Date: 15 Feb 1995 11:15:47 -0800 From: "Johann Opitz" Subject: 1994 Justice Department stu To: "Firearms Alert" reposted from newsgroup alt.president.clinton Note that it doesn't mention the value of the victim being armed with a firearm until the end. ================================================ The following is edited parts of a 1994 Justice Department study: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE Research in the brief. February 1994 KEY ISSUES: Most murders involve firearms, and young minority men are at especially high risk of being murdered with a gun. Innovations in laws, law enforcement, public education, and technology all show promise of reducing gun murders by selectively making firearms less available to persons likely to use them in violence, less accessible in situations where violence is likely to occur, or less lethal. Evaluations are needed to test the effectiveness of these innovations. KEY FINDINGS: Greater gun availability increases the rates of murder and felony gun use, but does not appear to affect general violence levels. Self-defense is the most commonly cited reason for acquiring a gun, but it is unclear how often these guns are used for self-protection against unprovoked attacks. According to the latest available data, those who own guns in violent crimes rarely purchase them directly from licensed dealers; most guns used in crime have been stolen or transferred between individuals after the original purchase. In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetuator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed. Several strategies may succeed in reducing gun murders, but rigorous evaluations are needed to to ascertain their effectiveness. Among these are reducing firearm lethality (e.g., by banning certain types of ammunition), reducing unauthorized use (e.g., through combination locks on triggers, or sentence enhancement for burglary and fencing violations that involve guns), and educating the public about safe use and storage. Evaluation findings indicate that the gollowing kinds of laws can reduce gun murder rates when they are enforced: prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons, extending sentences for robbery and assault when a gun is used, and restrictive licencing requirments for handgun ownership. Where there is local support, priority should be given to three enforcement objectives: disrupting illegal gun markets; reducing juveniles' access to guns; and close cooperation between the police and the community to set priorities and enforce laws, in order to reduce the fears that lead to gun ownership for self-defense. Any firearm murder follows a particular chain of events: One person acquires a firearm; two or more people come within reach of the firearm; a dispute escalates into an attack, the weapon is fired; it causes an injury; and the injury is serious enough to cause death. While that sequence probably seems obvious, thinking about gun murders as a chain of events draws attention to a series of risks that should be measured and questions that should be considered in designing strategies to reduce murders or other violent events that involve guns Some potentially useful distinctions should be made at the outset: 1. AVAILABILIY of guns refers to the overall number of guns in society and the ease of obtaining them. 2. POSSESSION of a gun simply means ownership, regardless of how the weapon is stored, carried, or used. 3. ACCESS to a gun as a weapon of violence means its immediate availability at the site of a violent event and depends on how the gun is stored or carried. 4. ALLOCATION of a gun refers to the distribution of gun possession among people who have and people who have not demonstrated high potentials for violent behavior. 5. LETHALITY of guns or other weapons means the likelihood that a person injured by the weapon will die as a result. HOW IS GUN AVAILABILITY RELATED TO VIOLENCE LEVELS? Speculation about the relationship between gun availability and violence takes two directions. On one hand, greater availability of guns may deter some potential perpetrators of violent crimes out of fear that the intended victim may be armed. On the other hand, greater availability of guns may encourage people who are contemplating committing a violent crime to carry it out, but first to arm themselves to overcome their fears of retaliation. Greater gun availability may also increase violence levels if guns kept at home or in cars are stolen during burglaries, enter illegal markets, and encourage criminals to attack victims they would pass up without being armed. Guns kept in homes may also be used in family arguments that might have ended nonviolently if guns were not available. How are these conflicting speculations resolved in actual proactice? The best way to answer this question would be to measure violent crime levels before and after an intervention that substantially reduced gn availability. However, opportunities to evaluate the effects of such interventions have arisen in only a few jurisdictions. Because evaluation opportunites have been rare, researchers have used four less powerful approaches to study how gun availability affects violence and its consequences. The finding, while somewhat tentative and not entirely consistent, suggest that greater gun availability increases murder rates and influences the choice of weapon in violent crimes, but does not affect overall levels of nonfatal violence. The first research approach asks how differences in violence across American cities are related to variations in gun availability, controlling for other relevant factors. These studies generally find small positive correlations between measures of gun availability and both felony gun use and felony