Regulation of Firearm Dealers in the United States: An Analysis of State Law and Opportunities for Improvement

Firearms were associated with 30, 136 deaths in the United States in 2003. Most guns are initially sold to the public through a network of retail dealers. Licensed firearm dealers are an important source of guns for criminals and gun traffickers. Just one percent of licensed dealers were responsible for more than half of all guns traced to crime. Federal law makes it difficult for ATF to inspect and revoke the licenses of problem gun dealers. State licensing systems, however, are a greatly under-explored opportunity for firearm dealer oversight. We identify and categorize these state systems to identify opportunities for interventions to prevent problem dealers from supplying guns to criminals, juveniles, or gun traffickers. Just seventeen states license gun dealers. Twenty-three states permit routine inspections of dealers but only two mandate that those inspections occur on a regular basis. Twenty-six states impose record-keeping requirements for gun sales. Only thirteen states require some form of store security measures to minimize firearm theft. We conclude with recommendations for a comprehensive system of state licensing and oversight of gun dealers. Our findings can be useful for the coalition of more than fifty U.S. mayors that recently announced it would work together to combat illegal gun trafficking.     

Challenge of Firearms Control in a Free Society

Chapter 10 of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, titled “Control of Firearms,” is a brief but strong statement in support of regulating gun transactions, possession, and carrying, with several specific recommendations, including the adoption of universal gun registration and permit‐to‐purchase requirements. The U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, when writing the chapter, had no systematic research to draw on. Since its publication in 1967, the field of gun violence has become an active area of research, and much has been learned. But the nation has become far more polarized politically during the last 50 years, and gun policy has become a rigidly partisan issue. A new commission would have great difficulty reaching consensus, although there may be common ground on regulating guns vis‐à‐vis mental illness and domestic violence.     

Louisiana boys and the politics of delay: gun carry law implementation in the sportsman's paradise

Gun ownership and control issues are remain divisive in academic and in public policy formation and media opinion-making. Despite the recent publication of comprehensive monographs on the subject of gun ownership and how it relates to law, culture and social structure, little is known about the actual practice of promulgating and carrying out various regulations. The implementation of seemingly permissive gun carry permit legislation in Louisiana has been obscured by politicians and law enforcement officials for largely political reasons. Racial and class-oriented subtests are inherent in local and state-level political maneuvers although issues about liability are frequently invoked when permits are not granted. Virtually all major players in this micro-level analysis are unwilling to discuss the issues involved. Consequently, not even those charged with granting the permits claim to not know just what the gun carry law actually means. The ultimate result is delay, confusion and ill-will.     

Gunshot wound to the back of the head--self defence vs homicide

A police officer attended the scene of a burglary in progress and, following a pursuit through the house with his gun in hand, short the burglar in the back of the head. the officer pleased self-defense alleging that the burglar had whirled around holding what was perceived as a gun in this left hand and that he had reflexively pulled the trigger of his own gun. When he examined the body, a black yarmulke was present near the outstretched hand of the burglar. The results of a reconstruction were consistent with the details of the police officer's deposition.     

Specifying the role of exposure to violence and violent behavior on initiation of gun carrying: a longitudinal test of three models of youth gun carrying

Two waves of longitudinal data from 1,049 African American youth living in extreme poverty are used to examine the impact of exposure to violence (Time 1) and violent behavior (Time 1) on first time gun carrying (Time 2). Multivariate logistic regression results indicate that (a) violent behavior (Time 1) increased the likelihood of initiation of gun carrying (Time 2) by 76% after controlling for exposure to violence at Time 1, which is consistent with the stepping stone model of youth gun carrying, and (b) youth who were both exposed to violence at Time 1 and engaged in violent behavior at Time 1 were more than 2.5 times more likely to initiate gun carrying at Time 2 compared to youth who had neither of these characteristics, which supports the cumulative risk model of youth gun carrying. The authors discuss the implications of these findings in clarifying the role of violence in the community on youth gun carrying and the primary prevention of youth gun violence.     

