U.S. Department of Justice 

National Institute of Justice 

The Armed Criminal in America 

A Survey of Incarcerated Felons 

by 

James D. Wright 

Principal Investigator 

Peter H. Rossi 

Co-Principal Investigator 

July 1985 

If you have issues viewing or accessing this file contact us at NCJRS.gov.
National Institute of Justice 

James K. Stewart 

Director 

Lois Felson Mock 

Project Monitor 

This project was supported by Grant Number 82-IJ-CX-()00 1, 

awarded to the Social and Demographic Research Institute, 

University of Massachusetts, by the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, under the Omnibus Crime 

Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended. Points of 

view or opinions stated in this document are those of the 

authors and do not necessarily represent the official position 

or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Contents 

Acknowledgments iii 

The Armed Criminal in America 

Background and Methodology 1 

Introduction 1 

Background 1 

Sampling and Data Collection 2 

Data Quality 3 

Sample Description 5 

Marriage and Family Background 5 

The Timing of Significant Life Events 5 

Juvenile Criminality 6 

Drug Abuse 7 

A Typology of Armed Criminals 9 

Patterns of Weapons Ownership and Use 13 

Overall Patterns 13 

Patterns of Weapons Use: The Conviction 

Offense 14 

Patterns of Weapons Use: Other Offenses 17 

Weapon Carrying Behavior 17 

Gun Ownership and Use in Crime 18 

Growing Up with Guns 19 

The Motivations to Go Armed 23 

The ''Seriousness" of Carrying 25 

Differences in Motives by Criminal Type 26 

Confronting Armed Victims 27 

What Felons Look for in Firearms 31 

Patterns of Firearms Acquisition 35 

Means and Sources of Acquisition 35 

Gun Theft 37 

Handgun Controls and Weapons Substitution 41 

Implications 45 

The Nature of the Illicit Firearms Market 46 

Crime Guns: Quality and Price 47 

Why Criminals Carry and Use Guns 47 

Substitution and Other Neutralizing Side 

Effects 49 

Bibliography 51 

Content
List of Tables 

Table 1: 

Table 2: 

Table 3: 

Table 4: 

Table 5: 

Table 6: 

Table 7: 

Characteristics of Respondents and 

Nonrespondents: Michigan 4 

The Timing of Significant Life 

Events 6 

Juvenile Criminality 6 

Conviction Offense Data by Criminal 

Type 10 

'Total Criminality" by Criminal Type 10 

Weapons Use in Conviction Offenses 14 

How Guns Are Used in Crimes, Depending 

on Whether or Not They Were Fired: 

Conviction Offenses 15 

Table 8: Weapon Carrying Behavior by Weapon 

Type 17 

Table 9: Gun Carrying Behavior by Criminal 

Type 18 

Table 10: The Commission of Armed Crime as a 

Function of Gun Ownership 19 

Table 11: Intercorrelations Among the Socialization 

"Agents" and ''Experiences" Variables 20 

Table 12: Correlations Between Felons' Firearms 

Behavior and Early Firearms 

Socialization 21 

Table 13: Weapon Carrying Motivations 23 

Table 14: Reasons Why Felons' Most Recent 

Firearms Were Obtained 26 

Table 15: Attitudes Toward Encountering Armed 

Victims: Total Sample 27 

Table 16: Confronting the Armed Victim: 

Experiential Results 28 

Table 17: Relative Importance of Four Categories 

of Handgun Characteristics 31 

Table 18· Handgun Characteristics Preferences by 

Gun Ownership and Criminal Type 32 

Table 19: Means and Sources of Handgun 

Acquisitions 35 

Table 20: Means by Sources of Handgun 

Acquisitions 36 

Table 21: Means and Sources of Handgun Acquisitions 

by Motives for Obtaining a Handgun 36 

Table 22: Weapons Choices Under Various Handgun 

Control Policies 43 

vi List of Tables 
Acknowledgements 

A research project such as the one reported here only 

succeeds if it enjoys the cooperation and assistance 

of any number of people who, through obligation or 

courtesy, make themselves and their expertise available to the research staff. Whether this project has 

in fact succeeded is for readers, not us, to deci<fe; 

such failings as it may contain, however, are not for 

lack of the enthusiastic cooperation and capable as- sistance of the following individuals, for whose contributions we are most grateful: 

Our first and largest debt is to the National Institute of Justice, who provided the funds to undertake 

this research and who has supported the Social and 

Demographic Research Institute's violent crime re- search program for the past seven years. Officials at 

NIJ who have been involved in varying degrees with the 

project include the Institute Director, James K. 

Stewart, and the Associate Director, Robert Burkhart; 

Fred Heinzelmann, Director of the Institute's Community Crime Prevention Division; and Dr. Lois Mock, who 

served as project monitor for the study. 

We note a special gratitude to Dr. Mock for her patience in seeing the project through to completion, 

her assistance in winning the initial grant, her many 

valuable suggestions as the research proceeded, and 

her detailed and helpful comments on earlier drafts. 

We are also grateful for the time and advice of the 

scholars and practitioners who constituted the project's Advisory Committee: Mr. Al Andrews, Chief of 

Police of Peoria, Illinois; Dr. Marcia Chaiken of the 

National Institute for Sentencing Alternatives; Dr. 

Phillip Cook of Duke University; Dr. Mark Moore of 

Harvard University; and Mr. William Wilkie of the 

National Institute of Corrections. The members of the 

Advisory Committee met formally to review the project 

pretest results and to brainstorm over the contents of 

the questionnaire; most of them were also pester~d by 

mail or phone periodically throughout the study for 

advice and counsel. 

Mr. Wilkie is owed a special note of thanks for his 

assistance in arranging our access to the state prison 

systems where we eventually interviewed. A day on the 

phone in behalf of a research project not of his own 

making saved us what would have otherwise been several 

months of work. 

The project was also blessed with an extraordinarily 

resourceful and talented field team who travelled to 

prisons all over the United States gathering the data 

on which this study is based. For services dramatically in excess of the rate of pay--for countless hours 

in coach class, endless nights in Holiday Inns, 

fifteen and sixteen hour working days, and infinite 

patience (and good research judgment) in the face of 

wary administrators and hostile inmates--we thank Jeff 

Segal, Joe Pereira, and Tommy Joyner. 

Additional thanks are owed lVlr. Pereira for having 

undertaken the data quality analysis reported in the 

text and for assisting in the translation of the 

Spanish version of the questionnaire; and also to Mr. 

Segal, who undertook the data analyses and first 

drafts of the material on stolen firearms. 

Data entry, analysis, and management were under the 

general direction of SADRI's Director of Software 

Development and Data Base lVlanagement, lVls. Eleanor 

Weber-Burdin, whose talents on the computer are exceeded only by her commitment to the people and projects of "the shop." Ms. Weber-Burdin's assistant, Ms. 

Marianne Geronimo, provided supervision of the data 

entry staff and much assistance to the principal investigators in the data analysis. Special thanks to 

both of them for yet another job well done. 

Gratitude is also owed the several undergraduate and 

graduate students at the University of Massachusetts 

who entered the data from the raw questionnaires onto 

the computer at a quick rate and with remarkably few 

errors: Rachael Angeline, lVlatthew Archibald, Denise 

Furlong, Michael Hanrahan, Amy Kopel, Lisa Lorant, 

Mary Ellen Madaio, and Aida Rodriguez. lVls. Rodriguez 

also assisted in preparing the Spanish version of the 

questionnaire. 

Our presence in the ten research sites, and therefore 

our ability to gather the project data, was only possible because of the cooperation anc'l assistance of 

each state's corrections administration--from the 

State Commissioner of Correot<ions down to and including the security staff who were assigned to watch over the field team whil~;: we were in the site. None of the 

following peopld had any obligation to render, or stood to profit from, the help which was, nonetheless, 

freely given: 

In lVlichigan: Mr. Perry 1\-1. J·ohnson, Director, Michigan 

Department of Corrections; Mr. William Kime, Deputy 

Director of Research; 'VIr. Robert Richardson, Chief of 

Research in the Program Bureau; Warden John Jabe and 

Deputy Warden Gach, Michigan Reformatory; lVlr. Jabe's 

Administrative Assistant, Mr. Joe Cross; Mr. Robert 

Heriford; and Officers Bernard Clark, Richard Signs, 

Don Gostenell, and Bradley Harris. 

In lVlissouri: Dr. Lee Roy Black, DirectorbDepartment of Corrections and Human Resources; Mr. ale Riley, 

Acting Director, Division of Adult Institutions; lVlr. 

Gerard Frey, Superintendent, and Mr. Don Cabana, Assistant Superintendent, Missouri Eastern Correctional 

Center; and at the Center, Ms. Micki Andrews. 

In lVlinnesota: Mr. Jack G. Young, Commissioner, lVlr. 

Orville Pung, Deputy Commissioner, and Mr. Gerry 

Strathman, Research Director, lVlinnesota Department of 

Corrections; Mr. Frank Wood, Superintendent, and l\llr. 

Dennis Benson, Residential Program Manager, Minnesota 

Corrections Facility at Oak Park Heights; at the Oak 

Park Heights facility, Lt. Lou Stender, Mr. David 

Crist, and Mr. Rick Hillengass; Mr. James Hulburt, 

Superintendent, Minnesota Corrections Facility at Lino 

Lake; and at the Lino Lakes facility, Mr. William 

McGrath, lVls. Delores Redfield, Ms. Toby Larson, and 

Officer Pat Clemens. 

In Oklahoma: Mr. Larry R. Meachum, Director, and Mr. 

Clifton Sandel, Supervisor of Planning and Research, 

Oklahoma Department of Corrections; Mr. Larry Fields, 

Warden, Joe Harp Correctional Center; and at the Center, Mr. Larry Thornton, Medical Director; Mr. Sam 

.Preston, Programs Director; and Officers Stephen D. 

Moore; Terry W. Ragsdale, Jerome L. Carson, Keith 

Hall, and John Y. Brown. 

Acknowledgments 
In Florida: Mr. Louis L. Wainwright, Secretary, Dr. 

John H. Dale, Jr., Chief, Bureau of Planning, Research, and Statistics, and Mr. Bob Kriegner, Florida 

Department of Corrections; Superintendent Raymond D. 

Massey and Mr. Paul V. Gunning, Assistant Superintendent for Operations, Union Correctional Institution; 

and at the Institution, Colonel Jackson, Major 

Tomlinson, Lieutenant Rayburn, and Sergeant Newman of 

the Security Staff; Mr. Cunningham, Chief of Classification; Mr. J. L. Pitcher, Business Manager; 1VIr. 

Chuck Davis, Director of the educational unit; and 

Officer Robbie Watson. 

In Georgia: Mr. David C. Evans, Commissioner, 1VIr. Ben 

Wyckoff, Director of Research and Evaluation, and Ms. 

Meg Updycke, Office of Public Affairs, Georgia Department of Corrections; Mr. Bob Francis, Warden, Georgia 

Diagnostic and Classification Center; and at the Center, Mr. Parrish, Assistant Superintendent for Security, 1V!r. David Fields, Assistant Superintendent for 

Operations, and Mr. Steve Phillips, Assistant Superintendent for Care and Treatment; Mr. Dave Cawthon; and 

Officers Wesley Baker and Tommy Lee Williamson. 

In Nevada: Mr. Vernon Housewright, Director, Nevada 

Department of Prisons; Mr. George Sumner, Superintendent, Nevada State Prison; and at the Prison, Counsellor Robin Bates and Lt. Roger Belleville. 

In Arizona: Mr. Ellis MacDougall, Director, Mr. Jerry 

Thompson, Deputy Director, and Mr. Bob Anderson, Head 

of Research, Arizona Department of Corrections; Mr. 

Don Wawrzaszek, Chief Administrator, Arizona State 

Prison; Mr. Bob Goldsmith, Warden, and Mr. Al 

Grijalva, Assistant Warden, Central Unit; and at the 

Unit, Major Herndon, Chief of Security, and Officers 

Becky Blanco, Myron B. Fristad, Gary E. Peterson, 

Rickey Garrett, and John A. Nielson. 

In Maryland: Mr. John P. Galley, Commissioner, and 

'VIr. Bruce Stout, Executive Assistant, Maryland Division of Correction; Mr. Marlin Bachtell, Warden, Maryland Correctional Training Center; and at the Center, 

Mr. Terrie Chavis, Assistant Superintendent for Treatment, and his assistant, Mr. Bernard Burnes; Mr. 

Brewer, Security Officer; Lt. Nelson Baker; and Officers John Mills, Charles Turner, and Daniel 

Sirbaugh. 

In Massachusetts: Mr. Michael V. Fair, Commissioner, 

Mr. Dennis Humphrey, Associate Commissioner, and Mr. 

Frank Carney, Director of Research, Massachusetts Department of Correction; Superintendent Terence 

Holbrook and Deputy Superintendent Michael Maloney, 

Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk; and 

at the Institution, Mr. Carlos Geromini, Principal of 

the Education Unit, and Officer James Butler. 

iv Acknowledgments 

The next-to-final draft of the survey questionnaire 

was pretested on 18 men serving sentences in the Berkshire County House of Corrections, a county jail in 

Western Massachusetts. We are grateful to Sheriff 

Carmen C. Massimiano and Officer Paul Therrien of the 

Pittsfield Police Department for arranging our access to the pretest site. 

Over the course of this project, SADRI was well-served 

by an able and cheerful secretarial pool consisting at 

various times of Ms. Cindy Coffman, Mr. Ken Forfia, 

Ms. Jeanne Reinle, Ms. Kathy Moore, and Ms. Jane 

Karp, all of whom contributed to the production of 

this manuscript or to one (or more) of its several 

predecessors. 

Previous drafts of the study report (or its component 

parts) profitted immensely from the careful reading 

and critical commentary of Dr. Lois Mock, Dr. Phillip 

Cook, Dr. Paul Blackman, Mr. Mark Benenson, Dr. Gary 

Kleck, Dr. Marcia Chaiken, several of our colleagues 

at the University of Massachusetts, numerous participants at various meetings and symposia where preliminary findings were presented, and others who have asked 

not to be identified. We are grateful indeed to these 

people for having prevented many factual errors and 

interpretive excesses from seeing the light of print. 

Finally, we express our gratitude to the nearly 2,000 

prisoners all over the United States who agreed to 

participate in this study and complete a survey 

questionnaire. 

Despite the considerable assistance just acknowledged, 

none of the persons and institutions identified above, nor the National Institute of Justice, nor the United 

States government, bears any responsibility whatsoever 

for any of the findings, interpretations, conclusions, 

or implications expressed in this volume, all of which 

remain our own. 

James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi 

Amherst, "l:assachusetts 

November, 1984 
Background and Methodology 

Introduction 

Violent crime that threatens or abuses the physical 

safety of its victims lies at the heart of the crime 

problem in America today. In turn, the use of firearms to commit crime constitutes a major portion of 

the violent crime problem. Each year, some 30,000 

American citizens die through the suicidal, homicidal, 

or accidental abuse of guns; several hundreds of 

thousands are injured; hundreds of thousands more are victimized by gun crime (Wright et al., 1983). 

Crime of all sorts impacts on a substantial portion of 

the nation's households: victimization surveys show 

that one out of five households is victimized by crime 

annually. Although violent crime per se constitutes 

no more than about a tenth of all crime, the remainder 

being economic crime, it contributes considerably more 

than its share to the fear of crime and to the 

public's sense of crime as a serious problem facing 

the Nation. Indeed, it can be argued that violent 

crime is the crime problem and that a reduction in 

violent crime should be a matter of highest priority on the law enforcement and criminal justice policy 

agendas of our society. 

The research reported here was designed to make a contribution to the formation of policy in this area by 

providing basic information on violent crime and, in 

particular, on violent criminals. To this end, we have attempted to provide answers to two basic questions: 

First, what roles do firearms play in the lives of 

violent criminals? What motivates them to acquire, 

carry, and use guns? And secondly, how do criminals 

obtain the firearms that they use to commit their 

crimes? 

This report presents our research findings relating to 

these two basic questions and discusses their implications for firearms policy, practice, and research as 

they apply to our particular offender population:-

adult male felons incarcerated in state prisons. We 

must emphasize here and elsewhere that our data do not 

permit us to speak for all offender groups. It is 

quite possible that other criminal populations--such 

as juvenile offenders, female offenders, first offenders, and less serious (non-felony) adult male 

offenders--might show very different patterns of firearms acquisition, ownership, and use, with correspondingly different implications for criminal justice 

response. 

Background 

The research reported here developed out of a review 

o~ the ava!lable research literature on "Weapons and 

VIolent Cr1me" conducted by the Social and Demographic 

Research Institute under a grant from the National Institute of Justice. This review concluded that there 

was a virtually complete absence of sound, nationally 

generalizable evidence on most of the important issues 

involved in the matter of firearms and crime--on 

where, how and why criminals acquire, carry, and use 

guns to prey upon the American population (Wright et 

al., 1983). Although fragments of evidence on at 

least some of these topics had accumulated in various 

studies, no comprehensive analysis of national scope 

had ever been undertaken.! 

Of the many smaller scale state and local studies 

available on these topics, the most promising by far 

is the study done by Burr (1977), who obtained some 

very intriguing data on felons and their firearms by 

directly interviewing a sample of prisoners. Burr 

found that they were quite willing to talk about their 

previous criminal careers and about their acquisition 

and use of guns. However, since Burr's sample was 

based on men housed only in Florida prisons, his findings are of limited generalizability. 

The study reported in this volume amounts to an extension· of Burr's method to a nation-wide sample of 

state prison inmates. Although convicted felons are 

to some unknown degree a selected group of criminals, 

a strong case can be made on several grounds that a 

study based on a large sample of prisoners might produce much interesting and policy relevant information on the criminal use and abuse of guns. 

1. For a comprehensive review of the pertinent literature on thes

topics up through about 1981, see Wright et al., 1983, Chs. 8 and 

9. The key conclusion: ''Remarkably, no nationally representativ

data are available on the weapons used in violent crime, with the 

partial exception of homicide" (p. 16). 

Excepting Burr (1977), essentially all that was known about the uses of weapons in crimes up to about 1981 had been learned eith

from the criminal victimization surveys or from samples of fire- arms confiscated by the police. Since victims would only be imperfectly aware even of the presence of a weapon in a crime incident in many cases, the first of these has not proven very rich as a source of information. The second source of data, moreover

is seriously limited by methodological considerations, discussed 

in some detail in Brill (1977). 

The consequence of the generally under-developed state of the li

erature at the time we initiated this study is that we did not 

have a rich theoretical or empirical literature on which to draw 

in crafting our study design. Hence, the survey was designed m

to provide descriptions of motives and behaviors than to test 

specific theories or hypotheses about why criminals acquire and 

carry the equipment that they do. Given these descriptive purposes, we have avoided complex multivariate analyses of the data 

in favor of simpler analytic strategies. 

Between 1981 and the present, several useful studies have appear

in the literature on weapons and criminal violence. We note in 

particular the RAND study of "Criminal Careers" (Chaiken and 

Chaiken, 1982), which is also based on a large survey of incarcerated criminals. Similarities between the RAND findings and o

own are noted periodically throughout the text. We also note a series of studies by Cook (1981, 1982, 1983) on which we have re- lied heavily, especially in considering the crime of robbery. . A 

very useful, although largely speculative, account of gun theft 

appears in Moore (1981). Also useful are Kleck (1984a and 1984b

and Balkin and MacDonald (1984). Constraints of space preclude 

comprehensive review of these studies in present context. Suffice 

it to say that we have borrowed insights liberally from each of 

these sources. 

Background and Methodolog
First of all, state prisoners are accessible for studv 

at relatively low cost. Second, although first of- · 

fenders often are not imprisoned, and as a consequence 

would be seriously under-represented in any sample of 

prisoners, repeat offenders (those most likely to be 

imprisoned) apparently constitute the source of much 

criminal behavior and often of its more serious forms 

(e.g., Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982). Hence, the crimes 

committed by men most likely to be found in prison 

constitute a considerable portion of the overall 

"crime problem." Third, although juveniles by definition are excluded from such a study, many felons have 

long careers of crime extending back into their 

adolescence and perhaps earlier. Hence juvenile crime 

can be included in part by considering the crime 

careers of current prisoners. Such, in any case, were the principal rationales for the use of inmates of 

state prisons as sources of information for this 

study. 

Sampling and Data Collection 

To fill the apparent gaps in our knowledge about how 

and why criminals obtain guns, we designed and conducted a survey of prisoners who had been incarcerated 

for felony offenses and were serving time in a sample 

of state prisons all around the country. We questioned them about their acquisition and use of guns in 

the period of time before their imprisonment. Self 

administered questionnaires were filled out by 1,874 

felons in a total of eleven state prisons located in 

Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, and Massachusetts. 

These ten states were chosen for the research ( i) to 

provide adequate regional dispersion in the sample, 

and (ii) on the basis of the state's willingness to 

cooperate in the research. 

Work on the project began in December, 1981. The 

first six months were spent in negotiations for access 

to a set of prisons and in developing a pretest draft 

of the survey protocol. A draft questionnaire was 

pretested in June, 1982, in a county jail in Massachusetts. Data collection started in August, 1982, 

and continued through January, 1983. In all, 1,982 

inmates serving time in eleven prisons in ten states 

participated in the survey. Unusable questionnaires 

were obtained from 108 men, leaving 1,874 cases for 

the actual analysis. 

Our initial hope was to obtain access to the main maximum security facility in each of the selected states, 

on the grounds that hard-core gun using felons would 

be housed primarily in such institutions. In fact, in 

every case, the decision as to which prison we were 

allowed to study was made unilaterally by the state's 

Commissioner of Corrections. In most states, we were 

not granted access to the main maximum security 

prison, often because the safety of the field team 

could not be assured, and so we interviewed in some other prison instead. Ultimately, four maximum security prisons, three medium-to-maximum security prisons, 

and three medium security prisons were included. Except for Minnesota, we interviewed in only one prison 

per state; in M:innesota, we interviewed in two facilities and have combined these data in all subsequent 

analyses. 

2 Background and Methodology 

Eligibility criteria for participation in the survey 

were fairly minimal: we interviewed only men who were in prison on a felony conviction and who had 

been sentenced to their current term on or after 1 

January 1979. No restrictions were imposed based-on 

the felon's conviction offense; more particularly, we 

did not attempt to restrict the sample only to men 

who had committed crimes with guns.2 Given the pu

poses of the study, we thought it- important to have 

group of unarmed criminals to serve as a comparison 

group. About two-fifths of the final sample claimed 

never to have committed any crime armed with any w

on; the remainder had. 

