 1. Overall firearm deaths in 2010 2. Overall firearm deaths from 2001 through 2010 3. Firearm homicides in 2010 4. Firearm suicides in 2010 5. Firearm homicides among women from 2001 through 2010 6. Firearm deaths among children ages 0 to 17, from 2001 through 2010 7. Law-enforcement agents feloniously killed with a firearm from 2002 through 2011 8. Aggravated assaults with a firearm in 2011 9. Crime-gun export rates in 2009 10. Percentage of crime guns with a short “time to crime” in 2009. Using these data, we rank each state according to the rate of each indicator of gun violence and create an overall ranking of the states across all 10 indicators, resulting in an overall state ranking for the prevalence of gun violence. Finally, we compare this overall state gun-violence ranking with a Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence ranking of states based on the strength of their gun laws. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 19, 2013 at: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/AmericaUnderTheGun-3.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/AmericaUnderTheGun-3.pdf Shelf Number: 129633 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGuns |
Author: Jenkins, Jack Title: Thou Shall Not Kill: Faith Groups and Gun-Violence Prevention Summary: Rev. Agabus Lartey, pastor of Family Life Fellowship Church in Boston, Massachusetts, left the lights on for his daughter Kristen before going to bed last August. But Kristen, a 22-year-old who had just graduated from college, never came home that night. Instead, she and three other young women were gunned down that evening while sitting in a car on a nearby street. Three of the four women died from their wounds, all victims of senseless—yet, for many Americans, frighteningly frequent—gun violence. “I went into her room, and she wasn’t there,” Lartey told The Boston Globe. “I had an inkling, I started connecting the dots, and at that moment my doorbell rang, and there was a cop, and I knew that she had passed. … My birthday is the day that my daughter died.” Stories such as Kristen’s are all too common in the United States, but they don’t have to be. Millions of Americans have been affected by gun violence in their communities, and millions more are calling for an end to the killing—and their voices are growing louder. In the wake of the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December, an overwhelming majority of Americans called for common-sense gun regulations that could help prevent future killings: Polls show that 91 percent of Americans, including 85 percent of gun owners, support universal background checks for gun purchases. But despite such strong public support, the U.S. Senate failed to pass a series of sensible gun regulations last week—including universal background checks for gun purchases. The Senate’s refusal to act has triggered widespread outrage among gun-violence-prevention advocates. Yet now more than ever, advocates are determined to intensify their efforts to defeat the gun lobby and win common-sense regulations to help make America safer. Faith-based groups have long been key partners in these kinds of efforts, bringing a moral voice, firsthand experience, learned expertise, and strategic know-how to the cause. Together with citizen groups, law-enforcement officials, elected leaders, and survivors of shootings, they are decrying the cowardice of senators who voted down gun laws and calling for sensible regulations that will help curb the epidemic of gun violence that haunts neighborhoods across the country. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013. 11p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 19, 2013 at: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/FaithGunViolence.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/FaithGunViolence.pdf Shelf Number: 129635 Keywords: Faith-Based GroupsGun ControlGun Violence (U.S.)Homicides |
Author: Welch, Edward Title: Preventing School Shootings: A Public Health approach to Gun Violence Summary: Gun violence in America must be addressed at the highest levels of society. Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech were attacks on the very fabric of America. School shootings represent attacks on our nations' future. A public health approach to gun violence focuses on prevention. Public safety professionals, educators and community leaders are squandering opportunities to prevent horrific acts of extreme violence. Preparedness is derived by planning, which is critical to mobilizing resources when needed. Rational public policy can work. Sensible gun legislation, which is accessible through a public health approach to gun violence, neither marginalizes nor stigmatizes any one group. University administrators must fully engage the entire arsenal of resources available to confront this pernicious threat. The academic community can create powerful networks for research, collaboration and information sharing. These collective learning environments are investments in the knowledge economy. In order for the police to remain relevant, they must actively engage the community they serve by developing the operational art necessary to cultivate knowledge, relationships and expertise. Police departments must emphasize strategies that improve performance. Police officers must understand the mission and meaning of "To Protect and Serve" and the consequences of public safety, which often comes at their personal peril. Gun violence in America is a public health epidemic and preventing it requires a collective responsibility Details: Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2013. 171p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed October 28, 2013 at: Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=736339 Shelf Number: 131398 Keywords: Colleges and UniversitiesGun ControlGun ViolenceSchool CrimeSchool SafetySchool ShootingsSchool Violence |
Author: Braga, Anthony A. Title: SMART Approaches to Reducing Gun Violence Summary: Despite significant decreases in crime nationwide, America continues to experience criminal gun violence at extraordinarily high levels - more than 11,000 individuals are murdered by firearms and 75,000 are treated for nonfatal gunshot wounds at hospitals annually, and these incidents are certainly undercounted in our statistics. Beyond the devastating toll measured in injuries and loss of life, gun violence also imposes a heavy burden on our standard of living, from increased fear and reduced quality of life to depressed property values. While the public tends to focus its attention on mass shootings, the most common forms of gun violence occur on a daily basis involving gang members, violent youth, and others involved in crime. As a result, local police departments are in a strategic position on the front lines poised to curb or even prevent gun crime, injuries, and deaths. In response, a number of departments are experimenting with new, evidence-based strategies and tactics aimed at addressing the chronic and pervasive gun violence problem. Yet, the question remains: Can the police effectively reduce and prevent gun crimes and associated violence? The Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) emerged on the law enforcement landscape in 2009. With SPI, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) sought to identify effective and efficient solutions to chronic local crime problems, including gun violence. This program provides a valuable opportunity for local police agencies to partner with academic researchers and rigorously assess whether gun violence reduction strategies have the intended effects on crime, violence, and communities. Indeed, nine of thirty-five SPI-funded police agencies nationwide have targeted gun violence as part of their Smart Policing Initiatives (Boston, MA; Los Angeles, CA; Baltimore, MD; Joliet, IL; Las Vegas, NV; Cambridge/Somerville/Everett, MA; Kansas City, MO; Rochester, NY; and East Palo Alto, CA). This Spotlight report reviews the common strategies that police have employed across those nine sites. These evidence-based strategies, which reflect core tenets of the SPI, are grounded in a risk-focused framework that recognizes the importance of targeting efforts on the places, people, and times at greatest threat of violence. The common strategies identified for implementation in the nine SPI sites include: - Targeting persistent gun violence hot spots - Targeting prolific offenders in persistent hot spots - Employing new technologies and advanced crime analysis - Engaging a wide range of collaborative partners - Conducting advanced problem analysis We prepared the Gun Violence Spotlight to further the national conversation on the gun violence problem and to provide a resource for local officials seeking to make informed, evidence-based decisions regarding their prevention, intervention, and suppression efforts. Though many of the SPI projects are ongoing, several sites have produced important findings, derived through rigorous research methodologies, which indicate that their interventions have effectively reduced gun violence: - Boston's problem-oriented strategy focusing on micro-level hot spots reduced aggravated assaults by more than 15 percent, violent crime by more than 17 percent, and robberies by more than 19 percent. - Baltimore's strategy of targeted enforcement within selected crime hot spots reduced homicides by 27 percent; and a related focused deterrence intervention reduced non-fatal shootings in one neighborhood by 40 percent. - Baltimore's Gun Offender Registry reduced gun-related re-offending risks among participants by 92 percent. - Los Angeles' LASER initiative, which combined place and offender strategies with the use of criminal intelligence data, reduced homicides by more than 22 percent per month in the target division (Newton), and gun crimes by 5 percent in each reporting district of the target division. The Boston, Baltimore, and Los Angeles findings are certainly encouraging, and they strongly suggest that the SPI has generated significant declines in gun crime and related violence. Results for other SPI sites will be forthcoming in the near future. This Spotlight identifies a number of next steps for addressing gun violence, most notably the development of supply-side approaches that disrupt illicit gun supply lines and combat illegal gun sales. Details: Washington, DC: CNA Analysis & Solutions, 2014. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Smart Policing Initiative Spotlight Report: Accessed April 21, 2014 at: http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/SPIGunViolenceSpotlight.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/SPIGunViolenceSpotlight.pdf Shelf Number: 132098 Keywords: CollaborationCrime Prevention ProgramsGun ControlGun ViolenceHot SpotsIllegal MarketsPartnershipsViolent Crime |
Author: Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy Title: Guns, Public Health, and Mental Illness: An Evidence-Based Approach for State Policy Summary: This report calls for strengthening current policies banning access to firearms for people with histories of involuntary treatment for mental illness. But the recommendations also offer a new "risk-based" paradigm to supercede the long-established model of gun rights restrictions focused on mental health. The report calls for temporary restrictions of up to five years on the purchase and possession of firearms by individuals convicted of violent misdemeanors, domestic violence, or more than one drug or alcohol conviction within a certain period - all of which are behaviors that demonstrate an elevated risk of violence, even when not accompanied by a record of mental illness, according to research cited in the report. Details: Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy, 2013. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 23, 2014 at: http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/publications/GPHMI-State.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/publications/GPHMI-State.pdf Shelf Number: 132146 Keywords: Firearms and CrimeGun ControlGun PolicyGun ViolenceMentally Ill |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: Women Under the Gun: How Gun Violence Affects Women and 4 Policy Solutions to Better Protect Them Summary: Violence against women looks very different than violence against men. Whether in the context of sexual assault on college campuses or in the military, violence by an intimate partner, or other types of violent victimization, women's experiences of violence in this country are unique from those of men. One key difference in the violence committed against women in the United States is who commits it: Women are much more likely to be victimized by people they know, while men are more likely to be victims of violent crime at the hands of strangers. Between 2003 and 2012, 65 percent of female violent crime victims were targeted by someone they knew; only 34 percent of male violent crime victims knew their attackers. Intimate partners make up the majority of known assailants: During the same time period, 34 percent of all women murdered were killed by a male intimate partner, compared to the only 2.5 percent of male murder victims killed by a female intimate partner. A staggering portion of violence against women is fatal, and a key driver of these homicides is access to guns. From 2001 through 2012, 6,410 women were murdered in the United States by an intimate partner using a gun - more than the total number of U.S. troops killed in action during the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Guns are used in fatal intimate partner violence more than any other weapon: Of all the women killed by intimate partners during this period, 55 percent were killed with guns. Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than are women in other high income countries. Limiting abusers and stalkers' access to firearms is therefore critical to reduce the number of women murdered in this country every year. This idea is not new: Congress first acted 20 years ago to strengthen our gun laws to prevent some domestic abusers from buying guns. But we are still a long way from having a comprehensive system of laws in place at both the federal and state levels that protect women - and children and men - from fatal violence in the context of intimate and domestic relationships. This report provides an overview of the data regarding the intersection of intimate partner violence and gun violence, describing four policies that states and the federal government should enact to reduce dangerous abusers' access to guns and prevent murders of women: - Bar all convicted abusers, stalkers, and people subject to related restraining orders from possessing guns. - Provide all records of prohibited abusers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. - Require a background check for all gun sales. - Ensure that abusers surrender any firearms they own once they become prohibited. Some states have already adopted some of these policies, and in the past 12 months, there has been a growing movement across the country to enact laws closing some gaps related to domestic abusers' gun access in several states, including Wisconsin, Washington, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Minnesota. This report collected and analyzed data from a variety of sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI; the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC; the Office of Violence Against Women; state criminal justice agencies; state domestic violence fatality review boards; and academic research. These data provide a snapshot of women's experiences of violence in this country and show the glaring gaps in state and federal laws that leave victims of domestic violence and stalking vulnerable to gun violence. Many of these data have not been made public prior to the publication of this report and were collected through Freedom of Information Act requests. Among our findings: - In 15 states, more than 40 percent of all homicides of women in each state involved intimate partner violence. In 36 states, more than 50 percent of intimate partner-related homicides of women in each state involved a gun. - A review of conviction records in 20 states showed that there are at least 11,986 individuals across the country who have been convicted of misdemeanor-level stalking but are still permitted to possess guns under federal law. It is likely that there are tens of thousands of additional convicted stalkers who are able to buy guns. - While submission of records regarding convicted misdemeanant domestic abusers to the FBI's NICS Index has increased 132 percent over the past five-and-a-half years, only three states appear to be submitting reasonably complete records - Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. Records from these three states account for 79 percent of the total records submitted to the FBI. Every day in the United States, five women are murdered with guns. Many of these fatal shootings occur in the context of a domestic or intimate partner relationship. However, women are not the only victims. Shooters have often made children, police officers, and their broader communities additional targets of what begins as an intimate partner shooting. In fact, one study found that more than half of the mass shootings in recent years have started with or involved the shooting of an intimate partner or a family member. Enacting a comprehensive set of laws and enforcement strategies to disarm domestic abusers and stalkers will reduce the number of women who are murdered by abusers with guns-and it will make all Americans safer. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2014. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 1, 2014 at: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/GunsDomesticViolence2.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/GunsDomesticViolence2.pdf Shelf Number: 132588 Keywords: Family ViolenceGun ControlGun ViolenceHomicidesIntimate Partner ViolenceViolence Against Women |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: Assault Weapons Revisited: Policy Options for Regulating Rifles, Shotguns, and Other Firearms 20 Years After the Passage of the Assault Weapons Ban Summary: 20 years after President Bill Clinton signed the federal assault weapons ban into law in September 1994 and a decade after Congress allowed that law to lapse - the question of whether and how to regulate particularly lethal firearms is no longer the primary focus of the national gun debate. While the question of what to do about the proliferation of certain military-style rifles - so-called "assault weapons" - remains open, advocates for stronger gun laws have recently focused on the question of who may possess guns, rather than which type of guns should receive heightened regulation. In the wake of the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, President Barack Obama, congressional leaders, and gun-violence prevention advocates alike made deterring dangerous people from accessing guns the top legislative priority with a proposal for comprehensive background checks for all gun sales. In April 2013, while the Senate also considered a new assault weapons ban that only mustered 40 votes, the Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks garnered 55 votes. This shift in focus to prevent dangerous people from accessing guns is appropriate: A broad set of research suggests that such measures are effective in reducing gun violence. Additionally, there is overwhelming support in opinion polls for expanding background checks and similar measures aimed at restricting dangerous people from accessing guns. But the debate persists about whether and how to best regulate assault rifles and other types of firearms that may pose heightened risks to public safety. For more than 20 years, there has generally been only one policy solution offered in this debate: a ban on assault weapons. This report considers how gun laws have evolved to address different classes of firearms and looks more broadly at how federal and state laws treat rifles and shotguns differently than handguns and whether all of those distinctions continue to make sense. It also examines data on the changing nature of gun violence and the increasing use of long guns and assault rifles by criminals, with a focus on Pennsylvania as a case study. Additionally, this report offers a new framework for regulating assault weapons and other special categories of guns that balances the desire of law-abiding gun owners to possess these guns with the need to protect public safety from their misuse in dangerous hands. These policies include: - Require background checks for all gun sales - Require dealers to report multiple sales of long guns - Equalize interstate sales of long guns and handguns - Require federal firearms licenses for individuals that manufacture guns using 3D printers - Bar possession and use of machine guns by individuals under the age of 16 - Require a permit for possession of assault weapons Twenty years after the successful passage of the federal assault weapons ban and 10 years after its expiration, the push for a federal ban on these guns seems stuck in neutral. But much more can be done to strengthen regulation of particularly dangerous guns and to ensure that laws regulating handguns and long guns make sense in today's context. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2014. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 18, 2014 at: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AssaultWeapons-report.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AssaultWeapons-report.pdf Shelf Number: 133375 Keywords: Assault WeaponsFirearmsGun ControlGun Control PolicyGun LawsGun-Related Violence (U.S.)Guns |
Author: Donges, Hannah Title: Women and Gun Ownership Summary: Policy and research on the role of firearms in women's lives usually stress women as victims of gun violence. Around the world, firearms are used in roughly 40 per cent of the estimated 66,000 annual homicides with female victims. Guns are even more commonly used to injure, intimidate, and coerce women (Alvazzi del Frate, 2011, pp. 117, 131-32). Although women own and use guns, or live in households where firearms are present, firearms policy and research tend to focus on the role of and effects on men, who are the majority of firearm owners worldwide (Alvazzi del Frate and McDonald, 2014, p. 2). While relevant data is scarce, it reveals a substantial gap between male and female civilian firearm owners and users. As shown in this Research Note, women account for a smaller proportion of gun owners than men, and they are not as aware of or not as willing to acknowledge the presence of firearms in homes and communities. Bridging this gender gap will help shed light on perceptions of and attitudes towards firearms, which could help to inform the agenda for women, peace, and security as well as the development of comprehensive and efficient safety policies. By showing what can be said with relative certainty, this Research Note establishes a baseline for systematic analysis and careful policy-making. Details: Geneva, SWIT: Small Arms Survey, 2014. 4p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Notes, No. 45: Accessed October 22, 2014 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-45.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Europe URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-45.pdf Shelf Number: 133788 Keywords: Gun ControlGun OwnersehipGun PoliciesGun ViolenceGunsHomicidesViolent Crime |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: The Gun Debate 1 Year After Newtown: Assessing Six Key Claims About Gun Background Checks Summary: The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, reignited the debate on whether to strengthen federal and state gun laws. Soon after the massacre, the top priority for advocates for stronger gun laws became broadening background checks to apply to all gun sales. Under current federal law, vendors in the business of selling guns must get a license, conduct background checks, and keep records. But unlicensed "private" sellers-persons who maintain they sell only occasionally at gun shows, online, or anywhere else-are able to sell guns with no questions asked. In some ways, the debate's emphasis on the universal background checks proposal was surprising-after all, the Newtown shooter would not have been subject to federal prohibitions, other than the one that blocks handgun sales to persons under 21, and background checks were only tangentially related to the shooting. The ascendance of background checks as the primary policy proposal to combat gun violence reflects a shift in gun-reform advocates' strategy from tightening regulations on guns themselves to strengthening laws that keep guns away from dangerous people. The shift had already begun before Newtown; after, it only accelerated. Both policy research and political realities informed this shift in priorities. As a policy matter, most research suggests that making it more difficult for dangerous people to acquire guns will have a significant impact in reducing the more than 30,000 gun deaths that happen every year in America. As a political matter, polling conducted before and after Newtown show that 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans support expanding background checks, including most gun owners. As the debate over the universal background checks proposal heated up before the Senate voted on the matter in April, discussion of the substantive benefits of this policy proposal was mostly lost in the fray. The background checks debate far too often devolved into sound bites, which gave rise to a number of widespread misunderstandings about the universal background checks proposal and its potential effects on gun violence in the United States. In this issue brief, we assess six key claims that have been made about background checks in the past year: 1.40 percent of gun sales occur without a background check. 2.Few criminals visit gun shows to acquire guns illegally. 3.Universal background checks will not work because criminals will not submit to them. 4.Efforts to prevent gun violence should focus on straw purchasing from gun dealers, not gun transfers among unlicensed buyers and sellers. 5.We should not enact new laws on background checks until the federal government starts prosecuting violations of the current laws. 6.Universal background checks would harm gun dealers. Some of the claims are true, some are false, and some fall in the middle. But all of these common talking points, whether for or against background checks, have become divorced from their context, making them difficult to understand. Our goal in the pages that follow is to assess each of these six key claims regarding the proposal to require background checks for all gun sales in order to provide a deeper analysis and contextualize the claims. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013. 17p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 18, 2015 at: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BackgroundChecks.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BackgroundChecks.pdf Shelf Number: 134963 Keywords: Gun ControlGun PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related Violence |
