The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban on Gun Markets: An Assessment of Short-Term Primary and Secondary Market Effects

The reactions of the gun market, including those of producers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers, play an important role in shaping the potential impact of gun control policies on gun crime. As a case in point, this paper examines the federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which bans a group of military-style semiautomatic firearms (i.e., assault weapons). Using a variety of national and local data sources, we assess the short-term (1994–1996) impact of the assault weapons ban on gun markets, examining trends in prices and production of the banned weapons in legal markets and assessing the availability of the banned weapons in illicit markets as measured by criminal use. Prices of assault weapons rose substantially around the time of the ban's enactment, reducing the availability of assault weapons to criminal users in the very short run. However, a surge in assault weapon production just before the ban caused prices to fall in the months following the ban. Implications of the findings for assessing this and other gun control policies are discussed.     

The importation and re-exportation of organized crime: explaining the rise and fall of the Jamaican posses in the United States

During the 1980s and 1990s, Jamaican posses captured the imagination of the press corps, film makers, and numerous of criminal justice scholars in the United States. However, except for a few historical references, their virtual disappearance from the contemporary criminal justice literature leaves many unanswered questions. In updating the literature, this paper examines the main factors contributing to the decline of Jamaican posses in the United States and explains how their criminal activities were displaced to Jamaica through aggressive U.S. anti drug and anti-gang operations and immigration policies.     

Balancing and the Bible: A Pre-Thucydidean View of Threat

This article uses the case of King Saul, David, and the Philistines, drawn from the Hebrew Bible (books 1 and 2 Samuel), to argue that leaders of states with contested or immature authority structures often elect to prioritize threats to their personal rule over external threats to the integrity and welfare of the states which they lead in a manner not predicted by neo-Realist international relations theory. In making this argument, this article not only makes a contribution to the Realist literature on threat prioritization but introduces a new, novel, and ancient data set which can be used both to generate new theories and to test existing theories within international relations.     

When the Line is Crossed... Paths to Control and Sanction Behaviour Necessitating a State Reaction

This article provides an overview of the various forms of proceedings available within 11 European criminal justice systems and reflects upon their core features. It also provides a picture of how far alternative, non-criminal proceedings are used by some of the systems as a different path to imposing a state reaction upon wrong-doers.