Selection of respondents within each prison was 

straightforward. We attempted in preliminary negot

tions with prison officials to get a crude estimate o

the likely number of men in the site who would meet 

our eligibility criteria. If this number was fewer 

than about 400, we interviewed every man in the pri

who agreed to participate. If the likely number of 

eligibles was greater than about 400, we obtained a 

current prisoner census and drew a simple random s

ple from it. In the end, it proved necessary to sample in only three sites; in the remaini"f seven sites

every willing participant was included. 

Questionnaires were administered to groups ranging 

from about ten men to well over a hundred men. Thre

members of the research staff were present during th

survey sessions to answer questions, clarify instruc

tions, etc. A Spanish-language questionnaire was 

available for Spanish-dominant prisoners; functional 

illiterates were given the survey protocol as an oral 

interview. 

Field visits at each site varied from two to four 

days; survey sessions averaged about two hours eac

Virtually all the sessions went smoothly. As reported 

by others who have surveyed prisoners, most respon

ents appeared to look on the protocol as a "test" and 

made an obvious effort to complete it accurately and 

well. 

2. As it happens, a felon's conviction offense is, at best, an im

perfect indicator of his actual pattern of criminality in the 

first place (Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982). One principal finding 

from the RAND study is that criminals, particularly high rate 

criminals, do not specialize in a particular type of crime; they 

are, rather, opportunists who commit any crime available to th

The same is true of the men studied in our research, as we ma

plain later in the text. To stratify a sample of prisoners on 

basis of weapons use in the conviction offense, in short, would 

intrinsically misleading; many men who did not happen to use 

weapon in the conviction offense would, nonetheless, have an e

tensive history of armed crime. 

3. It proves useful to emphasize at this point that the ten stat

who participated in this research do not constitute a probabili

sample of states; that the prisons where we interviewed in each 

state do not constitute a probability sample of prisons; and th

the 1,874 felons who filled out the questionnaire do not constitute a probability sample of prisoners. By choosing states fro

all over the country in which to conduct the research, we have 

attempted to generate data that are national in scope and sign

cance, but we have not by any means produced a ''nationally r

sentative probability sample" of states, prisons, or prisoners. 
Given our sampling and selection procedures, precise 

response rates for the survey are difficult to calculate. Still, it is obvious that our response rate was 

remarkably good in some sites and very poor in others. 

In one site where a precise response rate could be 

calculated, we achieved a cooperation rate of 9696; in 

another, 2296. In general, however, the response rates 

were respectable: across the eight sites where a reasonable estimate of the response rate could be 

made, we interviewed two thirds or more of the eligible respondents in five; in three sites, the response 

rate exceeded 8096. · 

The principal limitation of the survey data we have 

gathered lies, of course, in making inferences about 

criminal firearrns behavior on the basis of data obtained from a very selected subset of criminals, 

namely, the state prison population. No sample of 

prisoners, for example, will contain any criminals who 

consistently, by luck or talent, evade apprehension 

and imprisonment. Of course, no one knows how large 

this group is, nor how much of the total crime problem 

is generated by their criminal activities. The prevailing opinion these days seems to be that most 

reasonably active criminals sooner or later do some prison time. 

A second and probably more serious limitation is the 

substantial under-representation of juveniles, whose 

participation in street crime is non-trivial. Since 

many juvenile criminals may never persist in their 

criminality into adulthood, the juvenile careers of 

those who do may be unrepresentative. A consequence 

is that this study· has relatively little to say about 

the firearms behavior of men who have yet to reach the 

age of majority, except in the form of recall information from those whose criminality persisted into their 

adult years. 

Finally, first offenders are often not sent to prison, 

even if convicted, and are clearly under-represented 

in any prison sample. It is conceivable, perhaps even 

likely, that their patterns of firearms use are quite 

different from those who have longer records. 

All told, our sample of incarcerated felons probably 

differs from the total population of criminals in the 

following ways: Our sample is probably older and has 

a longer and more sustained involvement in criminality 

and in the criminal justice system. The sample is 

also likely to have been more violent in their crime 

than typical criminals and to have committed more serious offenses. Moreover, the sample may be less 

skillful (or careful) in committing their crimes and 

hence more likely to be imprisoned. Finally, our sample may be less responsive to the risks encountered in 

a criminal career since they were not deterred by 

the risks of imprisonment. Hence our sample probably 

over-represents the ''hard-core" persistent criminals. 

All the findings reported in this volume should be 

interpreted in light of this fact. 

Data Quality 

Concerns about data quality arise easily when dealing 

with self administered questionnaires and a sample of 

this general sort. What confidence can one have that 

felons report honestly and reliably on their criminal 

activities? That they have made no systematic effort 

simply to bamboozle a research project to which they 

are, at best, indifferent? In short, what reason do 

we have to believe anything that these men have told us about themselves and their criminal pasts? 

The definitive study of the quality of prisoner selfreport data is Marquis (1981), a data quality analysis 

of the RAND "Criminal Careers" survey. In this study, 

data quality was assessed by comparing prisoners' 

self-reports with information contained in official 

criminal justice records. Such comparisons, of 

course, are not comparisons between "true" and 

"measured" values but are rather comparisons between 

two measured values, both subject to error. In gener

al, data base management procedures within the crimi

nal justice system leave much to be desired (e.g., 

Weber-Burdin et al., 1981; Rossi, Berk and Lenihan, 

1980); as such, there is no guarantee that the official data are somehow "truer" or less error-prone than 

the self-reported data are. 

Following Marquis, we also have undertaken some 

limited comparisons between official and survey data. 

It is perhaps a pertinent comment that most of the 

prison systems involved in our study were not in a 

position to supply machine-readable data on our sampl

without extraordinary, expensive, and time consuming 

efforts. Indeed, in the end, we negotiated in detail 

with only two sites for release of official data, and 

obtained these data only for one site, Michigan. This 

is not to imply that other states do not keep the appropriate records, only that the records are kept in 

ways that do not facilitate research use. 

In Michigan, we drew an initial sample of 404 men, 

from whom 265 useable cases were obtained. We re- ceived from the Data Processing Division at the Michi

gan Department of Corrections a computer tape with 

complete criminal record data for 400 of the original 

404 cases. (Four rnen had either died or left the 

prison system by the time our tape request was processed.) These circumstances therefore allow for two 

types of comparisons relevant to our present concerns

(i) we can compare the 265 men from the original sam

ple who completed a useable questionnaire with the 135 

who did not; this tells us whether and how respondents 

differ from non-respondents and is therefore a measure 

of self-selection bias; and ( ii) we can compare survey 

data with official data for the 265 men for whom we 

have both, a direct measure of the reliability of the 

self-reported information. 

The "official" data on the Michigan inmates are rather 

limited in scope, consisting of birth date, marital 

status, number of dependents, education, race, occupa

tion, drug use, alcohol use, and some details on conviction offenses. Rates of missing data are distressingly high on m11ny of the variables: birth date, 

race, occupation, and marital status are present for 

nearly all men, but 2696 of the cases are missing information on educational level, 5996 are missing information on drug use, 7696 are missing information on alcohol use, and 8396 are missing information on numbe

of dependents. 

Since participation in the survey was voluntary (in 

Michigan and all other sites), it is certainly possible that respondents differed significantly from 

non-respondents in ways that might imperil the generalizability of the research results. In Michigan, 

however, this was apparently not the case: respondents and non-respondents were nearly identical on 

every point where comparison is possible (Table 1). 

Background and Methodology 
Table I 

Characteristics of Respondents and Nonrespondents: Michigan 

Total Sample Respondents Nonrespondents · 

AGEl 

N = {400) {261) (139) 

Mean 21.3 21.5 21.1 

so 2.2 2.3 2.1 

Median 21.0 21.0 21.0 

Mode 21.0 21.0 21.0 

RACE 

White 32.7 34.1 30.2 

Black 65.5 64.0 68.3 

Indian 0.7 0.8 0.7 

Mexican 1.0 1.1 0.7 

MARITAL STATUS 

Married 5.0 4.0 6.8 

Single 95.0 96.0 93.2 

{% missing) {4.4) {4.6) {4.3) 

EDUCATION 

Mean 9.7 9.8 9.5 

so 1.2 1.3 1.2 

9th grade or less 45.3 44.3 47.2 

10-11 th grade 47.0 45.3 50.0 

High School 

{GED) 7.0 9.4 2.8 

Any College 0.7 1.0 0.0 

{% missing) {25.5) {26.4) {23.7) 

NUMBER OF 

DEPENDENTS 

Mean 1.7 1.9 1.5 

so 1.5 1.7 1.0 

Median 1.3 1.3 1.2 

Mode 1.0 1.0 1.0 

{% missing) {83.2) {81.0) {82.7) 

OCCUPATION 

Professional 

Clerical 0.5 0.8 0.0 

Service Work 2.8 3.5 1.4 

Farming/Mining 1.3 1.6 0.7 

Skilled Trade 1.8 1.9 1.4 

Unskilled 39.0 39.4 38.1 

Structural 2.3 2.7 1.4 

Student 3.8 4.7 2.2 

None 48.3 45.3 54.7 

KNOWN DRUG USE 

Episodic 40.7 40.3 41.0 

Unknown 59.2 59.0 59.9 

KNOWN ALCOHOL USE 

Episodic 23.5 23.4 23.7 

Unknown 76.5 76.6 76.3 

SENTENCED FROM 

DETROIT 

% From Detroit 34.5 32.9 39.6 

1. Age was calculated by subtracting year of birth from 1982. 

(All these data, of course, are derived from the official records, since we have no survey data on the non- respondent group.) More sophisticated analyses of 

these data (not shown) produced identical results. In 

Michigan, then, we can conclude with considerable confidence that respondents and non-respondents did not 

differ with respect to any variable maintained in the 

official criminal justice records, 

Comparisons between "official" and survey data among 

the 265 men for whom we have both show an extremely 

high correspondence on most variables. The correlation between the two marital status variables is .84; 

between the two race variables, .85; and between the 

two age variables, .91. Since all these correlations are short of perfect, there is clearly some error in 

the data (either or both sets); the magnitude of these 

correlations, however, implies a generally high reliability in the self-reports of major demographic cha

acteristics. 

Analysis of the self-reported data on criminal activi

ties is restricted to information about the conviction 

offense and is complicated by (i) multiple conviction 

offenses (in both records) for much of the sample, a

(ii) the inherently ambiguous meaning of many crime 

categories. In general, it can be assumed that the 

self-reported conviction offense is an account in col

loquial language of what the felon actually did; the 

"official" conviction offense is a label from the 

wording used in the state Criminal Code that is the 

official designation of the crime of which the felon 

was convicted (or to which he pleaded guilty). Thus

there are plausible reasons other than reporting erro

that would cause the self-reported and official con- viction offenses to disagree. 

This in mind, it is perhaps remarkable that the conviction offense data are as consistent as they are. The measure of consistency we employed is the prop

tion of cases in which the official and survey data 

agree on the conviction offense. To illustrate, a ma

who told us he was in prison for rape is considered 

"consistent case" if there is at least one "official" 

conviction offense that is a rape, no matter what 

other conviction offenses are also present in the official record for the commitment. The man is also 

considered a consistent case if he does not give rap

as a conviction offense and there is no rape charge 

be found within the official record. 

All told, the 261 Michigan 'felons for whom we have 

survey data had 459 official conviction offenses in 

their records. "Consistency rates" by type of crime are as follows: Robbery, 79%. Burglary or breaking 

and entering, 82%. Larceny, 84%. Assault, 84%. 

Rape, 90%. Auto theft, 92%. Murder 92%. All of 

these, obviously, are large proportions of consistent 

responses and reflect a comforting degree of conver- gence between the official and self-reported data. 

The principal conclusions to be derived from the for

going analysis are straightforward: In the one site 

where we could inquire, we found no systematic diffe

ences between respondents and non-respondents (no 

selection bias); likewise, for the few variables where 

a comparison was possible, the agreement between se

reported and "official" data was acceptably close (no 

reporting bias). Whether these patterns generalize 

our other sites is an open question; however, most o

the patterns revealed in this analysis are in accord 

with those reported by Marquis (1981).4 

4. In fairness, Michigan was undoubtedly one of our more succ

ful sites, most of all in regard to the response rate. Of the 

men initially sampled in Michigan, 74 had become ineligible by 

time we arrived: some had been transferred elsewhere, others 

been paroled or released, etc. This left 330 eligible responde

of whom 265 completed a questionnaire, for a response rate of 

Whether the conclusions advanced in the text in regard to the 

sence of non-response bias would generalize to the sites where 

response rate was not nearly so good is, of course, uncertain. 

4 Background and Methodo
Sample Description 

The general circumstances of the prison population in 

America are reasonably well-known: in the aggregate, 

prisoners tend to be young males from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. In these regards, our sample was no exception. More than twothirds of the sample (6996) were under age thirty, just 

about half (5096) were white, fewer ~han two-fifths 

(3996) had completed as much as 12 years of schooling, 

and, when employed, most tended to have held down jobs 

that were close to the bottom in wages and skill 

levels ,5 

Selected socio-demographic characteristics of the 

total US state prisoner population are given in the 

1981 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 

(Flanagan et al., 1981: 485-486), Comparisons between our sample demographics and the data from this 

source show that our sample closely resembles the 

total US state prisoner population on most variables.6 

Marriage and Family Background 

Most ( 6396) of the prisoners in the sample had never been married; among the two-fifths who had been mar- ried at one or another time, nearly half experienced a 

marital breakup, whether through divorce, separation, or death. At the time of the survey, the married proportion of the sample was just under one fifth. An 

additional quarter were ''living with a girlfriend" 

prior to their incarceration. About three fifths 

( 6296) claimed to have fathered a child, a rather high 

level of fertility considering their average age and 

marital status. 

The families of origin of the men in the sample tend 

to have been rather large. A mere 296 claimed to have 

had no brothers or sisters, and the median number of 

siblings reported was 5.0 (mean = 5.3). On avera~e, 

then, the men in the sample were one of six children 

in their family of origin; about 1496 were one of ten 

or more children. 

The siblings of our sample are of some interest. Over 

half (5496) reported having a brother or sister who was arrested at one or another time; nearly two-fifths 

(3996) had brothers or sisters who also served prison or jail sentences. Also of considerable interest: 

half the respondents ( 5296) reported havin~ siblings 

who owned rifles or shotguns, and nearly as many (4496) 

reported siblings who owned handguns. About a fifth 

5. About two-fifths of the sample (3996) said they were unemployed 

at the time thev were last arrested, some four times the national 

unemployment rate.· Among those with a job at any time during the 

year prior to Imprisonment, weekly take home pay avera~~;ed $226. 

Most of the sample (5496) felt they needed more meney than they were earning "to make ends meet." 

6. The principal exception to this conclusion Is that our sample 

appears to be a bit younger on the average than It "should" be. 

In the total state prisoner population of the country, 6396 are under the age of 30; In our sample, the fi~tUre was 6996. This disparity results from the Inclusion of the Michigan State Reformatory among the prisons where we Interviewed; the Reformatory houses mainly youthful offenders ages 16 - 24. Excluding the 

Michigan cases, the per cent of the remaining sample under age 30 

is 6496. 

of the sample (1896) had a brother or sister who showe

them how to shoot a gun. 

Most (about 8496) of the sample grew up in a home wit

the father (or, at minimum, a "man of the house") 

present. Many of the fathers. themselves lived "outside the law." About a quarter of the fathers were re- ported as having been arrested at some point in their 

lives; just under a fifth (1896) had served prison 

time. 

Most of our respondents were raised in homes with 

firearms present. About 7096 of the fathers were reported as having owned a shoulder weapon; well over 

half ( 5796) as having owned a handgun· more than a third (3596~, as having carried his handgun with him 

outside the home. Among those with a father present 

and with non-missing data on both relevant questions 

( N = 1441), 7596 answered "yes" to either the rine/ 

shotgun or the handgun question, or both. Since only 

about half of all US households possess a firearm of 

any sort (Wright et al., 1983: Ch. 5), it is therefore 

clear that the sample originates disproportionately in 

social groups where gun ownership is high. 

The Timing of Significant Life Events 

Some appreciation of the childhood and adolescent ex- periences of our respondents can be gleaned from Tab

2, which reports data from a series of questions asking about the ages at which certain significant experiences occurred.7 

All told, the questionnaire asked about eighteen such 

life events. On the average, the first of the eighteen to have occurred was firing a gun, which happene

on average early in the thirteenth year. During the same year, the average respondent also had sex with 

woman for the first time; about midway through the 

fourteenth year, the average respondent got drunk for 

the first time. Prior to the sixteenth birthday, the 

average respondent had also stolen something worth 

more than $50, acquired his first shoulder weapon, an

smoked marijuana for the first time. The average re

spondent, In other words, was "into" sex, drugs, guns

and crime before he was even legally eligible to drive 

In most states. 

During the sixteenth year, the average respondent 

"came of age", that is, obtained his first full-time 

job, moved out of the parental household for the first 

time, and experienced his first arrest. On average, our respondents were first arrested at age 16.6 years 

and were living on their own bv age 16.8 years. 

7. To facilitate comprehension of the data shown in Table ?, we have arranged the various life events In rank order according to 

the average age at which each first occurred to the men In the 

sample. Note, however, that the standard deviations around thes

averages are relatively large. The rank ordering shown in the 

Table, In short, amounts to a presentational convenience and 

should not be Interpreted as an Invariant causal sequence. 

Sample Description 
Table 2 

The Timing of Significant Life Events 

Mean so Median N1 Percent Percent 

"Never" Missing 

Current Age 27.8 8.1 26.0 1834 2.1 

Age when R 

first: 

Fired a gun 13.2 4.4 13.0 1677 8.6 1.9 

Had sex 13.7 2.9 13.8 1821 1.0 1.9 

Got drunk 14.5 3.5 14.4 1679 8.5 1.9 

Stole $50+ 15.1 4.6 14.7 1463 19.1 2.8 

Got long gun 15.1 4.6 14.8 1233 31.0 3.2 

Smoked pot 15.8 5.6 14.7 1544 15.0 2.7 

Had fulltime 

job 16.4 2.6 16.2 1729 6.0 1.7 

Got arrested 16.6 5.7 15.8 1841 0.9 0.9 

Lived on own 16.8 3.1 16.7 1687 8.5 1.5 

Did hard drugs 17.1 4.5 16.4 1113 36.7 3.9 

Sawed off gun 17.8 4.1 16.8 372 74.3 5.8 

Got hand gun 18.1 5.6 17.1 1154 34.7 3.7 

Hurt someone 18.8 7.0 17.2 937 46.1 3.9 

Did felony 19.0 6.8 17.6 1791 4.4 

Convicted 19.2 6.4 17.8 1831 1.2 1.2 

Sent to 

prison 19.2 6.4 17.8 1830 1.2 1.2 

Did armed 

crime 19.8 7.0 17.9 1110 36.8 4.0 

Did handgun 

crime 19.8 7.1 18.0 819 51.2 5.1 

l.:Sample size for which mean, SO, and median have been computed. 

Early in the seventeenth year, our average respondent 

had also begun experimenting with hard drugs; as we 

discuss later, about a third (3196, N = 1659) were destined eventually to become druj;f addicts, and roughly 

another third (3096, N = 1665), to become alcoholics. 

Between the eighteenth and twentieth birthdays, the 

life of our average respondent went from bad to worse: 

he 'Obtained his first handgun, on avera~e, at age 18.1 

years, seriously hurt or tried to kill someone at age 

Table 3 

Juvenile Criminality 

(1) "What kind of crime was your first pretty serious crime?" 

Burglary ••.••.••• 22% 

Robbery ••.••••••• 20% 

Theft, Larceny ••• 11% 

Auto Theft ••.•.•• 10% 

(N = 1707) 

(2) "How often did you do crimes before 

Never Once A Few 

Assault (. 73) 1 53 9 24 

Burglary ( • 78) 41 8 24 

Drug Related (.75) 62 2 13 

Murder (. 61) 92 5 2 

Rape (.60) 94 4 2 

Robbery (. 68) 67 7 15 

Armed Robbery (.70) 73 6 11 

Theft (.66) 35 9 25 

Assault •••..•••• 10% 

Drug related •••• 5% 

Homicide ••••..•• 6% 

All others •.•••• 16% 

age 18?" 

Dozens/ 

10-15 Hundreds (N=) 

6 8 1749 

8 18 1746 

4 18 1738 

1 1702 

1697 

4 7 1727 

3 7 1710 

9 22 1758 

1. Correlation with corresponding question about adult 

criminality. 

8 Sample Description 

1!!.8 years, committed his first felony at age 19.0 

years, was first convicted and sent to prison or som

other. correc.tio~al facility at age 19.2 years, and 

committed hiS first armed crime at age 19.8 years. 

The life histories of the sample during its twenties 

can be summarized rather more quickly: most of ear

adulthood was spent in prison. The mean age of the

sample is 27.8 years; the mean age at first imprison

ment, 19.2 years. On avera~e, then, 8.6 years tran

pired between the first imprisonment and the time o

our study. The average respondent spent 5.0 of tho

years behi.nd bars, typically not all of it in a single 

stretch: mdeed, the average respondent' in the stud

had been arrested 9.9 times, convicted 4.3 times and 

imprisoned 3.1 times, by the time we interviewed' him

Juvenile Criminality 

Several recent studies have suggested that, like dia

betes, "early onset" is the fatal form of the crimina

disease. That is, high rate criminals usually share 

the common characteristic of having committed fairl

serious and fairly frequent crimes while they were 

still juveniles. Our survey obtained several items o

information about juvenile criminality; see Table 3. 

On the average, as we have already noted, the men 

this sample commenced their criminal careers about 

midway in their teens: by age 15, the average respondent had already committed a non-trivial theft, 

age 16 and a half, had already been arrested, and by 

age 19, had committed his first "pretty serious" 

crime. 

A follow-up to this latter question asked what the 

felon's first "pretty serious" crime had been. Most 

of the sample's first felonies were economic crimes: 

burglary, robbery, or theft. Burglary and robbery 

were by far the most common "entry" crimes, mentio

by 2296 and 2096 respectively. Theft and automobile 

theft were also rather frequent, mentioned by 11% a

10%. About a tenth entered their criminal career w

an assault; some 696 entered with a homicide. 