Author: Dube, Arindrajit Title: Cross-Border Spillover: U.S. Gun Laws and Violence in Mexico Summary: To what extent, and under what conditions, does access to arms fuel violent crime? To answer this question, we exploit a unique natural experiment: the 2004 expiration of the U.S. Federal Assault Weapons Ban exerted a spillover on gun supply in Mexican municipios near Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, but not near California, which retained a pre-existing state-level ban. We find first that Mexican municipios located closer to the non-California border states experienced differential increases in homicides, gun-related homicides and crime gun seizures in the post-2004 period. Second, the magnitude of this effect is contingent on political factors related to Mexico's democratic transition. Killings increased substantially more in municipios where local elections had become more competitive prior to 2004, with the largest differentials emerging in high narco-trafficking areas. Our findings are consistent with the notion that political competition undermined informal agreements between drug cartels and entrenched local governments, highlighting the role of political instability in mediating the gun-crime relationship. Details: Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2012. 69p. Source: Internet Resource: IZA Discussion Paper No. 7098: Accessed April 30, 2015 at: http://ftp.iza.org/dp7098.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Mexico URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp7098.pdf Shelf Number: 135425 Keywords: Assault WeaponsDrug CartelsDrug TraffickingGun ControlGun-Related ViolenceHomicidesViolent Crime |
Author: Gleason, Diana Title: 2015 Update: Can I Bring My Gun? A Fifty State Survey of Firearm Laws Impacting Policies Prohibiting Handguns in Public Libraries Summary: In Capital Area District Library v. Michigan Open Carry, 826 N.W. 2d 736 (2012), the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded that state law preempted the library's weapons policy prohibiting firearms in the library. My article, Can I Bring My Gun? A Fifty State Survey of Firearm Laws Impacting Policies Prohibiting Handguns in Public Libraries,* asked how laws in each state impact similar policies prohibiting handguns in public libraries. The article warned that many states and the federal government were in the process of amending laws to increase or decrease gun restrictions, and that ongoing change could be expected. In fact, since the article was published in December, 2013, over half the states have amended or promulgated statutes impacting the issue. This update provides a more accurate baseline for following gun laws in the states and District of Columbia. Where information in the original article remains the same the text has not been changed. Details: Moscow, ID: University of Idaho College of law Library, 2015. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 21, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2605937 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2605937 Shelf Number: 136842 Keywords: College and UniversitiesFirearmsGun ControlGun PolicySecond Amendment |
Author: Great Britain. Law Commission Title: Firearms Law: A Scoping Consultation Paper Summary: When consulting on the contents of the Law Commission's 12th Programme of Law Reform, a number of respondents suggested that the law governing the use and acquisition of firearms was deeply problematic and in need to reform. This suggestion came from both the police, CPS, and other law enforcement agencies in addition to organisations representing the licensed firearms community. The law regulating the use and acquisition of firearms is contained primarily within the Firearms Act 1968. Further provisions, however, are to be found in an additional 33 Acts of Parliament. In total therefore, to understand fully the law on firearms it is necessary to have regard to 34 Acts of Parliament. In addition to these, the law is to be found in numerous pieces of secondary legislation. Early fact finding with stakeholders suggested there was consensus on those problems that cause the most difficulties in practice. In this scoping consultation paper, the Law Commission sets out these problems and makes some provisional proposals as to how they could be remedied. By providing immediate solutions to these pressing problems, the aim is to maximise public safety whilst also providing clarity and certainty for members of the licensed firearms community. From discussions with stakeholders, it also became clear that there are more fundamental problems with the law. These problems are attributable to the fact the law has become increasing complex, inaccessible and in some instances incoherent. Given that the Firearms Act 1968 was a consolidating Act, many of its provisions have their origin in older legislative provisions, such as the Pistols Act 1903. It is questionable whether these remain fit for purpose in the 21st century. It is for these reasons the Law Commission has also examined in this scoping consultation paper whether more comprehensive reform of the law is necessary. We conclude that the law is problematic and could be improved. The consultation paper gives some examples of problems stakeholders have brought to our attention which we believe could be remedied by codifying the law. In this paper, we are asking consultees for their views on the suitability of the provisional proposals we have made to remedy the most pressing problems with the law. We are also asking consultees whether they agree with our provisional conclusion that more comprehensive reform of the law is necessary. We are equally eager to know whether consultees have any examples of unnecessary costs incurred that are attributable to the deficiencies with the current legislative regime Details: London: The Stationery Office, 2015. 116p. Source: Internet Resource: Consultation Paper No. 224: Accessed October 19, 2015 at: http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cp224_firearms.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cp224_firearms.pdf Shelf Number: 137010 Keywords: FirearmsGun ControlGunsWeaspons |
Author: Police Executive Research Forum Title: Gun Violence: Regional Problems, Partnerships, and Solutions. Findings and Recommendations from Four Regional Summits and a Survey of Police Executives Summary: To better understand regional issues and perspectives about gun crime and violence, the Police Executive Research Forum, with support from the Joyce Foundation, held four regional summits and surveyed law enforcement leaders on gun violence reduction strategies. The summits were held in Minneapolis, MN; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; and Milwaukee, WI in 2013 and 2014. The survey of PERF's member police executives from around the nation was conducted from December 2014 to February 2015. Throughout the four summits, one message came through especially clearly: We must find a way to "de-politicize" gun crime issues and generate a national conversation about gun crime as a public health issue, not an issue of violating anyone's Second Amendment rights. Some of the information offered by the summit participants is shocking - such as a neighborhood in Milwaukee where residents were not even calling police to report hearing shots fired 86 percent of the time, because it was such a common occurrence. Even more frustrating, as Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn noted, misdemeanor gun crimes in Wisconsin never result in an individual being prohibited from buying or owning a gun. So even a criminal with 20 or more misdemeanor firearms convictions could legally purchase and own a gun in Wisconsin. Some of the information is illuminating, such as the Minneapolis Police Department's successful efforts, recounted by former Chief Tim Dolan, to reduce bank robberies and street robberies by deploying surveillance cameras and gunshot detection technology in downtown areas. The discussions also provided hope by demonstrating that criminal justice professionals, working with elected officials, can bring about reasonable changes in gun laws that do reduce gun crime in their jurisdictions. All of the presentations and conversations were of value - helping us clarify what works, what could work, and what legislators, elected officials, criminal justice professionals, and community leaders can do to reduce gun crimes, make neighborhoods and regions safer, and provide opportunity and hope to the next generation of community members. Details: Washington, DC: PERF, 2015. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 11, 2016 at: http://www.policeforum.org/assets/gunpolicyreport2015.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.policeforum.org/assets/gunpolicyreport2015.pdf Shelf Number: 137448 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceGunsViolent Crime |
Author: Barnhizer, David Title: Gun Control Hysteria Summary: The call to ban guns does not make sense from an effective regulatory perspective. Nor do gun control proposals representing an irrational fear of weapons satisfy Constitutional analysis whether that analysis proceeds under either a strict interpretation or "evolving document" analysis. The irony is that the "living and evolving document" approach to Constitutional interpretation, under current real-world threats and conditions, actually requires affirmative protections of Second Amendment rights. A key determinant of how rights and duties should be adapted to the "new normal" of serious and escalating risks of decentralized and distributed violence pursuant to the "living" US Constitution is that it must now be adjusted to the higher and "threat levels" we are experiencing. This means that the fundamental right to bear arms for defense of self and family must be given greater weight and deference under either a strict interpretation or evolving document approach. In terms of effective regulation, every gun control measure proposed or enacted since the Clinton administration has either failed or must fail when tested against the real world. Regulatory flops such as the Clinton "assault weapons" ban target firearms only rarely used in crime. Proposals or actual programs for firearms registries tug at the heartstrings of those who believe in the ability of the state to properly manage and control social interactions, but in practice fail to solve crimes, do not deter criminal conduct, nor make law-abiding citizens safer in any meaningful respect. Over and over, proposed firearm-restrictive "solutions" are only words on paper, inevitable and expensive regulatory "flops" with no hope of working and typical expressions of cynical politicians' public relations strategies aimed at garnering votes from the uninformed. Anti-gun advocates - at least those acting in good faith and not from purely cynical political motives - are convinced that any views contrary to their own are products of "barbarism", ignorance or some form of malicious social "psychosis". Whether a gun owner possesses weapons for reasons of self-defense, from a desire to defend local and national community if needed, or simply because the individual enjoys target shooting, hunting or being part of a "gun culture" such motivations are entirely incompatible with the belief systems of anti-gun activists who exist in secure "cocoons". Moreover, and remarkably, such regulations fail to conform to good faith Constitutional analysis under either an "originalist" or a "living constitution" type of analysis. While the Court itself has resolved the question of individual rights to firearm ownership in Heller and MacDonald, an honestly-applied "living constitution" analysis also requires the state to recognize and promote individual rights to firearm ownership and defense of self and others. Specifically, "living constitutionalists" claim that the text of the Constitution adopts different meanings depending upon perceived needs, morals, or other socio-political-contextual factors. In analyzing the perceived needs, morals, or other socio-political-contextual factors that define modern culture, an inescapably dominant reality is that the "threat climate" of the US has escalated significantly. This includes increasing sectarian strife, inadequate "after the fact" law enforcement, and the burgeoning rise in terroristic threats. Repeated ominous warnings from governmental actors charged with defending us indicate the risks we face are significant and becoming worse. We are being inundated with warnings from our officials that terrorist organizations are guaranteed to launch attacks in the United States. Some of the attackers will be long-time residents or newly radicalized citizens who seem to spring out of nowhere - as in the San Bernardino murders. We will be living with "lone wolf" attacks for several decades and must be prepared to deal with them. Unlike Supreme Court justices and presidents, the vast majority of Americans do not have personal guards or the resources needed to live in a secure suburban environment or gated community. Those who live in America's cities and in scattered rural areas with little police presence legitimately feel a greater need to be able to defend self, family and property from human predators. In such a context no one should disagree that the first obligation of a political community - local and national - is to provide security against crime and military assaults. Recognition that local and national communities are at a steadily increasing risk of violent attacks - whether from criminals or terrorists - has led a number of law enforcement officials to urge those who are legally eligible to do so to carry weapons and be prepared to react to violent assaults, ironically an urging to prepare to be able to act as a sort of "militia". The fact that experienced law enforcement officials see the need for defense of self, others and community against terrorist threats or to counter emotionally disturbed people intent on killing helpless people in "soft target" situations indicates strongly that our culture has changed in a fundamental way. The "new normal" of American culture involves the increased risk of violent attacks from foreign and homegrown sources - virtually none of which is comprised of actors who are legal owners of guns. Details: Cleveland, OH: Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University, 2016. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Cleveland-Marshall Legal Studies Paper No. 295 : Accessed March 26, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2744879 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2744879 Shelf Number: 138425 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Control policyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceRight to Bear ArmsSecond AmendmentSelf Defense |