Student Weapon Possession and the “Fear and Victimization Hypothesis”: Unraveling the Temporal Order

Using longitudinal data from nearly 4,000 students across 113 public schools in Kentucky, we attempt to unravel the direction of the relationships between student weapon carrying and various objective and subjective school‐crime experiences, including victimization, perceived risk of school victimization, and fear of school victimization. Overall, we found little support for the idea that fear and victimization increase weapon carrying, controlling for other theoretically important predictors, including delinquent offending. While 7th‐grade victimization was modestly associated with increased non‐gun weapon carrying in 8th grade, high perceptions of individual victimization risk in 7th grade decreased both subsequent gun and non‐gun weapon carrying. Fear of criminal victimization in 7th grade did not predict either type of subsequent (8th‐grade) weapon carrying. Though fear, risk, and victimization were inconsistent predictors of gun and non‐gun weapon carrying, we found strong and consistent support for the effects of weapon carrying on subsequent fear, risk, victimization, and offending. However, contrary to the implications of fear and victimization hypotheses, both gun carrying and non‐gun weapon carrying in the 8th grade increased fear of school crime, perceived risk, and actual victimization in the 9th grade. Implications of these findings for the applicability of a “weapons” or “triggering” effect are discussed.     

Impact of the Stand Your Ground law on gun deaths: evidence of a rural urban dichotomy

We explore the impact of the Stand Your Ground (SYG) law on gun deaths by degree of urbanization. Unlike firearm homicides the definition of firearm deaths does not depend on the broadening of the self-defense provision that the SYG law represents. Using a difference-in-difference design, we find that the SYG law had no impact on gun deaths at the state level. However, once the U.S. states are disaggregated into portions by degree of urbanization—central city, suburb, small urban area and rural area—we find that the law increased gun deaths in the central cities and the suburbs, and had no impact in smaller urban areas and rural areas. These findings are consistent with the fact that there is a great divide between urban and rural areas in terms of ownership and usage of guns, attitudes towards guns, and the implications thereof. The finding of increased violence in the suburbs is of particular interest in the historical backdrop whereby the growth of the suburbs, to a large extent, may have been motivated by a desire to escape crime and violence.     

Licensed firearm dealers,legal compliance,and local homicide: A case study

Research summary

This study uses a combination of tract-level and street network-level analyses to examine: (1) the overall association between federally licensed firearm dealers (FFLs) and homicides, (2) the relationship between dealers with serious violations (such as selling to prohibited buyers or failing to record sales) and homicide, and (3) whether the dealer–homicide association is moderated by community disadvantage. Results replicate and confirm a relationship between dealers and homicides in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Importantly, however, we also find that proximity to noncompliant dealers specifically elevates the risk of lethal violence.

Policy implications

We detail how a coordinated effort between federal, state, and local agencies to regulate firearm dealers and ensure that legal compliance can be instrumental in reducing gun violence. There is a clear need for increased oversight of gun dealers and more robust policies that hold negligent dealers accountable, including the necessary funding and regulatory manpower to enable regular auditing and support consistent follow-up for noncompliant dealers. A comprehensive policy framework that supports supply-side gun violence reduction should include additions to state-level laws that require record keeping, videotaping and store security, and regular inspection for firearm dealers.     

COMMUNITIES,STREET GUNS AND HOMICIDE TRAJECTORIES IN CHICAGO, 1980–1995: MERGING METHODS FOR EXAMINING HOMICIDE TRENDS ACROSS SPACE AND TIME*

We merge Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and a semi‐parametric, group‐based trajectory procedure (TRAJ) to classify communities in Chicago by violence trajectories across space. Total, street gun and other weapon homicide trajectories are identified across 831 census tracts between 1980 and 1995. We find evidence consistent with a weapon substitution effect in violent neighborhoods that are proximate to one another, a defensive diffusion effect of exclusively street gun‐specific homicide increases in neighborhoods bordering the most violent areas, and a spatial decay effect of temporal homicide trends in which the most violent areas are buffered from the least violent by places experiencing mid‐range levels of lethal violence over time. In merging these two methods of data analysis, we provide a more efficient way to describe both spatial and temporal trends and make significant advances in furthering applications of space‐time methodologies.     

Can Situational and Structural Factors Differentiate Between Intimate Partner and “Other” Homicide?