8. The life history of a "typical" felon is often discussed in 

terms of what might be called "retarded development," especia

in regard to late adolescence and early adulthood. At a time 

life when most young males are completing their schooling, ge

married, starting a family, and launching themselves into adul

careers, the ''typical" felon is already in prison. Since pris

provides few or no opportunities to start a family or to accum

late seniority and experience in a "real world" job, the typica

felon's life cycle development is, accordingly, retarded, and a

such, at age thirty, he tends to resemble more a twenty year 

in terms of educational attainment, marital status, and employ

history. This pattern is frequently cited as at least part of 

explanation for the adjustment difficulties faced by many felon

subsequent to their release from prison. As is clear from the 

text, our sample also showed these same general tendencies. 

There is, however, another aspect of the patterning of life eve

that has not received as much attention, which might be calle

"accelerated development" in the early adolescent years. Stat

simply, our felons started doing "adult" things--having sex, ge

ting drunk, doing drugs, leaving home, and so on-early in the

teenage years, much earlier, we suspect, than ''normal" teenag

males. Thus, while many of these men resembled twenty year 

at age thirty, many also resembled twenty year olds at age fo

teen or fifteen. It Is as though they rushed very quickly Int

the stage of "late adolescence," and then managed to remain a

more or less the same stage well into their early middle age. 
Regardless of the response to the "first serious 

crime" question, each felon was given a list of common 

crimes and asked how frequently he had committed each 

crime "before you were 18 years old." Again economic 

crimes lead the list. About two thirds (65%) had committed at lea~t one non-trivial theft before age 18, 

about three fifths had committed at least one burglary, _and a third had committed at least one robbery. 

Also, JUSt under half (47%) had comn'iitted at least one assault. 

Early involvement with drugs is also indicated in 

these results: about two-fifths had done drug dealing or sales before age 18. The only crimes which large 

majorities had not done before age 18 are therefore 

murder and rape (92% and 94% "never," respectively). 

Only 18% of the men who answered the juvenile crime 

sequence responded "never" to all eight questions. 

Thus, more than four fifths of our respondents had 

committed at least one of these crimes prior to their 

eighteenth birthday. 

The rate at which these crimes were committed while 

the felon was a juvenile is strongly correlated with 

the rate at which they were committed after the felon 

became an adult. Each man was asked how often he had ever done each of these crimes as well as how often 

he had done them before age 18; correlation coefficients for the resulting pairwise comparisons range from 

.60 (rape) to .78 (burglary). It is therefore clear, 

following other recent findings, that juvenile criminality is an important predictor of adult criminality. 

Drug Abuse 

We indicated earlier that the men in. this sample began 

experimenting with drugs (including alcohol) at a relatively early age. For many, these early drug experi- ences were only the opening events in a life-long 

history of chemical dependence and substance abuse. 

About a third (29%) had been alcoholics by their own admission; likewise, about a third (31%) had been drug 

addicts, and an equivalent portion (29%) had been admitted to a drug or alcohol rehabilitation program at 

some· time. The crosst.abulation of the "alcoholic?" a~d '~drug addict?" questions revealed that 54% ( N = 1649) .claimed never to have been either; 14% had been 

both. If we take self-admitted dependency on either 

alcohol or drugs (or both) as the definition of "serious" drug abuse, then 46% of the sample would qualify. 

Many of the men who did not admit to outright drug addiction did admit to a heavy pattern of drug use. 

Each man was presented with a list of eleven commonly 

used illicit drugs and asked how frequently he had 

used each of them before coming to prison. Majorities 

ranging from 51% to 81% claimed never to have used 

barbiturates (51% "never"), psychedelics (59% 

"never"), opium (62% "never"), PCP (63% "never"), 

heroin ( 66% "never"), and methadone ( 81% '!never"). In 

the remaining cases, however, the majority had used 

the drug at least once. 

Unsurprisingly, alcohol and marijuana were the most 

commonly used drugs among this sample, by far. A mere 7% of the sample claimed neve'!' to have used alcohol; 

27% used alcohol "almost all qf the time." The cor- responding percentages for marijuana were 16% and 31%. 

Hashish, amphetamines, and cocaine were also frequen

ly used. 

As noted, some 46% of the sample was substance depe

ent. An upper boundary to the true fraction of drug 

abusers in the sample can be obtained by defining 

"serious drug abuse" to mean using any one of the 

eleven drugs "many times" or "almost all of the time." 

Only 26% of the total sample claimed not to have used 

any of these drugs many times or all the time; as a 

percentage of the subsample who answered at least on

of the drug questions, the figure is 16%, Thus, some

where between three-quarters and five-sixths of the 

sample used one or more of the eleven drugs either 

frequently or regularly. 

To get some sense of the financial burdens imposed by 

these drug use patterns, we asked the drug users how 

much they had been spending for drugs "in the average 

week." Heroin users (N = 192) were averaging about $5

a week on heroin, but with a high variation around 

that average; alcohol users (N = 1297) were averaging 

about $13 a week on alcohol; users of all other drugs 

(N = 900) were averaging about $27 per' week for drugs 

of various sorts. (Users who said they were not 

spending anything for their drugs are omitted from 

these calculations.) 

Not all men in the sample answered the questions abou

drug costs; many who did answer gave a non-numeric r

sponse (e.g., "a lot," "not much," "all the money I 

had," etc.). Excluding both these sources of missing 

data, there are 1,432 men who gave complete numerical 

information on their drug expenses. Of these, only 

11% were spending nothing in the average week for 

either drugs or alcohol; an additional 3596 'incurred 

only modest drug costs ($1-49). The remainder, some 

54% of the sample, were spending at least $50 a week on drugs; 37% were spending $100 a week or more.9 

Finally, we asked each man if he had been drunk. or 

high on drugs when he committed the crime for which h

was now in prison. M6st had been: 41% said they were 

drunk, 37% said they were high; 57% had been either 

drunk or high (or both); '18% had been drunk and high. 

These and other results reported above make it clear 

that the drug problem and the crime problem are inti.-

mately related. 

9. The relationship between drug use and drug addiction is much 

one would expect. Among those who used alcohol "almost all the 

time" (N = 445), 68% said they were or had been alcoholics; amo

the regular heroin users (used heroin ''many times" or almost all 

the time, N = 216 ), 90% were or had been heroin addicts. 

Only 22% of the sample said they "never" used drugs; another 27

said they only took drugs from time to time. A small group, 12%

used drugs only on weekends. The remainder, nearly two fifths, 

did drugs just about every day, 

About a third (35%) confessed to having committed at least one property crime because they needed drug money; 13% of the samp

had done so "many times." The tendency to have done so was pos

tively and significantly related to all 11 questions on drug 

usage, with the correlation coefficient ranging from .21 to .41. 

The strongest correlation was for heroin use (.41), followed by methadone use (.38) .and barbituate use (,36), 

On the. relationship between drug use and criminal violence, see also Inciardi (1981). 

Sample Descn:lptlon 
A Typology of Armed Criminals 

Although compared to the general male population, the men in our sample appear to be quite homogeneous in 

their socio-economic backgrounds, they did vary con- siderably among themselves in the kind and amount of 

their criminal activities, and, most importantly for 

present purposes, in their patterns of weapons use. To capture this variability, we have developed a typology of armed criminals that figures prominently in 

all subsequent analyses. 

The typology was constructed using information from 

the questionnaire about (i} the type of weapon most 

commonly carried or used in the commission of crimes 

(no weapon, a knife or a club, a handgun, or whatever), and (ii) for the subset of firearms users specifically, the frequency of criminal weapons use. Initially, the sample was sorted into categories ac- cording to their responses to the following two 

questions: 

(1) "Thinking now about all the crimes you have ever done in your life ••• Have you ever used a weapon 

t'ii"'"Commit a crime or had any kind of weapon with you 

while you were committing a crime? 

(2) IF YES Still thinking about all the crimes you 

have ~ done ..• Have you ever used a K!!!l to 

commit a crime or ever had a K!!!l with you while you were committing a crime?" 

The information from these two questions was supplemented with information on the specific ~ of 

weapons used and on the frequency with which armed 

crimes had been committed. The end result was the 

following typology: 

Unarmed Criminals ( N = 725 or 39%) 

... prisoners for whom we could find no positive evidence anywhere in the questionnaire that they had ever 

used any weapons of any sort in committing their 

crimes. 

Improvisors (N = 79 or 496) 

... men who had used weapons, but not guns or knives, 

in their crimes, usually a variety of ready-to-hand 

weapons. 

Knife Criminals ( N = 134 or 796) 

... men who used predominately knives and never firearms in committing their crimes. 

One-Time Firearms Users (N = 257 or 1496) 

... men who had committed one and only one gun crime 

(whatever the type of gun they used). 

Sporadic Handgun Users (N = 257 or 1496) 

... men who have used a handgun "a few times" in com- mitting crimes, but never a rifle or shotgun. 

Handgun Predators ( N = 321 or 1796) 

... men who have used handguns "many," "most," or "all" 

of the time in committing their crimes. 

Shotgun Predators ( N = 101 or 596) 

... men who claimed shoulder weapons as their most 

frequently used weapons and who committed more than 

one crime with such weapons. Since most of these 

persons specialized in the use of sawed off shotguns, 

we use the term Shotgun Predators for this group. It 

should be noted, however, that a few of them used 

other types of shoulder weapons instead. 

It must be stressed that these typological categories 

do not represent "pure" types, in that many felons 

appear to carry several weapons, a handgun and a knif

being the most common combination. To illustrate, 3796 

of the Handgun Predators, and 5396 of the Shotgun Pre

ators, were carrying more than one weapon during thei

conviction offense. 

As one would expect, there were sharp differences 

across these seven groups in their patterns of prior 

criminality (Table 4). The modal conviction offense 

among the Unarmed was burglary and breaking and ent

ing, mentioned by 2896, followed by robbery (1496), 

theft (1096), and rape (1096). The robbery percentage 

for the group was the lowest of all, and they were 

also much less likely than any other group to be doing 

time for aggravated assault. 

The Improvisers are rather more distinctive. First, 

unlike any other group, the modal conviction offense 

for the Improvisors was homicide, mentioned by 2896. 

Indeed, their homicide percentage was the highest of 

all and was more than twice the percentage registered 

for the total sample. The group's figure for aggravated assault was also distinctively higher than the 

average--2296 vs. 1396 in the total sample • 

It would therefore appear likely that our category of 

Improvisors contains a fair-sized proportion of socalled criminals of passion--not hardened, calculating felons. Consistent with this depiction, their 

robbery percentage was among the lowest recorded in 

the table. 

Among Knife Criminals, the modal conviction offense 

was burglary ( 2496), followed closely by robbery ( 2296)

then aggravated assault (1896), rape (1696), and homicide (1596). The Knife Criminals, interestingly, were 

much more likely to be doing time on a rape charge 

than any of the other groups. 

Finally, as might be anticipated, the modal conviction 

offense among all four categories of firearms criminal 

was robbery, with percentages ranging from 3796 to 509

Among the One-Time Firearms Users, robbery was followed by homicide (2196), then aggravated assault 

(1896). In the remaining three categories, burglary 

was the next most frequently mentioned conviction offense, followed in turn by either aggravated assault or some kind of weapons charge. It should also be 

noted that the Predators (both groups) showed the 

highest average number of conviction offenses of any 

group. 

Typology of Armed Criminals 
Table 4 

Conviction Offense Data (Self-Reported) by Criminal Type 

Total UNA IMP KNI ONE 

N = 1874 725 79 134 257 

SPO 

257 

HGP SGP 

321 101 

Conviction 

Offense 

Arson 1 

Simple Assault 4 

ADW 13 

Auto Theft 7 

Burglary 25 

Counterfeiting 1 

Drug 

Possession 7 

Drug Sales 6 

Forgery 5 

Fraud 1 

Kidnapping 4 

Homicide 12 

Manslaughter 3 

Stolen 

Property 5 

Rape 9 

Other Sex 

Offense 6 

Robbery 30 

Theft 10 

Weapons 

Charge 10 

X N of 

1 

4 

5 

6 

28 

1 

6 

7 

6 

1 

3 

6 

2 

4 

10 

8 

14 

10 

3 

3 

4 

22 

3 

25 

0 

4 

3 

1 

0 

5 

28 

1 

5 

7 

3 

25 

12 

3 

(% YES)2 

4 0 

6 3 

18 18 

7 6 

24 12 

2 0 

2 3 

4 5 

3 3 

2 0 

5 5 

15 21 

5 6 

2 2 

16 7 

6 4 

22 37 

9 7 

9 13 

1 

2 

13 

6 

27 

0 

7 

4 

3 

1 

3 

9 

2 

5 

8 

4 

50 

9 

11 

1 

5 

16 

9 

26 

0 

12 

6 

4 

1 

5 

14 

2 

8 

7 

4 

44 

14 

21 

2 

5 

27 

11 

28 

1 

9 

6 

4 

4 

9 

13 

3 

8 

4 

5 

40 

16 

23 

Conviction 

Offenses 1.51 1.21 1.47 1.57 1.48 1.61 1.99 2.01 

Armed at 

the Time?2 

YES 

NO 

(N =) 

IF ARMED: 

with what?3 

% Handgun 

% Any Long Gun 

% Any Knife 

% Any "Other" 

54 

46 

1 

99 

62 

38 

79 

21 

82 

18 

(1509) (470) (69) (122) (232) 

(N =) 810 

59 

25 

41 

22 

6 43 

9 

0 

9 

79 

96 191 

3 70 

5 

88 

7 

24 

16 

3 

71 80 

29 20 

(231) (299) 

165 239 

73 81 

17 24 

23 34 

6 13 

81 

19 

(86) 

70 

34 

63 

51 

23 

X N of Weapons Mentioned 1.4 0.6 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.8 2.4 

% Carrying 2 or More 

Weapons 

Other 

X Prior 

Arrests 

X Prior 

Convictions 

23 5 6 12 19 37 53 

9.9 6.7 8.9 9.7 7·5 12.3 16.4 14.4 

(1680) (650) (72) (126) (229) (231) (293) (79) 

4.3 3.3 4.4 4.7 3.2 5.0 6.4 4.8 

(1748) (672) (75) (126) (238) (244) (305) (88) 

X Prior Incar-Kx 3.1 2.6 3.5 3.7 2.7 3.4 

(74) (125) (230) (240) 

3.8 3.8 

cerations (1719) (665) (300) (85) 

1. Categories of TYPE: UNA • Unarmed Criminal, IMP = 

Improvisor, KNI • Knife Criminal, One • One~Timer, SPO • Sporadic, HGP • Handgun Predator, SGP = Shotgun Predator. 

2. Missing data omitted item by item. 

3. Multiple responses are possible. 

10 Typology of Anned Criminals 

The question on conviction offense was followed by a 

sequence asking for some details about the incident, 

specifically, whether the offender had been armed wi

any kind of weapon at the time. These data are also 

shown In Table 4. In the total sample, just over hal

(54%) had been armed during their conviction offens

a figure that varied from 1% (of the Unarmed) to 82

(of the One-Timers). In general, the "armed at the 

time?" question gave the results one would expect: 

about four fifths of the Handgun Predators, Shotgun 

Predators, One-Time Firearms Users, and Knife Crim

nals had been armed during the conviction crime, as had been 71% of the Sporadic Handgun Users and 62% 

the Improvisors. As is obvious from the table, most 

were armed with the weapon one would expect given 

their placement within the typology. 

The survey contained additional questions asking abo

all the crimes the respondents had ever committed (

just the conviction offense). Summarizing briefiy, 

the Predators (both groups) were the most likely to 

have committed every kind of crime we asked about 

(rape being the only exception), and to have commit

each kind of crime at a higher than average rate. In 

all cases, the reported information on weapons use in 

these crimes was consistent with the respondent's 

placement within our typology. 

In order to summarize the information contained in t

criminal history sequence, we created a "total criminality" index. The sequence asked about seven major 

crime types: assault, burglary, drug dealing, homicide, rape, robbery, and theft. Seriousness scores 

for each of these seven crime types were derived fro

recent work published by Wolfgang (1980) in which a 

national sample of Americans was asked to rate the 

seriousness of a large number of different crimes. 

Wolfgang's scores were used to weight the frequencie

recorded for each of the seven crime types. 

Table 5 shows the means and standard deviations of 

resulting Total Criminality Index, first for the total 

sample then separately for each of the seven categor

ies of the typology. The numbers do not have any i

tuitively obvious meaning except that the higher the 

Total Criminality Index, the more serious and more 

frequent was the total set of crimes admitted by the 

felon. 

Table 5 

"Total Criminality" by Criminal Type 

I so SUM % of TOTAL 

TOTAL 139 190 260,285 100% 

Unarmed 61 113 44,011 17% 

Improvisors 101 140 8,005 3% 

Knife Criminals 109 129 14,560 6% 

One-Time 84 136 21,677 8% 

Sporadic 151 158 38,773 15% 

Handgun Predators 332 232 106,453 41% 

Shotgun Predators 265 269 26,807 10% 
The overall sample mean was 139. As would be ex- pected, the lowest category mean was found for the 

Unarmed Criminals (mean = 61), followed, interestingly, by the One Time Firearms Users (mean = 84). 

Judging from the "total criminality" result, these two 

categories contained mostly "soft-core" felons--men 

who had committed fewer crimes and less serious crimes 

than the others. 

The Improvisers (mean = 101) and the Knife Criminals 

(mean = 109) formed a second distinctive cluster--

clearly more criminal overall than the Unarmed and the 

One-Timers, but well below the remaining categories. 

Then, about midway between this last set of categories 

and the truly high rate felons, one finds the Sporadic 

Handgun Users (mean = 151). 

Finally, there are the Predators, whose scores were 

sharply higher than the scores obtained in any of the 

other categories. Among the Shotgun Predators, the 

mean = 265, and among the Handgun Predators, who are clearly the most active and most violent of them all, 

the mean = 332. The men we have labelled Predators are clearly omnibus felons who, one imagines, com- mitted more or less any crime they had the opportunity 

to commit. 

As shown in the third column of the table, the sum of 

the "total criminality" index over the entire sample was about 260,000. The percentage of this total sum 

accounted for by each of the seven categories is shown 

in the fourth column. 

The Unarmed Criminals amounted to about 39% of the 

total sample, but accounted for only 17% of the total 

crime this sample has committed. The Predators (handgun and shotgun combined), in contrast, amounted to 

about 22% of the sample and yet accounted for 51% of 

the total crime. If one adds the Sporadics in, we are dealing with just over a third of the total sample and 

just under two-thirds of the total crime. Thus, when we talk about "controlling crime" in the United States 

today, we are talking largely about controlling the 

behavior of these men. 

Typology ot Armed Crimina
Patterns of Weapons Ownership and Use 

Overall Patterns 

Data on gun ownership and use among our respondents 

show that three quarters of the men had owned one or 

more firearms at some time in their lives. (This 

amounts to just over 1300 men, the subsample on which 

all the rest of this section is based.) A little more 

than 'lalf ( 5796) owned a gun at the time of their last 

arrest; of these, most ( 7896) owned a handgun; 3496 

owned a rifle, and 4496 owned a shotgun. 

Men in the sample who had ever owned guns tended to 

have owned them in what appear to be fairly large numbers. Indeed, the modal number of guns of all types 

ever owned was "more than ten," and the average (mean) 

number ever owned among those having owned at least 

one was 6.6 firearms. This can be loosely contrasted 

with the average number of guns owned among all US 

families owning at least one gun, which is about 3.2 

firearms (Wright et al., 1983: 40).10 

Gun owning criminals were also much more likely ever to have owned handguns than gun-owning families at 

large appear to be. Available data suggest that about a quarter of all US families, and thus about a half of 

all gun-owning families, possess at least one handgun 

(Wright et al., 1983: Chs. 2 - 5); among the men in 

our sample who had ever owned any firearm, 8796 had 

owned at least one handgun. 

As with firearms in general, these men also tended to 

have owned handguns in large numbers: again, the 

modal response to the "how many handguns" question was "more than ten" and the mean number owned among those 

ever owning at least one was 6.2 handguns: liJore than 

three quarters of those ever owning any firearm had 

also owned at least one shotgun and a similar proportion had owned at least one rifle. 

Men who had ever owned a gun were asked whether they 

had ever registered any of their guns with police or 

other authorities, and also whether they had ever applied for a permit to purchase or carry. their guns. 

The strong majority response was "no" m both cases ( 7596 and 8596 respectively). In general, the tenden.cy 

not to have done these things was about the same m 

every state, regardless of state laws mandating one or 

the other of these measures. 

Most of the gun owners in the sample (6196) made it a 

practice to keep their gun ( s) lo~ded at all ti~~s; how 

this compares with normal practice among legttlmate 

gun owners is unknown. 

10. We stress that this is a loose contrast only. The figure re- ported in the text for the average number of guns owned amon~~; gun 

owning US families is based on responses to a question about the 

number of guns presently owned; the question in our survey asks 

how many guns the felon has ever owned. So far as we know, a question on the number ever owned has never been asked in a na- tional survey of gun owners; bv definition, it would have to be 

greater than 3.2, and could conceivably be much greater than 3.2. 

It is certainly possible, in other words, that the average number 

of guns ever owned by felons is no greater than the average ever owned by gun owners in general. 

Interestingly, only 2896 of our gun owners said that 

they had ever acquired a gun specifically for use in 

crime. Since at least half of our respondents had 

committed at least one gun crime at some point in 

their lives, it follows directly that many of the 

firearms that are ultimately used in crime are not 

acquired specifically for that purpose. -

Regarding the actual uses of guns, almost half (4996) 

of the gun owners admitted to having threatened to 

shoot someone at some time. Apparently, these were 

not idle threats: half of the sample also claimed to 

have actually fired their guns at human targets at 

some time. A crosstabulation of these two items sho

ed that among those who had ever threatened to shoo

someone, 7596 actually did. 

liJen who indicated that they had actually fired a gun 

at somebody (military service excluded) were asked 

about the circumstances in which this took place. T

most common circumstance by far, mentioned by 6696, 

one in which the felon felt the need "to protect 

myself." The next most common circumstance mention

for firing a gun at somebody was ''while committing a crime" (noted by 3996), followed by "during a gang 

fight" (3296), while leaving the scene of a crime 

( 2996), during a drug deal ( 2996), and "in a bar or 

tavern" (2796). All other possibilities were noted by 

2096 or less. 

Men who indicated that they had fired a gun at some

were asked whether they had managed to inflict a wo

in the process; most (6996) reported that they had. 

And of those who managed to inflict a wound, 8096 sa

they had intended to do so; accidental woundings wer

indicated in only 2096 of the relevant cases. 