Author: Rosenthal, Lawrence Title: The Constitutional Case for Limiting Public Carry Summary: Perhaps the single most important question arising in the wake of the Supreme Court's holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, even for purposes unrelated to service in an organized militia, is whether the Constitution permits limitations on the ability to carry firearms in public. For high-crime, unstable urban neighborhoods, an absolute constitutional right to carry firearms would likely cripple the type of problem-oriented, preventative policing that has successfully driven guns and drugs off of many urban streetscapes and has produced concomitant reductions in violent crime. This Issue Brief addresses the constitutional status of laws that endeavor to facilitate preventative policing by limiting the right to carry firearms in public. Details: Washington, DC: American Constitution Society, 2014. 18p. Source: Internet Resource: Issue Brief: Accessed May 5, 2016 at: https://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Rosenthal_-_The_Constitutional_Case_for_Limiting_Public_Carry_.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Rosenthal_-_The_Constitutional_Case_for_Limiting_Public_Carry_.pdf Shelf Number: 138954 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Control PolicyGun LawsPreventative policingSecond Amendment |
Author: Everytown for Gun Safety Title: Beyond Gridlock: How White House Action on Gun Violence Can Save Lives Summary: In the wake of the horrific shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon - the 18th mass shooting of 20151 - President Obama spoke to the nation, lamenting that gun violence has grown so routine in America and deploring Congressional inaction. But the President also issued a powerful call to action, and recommitted his administration to exploring its authority to take executive action and enforce the laws already in place. He asked whether there were steps his administration could take to prevent these "tragic deaths from taking place." This report answers the President's call, and offers five life-saving measures that the Administration could advance - today - to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. These five critical - and simple - steps would: keep dangerous people with guns out of our schools; crack down on gun trafficking and curb the sale of guns without background checks; ensure that law enforcement identifies and prosecutes the most dangerous criminals who try to illegally obtain guns; help states to enforce their own background check laws; and ensure that all convicted domestic abusers are prohibited from possessing guns. A comprehensive list of these and other recommended executive actions is set forth in the appendix to this report. Details: Everytown for Gun Safety, 2015. 18p. Source: Internet Resource Accessed May 13, 2016 at: https://everytownresearch.org/documents/2015/10/beyond-gridlock-white-house-action-gun-violence-can-save-lives.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: https://everytownresearch.org/documents/2015/10/beyond-gridlock-white-house-action-gun-violence-can-save-lives.pdf Shelf Number: 139016 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Control PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceHomicideViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Gotsis, Tom Title: Sentencing Outcomes for Firearms Offences Summary: This paper sets out the recent history of firearms offences, including the origins of the Firearms Act 1996 (NSW) in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. It then outlines the distinction between non-strictly indictable and strictly indictable firearms offences, and considers the significance of that distinction on the sentencing of firearms offences. The role and effect of standard non-parole periods on the sentencing of firearms offences is also considered. Sentencing statistics for firearms offences are then presented. The paper further provides a discussion of the objectives and main features of the recent amendments to firearms offences that were introduced by the Firearms and Weapons Prohibition Legislation Amendment Act 2015 and the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Amendment (Firearms Offences) Act 2015. Details: Sydney: NSW Parliamentary Research Service, 2016. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Briefing Paper 2/2016: Accessed May 19, 2016 at: http://apo.org.au/files/Resource/firearms_offences_briefing_paper_final.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Australia URL: http://apo.org.au/files/Resource/firearms_offences_briefing_paper_final.pdf Shelf Number: 139101 Keywords: Firearms Gun ControlSentencing |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: License to Kill: How Lax Concealed Carry Laws Can Combine with Stand Your Groud Laws to Produce Deadly Summary: The shooting death of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman's subsequent acquittal have focused the nation's attention on expansive self-defense laws - so-called Stand Your Ground laws - that enable an individual to use deadly force even in situations in which lesser force would suffice or in which the individual could safely retreat to avoid further danger. Leaders from around the country, including President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, have questioned how Florida's law - which is similar to laws enacted in 21 other states-may have contributed to the circumstances that led to Martin's death. Yet the Martin case also implicates another set of laws: the state laws governing who may carry concealed firearms - the laws that put a gun in Zimmerman's hands in the first place. Under Florida law, even individuals such as Zimmerman, who have a criminal history and a record of domestic abuse, are generally entitled to a concealed carry permit, as long as they are not barred from gun possession under federal law and as long as their offense does not meet a very narrow range of additional exclusions under state law. If Zimmerman had applied for a permit in one of the many states with stronger permit requirements, his history of violence and domestic abuse would likely have disqualified him from obtaining a concealed carry permit. This case might then have had a very different outcome. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013. 29p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 19, 2016 at: https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/StandYrGround.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/StandYrGround.pdf Shelf Number: 130127 Keywords: Concealed Carry LawsDeadly ForceGun ControlGun PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceStand Your Ground Laws |
Author: Goggins, Becki Title: State Progress in Record Reporting for Firearm-Related Checks: Protection Order Submissions Summary: A protection order - also known as a restraining order, order of protection, protective order, or an injunction - is an order issued by a civil or criminal court for the purpose of preventing violence or threatening acts or harassment against, sexual violence, or contact or communication with or physical proximity to another person.1 This order may also contain other provisions such as requiring the abuser to relinquish firearms and/or refrain from all contact with the victim of abuse. When the subject of the protection order violates the terms established by the court, the victim can ask law enforcement (or the court) to enforce the order. In 1994, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which requires all U.S. states and territories to give "full faith and credit" to all valid orders of protection issued by other jurisdictions including tribal lands, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. The intent of this provision is to ensure that victims of abuse can call upon law enforcement for protection no matter where they are in the country. While persons who have been granted protection orders are encouraged to keep a copy of the order with them at all times, sometimes this is simply not practical or even possible. Since many jurisdictions require validation of a protection order if it cannot be visually inspected, it is important that protection orders be entered into the Protection Order File of the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) as this is the best way to ensure that a record of its existence can be confirmed by law enforcement across the nation. For firearm- and explosive-related background checks the federal law contains provisions that narrow the circumstances when a protection order serves as a bar to receiving a firearm. The protection order must restrain the person who is the subject of the protection order from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner, or prevent the subject of the order from engaging in other conduct that would place the partner or child in reasonable fear of bodily injury. An intimate partner is defined as the spouse of the person, a former spouse of the person, an individual who is a parent of a child of the person, and an individual who cohabits or has cohabited with the person. In addition, the protection order must arise from a hearing in which the subject of the order had both notice and opportunity to participate. Some states have enacted laws expanding the nature of the relationship or types of conduct underlying the issuance of a protection order; these expanded-parameter protection orders serve as state disqualifiers for receiving a firearm. Details: Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts; Sacramento: SEARCH - National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, 2016. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 20, 2016 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/249864.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/249864.pdf Shelf Number: 140374 Keywords: Background ChecksDomestic ViolenceGun ControlProtection OrdersRestraining Orders |
Author: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division Title: Audit of the Handling of Firearms Purchase Denials Through the National Instant Criminal Background Check Systems Summary: The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is used by Federal Firearms Licensees, importers, and manufacturers (collectively, "dealers") to determine whether a prospective purchaser is legally prohibited from doing so. The process begins when the person provides a dealer with photo identification and a completed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Form 4473. The form asks questions corresponding to the categories of persons prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms. Providing false information is a federal crime. If a prospective purchaser answers "yes" to any questions, the sale must be denied. Otherwise, the dealer generally must request a NICS check from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or their state point of contact. The transfer can occur only if the check does not identify prohibitive criteria, or if it takes more than 3 business days. If 3 business days pass without a determination that the transaction can be approved or must be denied, the dealer can either complete the sale (unless prohibited by local law) or wait for the check to be performed. For approved transactions, identifying information about the purchaser and firearm is purged from NICS within 24 hours pursuant to federal law. For denied transactions, the FBI sends relevant information to ATF's Denial Enforcement and NICS Intelligence (DENI) Branch for possible investigation. For a "delayed denial," where a firearm transfer to a prohibited purchaser occurred because the check took more than 3 business days to complete, ATF is charged with recovering the firearm. Additionally, ATF consults with U.S. Attorneys' Offices (USAO) to decide whether to refer for possible prosecution denial cases that it believes have prosecutorial merit. The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) undertook this audit to examine (1) the effectiveness of the FBI's quality control processes for NICS transactions, the impact of state reporting and recording on FBI NICS determinations, and the FBI's referral of denied NICS transactions to ATF; (2) ATF's initial screening and referral of denied transactions to its field offices for investigation, and ATF field offices' investigation of denied transactions; and (3) the USAOs' prosecution of crimes associated with denials. Details: Washington, DC: DOJ, 2016. 66p. Source: Internet Resource: Audit Division 16-32: Accessed September 30, 2016 at: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/a1632.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/a1632.pdf Shelf Number: 140527 Keywords: Background CheckCriminal BackgroundsFirearmsGun ControlGun Policy |
Author: Depew, Briggs Title: The Decision to Carry: The Effect of Crime on Concealed-Carry Applications Summary: Despite contentious debate on the role of concealed-carry legislation in the U.S., little is known about individual decisions to legally carry concealed handguns in public. Using data on concealed-carry permit applications from 1998 to 2012, we explore the degree to which individuals respond to crime by applying for permits to legally carry concealed firearms. We find that recent homicide incidents increase concealed-carry applications in areas relatively near to the event. Our main results suggest that an additional homicide in relatively small cities increases applications by 26 percent over the following two months. We also find effects in larger cities when using neighborhood-level data.Our data allow us to explore specific circumstances of crime incidents and the characteristics of responsive applicants. Our results show that gun-related homicides are particularly relevant and that whites and males are most responsive to homicide incidents. We also find evidence that individuals are more responsive to homicide incidents when they share a common characteristic with the victim, particularly for female applicants. Details: Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2016. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: IZA Discussion Paper No. 10236: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2846327 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2846327 Shelf Number: 147822 Keywords: Concealed CarryGun ControlGun PolicyRight to Carry |