A large body of research has identified strong and consistent correlates of aggregated intimate homicide incidents; however, the bulk of these studies focuses on the influence of either case or neighborhood characteristics on homicide types, but not both. This study examines data collected from 739 homicides in two distinct metropolitan cities to determine which factors differentiate intimate and non-intimate homicide. Findings reveal that intimate partner homicides (IPH) are more likely to involve females both as victims and offenders when compared to non-IPH incidents. In addition, IPH homicides are more likely to be committed with weapons than non-IPH, but this finding only appears in Indianapolis homicides. Indeed, one of the stark contrasts between Indianapolis and Newark was the much greater prevalence of firearms involved in IPH homicides in Indianapolis. This suggests the need for future research that sorts out patterns of household gun possession, factors influencing community levels of household gun possession, and the use of legally- or illegally-possessed firearms in IPH homicide.     

Intervening in gun markets: an experiment to assess the impact of targeted gun-law messaging

The objective of this study was to assess whether targeting new gun buyers with a public safety message aimed at improving gun law awareness can modify gun purchasers’ behaviors. Between May 2007 and September 2008, 2,120 guns were purchased in two target neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles. Starting in August 2007, gun buyers initiating transactions on odd-numbered days received a letter signed by prominent law enforcement officials, indicating that law enforcement had a record of their gun purchase and that the gun buyer should properly record future transfers of the gun. The letters arrived during buyers’ 10-day waiting periods, before they could legally return to the store to collect their new gun. Subsequent gun records were extracted to assess the letter’s effect on legal secondary sales, reports of stolen guns, and recovery of the gun in a crime. An intent-to-treat analysis was also conducted as a sensitivity check to remedy a lapse in the letter program between May and August 2007. The letter appears to have no effect on the legal transfer rate or on the short-term rate of guns subsequently turning up in a crime. However, we found that the rate at which guns are reported stolen for those who received the letter is more than twice the rate for those who did not receive the letter (p value = 0.01). Those receiving the letter reported their gun stolen at a rate of 18 guns per 1,000 gun-years and those not receiving the letter reported their gun stolen at a rate of 7 guns per 1,000 gun-years. Of those receiving the letter, 1.9% reported their gun stolen during the study period compared to 1.0% for those who did not receive the letter. The percentage of guns reported stolen in these neighborhoods is high, indicating a high rate of true gun theft, a regular practice of using stolen-gun reports to separate the gun buyer from future misuse of the gun, or some blend of both. Simple, targeted gun law awareness campaigns can modify new gun buyers’ behaviors. Additional follow-up or modifications to this initiative might be needed to impact the rate at which guns enter the illegal gun market and ultimately are recovered in crimes.     

FIREARMS OWNERSHIP, GUN CONTROL ATTITUDES, AND NEIGHBORHOOD ENVIRONMENT

Consensus has not been reached on whether a relationsip exists among violent crime, fear of crime, and firearms ownership. The questions addressed here are how, if at all, the neighborhood environments of urban blacks and whites affect their patterns and levels of gun ownership, what their attitudes are toward gun regulation, and whether there is a relationship between gun regulation attitudes and firearms ownership. Data collected through a mail questionnaire from white and black residents of high and low homicide risk neighborhoods in Detroit were used to test the questions. Results indicate, for the most part, that blacks and whites hold different attitudes toward gun regulation, that gun regulation attitudes affect gun ownership patterns, and that only in one instance did neighborhood environment explain gun ownership relatively well.     

The impact of gun control and gun ownership levels on violence rates

What effects do gun control restrictions and gun prevalence have on rates of violence and crime? Data were gathered for all 170 U.S. cities with a 1980 population of at least 100,000. The cities were coded for the presence of 19 major categories of firearms restriction, including both state- and city-level restrictions. Multiple indirect indicators of gun prevalence levels were measured and models of city violence rates were estimated using two-stage least-squares methods. The models covered all major categories of intentional violence and crime which frequently involve guns: homicide, suicide, fatal gun accidents, robbery, and aggravated assaults, as well as rape. Findings indicate that (1) gun prevalence levels generally have no net positive effect on total violence rates, (2) homicide, gun assault, and rape rates increase gun prevalence, (3) gun control restrictions have no net effect on gun prevalence levels, and (4) most gun control restrictions generally have no net effect on violence rates. There were, however, some possible exceptions to this last conclusion—of 108 assessments of effects of different gun laws on different types of violence, 7 indicated good support, and another 11 partial support, for the hypothesis of gun control efficacy.     