Finally, we asked our gun owners how often they fired 

their guns. A tenth responded "never," and another 

third said only once or a few times a year. On the 

other hand, the majority ( 5796) fired their gun ( s) on

a month or more, on the average; and almost a fifth 

fired them several times a week. It would be useful 

to compare these results with comparable data on legitimate firearms owners, but the relevant data do n

exist. 

It would be wrong to infer from the above results tha

most of these firings involved some sort of criminal 

activity. Most of the gun firing that these men did 

would qualify as sporting or recreational. Indeed, 

the most common situation in which their guns were 

fired was "target shooting, plinking" (3596), hunting 

(1796), or a combination of target shooting and huntin

(1996). Adding "at a P,"Un club or shooting range" to 

the above three responses, sporting and recreational 

usage accounted for nearly three-quarters of the gun 

firing in this sample. The remaining quarter was 

divided nearly equally between firing "in self defense" (1496) and firing during the course of a crime 

(1196). 

Like other men of similar age and circumstances, the

men clearly used firearms rather frequently in sport 

and recreational applications; unlike other men, they 

Weapons Ownership and Us
also sometimes used them for illicit criminal purposes as well, to which we now turn attention. 

Patterns of Weapons Use: The Conviction 

Offense 

As indicated earlier, our study asked for considerable 

details concerning the weapons these men carried 

during their conviction offense. To set the stage, we 

note some of the circumstances of the conviction crime 

itself. According to their own reports, about 39% of 

our respondents were unemployed or looking for work at 

the time of their conviction crime; almost half (49%) 

were either ''broke" or "short on money"; and substantially more than half (57%) were either drunk, high on 

drugs, or both. Only about a quarter were "worried 

about getting caught." 

Although just over 60% of our sample had committed at 

least one armed crime at some point, only about 54% 

(of those who answered the relevant question; N = 

1509) were actually armed during the crime for which 

they were then in prison. This 54% amounts to 810 men 

who admitted to carrying a weapon during their con- viction offense, the subsample on which most of the 

following analysis is based. 

The handgun was, by far, the weapon of choice among 

those who were armed during the conviction offense. 

All told, 60% of these men (N = 796) were armed with a 

handgun at the time. About 15% were armed with sawedoff equipment; 11% were armed with unmodified shoulder 

weapons. About 40% carried a knife during the conviction offense; another 16% were armed with some 

other weapon (e.g., straight razor, brass knuckles, 

explosives, martial arts weapons, etc.) 

As is obvious from the total of these percentages, the 

carrying of multiple weapons during the conviction 

offense was fairly common. Of the 789 men who answered 

all the questions about the kinds of weapons carried 

during the conviction crime, 25% reported carrying more than one weapon, a handgun and a knife being the 

most common combination. (Almost ten percent reported carrying three or more weapons during the 

conviction offense.) As would be expected, the tendency to carry multiple weapons was especially pronounced 

among the Predator groups, among whom 43% were armed 

with more than one weapon during their conviction 

crime. (Among the Sporadics, the figure was about 

20%; and in the other categories of the typology, on the order of 10% or less.) 

Given this pattern of multiple weapons carrying, there 

is some ambiguity in sorting the sample out into fire- arms and non-firearms criminals. If, however, we give 

precedence to the carrying of a firearm (as in the 

development of the typology), then about threequarters (72%) of the men who were armed during the 

conviction offense were armed with a firearm of one 

sort or another (even if they were also armed with 

something else), and the remaining quarter (28%) were 

armed with something other than a firearm. The cross- tabulation of this variable with other items from the 

conviction offense sequence is shown in Table 6. 

Men who had been armed with a firearm during the conviction offense were asked whether the gun was actually fired during the crime. Surprisingly, nearly two14 Weapons Ownership and Use 

Table 6 

Weapons Use In Conviction Offenses 

During conviction offen

felon was armed with: 

Firearm 

(N=580) 

Something E

(N=230) 

1. Was the gun actually fired during the crime? 

NO 

YES 

61 

39 

2. Did you bring your weapon with you ••• , or get it at the 

scene? 

BROUGHT IT WITH ME 

GOT IT AT SCENE 

BOTH 

79 

12 

9 

66 

23 

11 

3. Did you actually use your weapon ••• in committing that crim

or did you just have it with you ••• 

JUST HAD IT 

ACTUALLY USED IT 

If II ACTUALLy USED IT: II How did you 

4. To Scare Victim: % YES 

(N) 

5. To Injure Victim: % YES 

(N) 

6. To Kill Victim: % YES 

(N) 

7. To Get Away: % YES 

(N) 

8. To Protect Myself: % YES 

(N) 

24 

76 

use·the weapbn? 

69 

(407) 

16 

(407) 

18 

(404) 

26 

(407) 

38 

(406) 

42 

58 

44 

(118) 

26 

(117) 

16 

(117) 

18 

(116) 

32 

(117) 

9. Did you plan to use the weapon in the way you did, or was something that just happened ••• 

PLANNED TO USE 44 26 

JUST HAPPENED 56 74 

N = (346) (103) 

fifths (39%) responded ~. which implies a notable 

readiness to use the weapon ( s) being carried. More 

detail on the firing of guns during the conviction offense is presented later. 

Another question in the sequence asked whether the 

felon brought his weapon ( s) with him to the scene o

the crime, or whether the weapon ( s) had been acquir

at the scene. The large majority of both types of 

felons brought their weapons with them: the majorities amounted to 79% of those who were armed with a firearm during the conviction crime and 66% of those 

armed with something else. Thus, most armed crime 

(whatever the type of weapon) apparently involves a

least some minimal degree of premeditation--enough 

advance thought, at least, to bring one's weapons 

along. 

To have carried a weapon during the conviction offen

is not necessarily the same as actually usinqo the 

weapon to commit the offense. We asked the sample 

whether they had actually used their weapon in com- mitting the crime, or whether they just had it with 

them. 'VIajorities of both types reported that they 
actually used the weapon in some way, but the majority was considerably larger (76%) among those armed with a gun than among those armed with "other" weapons (58%). 

Judging from these results, some three-quarters of the men who committed crimes while armed with a gun actually used the gun in some fashion in the course of 

that crime. 

Felons who indicated that they had in fact used the 

weapon in some way were then asked, "How did you use 

the weapon?" "To scare the victim" was by far the most common usage among both types, mentioned by 69% of 

those armed with a gun and 44% of those armed with 

other weapons. A principal motive for the use of 

weapons in crime, and especially for the use of guns 

in crime, is apparently to intimidate the victim into 

quick and ready capitulation to the offender's demands. "To protect myself'' was the next most frequent 

response in both categories, noted by 38% and 32% 

respectively. 

The use of weapons to injure or kill the victim was 

predictably much less common than the use of weapons 

for purposes of intimidation; still, 18% of those 

armed with a gun, and 16% of those armed with something else, said they used the weapon to kill the 

victim during their conviction offense. (It should be 

mentioned that about 15% of the total sample were doing time on a homicide or manslaughter charge.) 

Interestingly, the use of the weapon to injure the 

victim was somewhat more frequent among those armed 

with something else (26%) than among those armed with 

a gun (16%). This pattern is consistent with findings 

reported by Cook (1980) and others, namely, that in 

robberies at least, the overall injury rate is higher 

among non-gun robberies than among gun robberies (presumably because people who are being robbed at gun 

point are less likely to resist). 

The final question in the sequence asked those who had 

used their weapon in some way to commit the crime 

whether they had planned to use the weapon, or whether 

it "just happened." Advance planning for the use of 

the weapon was the minority report in both cases. Still, among those armed with a gun, some 44% 

indicated that they had planned to use the g-un in the 

way that they did. (Among the "something else" group, 

the figure was 26%). 

All told, there were 156 men in the sample who were 

armed with a gun during the conviction offense, who 

also used the gun in some way in committing that offense, and who, finally, indicated that they had 

planned on using the gun in the way that they did. As 

one might anticipate, most of these 156 men (73%, to 

be precise) were in prison on a robbery charge. Some 

27% were in on a weapons charge, 22% on an aggravated 

assault or "assault with a deadly weapon" charge, 15% 

on a burglary charge, and 10% on a homicide charge. 

(Given the total of these percentages, many of these 

men were clearly in prison on more than one charge, a 

robbery charge and a weapons violation being the most 

common combination.) Also unsurprisingly, 57% of them 

fell into the two predatory categories of our typology. 

Interestingly, among those who were armed with a gun 

during the conviction offense and who actually used 

the gun in committing the offense, the tendency to 

have fired the weapon was much lower among those who 

planned on using the gun than among those who did not. 

Among those who had planned on usin~ the weapon, 28% 

reported firing the weapon during the crime; among 

those who had not "plan(ned) on using the weapon in 

the way that you did," 70% report having fired the 

weapon. Percentaging in the other direction, only 24% 

of those who reported having fired their gun during 

the conviction offense also reported having planned t

use the weapon in that way. 

The strong implication of these findings is that most 

firings of guns in criminal situations are unplanned. 

The "plan," to the extent that there was one, was pre

sumably to intimidate the victim and to use the weap

to that end. The actual firing of the weapon was, one senses, a rather unwanted by-product of a situation 

that "goes sour" for whatever reason: the victim 

resisted rather than capitulated, the police arrived 

at the scene, or the offender encountered some difficulty in effectuating his escape. Whatever the 

reason, however, the finding is reasonably clear: 

most of the men who actually fired guns in criminal 

situations claimed to have had no prior intention of so doing.Il 

As would be expected, how the gun was in fact used 

a crime situation varied rather sharply depending on whether or not it was fired (Table 7). By far the 

most common use in the case of unfired weapons was 

intimidate the victim (89%); in contrast, the most 

common use in the case of fired weapons was "to pro

tect myself" (48%). Injury to the victim was predict

ably much more common in cases when the gun was fi

(26%) than when it was not (9%), as was the victim's 

death (36% to 3%). 

Table 7 

How Guns Are Used in Crimes, Depending on Whether Or Not 

They Were Fired: Conviction Offenses 

Was Gun Fired? 

"How did you use the weapon?" NO YES 

To Scare Victim: % YES 89 45 

(N) (218) (184) 

To Injure Victim: % YES 9 26 

(N) (218) (184) 

To Kill Victim: % YES 3 36 

(N) (217) (182) 

To Get Away: % YES 26 28 

(N) (218) (184) 

To Protect Myself: % YES 31 48 

(N) (217) (184) 

1. Table is based on those who were armed with a gun at the 

conviction offense, and who used the gun to commit the offe

11. On the other hand, it is worth emphasizing that 3996 of the 

in the sample who were armed with a gun during the conviction 

fense reported having fired it during that offense. Despite th

apparent lack of prior intention, in other words, these men cle

ly had· few compunctions about opening fire when the situation 

seemed to demand it. Perhaps the most sensible reading of thes

results is that while our felons appear not to have planned to 

pull the trigger, relatively few of them planned not to either. 

Weapons Ownership and Us
Patterns of Weapons Use: Other Offenses 

For most of our sample, the conviction crime is only 

the most recent in a fairly long series of criminal 

activities. Many of the questions that we asked about 

the conviction offenses were also asked about the more 

general use of weapons in committing crimes; results 

from these "more general" questions are reported in 

the present section. For simplicity, our four categories of Gun Criminals are collapsed into one for 

this analysis, as are the two cate~ories of "Armed 

Not with a Gun." ' 

As in the conviction offense data, handguns are by far 

the preferred weapon among gun criminals. Among those 

who had ever committed a gun crime, 90% had used a 

handgun for at least one of them; 85% stated that the 

handgun was the weapon they used most frequently. 

Next in popularity was the justly infamous sawed off 

shotgun, indicated as a crime weapon by 27% of the gun 

criminals and as the most frequent crime weapon by 9%. 

Percentages having used other kinds of firearms at 

least once in committing a crime were 16% for unmodified shotguns, 10% for unmodified rifles, and 7% for 

sawed off rifles. 

Men who had committed armed crime, but not with a gun, 

used mainly knives and a motley assortment of other 

weaponry. Among this group (N = 177), 38% had used a 

buck knife at least once and 24% Indicated the buck 

knife as the weapon used most frequently. Next in 

popularity was the pocket knife (34% having used one 

at least once, 23% indicating it as the most frequently used weapon) and the club (34% and 14% respectively). "Other" weapons used by these men included 

switchblades, hunting and butcher knives, brass 

knuckles, straight razors, mace, pieces of chain, 

martial arts weapons, baseball bats, etc. 

Both groups of armed criminals were asked how often 

they were armed when they did their crimes. The most 

substantial difference between the two groups was the 

percentage responding, "only once." Among the gun 

criminals, 26% claimed to have been armed only once 

(these, of course, are the One-Timers in our typology); amo~g the armed--not with a gun--group, the 

correspondmg percentage is 38%. About a third of 

both groups said they were armed "a few times." To 

have been armed "many times," "most of the time " or "all of the time" was characteristic of 40% of th~ gun 

criminals and 28% of the other group. 

Weapon Carrying Behavior 

The next question in the sequence was intended to explore the issue of habitual carrying of weapons. The 

question read as follows: 

"Some of the men we have talked to tell us they were in the habit of carrying a weapon with them pretty 

much all the time, even on days when they were not 

planning to do any crimes. Other men tell us that 

they were in the habit of carrying a weapon only in 

certain situations--for example, when they were ~oi

out drinking--again, whether they planned to do a 

crime or not. Still others tell us that they only 

carried a weapon when they ~ planning to do a 

crime. Which of these are you most like?" 

Responses were very similar for gun criminals and 

others (Table 8). The majority response in both cas

was to have carried weapons "only in certain situations," the pattern for 51% of the gun criminals and 

53% of the others. The next most frequent response 

Table 8 

Weapon Carrying Behavior by Weapon Type 

TYPE 

Other 

Carried a weapon: Gun Weapon 

All the Time 30 34 

Only in Certain 51 53 

Situations 

Only When Planning 19 13 

A Crime 

(N=) (788) (131) 

was to have carried a weapon all the time, the patte

for about a third of both groups. The least common 

pattern in both cases was to have carried a weapon 

only when planning a crime, indicated by 19% of the 

gun criminals and 13% of the others. It therefore a

pears that most of the weapons that are used in 

crimes, be they firearms or other weapons, were not 

carried specifically for that purpose. One should, o

course, not be misled by these results. To ask 

whether a felon carried a gun on days when he was "planning to do a crime" assumes that these men som

how "plan" their criminal activities. In contrast, as we have stressed, most of them were clearly opportunists whose "plan," so to speak, was to be ready 

whenever the opportunity presented itself. Among t

more predatory felons in the sample, committing crim

is an integral aspect of daily existence; it is not as though they wake up some mornings expecting to do 

crime (and therefore prepare themselves by carrying 

gun) and on other mornings expecting not to. In thi

context, the distinction between "general purpose" 

carrying and carrying specifically for criminal purposes becomes ambiguous to say the least. 

In by far the largest majority of cases, then, weapon

were available for use in crimes either because of a tendency to carry weapons all the time or through a practice of carrying weapons in particular situations

The follow-up questions concerning these "situations

were quite revealing. The most common by far was 

"whenever I thought I might need to protect myself," 

mentioned by 83-84% of both groups. 

Weapons Uses Other Offense
As we see later, self-protection figures prominently 

as a claimed motive in the weapons behavior of these 

men. Given the lifestyles involved, this is no doubt 

a genuine motive in some cases; in other cases, it is 

no more than a self-serving rationalization, if for no 

other reason than that men like these who carry guns 

routinely to "defend themselves" against the endemic 

violence of their environment contribute to the hostility of the environment by the very act. 

Other situations in which these men would tend to 

carry weapons include: when doing a drug deal (men- tioned by 47% of the relevant gun criminals and 30% of 

the others), when going to a strange part of the city 

(mentioned by 50% and 46%, respectively), "at night" 

(34% and 41%), when they were with others who were 

carrying weapons (34% and 23%), etc. Most of these 

are clearly variations on the "self defense" theme. 

We further note: a man who tends to carry a weapon 

whenever he thinks he might need to protect himself, 

or whenever he is going to a strange part of the city, 

or whenever it is dark out, etc. clearly tends to 

carry his weapon(s) on a pretty regular basis, if not 

quite "all the time." These points in mind, we appear 

to be dealing, in reality, with only two types of 

weapons carrying behavior--habitual carrying for general purposes, and premeditated carrying for the 

specific purpose of committing crimes. And it is the 

former pattern that predominated, quite heavily, among 

the armed criminals in our sample. 

An analysis of the "all the time" response to the 

carrying question showed that the strongest correlates 

were whether the felon's family, friends, and associates owned and/or carried firearms. The effects of 

gun ownership and carrying among the felon's associates and friends--"the people you hung around with 

before you came to this prison"--were particularly 

striking. One item asked how many of these people 

themselves owned a gun; responses correlated .20 with 

the tendency for the felon himself to carry "all the 

time." Another item asked how many of the felon's associates owned a handgun; responses to this item 

correlated .24 with the felon's own carrying. Still 

another item asked, "about how many of them ••• made a habit of carrying a handgun with them outside their 

home?" This item correlated .32 with the felon's own 

carrying behavior, and this was the single strongest 

correlate revealed in this analysis.12 

The implication, clearly, is that the single most important reason why a felon might decide to carry a gun 

12. It can also be mentioned in passim;:: that the carryin~t question 

being discussed in the text was quite strongly correlated with two 

other questions from much later in the survey on c~rrying behavior 

(r's = .55 and .56), su~esting a considerable degree of internal 

consistency in the questionnaire data. 

The correlation between a felon's carryin~t behavior and that of 

his associates admits of several interpretations, all probably 

correct to some degree. First, a felon's peers may influence his 

weapons carrying behavior in the same way that peers often influ- ence one's choice of clothing; peers, that is, may define "acceptable" patterns of behavior. In this case, the correlation would 

bespeak little more than conformity to group-defined norms. Secondly, armed peers might constitute a threat to the felon's 

safety; unarmed members of armed groups may be very vulnerable to 

bullying and coercion. Finally, it may be a simple matter of 

selection; men who routinely carry guns, that is, may elect to 

hang out with others who do the same. Nothing in our data would 

allow a choice among these possibilities. 

18 Weapons Use: Other Offenses 

more or less all the time is that he associates with 

other men who carry guns routinely. 

The tendency to carry "all the time" was also correlated with other aspects of weapons behavior. The 

carrying question, for example, correlated .24 with 

the number of guns ever owned and .30 with the numb

of handguns ever owned. Felons who carried "all the 

time" were also more likely to keep their gun(s) 

loaded (r = .22) than others, and they tended to fire 

their guns more often (r = .29). They were also more 

likely to have threatened to shoot someone (r = .25), 

and to have actually shot someone (r = .30) than thos

who carried less regularly. Finally, and predictably, 

the men who carried a gun "all the time" tended to be 

high-rate criminals; the carrying question correlated 

at .29 with our Index of Total Criminality. 

The tendency to carry a gun "all the time" was especially pronounced among our Predators (Table 9). 

Among gun criminals in general, recall, about 30% said 

they carried a gun more or less all the time; among 

the Shotgun Predators, the figure rose to 40%, and 

among the Handgun Predators, to just over 50%. Thus, 

the Predators stand out from other groups because of 

their routine and habitual carrying of firearms. 

Table 9 

Gun Carrying Behavior by Criminal Type 

TYPE 

Carried a gun: One-time Sporadic Handgun Shotgu

Predator Preda

All the Time 13 14 51 40 

Only in Certain 64 57 3g 4g Situations 

Only When 

Planning 22 29 10 11 

A Crime 

(N= (179) (235) (292) (82) 

By far the most common usagf of weapons in committing crime was intimidation o the victim, as in the 

conviction offense data. The second most frequent u

in both cases was for "self protection," mentioned by 

50% of the gun criminals and by 44% of those armed--

not with a gun. "To get away" was third (noted by 35

and 25% of the two groups), followed by "to injure the 

victim" and "to kill the victim," respectively. One 

gun criminal in six in this sample said he had used a 

gun to kill a victim in the course of a crime. Finally, a majority (57%) of the gun criminals reported 

having fired a gun at least once in the course o'f a 

crime, and of these, 25% reported having killed some- body at some time. 

Gun Ownership· and Use in Crime 

Not all gun owners in the sample have committed gun 

crimes; not all gun criminals have owned guns. The 

relationship between having owned guns and having co

mitted crimes with them is shown in Table 10. Among 

non-owners, 18% had committed at least one guri crim

among the gun-owning felons, 59% had committed at 
least one gun crime. On the other hand, nearly a 

third (32%) of the gun owners in this sample had never 

committed armed crime at all, whether with a gun or 

with some other weapon. 

More interesting, perhaps, is that the tendency tCi 

have committed gun crime increased with the number of 

guns ever owned. Among those who had owned just one 

gun, 40% had committed at least one gun crime, a fraction that increased quite regularly up through and including the "ten or more guns" category, where 79% had 

committed at least one gun crime. Thus, the more guns 

a felon had owned, the more likely he was to have com- mitted a crime with one of them. 

What distinguishes gun owning felons who use their 

guns to commit crime from gun owning felons who do 

not? As it happens, a key factor implicated in this 

difference appears to be their gun-carrying tendencies; gun owning felons who used their guns to commit 

crimes were, for the most part, those who actually 

carried their firearms on a more or less regular 

basis. 

To illustrate, all the handgun owners in the sample 

were asked if they ever carried their handguns with 

them outside the home--"for protection or self defense, or to use in committing crimes." Overall, 19% 

of the handgun owners said, "Never," and another third 

said that they had done so only "a few times." Thus, a 

small majority of the handgun owners in this sample 

(52% of them) were not in the habit of carrying 

their handgun(s) on aregular or routine basis. Among 

the Unarmed and the Armed-Not-with a-Gun handgun 

owners, this was true of some 77-84%. Even among the 

One-Timers and the Sporadics, some 60-70% did not 

carry their handguns on any regular basis. Only among 

the Predator groups do we find a strong majority pattern of routine handgun carrying: among the Handgun 

Predators, about 90% carried their handgun "many 

times" or all the time; among handgun-owning Shotgun 

Predators, this was true of 64%. Nearly half ( 44%) of 

the Handgun Predators made it a practice to carry 

their handgun "all the time.n13 

13. Follow-up questions probed for details on weapons carrying behavior. Those who carried regularly tended to carry the gun on their person (vs. in a car or somewhere else); the majorities 

ranged from 7596 to 9296 depending on type. ''Shoved into a belt or waistband" was the most common means of carrying (4696), followed 

by shoulder holsters (2196), and shoved into pockets (1896). Other 

possibilities were mentioned by 1096 or less in all cases. 