Author: Kleck, Gary Title: Does Gun Control Reduce Violent Crime? Summary: Do gun control laws reduce violence? To answer this question, a city-level cross-sectional analysis was performed on data pertaining to every U.S. city with a population of at least 25,000 in 1990 (n=1,078), assessing the impact of 19 major types of gun control laws, and controlling for gun ownership levels and numerous other possible confounders. Models were estimated using instrumental variables regression to address endogeneity of gun levels due to reverse causality. Results indicate that gun control laws generally show no evidence of effects on crime rates, possibly because gun levels do not have a net positive effect on violence rates. Although a minority of laws seem to show effects, they are as likely to imply violence-increasing effects as violence-decreasing effects. There were, however, a few noteworthy exceptions: requiring a license to possess a gun, and bans on purchases of guns by alcoholics appear to reduce rates of both homicide and robbery. Weaker evidence suggests that bans on gun purchases by criminals and on possession by mentally ill persons may reduce assault rates, and that bans on gun purchase by criminals may also reduce robbery rates. Details: Unpublished paper, 2016. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 17, 2016 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2807634 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2807634 Shelf Number: 145073 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Control PolicyGun OwnershipGun-Related Violence |
Author: Greenberg, Mark Title: Rethinking Gun Violence Summary: This working paper develops the argument of "Gun Violence and Gun Control" (also posted on SSRN), a short piece commissioned by the London Review of Books. We decided not to publish either paper, in part because we felt there were empirical issues that we were not in a position to assess. We welcome comments on either paper. In this Article, we propose a new way of approaching the problem of gun violence, synthesizing features of a number of successful initiatives. We begin, in Part I of this Article, by examining the gun debate. We argue that it is focused on the wrong question. Once attention is focused on the right question, it becomes clear how to develop a gun violence reduction strategy that is not subject to the standard objections to gun control. As an illustration of the wrong turn the debate has taken, we take as a case study Joyce Malcolm's recent Guns and Violence. The book attempts to use a historical study of guns and violence in England, as well as a brief comparison with the U.S., to develop policy prescriptions for the U.K. Malcolm is a respected academic historian, and her work, both in this book and in the past, has helped give wide currency to the view that increasing the number of guns in private hands is an effective way of reducing violent crime. Although the book has been widely praised by those on the same side of the debate, it has glaring defects in reasoning and scholarship. Malcolm fails even to notice that there is an option other than more guns or fewer guns. In Part II of the Article, we proffer a broad strategy for reducing gun violence. The essence of the strategy is to focus on keeping guns out of the wrong hands, rather than on reducing or increasing the number of guns generally. Although most writers (to the extent they consider the matter at all) assume otherwise, there is strong reason to conclude keeping guns out of the wrong hands - and doing so without reducing the number of guns in circulation - is a tractable problem, which is not to say that it is an easy or completely soluble one. The strategy has two parts, a demand side and a supply side. On the demand side, the strategy begins from the fact that a disproportionate amount of violent crime is committed by a very small number of identifiable persons. Moreover, although it is not generally appreciated, the criminal justice system has tremendous leverage over these recidivist offenders, for example, because most of them are subject to parole supervision. On the supply side, the crucial starting point is that the black market that supplies criminals with guns depends substantially on the legitimate market, and in particular on purchases of guns from licensed firearms dealers (as opposed to, for example, haphazard thefts). Powerful tools are available for cutting off the flow of guns from licensed dealers into the black market. The widely held view that there are simply too many guns already in circulation for supply-side policies to work is unjustifiably dismissive of suppositions about human behavior that are fundamental to the law, as well as of the admittedly tentative empirical evidence of recent gun-violence reduction initiatives. Details: Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, School of Law, 2010. 53p. Source: Internet Resource: UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 10-02 : Accessed October 20, 2016 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1531371 Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1531371 Shelf Number: 145887 Keywords: Background ChecksGun ControlGun ViolenceGun-Related Violence |
Author: Mayors Against Illegal Guns Title: Inside Straw Purchasing: How Criminals Get Guns Illegally Summary: This report presents findings from an investigation into one of the main ways criminals get guns: Straw purchases (when one person poses as the buyer of a gun that is actually for someone else). The report was prepared by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns based on investigative work by the James Mintz Group. It presents 12 specific findings showing how some licensed gun dealers sell handguns to illegal traffickers through straw purchases - which could and should be prevented. Details: s.l.: Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2008. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 10, 2016 at: http://everytownresearch.org/documents/2015/12/inside-straw-purchasing-criminals-get-guns-illegally.pdf Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://everytownresearch.org/documents/2015/12/inside-straw-purchasing-criminals-get-guns-illegally.pdf Shelf Number: 146986 Keywords: Gun ControlGun TraffickingGun ViolenceIllegal GunsTrafficking in Weapons |
Author: New York (State). Office of the Attorney General Title: Target on Trafficking: New York Crime Gun Analysis Summary: There are about 11,000 homicides by gun in America annually,[1] and each represents a multifold tragedy: a life-lost, a family destroyed, a community scarred. Beyond the yellow-tape of the crime scene, the bereaved ask "Who did this?" For those committed to stopping gun violence, the next question must be: “Where did they get the gun?” This report begins to provide an answer for guns recovered in New York. The New York State Office of the Attorney General (NYAG) is committed to preventing gun violence across New York State. It does so through its statewide gun buyback programs, defense and enforcement of New York’s gun safety laws, and aggressive disruption of violent gangs and gun trafficking rings by its Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF), which has recovered hundreds of crime guns in recent years.[2] Crime Gun Any gun connected to a crime that is recovered by law enforcement. A “crime gun” is any gun connected to a crime that is recovered by law enforcement. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) can “trace” these guns which, when successful, can begin to answer the question of “where did they get the gun?” While review of a single trace may reveal data that help solve a crime, comprehensive analysis of trace data can detect regional patterns of crime gun movement into and within a state. These patterns can be used to create sound policies and targeted interdiction strategies aimed at combatting trafficking of dangerous firearms. The NYAG created this first-of-its-kind report and interactive Tracing Analytics Platform to better understand gun trafficking patterns and to assess the efficacy of laws in combatting illegal guns in New York State. The Platform further allows local law enforcement to reach their own conclusions about how to address crime guns in their area. While federal appropriations riders known as the Tiahrt Amendments dramatically restrict ATF’s ability to use and distribute trace data, ATF can share such information with local law enforcement and prosecutors. Like ATF, these groups can publish aggregate statistical data regarding firearms trafficking patterns.[3] By collecting and analyzing New York aggregate gun trace data for 2010-2015, NYAG identified regional differences in trafficking patterns while discovering a commonality among crime guns recovered across New York State: New York’s gun laws have curbed access to the guns most associated with violent crimes, handguns. But the ready availability of these guns in states without these protections thwarts New York’s effort to keep its citizens safe. Our analysis has led us to several recommendations, including calling on the federal government to close the so-called “gun show loophole” which allows private sales of firearms without a background check, and urging states to require permits for handguns, which has worked effectively in New York to keep these dangerous guns out of the hands of criminals. Details: Albany: Office of the Attorney General, 2016. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 5, 2016 at: https://targettrafficking.ag.ny.gov/#part1 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://targettrafficking.ag.ny.gov/#part1 Shelf Number: 147886 Keywords: Gun ControlGun ViolenceGun-Related Crime, ViolenceTrafficking in GunsTrafficking in Weapons |
Author: Bricknell, Samantha Title: Mass shootings and firearm control: comparing Australia and the United States Summary: The debate around measures to prevent mass shootings has largely focussed on the effectiveness of firearm controls. Specific mass shooting events in the UK, Canada and Australia were followed by increased restrictions on firearm access and use while in countries such as the US, the response was less conclusive. Various examinations of the impact of firearm controls on firearm deaths have produced inconclusive results and, in particular, made little mention of the impact on the prevalence of mass shootings. This paper compares the incidence and characteristics of mass shooting events in Australia and the US in the period 1981 and 2013. The authors suggests that it is a complement of actions introduced with the Australian firearm reforms of 1996 and 2002 – particularly around access to specified firearm models and legislated methods to identify firearm licence owners at risk of harm or of harming – that have, for Australia at least, provided the stronger preventative response. Details: Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2015?. 9p. Source: Internet Resource: Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, 2015? Accessed January 30, 2017: http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/aic/foi/mass-shootings/Document-1.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Australia URL: http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/aic/foi/mass-shootings/Document-1.pdf Shelf Number: 144880 Keywords: Gun ControlGun-Related ViolenceHomicidesMass Shootings |
Author: Duquet, Nils Title: Firearms and Violent Deaths in Europe: An Exploratory Analysis of the Linkages Between Gun Ownership, Firearms Legislation and Violent Death Summary: On a regular basis, news stories appear in the media about public shootings where shooters use their guns to open fire and kill people in shopping malls or on school campuses. Mostly these stories deal with incidents in the United States. Over the last years, however, a number of European countries have experienced similar public shooting incidents. Notable cases were the shootings at Tuusula and Kauhajoki in Finland (2007 and 2008), the killings in Cumbria in the UK (2010), the Utøya attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway (2011), and the shootings at Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands and Liège in Belgium in 2011. Public shootings draw a high level of media attention. Less striking in the public eye, but not less significant – not least in quantitative terms –, are the numbers of people in Europe killed by firearms in the context of gun-related crime or in domestic shootings. It is estimated that between 2000 and 2010, over 10,000 victims of murder or manslaughter were killed by firearms in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). Every year, over 4000 suicides by firearm are registered in the EU. This means that, on average, there are 0.24 homicides and 0.9 suicides by firearm per 100,000 population in Europe every year. Compared with the US or other countries around the globe, the rates of gun-related violent death in Europe are rather low, certainly where the homicide rates are concerned. This does not mean, however, that the problem of gun violence has not appeared on the European policy radar in recent years. On the contrary, the attention devoted to the problem by law enforcement agencies and policy-makers has been growing. Reacting not only to shooting incidents such as those mentioned above, but also to warnings by police and law enforcement agencies that criminals are increasingly willing to use (heavy) firearms and that illegal trafficking in firearms is on the rise, a number of European countries have announced policy interventions targeted at reducing levels of gun-related violence and crime. The European Commission has also become an active actor in firearms policy. In