murder. However, they find no consistent relationship between gun availability and overall rates of violent crime. The second approach used was a comparison of two jurisdictions. The neighboring cities of Seattle and Vancouver have similar economic profiles and were found to have similar rates of burglary and assault. However, Seattle, with its less restrictive gun possession laws, had a 60 percent higher homicide rate and a 400 percent higher firearm homicide rate than Vancouver. It is not clear whether the differences in gun laws accounted for all the variation between the two cities in homicide rates, or whether differences in culture were also contributing factors. The third approach relies on cross-national statistical comparisons. These studies have generally reached one of the conclusions found in studies of American cities: a small positive correlation between gun availability and homicide rates. The finding is difficult to interpret, however, in view of differences by country in culture and in gun regulations. For example, murder rates are low in Switzerland, where militia requirements make possession of long guns by males nearly universal. This seems to suggest there is no positive correlation between gun availability and murder rates. But this interpretation is clouded because in Switzerland access to guns is limited: militia members are required to keep their guns locked up and to account for every bullet. The fourth approach relies on analyses of trends over time. Studies using this method have found no correlations between gun availability and rates of violent crime. But trends are subject to a variety of influences, which may mask a relationship that would emerge in the aftermath of some new law or other intervention that substantially reduced gun availability. Evaluation findings about such interventions are discussed later in this report, but more such evaluations are needed to obtain better answers to this question. HOW DO PEOPLE OBTAIN POSSESSION OF GUNS THEY USE IN VIOLENT CRIME? ...available data... suggest that illegal or unregulated transactions are the primary sources of guns used in violence. ...only 29 percent of 113 guns used in felonies committed in Boston between 1975 and 1976 were bough directly from federally licensed dealers. ...20 percent of the guns passed through a chain of unregulated private transfers, while 40 percent were stolen. Most of the illegal suppliers ... sold only a few guns per month, rather than large organizations or licensed dealers working largely off the books. ...in 1982, only 16 percent of those who used guns in criminal activites reported buying them from licensed dealers. Twice as many (32percent) reported stealing the gun, and the rest borrowed or bought it from friends and acquaintances. Thefts and illegal purchases were not suprisingly most common among the incarcerated felons who said they acquired their guns primarily to commit crimes. HOW DOES GUN ACCESS AFFECT THE CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLENT EVENTS? ....Studies have determined how the likelihood of outcomes of the threat- escalation to an actual attack, to injury, and to death- changes if the robber or assaulter posing the threat is armed with a gun. A study of personal robberies revealed that escalation from threat to attack is less likely if the robber is armed with a gun than if he or she is unarmed. A similar pattern was found in assaults. Perhaps the reason is that robbers armed with guns are less nervous, or victims confronted with guns are too frightened to resist, or both. Either effect could reduce the risk of escalation from threat to attack. HOW DOES GUN USE AFFECT THE CHANCE THAT A VIOLENT CRIME WILL END IN THE VICTIM'S DEATH? The overall fatality rate in gun robberies is an estimated 4 per 1000- about 3 times the rate for knife robberies, 10 times the rate for robberies with other weapons, and 20 times the rate for robberies by unarmed offenders. ...While researchers who have looked at the question generally concur that victims injured by guns are more likely to die than victims injured by other weapons, an important question remains: how much of this greater lethality reflects properties of the gun, and how much reflects greater determination to kill by those who choose guns over other weapons for their violent acts? ...The study of personal robberies, suggests at least one reason other than lethal intentions why some robbers use guns: to enable them to attack certain types of victims, such as businesses and groups of teenage males, who would otherwise be relatively invulnerable. Guns are used more often to rob these types of victims than to rob women and the elderly, who are considered the more vulnerable. Serial killers are considered the most intent of all killers, but they have rarely used guns. People who killed in violent family fights seem unlikely to have carefully considered their weapon choices; more likely, they resorted to the nearest available weapon, including hands and feet. Even among incarcerated felons, those interviewed in [a previous survey], 76% of those who fired guns in criminal situations claimed to have had no prior intention of doing so. DOES THE USE OF A GUN IN SELF-DEFENSE REDUCE THE INJURT RISK OF VIOLENT EVENTS? ...victims use guns to attack or threaten the perpetrators in about 1 percent of robberies and assaults- about 70,000 times a year- according to NCVC data for recent years. These victims were less likely to report being injured than those who either defended themselves by other means or took no self-protective measures at all. Thus, while 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent. == Johann Opitz e-mail: johann_opitz@smtp.svl.trw.com == == All Disclaimers Apply (so as to protect my employer) ==