We also asked where the gun was kept when it was not being car- ried. "Hidden away" was the modal response (5496), followed by "in a drawer" (3496), "in the bedside table" (2496), and "under my pillow" (1796). The last two responses were especially common among 

the Predators. In sum, even when sleeping, these men kept their 

firearms within easy reach. 

Comparable data on carrying practices among handgun owners in general are, at best, thin. One survey (discussed in Wright et al., 

1983: 142) found that 796 of all US adults, or about 2996 of all 

handgun owners, said "yes" to the question, "Do you ever carry 

that handgun or pistol outside of the house with you for protection, or not?" Thus, among handgun owners in general, the practice 

appears to be fairly widespread. On the other hand, only 1996 of 

the handgun owners in the felon sample responded "never" to the 

handgun carrying question, so about 8096 of them carried their 

handguns outside the home at least now and again. These data are not precisely comparable but do suggest that gun owning felons 

carry their handguns with them outside the home much more frequently than handgun owners in general do. 

Table 10 

The Commission of Armed Crime as a Function of Gun Owners

Felon Has Committed 

No Armed Armed ••• Not Gun 

Crime with Gun Crime (N=10

·Have you ever owned a gun? 

NO 69 13 18 (4

YES 32 9 59 (12

IF YES: How Many? 

ONE 47 13 40 (

2 - 3 41 10 49 (3

4 - 5 31 11 58 (

6 - 10 24 4 72 (

10 + 17 4 79 (3

Efforts to examine differences in criminal weapons 

behavior across states were largely unsuccessful 

since, having interviewed in only one prison per 

state, prison differences (e.g., according to security 

classifications) and state differences are perfectly 

confounded. The results of these efforts are therefore not reported.l4 

Growing Up With Guns 

It has been widely reported that the single best pre

dictor of adult firearms ownership in a "normal" (tha

is, non-criminal) population is whether one's father 

had owned a gun. It is a pertinent and, so far as we 

know, largely unresearched question whether the 

ownership and use of firearms among felons is simila

ly influenced by the effects of early socialization. 

As we have seen, most (75%) of the men in our samp

had owned at least one gun at one time or another. 

Over 90% had fired a gun at some time; the average 

at which they first did so was 13. Likewise, the 

average man in our sample obtained his own shoulde

weapon at age 15 and his first handgun at age 18. 

14. The analytic problem is simply this: In some states, cons

ent with our original plan, we interviewed in the main maximum 

security prison within the state; in other states, access to the 

main maximum security prison was not allowed and we interview

some other prison instead. In general, as would be expected, 

there were very strong relationships between prison type and w

ons behavior; we found more Predators in the maximum security 

prisons than elsewhere. This being the case, it is impossible f

us to decide whether the distinctiveness of felons at a particul

site reflects underlying differences that can be attributed to 

state-level characteristics; or alternatively, whether it is a simple compositional function of the prisoners that happened to 

housed in the prison where we interviewed. Efforts to tease out 

the differences through complex sample weighting procedures w

not persuasive. 

Weapons Use: Other Offense
Clearly, most of these men were exposed to firearms at 

a relatively early age and have owned and used guns 

throughout their lives. 

The survey asked about firearms ownership and carrying 

practices among four groups of potential "socialization agents:" fathers, siblings, "the people you hung 

around with before you came to this prison" (here-

-after, simply "friends"), and "the men in your family" 

(fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins). We also asked 

about seven "firearms socialization experiences" that 

many men encounter in their youth (here taken to mean prior to age 14),15 

As indicated earlier, about 70% of the fathers of the 

men in the sample are reported to have owned a rifle 

or shotgun; more than half owned a handgun; a cross- tabulation of the two items shows that 75% had fathers 

who owned some sort of firearm. Among handgun owning 

fathers, about three-fifths carried handguns outside 

the home. Likewise, about half the fathers ( 48%) 

showed their son(s) how to shoot guns, and roughly the 

same proportion (46%) gave their son(s) firearms as gifts. 

15. The experiences we asked about were: "went out shooting guns 

with your father" (48% said they had done so at least once), 

"played with toy guns" (78%), "joined the Boy Scouts" (38%), "went 

to a summer camp where guns were used for recreation" (14%), "went 

shooting at a gun club or pistol range" (19%), "went hunting" 

(58%), and "took apart a gun to see how it works" (36%). 

To provide at least some comparative data, these same seven questions were also asked of a non-random sample of male college 

students at the University of Massachusetts (N = 96). Felons and 

college students were about equally likely tc. have gone out shooting guns with their fathers; on the other six items, however, 

there were sizable differences between the two groups. Felons 

were more likely than college students to have gone hunting and to 

have taken a gun apart to see how it worked; college students were 

more likely to have had the remaining four experiences. 

Table II 

Intercorrelations Among the Socialization "Agents" 

and "Experiences" Variables 

VARIABLE I 

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 

Father Own Gun 1 

Father Own Handgun 2 .48 

Father Carry HG 3 .35 .62 

Father Teach Shoot 4 .51 .30 .26 

Father Give Gun 5 .31 .20 .20 .52 

Sib Own Gun 6 .31 .16 .21 .31 .25 

Sib Own HG 7 .18 .27 .28 .13 .14 .63 

Sib Teach Shoot 8 .14 .10 .14 .21 .13 .37 .37 

Friends Own Gun 9 .22 .17 .18 .?.1 .23 .22 .21 .12 

Friends Own HG 10 .14 .21 .23 .11 .17 .14 .24 .09 .76 

Friends Carry HG 11 .11 .16 .25 .08 .13 .12 .22 .07 .55 

Others Own Gun 12 .39 .21 .29 .42 • 31 .36 .30 .24 .37 

Others Own HG 13 .32 .4'5 .41 .30 .23 .27 .36 .20 .33 

Others Carry HG 14 .18 .30 .45 .18 .19 .20 .31 .16 .27 

Go Out Shooting 15 .39 .20 .17 .59 .48 .30 .13 .23 .20 

Camp 16 .07 .08 .08 .13 .14 .07 .08 .03 .09 

Club or Range 17 .16 .12 .12 .25 .25 .11 .06 .08 .14 

Hunting 18 .34 .13 .10 .45 .36 .29 .14 .22 .19 

Boy Scouts 19 -.01 .02 .03 .07 .02 -.02 -.04 -.03 .04 

Toy Guns 20 .02 .04 .rn -.02 -.03 .00 .02 -.04 .03 

Took Apart 21 .21 .15 .15 .26 .30 .19 .18 .16 • 23 

Perhaps the most significant data in the question sequence concern patterns of ownership p.mong the felons

friends. A mere 12% of the sample reported that 

~ of their friends owned a gun; more than twofifths reported that most or all of them did. 

Figures for handgun ownershipamong the felons' 

friends were similar although somewhat lower. About 

20% reported that most or all of their friends carried 

handguns. 

Finally, concerning the "men in your family," some 3696 

reported that most or all of them owned a gun; 20% 

reported that none of them did. Less than a third 

(29%) of the felons reported that none of the men in 

the family owned a handgun; about a quarter reported 

that most or all of them did. 

Table 11 shows the matrix of correlations among this 

set of questions. The seven "experience" questions 

are also included. One is struck by the overwhelming 

predominance of positive coefficients. (All but a 

handful of the coefficients are statistically significant.) Substantively, this pattern implies that _firearms socialization is patterned and cumulative. Men 

in the sample who were exposed to any one of the 

socialization agents and experiences shown in the 

table were more likely to have been exposed to all the 

others as well. 

In order to examine the effects of these early experiences on the sample's firearms behavior, we created 

five summated scales--one for each of the "agents" and a fifth for the "firearms experiences." It is an 

interesting question just how many of the men in the 

sample were exposed to ~ of the agents or experi- ences recorded in the table; or in other words, how 

many men fell at the de facto zero point on all five 

scales. As it happens, this is true of only 7 of the 

men in the sample. In short, virtually all of these 

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 

.66 

.27 .19 

.38 .31 .70 

.34 .44 .39 .53 

.09 .04 .37 .25 .12 

.13 .13 .08 .13 .17 .14 

.10 .or; .19 .17 .11 .33 .34 

.09 .05 .31 .19 .09 .60 .12 .27 

.05 .00 .03 .02 .05 .04 .17 .15 .04 

.02 .oo .01 -.01 -.01 .06 .07 .06 .05 .22 

.21 .16 .~1 .18 .16 .37 .23 .33 .36 .06 .09 

1. Correlation coefficients greater than about .05 are statistically significant at the • 05 level • 

20 Weapons Use: Other Offenses 
men had at least some exposure to firearms early in 

their lives. --

lntercorrelations among the five scaled variables are all moderate to high (ranging from .20 to .54), positive in sign, and statistically sil{nificant. We thus 

emphasize: men exposed to firearms in any of these 

contexts are likely to have been exposed in them 

all.l6 

The scaled variables provide an efficient way to as- sess the effects of early socialization on the sam- ple's own firearms behavior. For this purpose, we have selected 16 items of possible relevance, grouped 

loosely into four topical areas, as follows: 

~: How old the felon was when he (i) first fired a gun, (ii) first obtained his own shoulder weapon, 

(iii) first obtained his own handgun, (iv) committed 

his first armed crime, and (v) committed his first 

handgun crime. 

Gun Ownership in General: Has the felon ever owned a gun, ever owned a handgun? How many guns and handguns has he ever owned? How often did he fire his 

guns before he came to prison? 

Criminal Gun Use: Was the felon armed at the conviction offense? How often was he armed with a gun 

when he committed crimes? How much trouble will it be 

for him to obtain a handgun upon release? Is he a Predator or not? 

Carrying Practices: Two questions on how often the 

felon carried a firearm with him outside the home. 

Zero order correlations among the variables just discussed and the five scaled socialization variables are shown in Table 12. With only a few exceptions, the 

patterns indicated in the table are much as one would 

expect: the higher the felon's prior exposure to the 

agents and experiences of firearms socialization, the more pronounced his own firearms behavior tended to 

be. 

Considering first the "how old were you when ••• " 

questions, we note that the correlation coefficients are predominantly negative, as would be expected. In 

general, the higher the degree of exposure, the 

younger a felon was when he first "got into" v;uns. 

The age at which he first fired a gun is correlated 

-.38 with the Father's lnfiuence Scale, -.39 with the 

Experiences lnfiuence Scale, and somewhat more weakly 

(but still negatively) with the other three Scales. 

The age at which the felon acquired his first firearm 

16. These and similar findings based on studies of noncriminal IJI.ln owners are consistent with the idea of an "American Gun Culture," more precisely, a culture comprised of Individuals and families 

whose ownership and use of firearms is derivative of a shared set 

ot values transmitted through familial socialization. This Is not 

to imply that the average gun-owning criminal in our sample Is no different than the average deer hunter, skeet shooter, or gun collector. It Is to Imply that the average gun-owning criminal, like 

the average legitimate gun owner, was raised around guns and Introduced early In life to their use. It may well be that there are multiple gun cultures (as, Indeed, Lizotte and Bordua 1980, 1981 

have suggested), some of which strongly disapprove of the Illegal or quasi-legal use of guns and some of which do not. In any case, 

gun ownership In the population at large and among our sample of 

prisoners displays unmistakable cultural aspects. 

Table 12 

Correlations Between Felons' Firearms Behavior 

and Early Firearms Socialization 

Socialization Influence Scales1 

Male Experi

Firearms Behaviors Father Sibling Peers Clan ences 

AGE:2 

At 1st Firing -.366 -.23 -.19 -.26 -.39 

At 1st Gun -.38 -.14 -.20 -.23 -.31 

At 1st Handgun -.18 -.06 -.25 -.11 -.08 

At 1st Armed 

Crime -.01 -.01 -.14 -.01 .02 

At 1st Handgun Crime -.07 -.00 -.15 -.04 -.00 

GUN OWNERSHIP3 

Ever own gun .35 .30 .30 .27 .28 

IF YES: How many .25 .24 .36 .26 .22 

IF YES: Own HG .02 .09 .25 .12 -.03 

How many? .18 .22 .39 .20 .16 

How often fire .14 .11 .21 .15 .12 

CRIMINAL GUN USE 

Armed at 

conviction .08 .07 .22 .12 .06 

How often armed 

with gun?4 .20 .18 .33 .17 .14 

Trouble to get one? .11 .11 .20 .11 .16 

Predato~5 .18 .18 .34 .17 .12 

Unarmed -.11 -.14 -.28 -.14 - .11 

CARRYING PRACTICES 

Carry handguns? .11 .06 .28 .14 .03 

Carry firearms? .15 .15 .40 .19 .04 

1. Missing data have been deleted pairwise. 2. "Never" is treated as missing data for this analysis. 3. "Ever own• was asked of everyone. Remaining questions w

asked only of those who had ever owned. 

4. Asked of gun criminals only. 5. TYPE is represented here by two dummy variables, one for 

Predators and one for Unarmed Criminals. 

6. Correlation coefficients greater than about .05 are statistically si~nificant at the .05 level. 

follows a very similar pattern. In short, fathers and 

the experiences sons share with their fathers seem t

be the predominant infiuence on firinl{ and acquirinl{ 

gun for the first time. 

In the remaining three cases, however, the pattern 

shifts somewhat; the av;e at which a felon acquired h

first handgun, committed his first armed crime, and 

committed his first handgun crime were all more strongly correlated with the Peer lnfiuence Scale tha

with any of the other four, a pattern that recurs elsewhere in the table. 

All five infiuence scales were moderately to strongly 

correlated (.27 to .35) with whether the felon had ever owned a gun; among those who had ever owned a

least one, all five variables were likewise moderately 

to strongly correlated (.22 to .38) with the total 

number of guns the felon had owned. Among those ev

owning a gun, however, the tendency to have owned a handgun was strongly correlated only with the Peer I

nuance Scale (r = .25) and was essentially uncorre- lated with the other four variables. Friends also 

appeared to exert a greater infiuence on the number 

Weapons UH1 Other otren181 

l 
handguns ever owned, and on the rate at which a felon 

fired his guns, than any of the other scales. In 

terms of the number of handguns owned, for example, 

the effect of the Peer Influence Scale was about twice 

that of any other. 

In regard to criminal gun use and carrying practices, the general drift of the findings can be quickly summarized: firearms ownership and carrying among 

the felon's friends were by far the most important 

factors. For example, the tendency .to have been armed 

at the conviction offense is correlated at .22 with 

the Peer Influence Scale and essentially uncorrelated 

with all other scales. Among those who have committed 

at least one gun crime, the frequency with which they 

were armed with a gun during their crimes was correlated .33 with the Peer Influence Scale, by far the 

strongest effect of the five. Likewise, the effects 

of the Peer Influence Scale on the felon's carrying 

practices were more than twice as great as the effects 

of any other variable. We note finally: whether the 

felon is categorized as a Predator is correlated at 

.34 with the Peer Influence Scale but much more weakly 

correlated with all other variables; the correlation 

of the Peer Influence Scale with the Unarmed category 

is -.28, again the strongest effect of the five.l7 

In short, we witness in these data a rather intriguing 

pattern. When considering the more normal or legitimate aspects of firearms behavior (whether the felon 

ever owned a gun, how many he has owned, how old he 

was when he first fired or acquired one, etc.), 

fathers appeared to be the predominant influence (reinforced, to be sure, by all the other agents of 

socialization as well). When considering the clearly 

criminal aspects of firearms behavior, however, the 

influence of fathers (and other family agents) paled 

considerably and the effects of one's peer group came 

to dominate. 

The key "turning point" in the lives of most of these 

men, we suggest, was not that fine sunny day in their 

early adolescence when their fathers took them out to 

teach them the manly art of firing guns. Rather, it 

was when they realized that most of the people they 

hung around with were themselves carrying guns. Some 

adolescent males, of course, would respond to this information by finding new people to hang around with. 

Others might respond by obtaining a gun themselves, 

and these, it appears, were often the ones who ended 

up in prison. 

17. Since, as ind icated earlier, all five of the scaled socialization variables are rather strongly inter-correlated, the zero- order analysis reported in the text is potentially misleading. A 

multivariate analysis of these data, however, only confirmed the 

conclusions advanced in the text on the basis of the zero-order 

results. Holding all other variables constant, the clearly illicit 

aspects of a felon's firearms behavior were related only to the 

Peer Influence Scale. 

22 Weapons Use: Other Offenses 
The Motivations To Go Armed 

Why do felons acquire and carry weapons in the first 

place? Many previous discussions of this question 

have tended to depict the behavior as mainly the carrying of instruments of the trade, in short, a view of 

the felon as a rational economic calculator. Cook's 

(1976) "strategic choice analysis" of robbery, for ex- ample, suggests that robbers carry guns (vs. other 

weapons or no weapons) because it allows them to rob 

more lucrative targets and thus to maximize their 

take. Others suggest that it is more a matter of 

simple convenience: a gun is a very intimidating 

weapon, and it is just easier to commit crimes (less 

resistance from the victim, for example) if one is 

armed with a gun than if not. 

On the other hand, some of the results so far presented point as much to habit as to rational calculation as an important, if not predominant, motive. 

Earlier, for example, we reported that about 30% of 

the weapons users in the sample carried weapons almost 

all of the time, whether planning a crime or not; 

weapons also enhanced some felons' sense of security, 

these being the additional 50% who carried weapons in 

"certain situations," mainly, whenever they felt the 

need for self-protection. Only about one armed felon 

in five said that he had carried only when he had been 

planning to do a crime. From these findings alone, 

one can safely infer that the crime-facilitative aspects of a weapon did not represent the only, or even 

the major, motive for carrying one, that habit or fear 

were of at least equivalent importance. 

It would, of course, be mistaken to formulate the issue as one of "rational calculation" or "crime facilitation" versus habit, fear, or "self defense," since 

in fundamental ways these are false opposites. A 

felon who carried a gun mainly because he feared encounters with armed victims (and many did, as we see 

later) could be said to carry out of fear, out of a 

sensed need for self-defense, or as a means of more 

efficiently robbing potentially armed victims. In the 

abstract, these seem like separate classes of motives, 

but in reality they are inextricably related. 

Most of the information we have on the motivations to 

acquire and carry weapons was obtained by directing 

pointed questions to respondents according to their 

special circumstances. Men who indicated early in the 

questionnaire that they had never committed an armed 

crime were skipped to a set of questions asking, in 

essence, Why not? Men who had done gun crime were 

likewise skipped to a sequence asking about their 

motives for carrying firearms; men who had done armed 

crime, but not gun crime, were asked two sequences: 

why they carried the weapon they carried, and why they 

chose not to carry a gun instead.18 Table 13 presents this information. 

18. It should be stressed that these data must be treated with some skepticism; people are not always the best witnesses about 

their own motives, be they felons or "normal" adults. People are not always aware of all the relevant reasons for their own behaviors, and need not always be honest in reporting them even when 

they are. 

Table 13 

Weapon Carrying Motivations 

MOTIVES IMPORTANCE 

Not 

Some- A At 

Very what Little All _xl(N

Gun Criminals: Why did 

you carry a gun? 

1. Don't have to hurt 

victim 57 15 7 21 3.1 (7

2. Chance victim would 

be armed 50 12 13 25 2.9 (7

3. Prepared for 

anything ••• 48 20 11 20 3.0 (6

4 • ••• ready to defend 

myself 44 14 13 29 2.7 (7

5. Easier to do 

crime ••. 42 17 12 29 2.7 (6

6. Might need gun to 

escape .•• 40 15 12 33 2.6 (6

7. Need gun to do 

crime ..• 39 13 12 37 2.5 (6

8. Felt better with 

gun 34 20 17 29 2.6 (7

9. People don't mess with you 30 21 14 36 2.4 (6

10. Easy to hurt someone ••• 27 13 13 47 2.2 (6

11. Gun is "tool of 

trade" 25 16 16 43 2.2 (6

1~. Police have guns ••• 20 10 12 58 1.9 (6

13. Friends carried 

guns •.• 13 11 14 61 1.8 (7

14. Made me feel like a man 4 4 12 80 1.3 (6

Armed - Not With a Gun 

Criminals: 

'Why did you carry a weapon? 

1. Don't have to hurt 

victim 39 8 13 39 2.5 (1

2. Feel better with a weapon 33 12 9 46 2.3 (1

3. Ready to defend 

myself 30 13 13 45 2.3 (1

4. Easier to do 

crime ••• 29 12 10 48 2.2 (1

5. Chance victim would 

be armed 27 12 8 53 2.1 (1

contin

We acknowledge in particular the possibility of certain ''respons

set tendencies" in answering the question sequence. It might b

easier, that is, for a felon to say, "I needed a gun to protect 

myself," which sounds defensible if not entirely innocuous, than 

to say, "I wanted a gun to shoot people with." 

On the other hand, readers of previous versions of this report 

have argued that the more likely etrect is in the opposite direc

tion, the hypothesis being that felons would stress (or fabricate

tougher, more aggressive responses so as to project an image of 

self as fundamentally ''bad." Our hope, of course, is that these 

represent otrsetting tendencies. In any case, it is clear that 

the reasons felons themselves give for why they own and carry 

constitute useful information but do not provide the final word o

the matter. 

Motivations To Go Arme
Table 13 continued We focus first on the responses of the "Gun Criminals" 

(men who had done at least one gun crirne ). As these 

6. Prepared for any- 24 14 12 50 2.1 (132) men told it, the single most important reason why they 

decided to carry a gun while doing crime was, "if you thing carry a gun your victim doesn't put up a fight, and 7. Easy to hurt some- one 24 6 10 60 1.9 (135) that way you don't have to hurt them" ("very imporB. People don't mess tant" to 57% and the most commonly mentioned motive 

with you 20 11 17 52 2.0 (133) the fourteen we asked about, by a fairly substantial 

9. Might need weapon margin). Likewise, the second most important reason to escape 18 11 10 61 1.9 (133) cited was, "There's always a chance my victim would be 10. Friends carried 

weapon armed" ("very important" to 50%). It is of consider- 17 11 12 59 1.9 (138) 

11. Weapon's "tool of able interest that both the first and second most imtrade" 16 8 9 68 1.7 (133) portant motives relate to victims; half the men who 

12. Need weapon to do had committed gun crimes said that one "very impor- crime 11 8 10 71 1.6 (132) tant" reason to carry a gun during crime was the pros- 13. Police have pect that the intended victim would be armed.l9 

weapons ••• 10 5 13 72 1.5 (135) 

14. Made me feel like Intimidation of the victim, and defense against an a man 5 6 7 82 1.4 (130) armed victim, are the only motives of the fourteen we 

Armed-Not With a Gun asked about that were said to be very important by 

Criminals: half or more of the Gun Criminals portion of the sam- Why not carry a gun? pie. Other motives of nearly equal weight included, 

1. Just asking for 

(143) "when you have a gun, you are prepared for anything trouble 56 13 6 25 3.0 that rnight happen" ("very important" to 48%), and "a 2. Get a stiffer 

guy like me has to be ready to defend himself" (44%). sentence 54 15 6 25 3.0 (138) 

3. Never needed gun for Self-preservation was clearly the common theme in both 

my crimes 54 13 9 24 3.0 (138) these responses. 