October 2013 it announced a plan to reduce gun violence in Europe, in which it defined the misuse of firearms, whether legally-owned or illicitly manufactured or acquired, as "a serious threat to the EU's security from both an internal and an external perspective". One of the major problems the Commission identified in its initial policy papers was the problem of a lack of sound and adequate knowledge about firearms in Europe. The commission noted that "a lack of solid EU-wide statistics and intelligence hampers effective policy and operational responses". One of the ambitions of the EU’s firearms policy is, therefore, to address the gaps in knowledge concerning gun violence. An additional problem is that the lack of reliable and comprehensive information on firearms in Europe is not limited to the sphere of law enforcement and policy-making. European scholarly research focusing specifically on firearms availability, gun control and gun-related violence is scarce. There is a research community in Europe focusing on small arms and light weapons (SALW), but it is predominantly concerned with the export of firearms and the connections between these arms flows and violence in developing, transitional or fragile states outside Europe. Scientific research on firearms and gun-related violence in the domestic European context is much less advanced. The scanty research efforts made in this field by epidemiologists, criminologists and legal scholars remain fragmented, and suffer from the fact that there is no integrated scholarly community dealing with gun-related issues. Language barriers, moreover, often prevent the wider dissemination of research results. Given this relative lack of European firearms research, American studies are still clearly dominant at present in research on the links between the availability of firearms and gun-related violence. Greene and Marsh have calculated that out of the 665 studies on firearms and violence that they reviewed, 64% were about the USA. Of the remaining studies not on the USA, 13% concerned cross-national comparisons or articles in which the geographical focus was unspecified (such as reviews), while 8% were about developing countries. Only 15% concerned other developed countries such as Canada, Australia, the UK and Germany. Given the particularities of the American context, and more specifically the fact that the US has one of the highest rates of gun-related deaths and crime among industrialized democracies, simply transposing the results of American research to the European context is problematic. What are the levels of firearms availability in Europe? Are there links between the levels of gun ownership in European countries and these countries’ rates of violence and violent death? And what is the impact of European gun laws on public safety and health? The absence of evidence specifically for the European context makes it difficult for policy-makers and researchers to find impartial and unbiased answers to these questions. Hence the pressing need for research that specifically focuses on gun-related violence in the European context: and with the present report, we would like to make a contribution to that effort. As we are moving into largely uncharted territory, our analysis of the European situation will necessarily be exploratory. Our primary ambition is to collect and take stock of the fragmented evidence that is available on gun-related violence in Europe. Our geographical coverage will be broader than the EU and encompasses a group of approximately 40 European countries, although in some instances we will limit our analyses to the EU28. Details: Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2015. 83p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 16, 2017 at: http://www.vlaamsvredesinstituut.eu/sites/vlaamsvredesinstituut.eu/files/wysiwyg/firearms_and_violent_deaths_in_europe_web.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Europe URL: http://www.vlaamsvredesinstituut.eu/sites/vlaamsvredesinstituut.eu/files/wysiwyg/firearms_and_violent_deaths_in_europe_web.pdf Shelf Number: 141048 Keywords: Gun ControlGun OwnershipGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceGunsHomicidesViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Stewart, Peter A. Title: Middle Ground on Gun Control Summary: Each tragic shooting incident that the American news media covers highlights the problem of gun violence in the United States. However, the focus of this reporting is rarely on the largest component of total gun deaths: suicides. Suicides make up two-thirds of all gun deaths. Limiting access to firearms for individuals with suicidal tendencies could cause a significant reduction in the total number of casualties included in gun violence statics. This thesis examines the efficacy of adding more mental health information to the FBI's database of persons who are prohibited from gun purchases, and also compares U.S. gun laws to the National Firearms Agreement in Australia, which is widely accepted as an effective gun control measure. This research finds that mental health information on clinical depression and schizophrenia can be a strong predictor of suicidal tendencies, and reporting of this information could be improved in order to reduce overall gun violence. Improved mental health reporting must be a matter of federal law, because current state laws on guns vary widely and have limited effectiveness Details: Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2016. 83p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed March 4, 2017 at: https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=798872 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=798872 Shelf Number: 141333 Keywords: Background ChecksCriminal Background ChecksGun ControlGun Control PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceMental Health |
Author: Edwards, Griffin Title: Looking Down the Barrel of a Loaded Gun: The Effect of Mandatory Handgun Purchase Delays on Homicide and Suicide Summary: The effects of policies aimed to restrict firearm ownership and usage is a heavily debated topic in modern social science research. While much of the debate has focused on right-to-carry laws, less research has focused on other policies which affect firearm ownership and use, in particular statutory delays between the purchase and delivery of a firearm. In addition to the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which placed a mandatory five-day wait period between the purchase and delivery of a handgun, many states enacted similar policies before and after Brady's effective years. We exploit within-state variation across time in both the existence of a purchase delay and length of the delay to examine the effect of purchase delays on firearm-related homicides and suicides. We find that the existence of a purchase delay reduces firearm related suicides by around 3 percent, with no statistical evidence of a substitution towards non-firearm suicides. We find no evidence that purchase delays are associated with statistically significant changes in homicide rates. Details: Birmingham, AL: University of Alabama, 2016. 45p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Alabama Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2629397: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2629397 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2629397 Shelf Number: 146372 Keywords: Gun ControlGun PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceHomicidesSuicide |
Author: Parsons, Chelsea Title: Beyond Our Borders: How Weak U.S. Gun Laws Contribute to Violent Crime Abroad Summary: From the earliest days of his presidential campaign, a constant refrain from Donald Trump has been the need to protect the United States from foreign threats, particularly violent crime that he falsely asserts is committed at high rates by immigrants to this country. The Trump administration's protectionist, isolationist, nativist, and racist immigration policy is founded on the scurrilous notion that the United States needs to close the borders and restrict immigration to the country as a way to protect against the entry of violent crime. However, often overlooked in this debate is the degree to which exportation of violence goes in the other direction-that is to say, from the United States to other countries-and, in particular, the substantial U.S. role in providing guns that are used in lethal violence in other nations. From 2014 to 2016, across 15 countries in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, 50,133 guns that originated in the United States were recovered as part of criminal investigations. Put another way, during this span, U.S.-sourced guns were used to commit crimes in nearby countries approximately once every 31 minutes. Certainly, many of these U.S.-sourced crime guns were legally exported and were not diverted for criminal use until they crossed the border. The United States is a major manufacturer and a leading exporter of firearms, legally exporting an average of 298,000 guns each year. However, many of the same gaps and weaknesses in U.S. gun laws that contribute to illegal gun trafficking domestically likewise contribute to the illegal trafficking of guns from the United States to nearby nations. This report discusses the scope of the problem of U.S. guns being trafficked abroad and used in the commission of violent crimes in other nations. For example, in 2015, a trafficking ring bought more than 100 guns via straw purchases in the Rio Grande Valley of the United States and smuggled them to Mexico. At least 14 of these firearms were recovered in Mexico. In addition, this report identifies a number of policy solutions that would help to reduce the flow of crime guns abroad and begin to minimize the U.S. role in arming lethal violence in nearby countries. These recommendations include: Instituting universal background checks for gun purchases; Making gun trafficking and straw purchasing federal crimes; Requiring the reporting of multiple sales of long guns; Increasing access to international gun trafficking data; Rejecting efforts that weaken firearm export oversight. The United States has a moral obligation to mitigate its role in arming lethal violence abroad. While there are many factors unique to each nation that affect rates of violent crime, there is more the United States could do to reduce the risks posed by U.S.-sourced guns that cross the border and are used in crime in nearby countries. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2018. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 6, 2018 at: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2018/01/31115010/012918_BeyondOurBorders-report-51.pdf Year: 2018 Country: International URL: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2018/01/31115010/012918_BeyondOurBorders-report-51.pdf Shelf Number: 148995 Keywords: Gun ControlGun EnforcementGun PolicyGun TraffickingGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceTrafficking in Weapons |
Author: Nemerov, Howard Title: Has Texas Experienced an Epidemic of Firearms-Related Deaths? Summary: In-depth examination of complete datasets from the FBI and Centers for Disease Control indicates that Texas has become safer over time: - When comparing Texas data and national trends, Texans have become safer. - While some data shows an increase in the number of certain firearms fatalities, after including Texas's exceptional population growth during the same time period, Texas still experienced significant declines in firearms fatality rates. - Suicides now account for nearly two-thirds of all firearms fatalities. - Non-firearms suicides have increased at an exceptional rate, a trend reflected in national data. Despite this trend, firearms-involved suicide rates declined faster in Texas. Details: Unpublished paper, 2017. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 8, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3093716 Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3093716 Shelf Number: 149407 Keywords: Firearms Gun ControlGun Violence Gun-Related Homicides Homicides Suicides |
Author: Ramsey, Carolyn B. Title: Firearms in the Family Summary: This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of a reflexive, cultural distaste for firearms. Both sides in the gun-control debate rely on starkly contrasting, gendered images: the helpless female victim in need of state protection, including strictly enforced gun laws, and the self-defending woman of the National Rifle Association's "Refuse to be a Victim" campaign. Neither of these images accurately describes the position of many domestic violence victims whose partners have guns, and neither image responds effectively to the heterogeneity of conduct leading to a protection order or a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction that triggers federal and state firearms bans. The emphasis the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun organizations place on a woman's right to carry a firearm in self-defense ignores the most common homicide risks women face, as well as structural inequalities that contribute to gender violence. Yet, significant problems afflict an uncritically anti-gun approach, too. First, gun-control advocates tend to ignore the reality of intimate-partner abuse-a reality in which some women fight back; some family livelihoods depend on jobs for which firearms are required; not all misdemeanants become murderers; and victims have valid reasons for wanting to keep their partners out of prison. Second, to the extent that proponents of strict gun regulation also exhibit distaste for racialized crime-control policies, they fail to acknowledge that zealously enforced gun laws aimed at preventing domestic violence would put more people-including more men and women from vulnerable communities of color-behind bars. The current framing of the argument for tougher firearms laws for abusers is derived from public health research on domestic violence that makes a reduction in intimate homicide rates its chief goal. Yet, since hundreds of thousands of domestic violence misdemeanants are thought to possess illegal guns, reformers should also consider the potential costs to victims and their families of a move to sweeping and rigorous enforcement. Changes in gun laws and their implementation in the context of intimate-partner abuse ought to cure over- and under-breadth problems; provide greater autonomy to abuse victims and protections for those who resist their batterers; reconsider the lack of an exemption to the misdemeanor ban for firearms required on-duty; and include a better mechanism for restoring gun rights to misdemeanants who have shown the capacity to avoid reoffending. Details: Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Law School, 2018. 89p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-5: Accessed March 9, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3117096 Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3117096 Shelf Number: 149409 Keywords: Elder AbuseFamily ViolenceGun ControlGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceIntimate Partner ViolenceProtection OrderStalking |