ADVERSARY POLLING AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL MEANING: Implications in Gun Control Elections in Massachusetts and California

Opinion survey data have been used to assert that the public's desire for serious gun control has been blocked by the "gun lobby." This construction is opposed by a survey-based counter construction developed by the gun lobby. The superiority of the gun lobby's construction is supported by this article's survey data and by analysis of actual elections in 1976 in Massachusetts and in 1982 in California. What blocks the public from getting strict gun control is that the public does not want it.     

The Concentration and Stability of Gun Violence at Micro Places in Boston, 1980–2008

Boston, like many other major U.S. cities, experienced an epidemic of gun violence during the late 1980s and early 1990s that was followed by a sudden large downturn in gun violence in the mid 1990s. The gun violence drop continued until the early part of the new millennium. Recent advances in criminological research suggest that there is significant clustering of crime in micro places, or “hot spots,” that generate a disproportionate amount of criminal events in a city. In this paper, we use growth curve regression models to uncover distinctive developmental trends in gun assault incidents at street segments and intersections in Boston over a 29-year period. We find that Boston gun violence is intensely concentrated at a small number of street segments and intersections rather than spread evenly across the urban landscape between 1980 and 2008. Gun violence trends at these high-activity micro places follow two general trajectories: stable concentrations of gun assaults incidents over time and volatile concentrations of gun assault incidents over time. Micro places with volatile trajectories represent less than 3% of street segments and intersections, generate more than half of all gun violence incidents, and seem to be the primary drivers of overall gun violence trends in Boston. Our findings suggest that the urban gun violence epidemic, and sudden downturn in urban gun violence in the late 1990s, may be best understood by examining highly volatile micro-level trends at a relatively small number of places in urban environments.     

Guns,Southernness, and gun control

Southerners have been found to have higher levels of gun ownership than persons who reside elsewhere. This may be due to cultural factors peculiar to the Southern region. If so, this would have interesting implications for gun control initiatives. Although the differential in gun ownership has been linked to varying support or opposition to gun control, the relationship between this variable and specific types of gun control has not been examined. With this in mind, we investigate how specific types of gun ownership interact with Southernness, controlling for the effects of other variables, to determine preferences for three different types of gun control. We use 1975 data collected by DMI on a stratified random sample of 1538 noninstitutionalized adults in the United States. An analysis of several logistic regression equations indicates that a cultural component, related to Southernness, affects attitudes toward gun control. Southerners, in general, were the most opposed to permits and handgun bans. Southern shotgun owners, in particular, were found to be the most opposed to gun registration. These findings point to the need to consider region, culture, and gun type when addressing the issue of gun control.We would be happy to supply the interested reader with an electronic copy of the data set.     

Reassessing the Association between Gun Availability and Homicide at the Cross-National Level

This paper had two objectives. First, to examine the association between gun availability, gun homicide, and homicide in a manner that better accounts for potential simultaneity than previous cross-national research. Second, to examine the manner that the relationship between gun availability and violence is shaped by socio-historical and cultural context. The results lend little support to the notion that gun availability operates uniformly across nations to influence levels of violence. Rather, these results suggest that the nature of the relationship between gun availability and violence is shaped by the socio-historical and cultural processes occurring across nations.     

Individual-level risk factors for gun victimization in a sample of probationers

Interventions aimed at preventing the important problem of gun injuries could be improved with an understanding of whether there are unique factors that place individuals at an increased risk of gun victimization. Much remains to be known about the victims of gun violence. The purpose of this article is to assess whether there are individual-level variables uniquely related to the likelihood of experiencing a gun victimization in a sample of probationers, individuals already at a heightened risk for criminal victimization. Self-report data were collected from 235 felony probationers about, for instance, gun and nongun victimization, gang involvement, and drug sales. Results show different variables are related to nongun victimization and gun victimization. In the current sample, involvement in gun crimes are linked to an increased risk of gun victimization. Violent offending and residential stability are associated with an increased chance of crime victimization.