4. Somebody would get That "it is easier to do crime if you are armed with a hurt 49 9 7 35 2.7 (140) 

5. Wouldn't feel right 42 7 13 37 2.5 (137) gun" was the fifth (but only the fifth) most commonly 

6. Never thought about cited motive and was rated as "very important" by 42%. 

it 38 6 16 40 2.4 (139~ This plus the first-place result make it clear that 

7. Wouldn't trust myself 36 7 7 50 2.3 (135 the increased ease with which crime can be committed 

8. Never owned a gun 35 7 12 46 2.3 (137) if armed with a gun was one important motive for car- 9. Don't like guns 30 8 11 50 2.2 (135) rying one; the other results also suggest, however, 10. Against the law for me to own gun 25 7 13 56 2.0 (137) that self-preservation was a motive of equivalent 

11. Too much trouble importance.20 

to get one 16 5 7 72 1.6 (134) 

12. Costs too much 11 6 11 72 1.6 (138) The twin motif of efficiency and self-preservation 13. Wouldn't know how 

(132) recurs throughout the results. "I felt I might need a to use one 11 4 8 76 1.5 gun to escape" was very important to 40%; "you need a 

Unarmed Criminals: Why gun to do the kind of crime I did," to 39%. Some men not carry a weapon? "just felt better when I had a gun with me" ( 34% very 1. Just asking for 

14 3.3 (553) important). That "people just don't mess with you if trouble 69 12 5 you are carrying a gun" was very important to· 30%. 2. Get a stiffer Motives of apparently minimal importance included "a sentence 67 12 6 15 3.3 (535) 

3. Never needed gun 

for my crimes 61 7 6 26 3.0 (523) 

4. Somebody would 19. This result is consistent with a suggestion once made by 

get hurt 60 11 7 22 3.1 (531) Phillip Cook that many robbers carry guns as a rneans of avoiding, 

5. Wouldn't feel right 53 9 7 31 2.8 (528) not perpetrating, violence. It is, however, not consistent with 

6. Never thought about the argument reviewed In the previous footnote, that these felons 

it 52 9 10 28 2.9 (537) would exercise every opportunity to tell us just how ''bad" they 7. Against the law 51 8 6 36 2.7 (513) were. " .. .and that way you don't have to hurt them"." strikes us 8. Don't like weapons 46 11 8 34 2.7 (517) as an almost sissified response; it was, nonetheless, the most 

9. Never owned a weapon 38 6 7 48 2.3 f506) frequent response. 10. Wouldn't trust myself 34 8 9 50 2.3 502) 

11. Wouldn't know how It bears notice that felons of the sort being studied here are not 

to use one 14 8 7 70' 1.7 (495) above preying upon their fellow criminals; In this sense, the 

12. Wouldn't know how possibility that their victims would be armed is non-trivial. See 

to get one 14 6 7 73 1.6 (499) below, "Confronting Anned Victims," for additional details. 

13. Too expensive 12 7 8 73 1.6 (516) 

20. The Important point to be made from these results, of course, 

is not that crime-facilitation Is a more or less Important motive 

1. Means were computed with the following rank scores: 4=Very 

than self-preservation, but rather that guns are important to 

felons because they allow for the commission of crimes with a Important; 3=Somewhat Important; 2=A Little Important; l=Not minimum of trouble from victims and a maximum of security for the 

at All Important. felon. Whether or not this mixture of motives conforms to some postulated syndrome of economic rationality Is more a semantic 

problem than an empirical one. To be sure, many of the motives 

cited by these men went well beyond the rational calculus of a profitmaxlmlzlng businessman, relating, Instead, to survival In an 

uncertain and dangerous life. At the same time, a man who has 

decided to maximize his survival chances has obviously made a ver

rational decision. 

24 Motivations To Go Armed 
lot of the people I hung around with carried guns" 

(but see the previous discussion), and "carryin~t a ~un 

made me feel more like a man." 

Results for the Armed-Not-with-a-Gun Criminals were 

similar in some respects but quite different in 

others. We note first that all the possible motives 

for carrying weapons were generally less important to 

the men who carried weapons other than firearms than 

to the gun criminals. To illustrate, the mean re- sponse for the first-place finisher among the ArmedNot-with-a -Gun group was 2.5 ( 3996 "very important"). 

Among the Gun Criminals, there were six motives with 

hi~her mean scores. From this patternTwhich is quite 

general in the data), one infers that the reasons why 

gun criminals carried guns were generally more strongly held than were the reasons why the men who carried 

other weapons carried the weapons they did. 

As among the ~un criminals, the most important reason 

for carrying a weapon among the Armed-Not-with-a-Gun 

group was so that the victim would not put up a fight. 

Indeed, the two groups were agreed on four of the top 

five motives. Men who carried weapons other than 

guns, that is, appeared to do so for pretty much the same reasons that gun-carrying felons carried firearms --a combination of efficiency and protection. The 

difference was mainly that these reasons were less 

strongly held among the non-gun than among the gun 

group. 

The Armed-Not-with-a-Gun group was also asked why they 

had opted not to carry firearms; the Unarmed Criminals were asked why they had opted not to carry any weapons. Remarkably, there was virtually perfect agreement between the two groups through the first six 

motives on the list. In both cases, the most important reason for not carrying was that "the guy who 

carries a gun or a weapon is just asking for trouble" (very important to 5696 of the Armed-Not-with-aGun and to 6996 of the Unarmed), followed by "you get a stiffer sentence if you get caught with a gun or a weapon" (very important to 5496 and 6796, respectively). The other four top finishers in both groups 

were: "I never needed a gun or a weapon for the 

kinds of crime I did" (5496 and 6196 "very important"); 

"if you carry a gun or a weapon , somebody is going 

to get hurt" (4996 and 6096 very important, respectively); "I just wouldn't feel right carrying a gun or a weapon: (42% and 5396); and "I just never thought 

about carrying a ~un or a weapon" (3896 and 5296). 

Despite the high rank-order agreement of the reasons not to carry, we note again that all the cited reasons were less important, on the average, to the Armed-Notwith-a-Gun Criminals than to the Unarmed Criminals. 

The highest mean score among the former group was 3.0, 

and among the latter 3.3; and again, this pattern was 

quite general throughout all relevant comparisons. 

Interestingly, then, it appears that the Ar·rMd-Notwith-a-Gun criminals carried weapons for much the same reasons that the Gun Criminals carried guns, but 

chose not to carry guns for much the same reasons that the Unarmed opted not to carry anything. 

Some of the item-specific results warrant more extended comment. First, the strong showing of "you get a stiffer sentence if ••• " should be acknowledged. A 

weapons involvement would have eventuated in a 

stiffer sentence in many jurisdictions (e.g., Cook and 

Nagin, 1979); the perception of the sample on this 

point is no doubt lar~ely accurate. It is impossible 

to say for sure just how many of the Unarmed or the 

Armed-Not-with-a-Gun criminals would have been Gu

Criminals were it not for this fact; but presumably 

some, perhaps many, would have been. 

On the other hand, that it was "against the law" for 

most of these men to own a firearm appears to have 

been a minimal deterrent, especially for the ArmedNot-with-a-Gun group, among whom this finished ten

as a reason not to carry guns. This suggests (as an 

admittedly remote but interesting inference) that mo

might be ~ained in this area through sentencing pra

tices than through legislative action. 

Finally, it is of some relevance to note that the decision not to carry had little, if anything, to do 

with availability, knowledge, or price. The least important of all factors asked abo lit was, "A good gun or weapon just costs too much money;" this factor w

said to be not at all important by about threequarters of both relevant groups. "It is too much 

trouble to get a gun or weapon " and "I wouldn't kno

how to use a gun or weapon if I had one" were also 

not at all important to the large majority. As noted 

earlier, a substantial majority of the Unarmed Crimi

nals in the sample had in fact owned guns. That the

men did not use guns to commit crimes is therefore 

the result of inadequate knowledge about or exposur

to them. 

The "Seriousness" of Carrying 

The pattern of inter-correlations amon~ the fourteen 

"motivations" questions for the Gun Criminals reveal

a notable result: all the coefficients were positive

all were statistically significant; most were respectable in magnitude; and quite a few were substantial 

(.30 or higher). What this implies is that men who 

found any of these factors important tended to see each of the others as important too, which may have 

been a major reason why they were Gun Criminals in 

first place. 21 

The above result suggests that a useful measure of 

"seriousness" of gun carrying among the men in the 

sample can be constructed simply by summing the nu

of "very important" responses over the fourteen offered options. This, in essence, is a count of the 

n~mber of "good reasons" a felon gave for why he ca

ried a gun. Over the tot.al Gun Criminals sample, th

average number of "very Important" responses was 3

This average varied sharply across the categories of 

the typolo~y, from 1.6 "very important" reasons amo

the One-Timers to 5.2 "very important" reasons amon

the Handgun Predators. In general, as the frequency of gun use in crime increased, the number of import

reasons for carrying a gun also increased. The. 

higher-rate criminals in our sample evidenced a muc

greater seriousness of purpose in their gun-carrying 

behaviol'S than the others. 

21. Stated differently, most men who were able to cite any imp

ant reason for carrying a gun were usually able to cite numero

reasons. Presumably, the more ''good reasons" a man has for 

ing a gun, the more difficult it will be to persuade him to stop 

it. In this sense, the uniformly positive correlations among a

fourteen "motivation" questions are not encouraging. 

Motivations To Go Arme
Differences in Motives by Criminal Type 

Among the Predators (both types), the single most important reason for carrying a gun was, "When you have 

a gun, you are prepared for anything that might happen." Among the Handgun Predators, this was followed 

by the two "victims" responses, and then by selfdefense. Other items with mean scores (among Handgun 

Predators) of 3.0 or higher included the need to escape, that it was easier to do crime when armed with a 

gun, and that "I just felt better ••• " In general, the 

patterns for the Shotgun Predators were very similar. 

Relative to responses in the total gun criminals sample, then, these results suggest that the crime facilitative (or "efficiency") factors were somewhat less 

important, and the survival factors somewhat more important, to the Predators than to the other groups. 

Additional evidence on motivations was obtained from 

all the gun owners in the sample (not just the Gun 

Criminals), in connection with questions about the 

reasons why they acquired their most recent firearm( s). These data are shown in Table 14. 

Concerning the most recent handgun acquisitions, the 

predominant motive by far was self-protection: 5896 of 

the handgun owners in the sample cited this as a "verv 

important" reason why the most recent handgun was obtained. No other reason even comes close: the next 

highest "very important" percentage was for "target 

shooting" (3196). Remarkably, "to use in my cri~es" 

was cited as a "very important" reason by only 2896 of 

the sample; the proportion citing self-protection was more than twice as large.22 

Sport and recreational applications (hunting, target 

shooting, gun collections) were mentioned as important 

reasons by roughly a quarter of the handgun owners in 

the sample; specific criminal applications (stole a 

handgun to sell, needed a handgun to get somebody) 

were cited less frequently (10-2096), except, of 

course, general use in crime, which was noted by 2896. 

Judging from these data, a felon was as likely to ac- quire a handgun for some sport or recreational purpose 

as he was to acquire one for a specific criminal use. 

:Wany apparently had both sets of purposes in mind, 

just as a salesman might buy a car for both pleasure and business applications. 

Concerning the most recent shoulder weapon acquisition, sport and recreational uses dominated the results. Hunting was cited as very important by 6496, 

and target shooting by 4096. Following in third place 

was self-protection, very important to 3196. Specific 

criminal applications were less commonly cited: 

still, 17%--nearly one in five--mentioned "to use in 

22. As suggested earlier, acquiring a handgun specifically for its use in crime was relatively uncommon among the men in this sample. 

Given the close relationship between the themes of efficiency and 

self-preservation, the distinction is perhaps a spurious one. Nonetheless, many of the handguns that are used for crime appear 

to be obtained primarily for self-protection reasons, at least as the felon saw it. Then too, the "self protection" in question may 

only be protection against the inherent risks that stem from a life a crime. Apparently, most of our felons viewed firearms as general tools serving a variety of purposes, efficiency in crime 

being one, survival being another. Whatever the realities that 

underlie these responses, it is clear that "self protection" is an important symbolic rubric for many of these men. 

26 Motivations To Go Anned 

Table 14 

Reasons Why Felons' Most Recent Firearms Were Obtained 

MOST RECENT HANDGUN 

Hunting 

Target Shooting 

Gun Collection 

Protection 

Just wanted one To use in crimes 

Stole to sell 

Needed to get someone 

MOST RECENT SHOULDER 

WEAPON 

Hunting 

Target Shooting 

Gun Collection 

Protection 

Just wanted one To use in crimes 

Stole to sell 

Needed to get someone 

NOT 

IMPORTANT 

54 

38 

56 

16 

38 

52 

65 

80 

23 

30 

56 

44 

43 

70 

73 

87 

SOMEWHAT VERY 

IMPORTANT IMPORTANT 

20 26 

31 31 

19 25 

26 58 

36 26 

20 28 

18 17 

10 10 

14 64 

30 40 

19 26 

25 31 

33 23 

13 17 

13 14 

6 7 

my crimes" as a very important reason for their most 

recent acquisition. 

(

7

7

7

8

7

7

7

6

8

7

7

7

7

7

7

6

Felons who owned handguns but did not use them to co

·mi t crimes tended predominantly to have been sport an

recreational owners. Among the Unarmed Criminals, fo

example, "target shooting" was, on the average, as important as self-protection as a reason for acquiring 

the most recent handgun, and the same was more or le

equally true of Improvisors and l{nife Criminals as 

well. In all three cases, to be sure, self-protection 

was as important as (or, in one case, slightly more 

important than) any of the sport and recreational 

reasons. On the other hand, it was only among the 

non-gun criminals where sport and recreational motive

competed favorably with the other reasons listed. 

Self-protection was a relatively important motive in 

all seven groups; means varied from 2.1 to 2.6 (out of 

a possible maximum of three). Among the four groups 

of Gun Criminals, self-protection was the single most 

important motive in every case. Even among Handgun 

Predators, self-protection was more important than any 

of the specific criminal use applications; the mean response among Handgun Predators on "self-protection" 

was 2.6, vs. 2.3 on "to use in my crim·es." In short, 

even the more predatory criminals acquired. handguns 

primarily, as they saw it, for their own selfprotection, and only secondarily to use in crime. ( A.t 

the same time, use in crime was clearly more importan

to the Predators than to any of the other groups.)23 

23. That these men inhabit a violent and generally hostile world 

is easy to demonstrate. Over 7096 of them had been involved in 

saults; over half had gotten into bar fights; about 4096 had been 

stabbed with a knife; 5296 report having been shot at with a gun; 

third said they had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured" by a victim who was armed with a gun; etc. That they felt some need to "protect" themselves is hardly surprising. (All the 

above figures are for the total sample. Among the Predators 

specifically, the numbers are generally higher.) 
Confronting Armed Victims 

As we have just seen, among the reasons given for why 

one might carry a gun during crime was, "there's always a chance my victim would be armed," cited as a 

very important reason by 5096 of the gun criminals. We 

asked the sample a number of follow-up questions about 

encountering armed victims, findings from which are 

reported in this section. We cover two main topics: 

first, we consider evidence from the survey on whether 

an encounter with an armed victim is something about 

which felons worried in the course of committing 

crimes; and second, how frequently armed victims were 

encountered during the felons' criminal careers.24 

Results from the attitudinal questions are shown in 

Table 15. There is a very consistent pattern to the 

results; in all cases, the majority opinion was that 

felons are made nervous by the prospect of an encounter with an armed victim. 

The first item in the sequence asked the sample to 

agree or disagree that "a criminal is not going to 

mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a 

gun." About three-fifths of the sample (5696) agreed. 

Another item read, "A smart criminal always tries to 

find out if his potential victim is armed." !1/Iore than 

four-fifths ( 8196) agreed with that. Yet another item 

read, "Most criminals are more worried about meeting 

an armed victim than they are about running into the 

police." About three-fifths ( 5796) also agreed with 

that.25 

There were also two direct questions on whether guns 

thwart crimes. One reads, "One reason burglars avoid 

houses when people are at home is that they fear being 

shot during the crime." Three-quarters of the sample 

(7496) agreed. (Of course, there are other reasons for 

avoiding occupied homes, such as fear of being reported to the police, about which we did not ask). 

The other reads, "A store owner who is known to keep a 

gun on the premises is not going to get robbed very 

often." About three-fifths ( 5896) again agreed. The 

possibility that one's intended victim is armed was 

24. All the data reported in this section are ambiguous in the 

sense that we do not know directly just who the armed victims were that our sample reported encountering. One very potent and oftexploited image of the "armed victim" is that of the hard-bitten, 

generally law abiding home owner valiantly defending self an<l 

family from the incursions of the predatory criminal class. This, 

for example, is the image one obtains from ''The Armed Citizen" 

column in the NRA's American Rifleman, where accounts of these 

kinds of incidents are collected and printed. Such incidents 

doubtlessly occur, perhaps with considerable frequency; national 

surveys suggest that some 2-696 of the adult US population have at some time actually fired a gun in their own self defense (Wright 

et aL, 1983: Ch. 7). 

On the other hand, one must also keep in mind in reviewing our materials on armed victim encounters that felons prey, for the 

most part, on others much like themselves, and that in many of 

these encounters, the question, Who is victim and who is perpetrator?, Is often a judgment call. That the predatory felons in this 

sample hung around with other men who owned and carried guns has 

already been reported; that felons prey on the people they associate with and on others in the immediate environment is confirmed 

in details In the criminal victimization surveys (see, e.g., 

Hlndelang et al., 1978). Given these points, one would have to 

expect that the rate at which these men encountered armed victims 

would be rather high, which, indeed, it is (see text). 1'o emphasize, some of these encounters would involve encounters between 

Table 15 

Attitudes Toward Encountering Armed Victims: Total Sample 

Stronqly Stronql v Aqree Aqree Oisaqree Oisagree IN

1. A criminal is not 25 31 35 9 (1628

going to mess around with a victim he knows 

is armed with a gun: 

2. One reason 35 39 20 7 (1628

burglars avoid 

houses when 

oeople are at 

home is that they 

fear being shot: 

3. Most criminals 21 36 32 10 (1615

are more worried 

about meeting an armed victim than 

they are about 

running into the 

police: 

4. A smart criminal 30 51 15 4 (1608

always tries to 

find out if his 

potential victim 

is armed: 

5. A store owner who 18 40 32 9 (1645

is known to keep a gun on the 

premises is not 

going to get 

robbed very often: 

6. Committing crime 10 14 34 42 (1604

against an armed 

victim is an exciting 

challenge: 

evi.de~tly a concern to most of these men: the stron

maJOrity agreed that it is wise to find out in advanc

if one's potential victims are armed, and to avoid 

them if they are. 

perpetrators and total innocents; others--perhaps the larger 

share-would involve their own friends and associates. 

25. There Is, to be sure, a considerable degree of realism in thi

latter response. National surveys conducted periodically since 

1959 have routinely found that about half of all US households 

possess at least one gun, which translates Into about 40 million 

gun owning households. There are, in short, very many more po

tial "armed victims" to run Into than there are police. Consisten

with the point, Kleck (1983) has reported that in any given yea

more criminals are shot to death in "justifiable homicides" by 

ordinary civilians than are killed by the police, although the 

numerical difference is not large. 

The attitudinal result In the text Is based on a question about 

''most criminals." We also asked about each felon's personal opin

ion, that is, whether he personally worried more about armed vi

tims or more about the police. These data suggest that the two 

possibilities are roughly equivalent classes of concern. 

Motivations To Go Armed 

• 
One final question in the sequence was. designed to ex- plore the "other side" of this issue, namely, the 

possibility that "committing crime against an armed 

victim is an exciting challen~e." For about three 

quarters of the men in this sample, it was not.26 

All the preceeding items deal with. criminals in general; we also asked each man about the kinds of things 

he personally thought about "when you were getting 

ready to do a crime." The three things most often on a felon's mind when getting ready to commit crime were, 

it appears, the possibility of getting caught (cited 

as something one thought about "regularly" or "often" 

by 5496), the possibility of going to prison (5096), and 

the possibility that "your family might look down on 

you" ( 4896 ). Just over a third thought regularly or often about the possibility of getting shot by the 

police; an identical percentage thought regularly or often about getting shot by one's victim. The possibility of hurting or killing someone was also thought 

about regularly or often by roughly a third. That 

one's friends "might look down on you" was a concern to only about a quarter. 

It is of some interest to ask, which felons thought 

most about being shot by their victim in the course of a crime? A major factor appears to be having had the 

experience of encountering an armed victim at some prior time. We asked the sample in a later question 

series whether they, personally, had ever "run into a victim who was armed with a gun." Among those who had never had the experience (N = 919), 4896 said they 

"never" thought about being shot by their victim; 

among those who had ( N = 553), only 2396 "never" 

thought about it. Likewise, 4596 of those who had at some time confronted an armed victim thought about 

being shot by their victim regularly or often; among 

the remainder, the comparable figure was 2896. Here as in many other instances, experience appears to be a capable teacher. 

Direct evidence on the sample's experience with armed 

victim encounters is shown in Table 16. Just under 

two-fifths of the sample (3796) had at some time in 

their careers run into a victim who was armed with a gun. A slightly smaller percentage (3496) said they 

had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by 

all armed victim," and about two-thirds (6996) had at 

least one acquaintance who had had this experience. 

(A tenth knew "many" criminals who had been thwarted 

by an armed victim.) About two-fifths of the sample 

( 4096) had at some time decided not to do a crime 

because they knew or believed thattheir intended victim was armed. 