Author: Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence Title: Protecting the Parkland Generation: Strategies to Keep America's Kids Safe from Gun Violence Summary: Since 2000, more than 150,000 Americans were killed or injured by a gun before their 18th birthday. These children deserved to grow up and grow old, free to live and learn, and free from fear. But our nation failed them. As complicated as gun policy can often seem, there are some very simple truths that help explain this uniquely American phenomenon. There is simply no other high-income nation on earth that has let gunmakers and gun extremists write its gun safety laws. No other high-income nation on earth makes weapons of war available-immediately, with no questions asked-to un-vetted buyers intent on mass murder. No other high-income nation on earth has to routinely bury children gunned down in their classrooms and movie theaters and churches and parks. It doesn't have to be this way. It's been tempting for some people to turn away from the pain and shame of these tragedies, or to give in to the cynical lie that this violence can't be prevented. But not anymore. This year, America's young people are demanding change and building a movement for gun safety reform. We have watched in awe as young students emerged from bullet-ridden classrooms in Parkland, Florida, and exclaimed Never again. We have witnessed their courage and eloquence as they stood up on national television to US Senators and NRA celebrities, demanding action, answers, and accountability. This generation-the future leaders of our country-understands that gun violence is not inevitable. And they know that the Second Amendment is not under threat. We are. Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence presents this report as a tool for this new generation of activists. It provides data about the scope of the gun violence problem facing America's youth and offers concrete recommendations for evidence-based policies that save lives. Our goal is to support the Parkland students and the thousands of young people they have inspired, as well as the lawmakers who hear their call for action and want to work together to make a change. Despite the brutal pain that follows each tragic shooting in our country, the courage of our nation's youth shines a brighter light on our future. Details: San Francisco: Gifford's Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2018. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 13, 2018 at: http://lawcenter.giffords.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Protecting-Parkland-Generation_3.9.18.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: http://lawcenter.giffords.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Protecting-Parkland-Generation_3.9.18.pdf Shelf Number: 149448 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Control PolicyGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceHomicidesViolence Prevention |
Author: Parsons, Chelsea Title: Virginia Under the Gun: 4 Measures of Gun Violence and Gun Crime in Virginia Summary: In some respects, gun violence in Virginia is typical of that in much of the nation. For example, Virginia ranked 28th of the 50 states for the overall rate of gun deaths from 2004 to 2013-right in the middle of the states. On the other hand, Virginia has been the scene of some of the most horrific, high-profile acts of gun violence in recent memory: the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007 and the on-air execution of reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward in August 2015. In fact, in the eight and a half years since the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, approximately 7,173 Virginians have died by gunfire. These appalling incidents; Virginia's proximity to the nation's capital; and the fact that the National Rifle Association, or NRA, is headquartered in Virginia have made the commonwealth a national bellwether for the debate over gun laws. In recent years, the gun issue has been vigorously contested in political races across the state. For example, during the 2013 statewide elections, the NRA and two gun violence prevention groups-Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), and Independence USA, a political action committee created by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I)-collectively spent close to $4 million attempting to influence the outcome. That year, all three of the winning candidates for statewide office-Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), and Attorney General Mark Herring (D)-took strong positions in favor of strengthening gun laws, opposed the NRA, and explicitly campaigned on their support for common-sense gun laws. Despite the success that gun violence prevention groups enjoyed in the 2013 elections, efforts to strengthen gun laws in the state legislature have remained stalled. The Virginia legislature even failed to act on legislation to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers-a law that passed with broad bipartisan support in a number of other states-despite its successful passage in the state Senate in 2014 after a 29-6 vote. With elections for all seats in the state General Assembly and Senate scheduled for November 3, 2015, the issue of gun violence is once again on the minds of many Virginia voters. Gov. McAuliffe has continued to focus on this issue, recently announcing six new executive actions to address gun violence in the state, including creating a joint task force to prosecute gun crimes, implementing a crime gun tipline, and providing training for judges and prosecutors to encourage domestic abusers to surrender firearms. Gov. McAuliffe has also pledged to continue pushing the state legislature to enact common-sense gun laws in the upcoming legislative session. This issue brief provides additional context about what is at stake as Virginia voters consider which leaders they want to represent them in Richmond. It discusses four aspects of gun violence and gun-related crime in Virginia that are exceptional, unique, or above the national average: More Virginians are killed annually by gunfire than in car accidents. Virginia is one of the top exporters of crime guns. Women are killed with guns by intimate partners at a high rate in Virginia. Virginia has been disproportionately affected by mass shootings. The 2007 Virginia Tech massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in American history. In its wake, then-Gov. Tim Kaine (D) acted to ensure that more mental health records were accessible to the gun background check system-after the gap led directly to the Virginia Tech shooting. Since then, the rate at which Virginia submits mental health records has grown substantially, and the state now ranks third in the nation: To date, 224,079 records have been submitted to the background check system. Yet efforts to continue building on that progress and strengthen Virginia's laws and policies to address gun violence have been largely stymied by the state legislature. With 86 percent of Virginians supportive of legislation that would require background checks for all gun sales, the issue of gun violence prevention is certainly on many voters' minds as they head to the polls. 1. More Virginians are killed annually by gunfire than in car accidents For decades, more Americans have been killed annually in motor vehicle accidents than by gunfire. In response to the tens of thousands of car accident deaths every year, elected officials, policymakers, and the car industry have taken a number of steps to improve motor vehicle safety, including gathering and analyzing car death data, enhancing car design, implementing better technology, and improving road safety. As a result of this comprehensive approach to this public safety issue, the number of deaths from car accidents across the country has significantly declined. While there were 40,965 car accident deaths nationwide in 1999, that number dropped to 33,804 by 2013, a 17 percent decrease. Virginia has followed a similar trend: From 1999 to 2013, car accident deaths in the state declined 15 percent. By contrast, few national resources have been devoted to understanding gun violence and developing a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to reducing gun deaths. The NRA has effectively blocked public health research into gun deaths through limiting amendments to annual appropriations bills for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and many legislative bodies have lacked the political will to strengthen gun laws. During the same period that U.S. deaths due to car accidents were declining, deaths by gunfire were rising: While there were 28,874 gun deaths nationwide in 1999, that number increased to 33,636 by 2013, a 16 percent increase. As a result of the disparate approaches to these two serious public health issues, the gap between gun-related and vehicle-related deaths has shrunk significantly in recent years. While the number of U.S. motor vehicle accident deaths was 42 percent higher than gun-related deaths in 1999, this difference had decreased to less than 0.5 percent by 2013. A number of studies have concluded that these lines will cross sometime this year, when gun deaths outpace deaths due to car accidents. A 2014 report by Generation Progress and the Center for American Progress projected that 2015 will also be the year that guns become the leading cause of death of young people in the United States. Virginia is one of 17 states, along with the District of Columbia, where these lines have already crossed. In 2009, guns accounted for the deaths of more Virginians than car accidents for the first time. In 2013, the most recent year for which data are available, gun deaths were 17 percent higher than car accident deaths. If current trends continue, the number of gun deaths in Virginia will be 24 percent higher than the number of car accident deaths by the end of the next assembly's term in 2017 and 31 percent higher by the end of the next Senate's term in 2019. VAguns-brief-webfig1 2. Virginia is one of the top exporters of crime guns When a gun is recovered at a crime scene, one of the first challenges for investigators is determining from where the gun came. Restrictions on record keeping for gun purchases that are codified in federal law limit this inquiry to determining where the gun was first sold at retail and the identity of the first retail purchaser. To answer these questions, local law enforcement turns to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, which can trace guns from manufacturer through the first point of sale. Part of the tracing process involves identifying whether a gun crossed state lines before being used in a crime. A significant number of crime guns do move from state to state: From 2012 to 2014, 29 percent of guns recovered in crimes and traced were first purchased at retail in another state. Virginia is one of the top source states for guns recovered in crimes in other states. Due in part to the state's weak gun laws and the rise of Interstate 95 as a popular corridor for gun traffickers, Virginia exports a substantial number of crime guns. From 2012 to 2014, Virginia had the nation's ninth highest rate of crime guns exported to other states, with a rate 61 percent higher than the national average. Moreover, with more than 7,700 firearms purchased in Virginia and later recovered at crime scenes in other states, the state ranked third in terms of the absolute number of crime gun exports. Only Georgia and Texas exported a higher number of crime guns-9,134 and 8,103, respectively. VAguns-brief-webfig2 The movement of guns across state lines from states with weaker gun laws, such as Virginia, undermines other states' efforts to enact strong gun laws and curb gun violence. From 2012 to 2014, 60 percent of crime guns traced back to Virginia were either recovered in the District of Columbia or in one of the 10 states with the strongest gun laws, according to a ranking of state gun laws provided by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. An analysis of crime guns recovered in New York City in 2011 revealed that 90 percent came from out of state, with more crime guns coming from Virginia than from any other state. 