Gun Markets

Abstract

The systematic study of how available weapons influence the rates, patterns, and outcomes of criminal violence is new, but it is now a well-established and fast-growing subfield in criminology, legal studies, public health, and economics. This review focuses on the transactions that arm dangerous offenders, noting that if those transactions could be effectively curtailed it would have an immediate and profound effect on gun violence and homicide rates. Guns are legal commodities, but violent offenders typically obtain their guns by illegal means. Our knowledge of these transactions comes primarily from trace data on guns recovered by the police and from occasional surveys of gun-involved offenders. Because most guns used in crime are sourced from the stock of guns in private hands (rather than a purchase from a licensed dealer), the local prevalence of gun ownership appears to influence the transaction costs and the proportions of robberies and assaults committed with guns rather than knives or other weapons. Nonetheless, regulations that govern licensed dealers have been linked to trafficking patterns and in some cases to the use of guns in crime.

Weapon-carrying and the Reduction of Violent Harm

“…Violence, weapon use and public health Weapon use in a violent incident is strongly associated with harm (Zimring 1968;Brennan, Moore and Shephed 2006;Cook 2018) and removing weapons from violent encounters would significantly reduce the global burden of violent harm.…”

Firearm Availability and Fatal Police Shootings

“…Still, the linkage between firearm availability and fatal police shootings is not obvious. As described in Cook (2018), presently only 31 percent of U.S. households possess firearms. For the vast majority of those owners, there is no realistic prospect of their using the weapon for an illegal purpose.…”

“…One is to take steps to reduce the availability of firearms to active offenders or individuals at high risk of offending. Policies that are intended to have this effect are universal background checks and barriers to straw purchases (Cook 2018;Zimring 2017). Sherman (2018) also makes numerous policy recommendations related to the governance and training of local police.…”

Thinking about gun violence

“…In the United States, federal law allows most adults to own and possess as many guns as they wish, while banning possession by the minority who are disqualified due to their criminal record or other attributes specified in the 1968 Gun Control Act 13 . About 300 million guns are in private hands, enough to provide every adult with at least one gun (Azrael, Hepburn, Hemenway, & Miller, 2017), and 15–20 million new guns are sold each year (Cook, 2018b). Given this gun‐rich environment, it is reasonable to question the feasibility of keeping disqualified people from obtaining them, especially given the haphazard enforcement of the relevant regulations.…”

“…Despite this well‐established linkage, the typical transactions that provide guns to offenders are quite different than the transactions that arm the general public. In particular, while a majority of gun‐owning households obtained their guns by purchase from a licensed gun dealer, that is rarely the proximate source of guns used in crime (Cook, 2018b). In large part the supply of guns to offenders involves the diversion of guns from legal commerce and ownership, a process that is facilitated in a community where gun ownership is prevalent.…”