A cross-tabulation of the first two items reveals that 

encountering an armed victim is not the same thing 

as being thwarted by one. About 3796 of tpe sample had 

run into an armed victim, but a slightly smaller percentage, 3496, said they had been scared off, shot at, 

or otherwise opposed forcefully by one. The correla26. On the other hand, fully a quarter of the sample agreed with 

this sentiment. Some, in short, were apparently not at all nervous about armed victim encounters; to the contrary, the prospect 

seemed to excite them. Analysis of the responses showed that the 

tendency to agree with the item was considerably higher among the 

Predators than among the remainder of the sample; among the two 

Predator groups, agreement ran to about 40% (vs. about 20% elsewhere). For about two-fifths of the predatory felons, in other 

words, the thrill of confrontation with an armed victim appears to 

be part of the positive motivation to commit crime. 

28 Motivations To Go Armed 

• 

Table 16 

Confronting The Armed Victim: Experiential Results 

1. Thinking now about all the crimes you ever committed ••• D

you personally ever run into a victim who was armed with 

gun? 

NO 63 

YES 37 

100% 

N = (1667) 

2. Have you ever been scared off, shot at, wounded or captu

by an armed victim? 

NO 66 

YES 34 

100% 

N = (1673) 

3. Was there ever a time in your life when you decided not 

do a crime because you knew or believed that the victim 

carrying a gun? 

NO, NEVER 

YES, JUST ONCE 

YES, A FEW TIMES 

YES, MANY TIMES 

N = 

61 

10 

22 

8 

101% 

(1627) 

~. Think now about other criminals you have known in your 

life ••• Have any of the criminals you have known persona

ever been scared off, shot at, wounded, captured, or kil

by an armed victim? 

NO, NONE 

YES, BUT ONLY ONE 

YES, A FEW 

YES, MANY 

N 

31 

10 

48 

11 

100% 

(1627) 

tion between these two experiences is strong (r = .

but short of perfect. As it happens, there were 1,04

men in the sample who said they had never "run int

a victim who was armed with a gun," and of these, 

1596 said they had been scared off, shot at, etc. 

This appears to be an inconsistency, but may in fac

not be. "Run into" might be interpreted to imply a 

direct face-to-face encounter, and clearly, one coul

be "scared off," or even "shot at," by a gun-wielding 

victim and never confront that victim face-to-face. 

There were, likewise, 609 men in the sample who ha

encountered an armed victim. Of these, just two--

thirds said they had also been scared off, shot at, 

etc.; the remaining third had not been. This implies

first, that not all encounters with an armed victim 

eventuate in a thwarted crime; a third of the men w

had ever encountered an armed victim said they had 

never been deterred by one. But it also implies, 

secondly, that at least some of these encounters do 

result in a thwarted crime. Two thirds of the men 

had ever encountered an armed victim said they had 

also been deterred or thwarted by an armed victim 

least once. This is, to be sure, very imperfect evi

dence on the efficacy of private firearms as a defen

against crime, but it is at least some evidence that 

armed citizens abort or prevent at least some crime
That 4096 of the sample had at some time decided not to 

do a crime because the intended victim was carryin~ a gun is additional evidence favoring the same point.27 

The four items in Table 14 are fairly strongly correlated one with the other; the correlation coefficients 

range from .27 to .52. Substantively, this implies 

that those who had run into an armed victim were also 

likely to have been deterred or thwarted by one and to 

have had friends and acquaintances who had had similar 

experiences. 

The correlations among the items are stron~ enou~h to 

justifv combining them into a simple summated index of 

armed victim encounters. Analysis of this index 

showed that the more crime one has committed, the 

higher the odds on encountering an armed victim. The 

least likely ever to have had such an encounter were the Unarmed Criminals; the most likely, by far, were 

the Predators, especially the Handgun Predators. The 

probability of an encounter with an armed victim, in 

other words, appears to be directly proportional to 

the rate at which crimes were committed. Consistent 

with this latter point, the correlation between the 

Encounter Index and our Index of Total Criminality is 31. 

One must, of course, be cautious in interpreting all 

the above results. Many of these men's "victims" are in all likelihood other men much like themselves. The 

armed victim encounters reported by this sample may 

well be confrontations between two men with equally 

felonious histories and motives as between hard core perpetrators and total innocents. 

27. We can only speculate about the circumstances under which a felon would come to find out that his potential victim was armed 

and choose not to commit a crime accordingly. Unless a victim were a policeman, a security guard, or carrying his weapon in a very obvious way, it would normally be rather difficult to make 

the determination, most of all in committin~ a conventional crime 

(robbery, burglary, assault) against a conventional victim. 

From the above one infers that knowledge about a victim's armament 

would generally be highest when the "victims" are one's friends 

and neighbors or persons with whom one has frequent dealings. 

Hence, a felon might well decide not to rob his drug dealer when 

he knows his dealer carries a weapon at all times, might decide 

not to hijack the loot from a fellow thief known to be well-armed, 

etc. Indeed, it could be argued that the process that results In 

these men saying that they have been thwarted in at least one crime by an armed victim is merely tile opposite side of the selfprotection theme about which the prisoners made much as a motive 

for carrying guns. 

Our point here Is that It Is not at all clear what these men were saying when they told us they had decided at least once not to do a crime because they knew or suspected that the victim was armed. 

This might Involve a street robbery that was not attempted because 

of a suspicious bulge under the victim's jacket, or It might Involve a home burglary thwarted In progress because the victim 

opened fire, or It might Involve nothing more than a general tendency to avoid victimizing other thugs who are known to carry 

weapons. In all likelihood, It Involves a combination of these, 

but nothing In our data would allow a determination of the relative frequencies. 

Motivation• To Go Armed 
What Felons Look for in Firearms 

What do felons look for in a handgun? What characteristics are important to them? What kinds of handguns 

do they actually own and carry? 

It is often assumed that criminals prefer small, cheap 

handguns, the so-called Saturday Ni!;ht Specials (SNS), 

or, the currently preferred phrase, the "snubbies," 

the light-weight, short-barrellet1, typically smallercaliber weapons that are easily obtained, readily concealable, and serve the purpose o( intimidation as well as any other. 

Typically, this preference has been inferred from 

studies of confiscated weapons. In the well-known ATF 

Project Identification study, to illustrate, half the 

handguns in the sample were judged to be worth less 

than $50, 70% had barrel lengths of 3 inches or less, 

and 60% were .32 caliber or less; all told, 45% were 

deemed to be "Saturday Night Specials." Brill's (1977) 

analysis suggested a somewhat, but not dramatically, 

lower fraction of SNS's among the handguns used in 

crime. (Of course, Project Identification's handgun 

prices were obtained in the early 70's, and since that 

time inflation has raised the prices of all goods by 

as much as 125%; thus a handgun that sold for $50 then 

would now sell for about $112.) 

To assess the traits that our felons looked for in a 

handgun, every man in the sample (whether a gun owner 

or not) was given a list of handgun characteristics 

(e.g., "that it is cheap," "that it is big caliber," 

etc.) and was asked to state how important each characteristic "would be to you in looking for a suitable 

handgun." In all, thirteen handgun traits. were used 

for this analysis; each man was also asked to pick 

from the list of thirteen the single most important 

factor he "would look for in a handgun." 

Judging first from the fraction rating each trait as 

"very important," the three most desirable handgun 

characteristics were accuracy ( 62% ratin~ this as very 

important), untraceability ( 60%), and the quality of 

the construction (that it was "a well-made gun," 58%). 

That it was "easy to shoot" was very important to 54%; 

that it was "easily concealed" was very important to 

50%. "Easy to get" and "has a lot of firepower" were 

also relatively important (48% and 42%, respectively). 

In contrast, the characteristics usually associated 

with criminal handguns did not seem particularly important to these men: "thaiTt is cheao" was very important to only 21%; "that it is small caliber," to 

only 11%. These data clearly do not suggest a strong 

preference for SNS-style handguns. 

Results for the "single most important" question were 

generally similar: based on these results, the ideal 

handgun from the felon's viewpoint was one that had a 

lot of firepower (22%), was well-made (17%), could not 

be traced (13%), and was easily concealed (13%). 

Price, in contrast, was the single most important factor to only 6%; small caliber, to only 3%: In both 

cases, the importance of concealability was apparent, 

but beyond that, the traits characteristic of heavierduty handguns seemed far more important to these men 

than did the traits of snubbies or the Saturday Night 

Specials. 

The thirteen handgun traits asked about in the sequence can be roughly grouped into four categories for 

purposes of data reduction. First are the traits 

that, for our purposes, define the Saturday Night 

Special: cheap and small caliber. Second are the 

traits that, for want of a better term, we will refer 

to as the "serious handgun" traits: accuracy, firepower, big caliber, well-made gun. Third are a set of 

three traits that would normally matter only to a 

felon who intended to use the handgun for criminal or illicit purposes--that it is concealable, a scary 

looking gun, and cannot be traced--to which we will 

refer as the "criminal use" traits. Finally, there 

are four "convenience" traits --easy to shoot, easy to 

get, ammunition is cheap, ammunition is easy to get--

which might be of some importance to a handgun con- sumer regardless of the intended use. 

Table 17 

Relative Importance of Four Categories of Handgun Characteristic

IMPORTANCE CHARACTERISTICS 

SNS1 Serious2 Criminal3 Convenience4 

Not At All 

Important 40 13 14 15 

A Little 

Important 37 25 27 32 

Somewhat 

Important 17 42 47 40 

Very 

Important 6 20 12 13 

% = 100 100 100 100 

xs 2.1 3.0 2.8 2.8 

SD = .91 .88 .85 .83 

N = 1356 1317 1374 1346 

CORRELATIONS 

SERIOUS2 CRI~INAL3 CONVENIENCE4 

SNS 

SERIOUS .09 

CRIMINAL • 39 .35 

CONVENIENCE .47 .48 .58 

1. SNS = "Saturday Night Special" Traits: cheap; small caliber

2. Serious = "Serious Handgun" Traits: accuracy; firepower; big caliber; well-made. 

3. Criminal = "Criminal Use" Traits: concealable; scarylooking; untraceable. 

4. Convenience = "Convenience" Traits: easy to shoot; easy to 

get; cheap ammunition; ammunition easy to get

5. Mean Rankings are computed using the following scores: 1 =Not At All Important; 2 =A Little Important; 

3 = Somewhat Important; and 4 = Very Important. 

What Felons Look for in Firearms 
Scaling consisted simply of summing responses to the 

component variables. To reduce all four variables to 

a common metric, the resulting sum was divided bv the 

number of component items; each scaled variable therefore ranged from 1 (all !!omponent traits said to be 

"not at all important") to 4 (all component traits 

said to be "very important"). Distributions, means, 

standard deviations, and inter-correlations for the 

resulting variables are reported in Table 17. 

The distributions on these variables suggest rather 

strongly that the "serious handgun" traits taken as a whole were the most important factors felons looked 

for in a handgun. The mean on the "serious handgun" 

factor was 3.0, clearly the highest of the four means; 

62% of the sample scored 3 or higher on the "serious 

handgun" variable (somewhat or very important); re- latively few men (about 13%) considered the "serious 

handgun" traits to be generally unimportant. 

Next in importance were the criminal use and conveni- ence traits, with means of 2.8 in both cases. By far 

the least important were the Saturday Night Special 

traits: the mean for this variable was 2.1, and only 

23% of the sample regarded these traits as very or somewhat important to look for in a handgun. 

With one exception, the inter-correlations among these 

four variables were positive and strong. (The exception was a substantively trivial correlation of .09 

Table 18 

Handgun Characteristics Preferences by 

Gun Ownership and Criminal Type 

CHARACTERISTICS! 

Ever Owned a Gun? 

NO 

YES 

IF YES: Own Handgun? 

CRIMINAL TYPE 

NO 

YES 

Unarmed 

Improvisor 

SNS 

2.3* 

2.0 

2.1 

2.0 

2.2 

2.1 

Knife 2.2 

One-Time 2.0 

Sporadic 2.1 

HG Predator 1.9 

SG Predator 1.9 

F ratio a 4.54 

probability • .000 

SERIOUS 

2.7* 

3.1 

2.9 

3.1 

2.9 

3.1 

3.0 

2.9 

2.9 

3.3 

3.2 

7.32 

.ooo 

CRIMINAL 

2.8 

2.8 

2.6* 

2.8 

2.7 

2.7 

2.8 

2.7 

3.0 

2.9 

2.9 

5.03 

.000 

CONVENIENCE 

2.8 

2.8 

2.8 

2.8 

2.8 

2.7 

3.0 

2.8 

2.9 

2.9 

2.8 

1. 79 

.097 

---------------------------------------------------------------

* The difference between owners and nonowners is statistically significant (p < .01). 

1. See Table 17 for definitions of the four handgun characteristics. 

32 What Felons Look for In Firearms 

between the SNS and serious handgun traits.) The c

inal use and convenience traits were both correlate

at about the same level with the SNS and serious h

gun traits; or in other words, the convenience and 

criminal use traits were about equally important to men who preferred SNS-style handguns and to those 

preferred the heavier-duty equipment. We note fina

that the strongest correlate of the criminal use traits was the convenience traits (r = .58): men wh

valued a handgun for its suitability for use in crime 

also tended strongly to value guns that were easy t

obtain and fire, and for which ammunition was cheap 

and readily obtained. 

Table 18 shows the relationship between the "handg

traits" preferences and the gun ownership variables 

(ever own a gun? ever own a handgun?). The relati

ship to the armed criminals typology is also shown. 

Concerning the gun ownership variables, only three 

the eight mean comparisons were statistically signi

cant: men who had never owned a gun tended to va

the SNS traits more highly than men who had; likewise, the non-owners tended to value the serious ha

gun traits less highly than the gun owners did. 

Finally, men who had owned a handgun valued the cr

nal use traits more highly than gun owners who had 

owned handguns. 

Substantively, perhaps the most interesting result r

ported here is that the preference of felons for SNS

style handguns was concentrated disproportionately 

among felons who had never even owned a gun; amon

owning felons, the importance of the SNS traits was even less than suggested earlier,28 

The relationship of the preference variables with th

criminal typology proved Instructive. The preferen

for SNS characteristics was generally highest among 

the non-gun-using criminals, especially among the U

armed and Knife Criminals, and lowest among the 

Predator categories. Likewise, preference for the 

serious handgun traits was lowest among the non- users and highest among the Predators, as was the 

preference for the criminal use traits. (The relationship of the convenience factor to type was not 

statistically significant.) In short, serious criminals preferred serious equipment. 

The preceding describes the characteristics of the 

"Ideal handgun" from the criminal viewpoint. It is 

useful question whether the traits they preferred in 

handgun were to be found among the handguns they 

actually carried. 

To this end, each handgun owner in the sample was asked a series of questions about the most recent 

handgun he had owned: approximate retail value, ma

facturer, caliber, and barrel length. The apparent 

preference for serious equipment suggested above is 

amply evident In the handguns these men actually 

owned. On the whole, these were relatively expensi

handguns: only about 11% were judged to be worth 

or less, and just under a third (31%) were judged to 

28. It Is worth a note that all five of the "tlrearms socialization" variables were negatively related to the SNS preference 

positively related to the "serious handguns" preference, The 

greater a feion's early exposure to firearms, the stronger his 

preference for serious handguns. It can also be mentioned th

there was no correlation between having obtained one's most r

handgun "to use In my crimes" and the SNS preference (r = .0
be worth $100 or less. Most of these handguns ( 37%) 

fell into the $100-200 range; about a third (32%) were 

worth more than $200. Consistent with the price data, 

about three fifths of these handguns (57%) were manufactured by Smith and Wesson, Colt, or Ruger Arms, all 

three manufacturers of quality handguns. (To be sure, 

a sizable fraction of the respondents, 30%, did not 

know the manufacturer of their most recent handgun.) 

Data on caliber and barrel length sustain the same 

conclusion. Less than a third (30%) of the sample's 

most recent handguns had barrel lengths of 3 inches or less; most (53%) were standard-sized handguns of the 

sort normally carried, say, by policemen (4-6 inch 

barrels); a considerable number (17%) were large handguns of the "Dirty Harry" type ( 7 inch or lon~er barrels). 

The data on caliber are especially informative, mainly 

because roughly comparable data for non-felon handguns 

exist (Wright et al., 1983: 43). Relative to these 

data, the handguns carried by our felons were predominantly large, not small, caliber; the differences, 

moreover, are fairly substantial. More than a third 

(34%) of all handguns manufactured in the United 

States in 1973-74 were of the .22 caliber variety. In 

contrast, only about a sixth of the felons' most recent handguns were .22's. All told, just over half 

(53%) of all non-felon handguns qualify as small 

caliber weapons ( .32 caliber or less); less than a 

third of the felons ( 30%) owned handguns of these 

calibers. Relative to the totals, felons were considerably more likely to carry .357's (20% vs. 13% 

in the tot~44's (6% to 2%), .45's (8% to 3%), and 

9 mm. firearms (7% to 2%).29 

Neither barrel length nor caliber per se is sufficient to isolate the true SNS's in this sample of 

handguns. Some short-barrel weapons are chambered in 

large calibers; some small caliber weapons are not 

short-barreled. If, followin~ Project Identification, 

we define an SNS as bein~ both short-barreled and 

small caliber, then 125 of the most recent handguns 

owned by these men were Saturday Night Specials, which 

amounts to 14%. This, moreover, is certainly an overestimate of the true SNS percentage, since at least 

some of the short, small-caliber weapons would not 

have been especially cheap. -

In sum, these data are not consistent with the argument that felons prefer small, cheap, SNS-style handguns. The stated preferences of the sample, ant1 the 

equipment they actually carried, suggest, in contrast, 

a marked preference for larger and better made guns. 

29. Again, these comparisons are not precise. The data for "all 

handguns" are the calibers of all handguns manufactured in the US 

in 1973-74 (the latest year for which these data are aV!lilable, so far as we know). Thus, imported handguns are not included. It is 

usually assumed that imported handguns are predominantly of the 

smaller caliber types; if so, then the differences reported in the 

text understate the true differences. 

The prevalence of 9 mm. handguns in these data is worthy of note. 

We have remarked elsewhere on the growing popularity of the 9 mm. semi-automatic among the police (Wright et al., 1983: Ch. 4); 

judging from the data reported in the text, this weapon is also 

enjoying an increasing popularity among criminal consumers as well. (In any case, very few 9 mm. weapons appear in Brill's 

1977 data.) Based on the stated manufacturer, we infer that many 

of these are the Browning 9 mm. 13 round autoloaders that have 

been characterized as "the handweapon of choice among terrorists 

world-wide." 

There is an obvious and rather lar~e disparity between 

our findin~s and the results of the confiscation 

studies. For example, about 70% of the Project Iden:-

tification handguns had barrel len~ths of 3 inches or less in contrast to only about 30% in our data; 60% of 

the Project Identification hand~uns were of the 

smaller calibers as compared with only about 30% in 

our data; and so forth. 

We doubt whether there is any one single reason that 

accounts for the divergence in these results. Our 

data are possibly misleading on at least four counts: 

(i) It is possible that our sample exaggerated the 

size, worth and caliber of their handguns, perhaps to 

impart a "macho" image. (ii) Seven of the ten states 

in our study are either clearly or arguably Southern 

or Western states (clearly: Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, 

and Florida; arguably: Oklahoma, Missouri, and Maryland). It is possible that felons in Southern and 

Western states have handgun preferences that differ 

from the preferences of felons elsewhere. in the country. (iii) Our data refer only to the felons' most 

recent handguns; assuming multiple handguns among th

felons' arsenals, they may not have carried, day to 

day, these "most recent" handguns but rather other, 

smaller handguns acquired at some earlier time. 

(iv) Finally, our data cannot pretend to be representative of all criminals; the sample is biased in favor 

of persons with longer and more violent careers in 

crime. If, as seems likely, one-time, less violent, 

and/or juvenile offenders prefer smaller armament than 

our more "serious" felons prefer, then the Project 

Identification findings (and others like them) may 

well be more accurate as a depiction of the "typical" 

crime handgun. 

On the other hand, tllere are also good reasons to be 

skeptical of the confiscation studies; Brill (1977) 

provides the best discussion of these problems. 

Lacking any way to confirm the source of the disparity, we. have no choice but to stick with the substantive conclusion suggested by our data: the men we 

interviewed in these ten prisons tended both to prefer 

and to own larger and higher-quality handguns than 

previous studies led us to expect. 

The zero-order correlations between the characteristics these men said they preferred in a handgun and 

the characteristics of the handguns they actually 

carried were in the right direction but were not very 

strong. The SNS-traits preference was negatively correlated with the approximate retail value of the 

felon's most recent handgun (r = -.16), with caliber 

(recoded so that .22's, .25's, and .32's are small 

caliber and everything else is large, r = -.09), and 

with barrel length (r = -.07); and in contrast, the 

"serious handgun" preference was positively correlated 

with value (r = .23), with caliber (r = .22), and with 

barrel length ( r = .17 ). 

One reason why these correlations are not higher, of 

course, was that many of these "most recent" handguns 

had been stolen by the felon. As we see later, felons 

stole handguns because they were there to steal, not 

because they were looking specifically for a firearm; 

for any .given stolen handgun, then, one would expect 

no more than a random "fit" between desiderata and 

actual characteristics. 

If one omits handguns stolen by the felon himself from 

the analysis, then the correlations between preferred 

and actual handgun characteristics go up: absent the 

What Felons Look tor In Firearms 
stolen handguns, the SNS-traits preference was negatively correlated with retail value (-.22), caliber (-

.11) and with barrel length (-.13); and likewise, the 

"serious handgun" preference was positively correlated 

with value (.27), caliber (.24), and barrel length 

( .21 ). 

Although these correlations are still rather modest, 

the general tendency is clear enough: the criminals 

in our sample tended actually to carry what they preferred to carry, which for the most part meant fairly 

heavy duty handguns, in sharp contrast to the conventional expectation. 30 

30. The questionnaire included two measures of "consumer sophistication." One was an eight-item true-false test of knowledge about 

guns; the second, a seven-item true-false test concerning gun 

laws. In both cases, the average score was close to the chance 

expectation, which suggests that felons in general are not especially well-informed about firearms and firearms laws. About 

three-quarters did know, however, that it was against the law for a convicted felon to obtain a handgun. Relative degrees of con- sumer sophistication were as much as one would expect: the more 

firearms a felon had ever owned and the 'l'reater his early socialization to firearms, the higher his knowledgeability. Interestingly, the Handgun Predators knew more about guns (but not gun 

laws) than any other group. Finally, the greater the felon's 

knowledgeability, the greater his preference for the "serious 

handgun" traits. In contrast, the preference for small cheap 

handguns was strongest among those who knew the least about guns. 