3. Women are killed with guns by intimate partners at a high rate in Virginia American women face unique challenges when it comes to gun violence. Studies show that while they are killed less frequently than men, they are much more likely to be murdered by someone they know. In the majority of these cases, the aggressor is an intimate partner. According to information from the FBI, 34 percent of women murdered in the United States from 2004 to 2013 were killed by an intimate partner; 55 percent of those murders were committed with a firearm. The risk of intimate partner gun homicides against women is even higher in Virginia. From 2004 to 2013, 37 percent of female murder victims in Virginia were killed by an intimate partner, and approximately 60 percent of those murders were carried out with a firearm. The state's rate of intimate partner gun homicides of women during this period was 21 percent higher than the national average. Additionally, Virginia ranks 16th worst in the nation for the rate of intimate partner gun murders of women. Many perpetrators of intimate partner homicide in Virginia have a history of domestic violence. A recent study by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence found that more than one-third of perpetrators of intimate partner homicides in the state in 2014 had a history of violence or threats against the victim and that of those perpetrators, 74 percent used a gun to commit the murder. VAguns-brief-webfig3 4. Virginia has been disproportionately affected by mass shootings The FBI defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more victims are killed with a firearm. While they constitute a small portion of overall gun violence in the United States, mass shootings receive the bulk of the media's attention and tend to have a profound impact on the population. Moreover, research from the Harvard School of Public Health shows that the rate of mass shootings in the United States has tripled since 2011. Virginia ranks ninth among all of the states for the highest rate of victims killed in mass shootings. This is driven in large part by the Virginia Tech massacre, in which 32 people were murdered-the worst mass shooting in American history to date. Virginia has also experienced a number of family-related mass shootings that contribute to this ranking. These include a 2014 incident in Culpeper, Virginia, in which a man fatally shot his wife and three daughters before taking his own life. In a 2011 case, a man involved in a custody dispute fatally shot his two children, their mother, and another man before killing himself. When considering the raw number of victims of fatal mass shootings, Virginia ranks fourth highest overall, with 56 people killed in these incidents from 2006 to October 2015. Overall, 1 in every 20 victims of fatal mass shootings in the United States from 2006 to 2015 were killed in Virginia. Conclusion Over the next four years, an estimated 3,540 people will be killed with guns in Virginia if current trends continue. Gun violence is an urgent public health issue that demands attention and action from the state's leadership. There is much more that can be done to both strengthen Virginia's laws to prevent gun deaths and reduce the illegal flow of guns across state lines into other communities being ravaged by gun violence. Upon beginning their term in January 2016, the newly elected members of the next Virginia legislature should take up legislation that would address key weaknesses in the state's gun laws, including requiring universal background checks, prohibiting domestic abusers and stalkers from buying and possessing guns, and ensuring surrender of guns by all prohibited individuals. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2015. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 28, 2018 at: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2015/10/27/124132/virginia-under-the-gun/ Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2015/10/27/124132/virginia-under-the-gun/ Shelf Number: 149602 Keywords: Gun Control Gun Control Policy Gun Violence Gun-Related Violence Homicides |
Author: Jacobs, James B. Title: The Potential and Limitations of Universal Background Checking for Gun Purchasers Summary: Current federal law defies logic in requiring that only purchasers who buy from federally licensed sellers be subject to background checking. Thus, universal background checking is frequently proposed as the best and most important form of "sensible gun control". Upon closer inspection, however, universal background checking would be harder to implement and enforce than proponents recognize. Moreover, the likely payoff in reduction of gun homicides, crimes and suicides would be less than what is often assumed. This Article closely examines universal background checking in theory and practice, including the Manchin-Toomey Amendment which Congress rejected in 2013 but which continues to be reintroduced. Details: New York: New York University School of Law, 2017. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers; accessed April 19, 2018 at: http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1590&context=nyu_plltwp Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1590&context=nyu_plltwp Shelf Number: 149851 Keywords: Background ChecksGun ControlGun PolicyGuns |
Author: Thomas, Kim Title: The Rule of the Gun: Hits and assassinations in South Africa, 2000-2017 Summary: This report presents an analysis of data on hits (contract killings) carried out in South Africa. The data has been compiled as part of the work of a collaborative project, Assassination Witness. The data that informs the report spans the period from 2000 to 2017 and the findings allow certain conclusions to be drawn about the evolving nature of the phenomenon of paid-for assassinations. The targeted killing of people - a form of organized crime that escalated rapidly towards the end of the data period - has a highly detrimental impact on South Africa's ongoing democratic project and often fragile governance systems. The study found that a large proportion of assassinations in South Africa are contracted for political, economic or social gain, and that commissioned killings also targeted professionals in the country's criminal-justice system. There are segments of the economy that nurture and feed this criminal market, notably South Africa's notoriously violent taxi industry, which provides a recruitment pool where hitmen can be hired. The findings of this report aim to inform a more effective policy response to the phenomenon of contract killings in South Africa in order that more can be done about it. Posted on: 14 March 2018 Share this article FacebookTwitterGoogle GmailOutlook.comPinterestLinkedInSkypeEvernoteWhatsAppEmailShare SummaryThis report presents an analysis of data on hits (contract killings) carried out in South Africa. The data has been compiled as part of the work of a collaborative project, Assassination Witness. The data that informs the report spans the period from 2000 to 2017 and the findings allow certain conclusions to be drawn about the evolving nature of the phenomenon of paid-for assassinations. The targeted killing of people - a form of organized crime that escalated rapidly towards the end of the data period - has a highly detrimental impact on South Africa's ongoing democratic project and often fragile governance systems. The study found that a large proportion of assassinations in South Africa are contracted for political, economic or social gain, and that commissioned killings also targeted professionals in the country's criminal-justice system. There are segments of the economy that nurture and feed this criminal market, notably South Africa's notoriously violent taxi industry, which provides a recruitment pool where hitmen can be hired. The findings of this report aim to inform a more effective policy response to the phenomenon of contract killings in South Africa in order that more can be done about it.Various international studies provided the terminology, framework and background to understanding how and why contract killings become prevalent. But these analyses are largely focused on developed countries. It is important to note that the South African context, as is the case with other developing countries, is different from that of the Global North. In South Africa, the sheer number of hits is greater, the urgency of collecting the data more apparent and the need to act more pressing. Various international studies provided the terminology, framework and background to understanding how and why contract killings become prevalent. But these analyses are largely focused on developed countries. It is important to note that the South African context, as is the case with other developing countries, is different from that of the Global North. In South Africa, the sheer number of hits is greater, the urgency of collecting the data more apparent and the need to act more pressing. Key recommendations - Improve firearm control to reduce the flow of illicit arms.Focus on reducing violent competition within the taxi industry.Erode the 'nurseries of violence' that provide a supply of hitmen for hire. Bolster prosecution-led investigations.Expand efforts at monitoring assassinations and disaggregate homicide data, so that better-quality statistics on contract killings are made available. Details: Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 2018. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 30, 2018 at: http://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-rule-of-the-gun_Assassination-Witness_-1.pdf Year: 2018 Country: South Africa URL: http://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-rule-of-the-gun_Assassination-Witness_-1.pdf Shelf Number: 149960 Keywords: AssassinationsContract KillingsGun ControlHomicidesMafiaViolent Crime |
Author: Koenig, Christoph Title: Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock Summary: Do firearm purchase delay laws reduce aggregate homicide levels? Using quasi-experimental evidence from a 6-month countrywide gun demand shock starting in late 2012, we show that U.S. states with legislation preventing immediate handgun purchases experienced smaller increases in handgun sales. Our findings are hard to reconcile with entirely rational consumers, but suggest that gun buyers behave time-inconsistently. In a second step, we demonstrate that states with purchase delays also witnessed 3% lower homicide rates during the same period compared to states allowing instant handgun access. We report suggestive evidence that lower handgun sales primarily reduced impulsive assaults and domestic violence. Details: Tilberg, NETH: Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC), Tilburg University, 2018. 89p. Source: Internet Resource: TILEC Discussion Paper No. 2018-036; Accessed November 26, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272156## Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272156## Shelf Number: 153536 Keywords: Gun ControlGun Violence Gun-Related Violence Homicides Mass Homicides Mass Shootings Sandy Hook |
Author: Duggan, Mark Title: More Guns, More Crime Summary: This paper examines the relationship between gun ownership and crime. Previous research has suffered from a lack of reliable data on gun ownership. I exploit a unique data set to reliably estimate annual gun ownership rates at both the state and the county level during the past two decades. My findings demonstrate that changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate, with this relationship driven entirely by the impact of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used. The effect of gun ownership on all other crime categories is much less marked. Recent reductions in the fraction of households owning a gun can explain at least one-third of the differential decline in gun homicides relative to non-gun homicides since 1993. I also use this data to examine the impact of Carrying Concealed Weapons legislation on crime, and reject the hypothesis that these laws led to increases in gun ownership or reductions in criminal activity. Details: Cambridge, MA: national Bureau of Economic Research, 2000. 45p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series; Working Paper 7967: Accessed November 26, 2018 at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w7967 Year: 2000 Country: United States URL: https://www.nber.org/papers/w7967 Shelf Number: 153538 Keywords: Carrying Concealed Weapons Concealed Weapons Gun ControlGun Violence Gun-Related Crime Homicides |
Author: Browne, Bill Title: Point Blank: Political strategies of Australia's gun lobby Summary: The Australian public supports stronger gun control and stricter restrictions and laws on firearms. Despite this, there is a real danger of our firearm laws being watered down. Successive inquiries have found that no state or territory has ever fully complied with the National Firearms Agreement. The public will on firearms is being circumvented because firearms interest groups have made a concerted effort to undermine these laws and loosen state-level gun controls. These groups include firearms suppliers and their peak bodies, members' associations like shooting and hunting clubs, and gun advocates who operate more informally. Either operating independently or together, these organisations have made significant political donations, run campaigns to influence voters and encouraged the election of pro-gun cross-benchers. The Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia (SIFA), the peak body for Australia's five largest firearms suppliers, spends roughly the same amount of money, again as a share of population, on political campaigning as the National Rifle Association (the NRA) does in the United States. The Australian gun lobby runs political campaigns and lobbies politicians and journalists, but it attracts little attention in Australia because it keeps its operations low key. Gun lobby political advertising in recent years has mostly avoided mentioning firearms or gun control at all. Australians are probably more familiar with the NRA than Australia's equivalents, even though relative to population Australia's gun lobby is of a similar size and funding to the NRA. This report provides an account of the political strategies of the gun lobby. Details: Manuka, ACT: The Australia Institute, 2019. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Discussion paper: Accessed March 27, 2019 at: http://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/files/P598%20Point%20blank%20%5BWeb%5D.pdf Year: 2019 Country: Australia URL: http://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/files/P598%20Point%20blank%20%5BWeb%5D.pdf Shelf Number: 155190 Keywords: FirearmsGun ControlGun Policy |