34 What Felons Look for in Firearms 
Patterns of Firearms Acquisition 

Means and Sources of Acquisition 

How and where do felons obtain their firearms? Surprisingly, little is known about this question. It 

has long been susoected that many felons obtain their 

guns through theft, a suspicion that is stronglv confirmed in our data. It is also commonly assumed, but 

has never been thoroughly researched, that many felons 

exploit informal, black market, and other relatively 

hard-to-regulate sources of supply. This too is con- firmed in the analyses reported below. 

Burr's (1977) study of Florida felons represents, so 

far as we know, the only previous attempt to explore 

patterns of criminal gun acquisition by direct questioning of a felon sample. Data were gathered on the 

sources from which 176 crime handguns were obtained. 

Just over a third were acquired through private party 

transactions (purchases or swaps between private individuals), and about a quarter were obtained through 

theft. Another quarter were obtained through a retail 

dealer; a few were obtained as gifts (5%), through 

pawn shops (2%) or had simply been borrowed (4%). 

Taking "retail dealer" and "pawn shop" as customary 

retail transactions where there might be some concern 

with legality, and the remainder as informal, off-therecord transactions, the latter predominate in these 

data by about three to one (74% to 26%).31 

We attempted to obtain fairly comprehensive information from our sample as to where and how they had obtained their guns. Since our respondents tended to 

have owned guns in fairly large numbers, it was impractical to ask where and how they had obtained every 

gun they had ever owned. Thus, all our questions refer specifically to their most recent firearms acquisitions. Absent any evidence to suggest otherwise, we 

assume that patterns of acquisition for these ''most 

recent" guns were typical of all the firearms tra:n8-

actions these men undertook. 

Each man in the study was asked whether he had ever 

owned a handgun; 1,032 said ves. This amounts to 

55% of the total sample and to 79% of those who had 

ever owned any kind of gun. Each of the handgun 

owners was asked where and how his most recent handgun 

had been obtained (Table 19). 

Concerning "how," outright cash purchase was the most 

common means of acquiring a handgun, indicated by 

about 43%. The only other fairly common rn.eans of acquisition was theft, indicated by 32%. Small but 

roughly equal proportions obtained their most .. recent 

31. Burr also surveyed a sample of non-criminal gun owners. Patterns of acquisition differed in degree, but not in kind, from 

those observed in his sample of felons. Of the 433 l~itimate 

handguns in this analysis. 4396 were purchased from a retail dealer 

and 696 were bought at li ,awnshop; thus, only about half of the 

legitimate handguns were acquired through customary retail channels. Nationally representative data from a 1978 survey of gun owners showed largely the same results (Wright et al., 1983: 118-

119). Thus, informal mechanisms of circulation figure quite prominently in both the licit and illict firearms markets. 

Table 19 

Means and Sources of Handgun Acquisitions 

Means 

Theft 32 

Rent/Borrow 9 

Trade 7 

Purchase 43 

Gift 8 

% = 99% 

N = 970 

Sources 

Family/Friends 44 

Black Market 26 

Retail Outlet 21 

All Other 9 

% = 100% 

N = 943 

handgun as gifts (8%), by borrowing (8%), or through 

trades (7%). 

Concerning "where," the most important source was 

clearly friends, mentioned by 40%. "Off the street" 

was a distant second, mentioned by 14%, followed by 

gun shops, which were mentioned by 11%. Other source

of at least some importance included pawnshoos (6%), 

fences (5%), and family members and drug dealers (4% 

each).32 

Combining categories in obvious ways, we find that 

family and friends were by far the most common source 

for the felons' most recent handguns ( 44%), followed 

by various gray and black market sources (fences, dru

dealers, off the street, etc., with 26%), followed 

finally by customary retail outlets (gun shops, pawn 

shops, hardware and department stores, with 21%). The 

remaining 10% were acquired from a variety of other sources. 

The crosstabulation of the "where" and "how" questions 

is shown in Table 20. We note first that family and 

friends were the predominant source of supply whateve

the means of acquisition, including theft. Indeed, 

among those who had obtained their most recent handg

by stealing it, 31% reported stealing from friends or family members. Another 30% reported stealing from a 

gray or black market source (fence, drug dealer, etc.) 

About a tenth of the thefts were directly from retail 

outlets, and the remaining 29% were from "other 

sources" (in this case, overwhelmingly, from homes and 

apartments). Additional detail on the theft of firearms is reported later. 

32. We asked parallel questions about the samole's most recent 

rifle and shotgun acquisitions as well. Gifts of rifles and shotguns were more numerous than gifts of handguns; likewise, custom

ary retail outlets figure somewhat more prominently in the case o

shoulder weapons than in the case of handguns. Otherwis~ the 

patterns were quite similar. 

Patterns of Firearms Acquisition 
Tabie 20 

Means by Sources of Handgun Acquisitions 

THEFT BO~~OW/ 

RENT GIFT 

SOURCE 

TOTAL 

IOf 

Total 

PURCHASE 

i of i of 

Col. Total 

i of 'l of 

Col. Total 

'lof iof 

Col. Total 

TRADE • 'l of i of 

Col. Total 

i of i of 

Col. Total 

Family, Friends 

Gray or Black Mkt.1 

Retail Outlet2 

All Other 

Total ~ 

(Total N) 

44 

26 

20 

10 

10!)" 

(939) 

38 17 

26 11 

35 16 

1 1 

100" 413 

(415) 

1. Fence, off the street, druq dealer, or black market. 

2. Gun shop, pawnshop, hardware, or department store. 

31 10 

30 10 

10 3 

29 9 

lim" ~ 

(297) 

85 8 

10 1 

2 

3 

10!)" 9 

(82) 

54 4 

41 3 

3 

2 

roo 1 

(70) 

79 6 

15 1 

6 

100 S3 

(75) 

3. Individual "source" percents do not sum to total column oercent, due to rounding. 

Concerning outright cash purchases, family and friends 

were again the predominant source .of supply (38%), 

followed by customary retail outlets (35%). The black 

market also received a sizable share of the cash purchase market, in this case 2S%. 

Table 20 allows us to answer an important question, 

namely, what fraction of felons' most recent hand~un 

acquisitions involved a straightforward transaction 

(cash purchase) with a conventional retail outlet? As 

it happens, this describes 147 of the 939 men represented in the table, or 16%. One out of six of the men in this sample acquired his most recent handgun 

through means and sources likely to be concerned about 

the legality of the transaction; five out of six did 

not. 

As one might anticipate, there were fairly sizable 

differences in the means and sources of llandgun acquisitions across the categories of our typology. In the 

less predatory categories, cash purchase was clearly 

the most common means of acquisition, and in the more predatory categories, it was theft. One-timers and 

Sporadics were noticeably more likely to have borrowed 

(or rented) their most recent handguns than were the 

other types; knife criminals, noticeably more likely 

to have received their weapons as gifts. 

Concerning sources: family and friends were the major 

suppliers in all cases but one; among Shotgun Predators, black market sources were slightly more .:!ommon. 

Normal retail outlets were exploited by about a third 

of the Unarmed Criminals and the Improvisors, and by 

about a fifth or less of everyone else. Fractions who 

obtained their most recent handgun through purchase 

from a normal retail outlet varied from 30% of the 

Unarmed Criminals to 7% of the Handgun Predators. 

Thus, felons in general avoided usual retail outlets, 

and the more predatory felons were especially likely 

to do so. 

The presence of sizable numbers of handgun owners in 

all categories of the typology presents a convenient 

occasion in which to stress that not all of the handguns acquired by these men were in fact crime guns; 

what we have said so far pertains to the acquisition 

of guns by criminals in general, and not specifically 

the acquisition of guns to use in crime. We can, 

·36 Pattems of Firearms Acquisition 

however, provide at least some data on this latter 

topic as well. 

Men who indicated that they owned a handgun were 

about the reasons why they had acquired it. One of 

the options was, "to use in my crimes." As it happe

just over half the men who answered this question s

quence said that use in crime was not at all important; 20% indicated that it was "somewhat importan

and 29% said that it was very important. The cross

tabulation of this item with the questions on where 

and how handguns were obtained is shown in Table 

Handguns acquired by felons for reasons other than 

in crime tended to be outright cash purchases (50%

typically from family and friends (45%); handguns a

quired specifically to use in crime tended instead to 

be stolen. All told, about 20% of the non-criminal 

acquisitions involved cash purchase from a usual re

tail outlet vs. about 7% of the acquisitions where u

Table 21 

Means and Sources of Handgun Acquisitions by 1 Motives for Obtaining a Handgun 

"To Use In Crime" W

How Obtained 

Theft 

Rent/Borrow 

Trade 

Purchase 

Gift 

% = 

N = 

Where Obtained 

Family/Friends 

Black Market 

Retail Outlet 

All Other 

% = 

N " 

~ Cash Purchase 

From Retail Outlet 

Very Important 43 

14 

6 

32 

5 

100% 

208 

43 

32 

12 

13 

100% 

204 

7% 

Somewhat N

Important Imp

49 

9 

6 

29 

8 

101% 1

146 3

49 

27 

12 

13 

101% 1

142 3

7% 
in crime was somewhat or verv important. Thus, our 

essential point remains: more predatory criminals, 

acquiring a handgun specifically for use in crime, 

heavily exploited informal, off-the-record means and 

sources and rarely went through customary retail 

channels. 

The survey contains some additional descriptive details about the nature of the criminal handgun market. 

f1iven what has already been said, it comes as no surprise to learn that the market was dominated by used 

vs. new equipment: among those who answered the question, nearly two thirds ( 65%) reported that their most 

recent handgun was used when they obtained it. Used 

guns were somewhat more prominent when use in crime 

was a major or secondary motive for the acquisition 

than when it was not; new hand~uns were reported disproportionately by the Unarmed relative to the more predatory groups. 

The illicit firearms market was also predominantly a 

local market: more than three quarters of the sample 

(77%) reported that they had obtained their most recent handgun in-state. In general, there were no important differences in this fraction according to 

type, or according to the motive for acquisition, or 

by State. 

We also asked these men how long it took them to 

actually get their most recent handgun once they hao 

decided to do so; overwhelmingly, the answer was, 

"almost immediately." About 60% obtained it within a few hours, and about three quarters of them, within 

the day. Only about a tenth reported that it took more than a few days.33 · 

Gun Theft 

As we have just seen, a major source of the firearms 

owned and used by our sample was theft, the means by 

which 32% acquired their most recent handguns. We 

asked a fairly extensive series of questions concern- ing the theft of firearms, results from which are presented in this section. 

Estimates of the percentage of stolen guns among the 

firearms used in crime vary widely. The lowest estimate that appears in the literature is 6%, this fi~ure 

having been derived from the well-known Project 

Identification study. The opinion of Brill and most 

other observers is that this is almost certainly an under-estimate, quite probably a severe one. The 

follow-up study, Project 300, is also based on a , 

sample of confiscated guns but results in a more 

credible estimate of 22%. Brill's best estimate is 

about 19-20% (1977: 103); this too is based on a 

sample of confiscations. 

Another approach to the problem is to ask felons themselves whether they stole their gun(s), as, inoeed, we 

have done in our study. So far as we know, the only 

33. Phil Cook (private communication) has pointed out to us that 

many of these men would presumably have "decided" to obtain their 

most recent handgun the moment they were offered one on the street 

?r found one in the dresser drawer of a home they were burglarizmg. In such cases, clearly, the "how long did it take" question is without meaning. 

previous survey of felons to include such a question 

is Burr's. Among the 176 handguns owned by Burr's 

sample of felons, 23% were listed as stolen firearms 

by the felons themselves, rou~hly in the same ran~e a

the estimates based on confiscation samples. 

Somewhat in contrast to these findings, all the handgun owners in our sample were asked, "Which of the 

following best describes how you got your most re- cent handgun?" Results were reported earlier: about 

.a third (32%) said that thev personally had stolen it, a higher figure than reported in previous studies. 

The one-third estimate, moreover, is obviously an 

under-estimate of the true fraction of stolen guns 

among the guns used in crime, since a stolen gun need 

not have been stolen by the felon himself. 1\Aany of 

these men, knowingly or unknowinglY, will have bougttt

traded for, or otherwise obtained a handgun that had 

been stolen by someone else. 

To tap what can be called the secondary market in 

stolen guns, all the handgun owners in the sample we

asked, "To the best of your knowledge, was your most 

recent handgun a stolen weapon?" 11/len who had perso

ally stolen the gun were instructed to circle "definitely stolen" in response to this question, but not 

all of them did. If we treat every handgun tttat was 

reported to have been personally stolen ( 3296) as a 

"definitely" stolen weapon, then, all told, 46% of the 

most recent handguns possessed by this sample were r

ported as "definitely stolen" either personally or by 

someone else and another 2496 were "probably stolen." 

Thus, at least two-fifths, and possibly as many as seven-tenths of the most recent handguns owned by th

sample were stolen weapons. These data clearly imply 

that stolen handguns are a much more important sourc

of supply to the criminal population than has been 

suggested in any previous study. 34 

Corroborating evidence on the extent of firearms thef

among the sample was obtained in the criminal history 

section of the survey. All respondents were asked, 

"During any of the crimes you ever committed in your 

life, did you ever steal a gun?" Of those who responded (N = 1678), 47% said yes; among those who had ev

stolen a gun ( N = 790), 8696 reported having stolen 

more than one of them. 

The tendency to have ever stolen a gun was related, 

although not perfectly, to the tendency to have used 

guns to commit crimes. About a quarter of the Unarme

Criminals reported having stolen at least one gun; of 

this quarter, a third reported having stolen more than 

34. Again, there is a large disparity between our results and 

those reported from the confiscation studies. In this case, we think the most serious problem Is simply that in order for a hand

gun to show up as "stolen" in a weapon trace, its theft must hav

been reported to the police, complete with the correct serial num

ber and description. No one knows for sure what fraction of all 

stolen guns are reported to the police; the number is assuredly 

less than 10096 and may be very much less than 10096. (Certainly

the handguns these men said they stole from fences and drug 

dealers were not reported!) If half of all stolen ~ns are in fact 

reported, then the estimates from the confiscation studies would 

have to be multiplied by two; if only a third are reported, the 

estimates would have to be multiplied by three; etc, Taking both our finding (40-7096 stolen) and the finding from the confiscation 

studies (2096 stolen) as equally credible, the implication is that 

the fraction of stolen guns reported to the police lies somewhere 

between 30-5096, which strikes us as plausible. 

Patterns ot Firearms Acquisition 
ten guns. Among the Improvisors, 45% had stolen a 

gun; among the Knife Criminals, 34%; and amon~ the 

One-Timers, 35%. Thus, among the less predatory felon 

categories, fractions ranging from about a quarter to 

about a half had stolen at least one firearm. 

The remaining categories stand in sharp contrast; 

among the Sporadics and Predators, it is the rare man 

who had not stolen a firearm sometime in his life. 

Indeed, in these categories, the fraction who had ever stolen runs from 70% to 80%. These, moreover, tend to 

be high rate thieves: amon~ the Sporadics and Predators who had stolen at least one gun (N = 472), a mere 

5% had stolen only one. 

Response categories to the "how many ever stolen" 

question were just one, a few, 10-15, dozens, hundreds, or thousands. Taking "a few" to mean five and 

"dozens" to mean twenty-five, and using the lower 

limits to all the other categories, we estimate that 

the gun thieves in our sample had stolen some 30,000 

guns in their careers, an average of about 39 stolen 

weapons per thief. This average, of course, is greatly inflated by the small number of men who reoort 

thousands of thefts; the median value would be substantially lower. Still, it is clear that at least 

some of these men had stolen guns in very large num- bers. 

About 13% of the sample of gun thieves reported having 

stolen a single gun, most of them in the less predatory categories. These "one-time" thieves accounted 

for less than one percent of the total number of guns 

stolen. Of vastly greater concern are the 85 men--11% 

of the gun thieves--who reported stealing hundreds or thousands of guns; these men accounted for nearly 80% 

of the total volume of stolen guns reported by our respondents. About three-quarters of these "high rate" 

gun thieves were from the two Predator categories. 

Men who reported having stolen a gun were asked, "Have 

you ever gone out specifically looking for a gun to 

steal, or did you just steal guns when you came across 

them?" More than three-quarters (76%) of the gun 

thieves stole guns when they came across them; thus, 

going out looking specifically for a gun to steal was a relatively rare behavior. Likewise, we asked, "When 

you stole a firearm, was it usually because you wanted 

it for yourself, or was it usually because you intended to sell or trade it to somebody else?" More 

than two thirds (70%) of the gun thieves "usually" 

stole guns to sell or trade to someone else. f::learly, 

most gun thefts were "opportunity" crimes: guns were stolen mainly because they were there to steal, not 

because the felon had decided he needed a gun and that 

theft was the most convenient or cheapest way to obtain it. 

To be sure, a minority of the gun thefts were rather 

more purposive in character; these "more purposive" 

gun thefts were concentrated among the Predator categories. More than a third of the Handgun Predators 

(34%), and two-fifths of the Shotgun Predators (41%), 

reported having looked specifically for a gun to 

steal--higher percentages than obtained in any of the 

other categories. The Handgun Predators were also the 

likeliest, by far, to steal guns to keep for themselves (45% vs. 30% in the total sample of gun 

thieves). Still, even in the Predator categories, opportunity theft was the rule: looking specifically to 

steal a gun for one's own personal use was the minority tendency in every category. 

38 Pattems of Firearms Acquisition 

The cross-tabulation of these two questions isolate

an interesting subgroup, namely, 100 men who repor

that they looked specifically for guns to steal and 

that they usually stole guns to sell or trade to--

others. In some sense, these are men who appeare

specialize in gun theft, and so some additional ana

sis of them is in order. 

First, these 100 "professional" gun thieves stole gu

in larger than average numbers: their average num

of guns ever stolen was 84, or more than twice the 

average for all gun thieves. "Relative to the others

they were also distinctively more likely to steal fro

high quantity sources. Among the total sample of 

thieves, for example, 8% said they had stolen guns 

directly from a manufacturer; among the 100 "profe

sionals," this was true of 15%. They were also mor

likely to steal from a shipment (29% vs. 16% in the 

total) and from lltores (50% vs. 37%). They were a

more likely than the others to have stolen a gun fr

a policeman or "directly off a person." However, gu

theft during housebreaks was no more common amon

"professionals" than among the total sample. 

The "professionals" also differed in how they dispos

of the guns they stole. Most sold to fences (64% 

49% in the total sample of gun thieves); a surprisi

ly large number sold stolen firearms to gun dealers 

(3296, vs. 21% in the total sample). Perhaps the t

"gun dealer" was interpreted by many to include pe

sons who traded primarily on the black and grey 

markets, as well as licensed retailers and wholesalers. Many of them (27%) said they had used st

guns to settle their debts; nearly two-fifths (of the 

"professionals," vs. 31% of all gun thieves) had als

sold stolen guns to their drug dealer. 

There was a definite connection between drug abuse 

"professional" gun theft as we have defined it here

Relative to the total sample, the "professional" gun 

thieves were heavy drug abusers and high rate dru

dealers; more than half of them (53%, vs. 27% of t

total sample) had made dozens or hundreds of drug 

deals. They were also more likely than the averag

man in the sample to have been armed during the c

viction offense (about two-thirds, vs. just over ha

of all respondents); relative to other armed criminals, they showed a preference for sawed-off shotg

(21% vs. 13% among the total armed criminals sam

Yet another follow-up question asked, "Of all the g

you have ever stolen, did you ever keep one for yo

own personal use?" Although less than a third of th

gun thieves usually stole guns for themselves, fully 

two-thirds had kept at least one for their own per

al use, at some time, for some reason. Predictably

the tendency to have kept stolen guns for personal 

increased regularly as one moves to the more pred

categories of the typology, reaching a peak among 

Handgun Predators, of whom 90% had kept a stolen 

for their personal use at least once. 

Men who indicated that they had kept a 11,'Un for pe

sonal use were asked why. The most frequent answ

given by 68%, was that "it was a nice piece," presu

ably, a nicer piece than the one they were then ca

rying. Theft appears to serve as a mechanism of 

nological upgrading among the criminal population. 

The next most frequent reason for keeping a stolen 

gun, mentioned by 37%, was that "I did not have a 

then." Roughly a third mentioned that "a stolen gu

could never be traced to me"; predictably, this re- sponse was especially common among the more ser
gun abusers. Other reasons for keepin~ stolen guns 

were all cited less frequently, for example, "I collect guns" (mentioned by 2096), or "I couldn't find 

anyone to sell it to" ( 1296 ). 

All who reported the theft of a gun were asked if they 

had ever sold or traded a stolen gun; 9096 had. Of 

these, 1696 had done so "just once," 4796 had done so "a 

few times," and 3796 had done so "many times." "A few 

times" was the modal response among all categories ex- cept the Predators; among the Predators, "many times" was the most common response. About 9596 of the Predators (both groups) had sold or traded a stolen gun at 

least once in their careers. 

Men who reported having sold or traded at least one 

stolen firearm were queried about their customers in 

these transactions. The most frequent sale was "to a 

friend," mentioned by about two-thirds overall. This, 

in fact, was the modal response in all categories, 

with percentages ranging from 5396 of the Unarmed to 

7396 among the Handgun Predators. 

Next to friends, black market sales predominated, es- pecially to fences ( 49%) and drug dealers ( 31%). 

Sales "to a stranger on the street" were also fairly 

common, having been mentioned by 2596. Other frequently mentioned outlets included pawnshops (21%), 

gun dealers (21%), "people I was in debt to" (20%) 

and family members (12%). Three men volunteered the 

information that they had sold stolen guns to police- men. 

The pattern of commerce revealed in these responses 

is, of course, very similar to the pattern of acquisition noted previously. Felons with stolen guns to 

sell tended to sell them to the same sources that 

other felons exploited to acquire guns. Some of these 

men, clearly, were suppliers to the stolen gun market, 

and others were consumers in the market; realistically, most of these men were probably both suppliers and consumers at various times. It is also of some significance that the 693 men who entered the "who did 

you sell to?" sequence gave a total of 1,670 answers, 

for an average of 2.4 channels of distribution per 

man. More than a third of these channels involved 

close associates (friends, family, creditors); another 

third involved clearly criminal enterprises (fences 

and drug dealers). Still, rou~hly a sixth of the commerce in stolen guns involved legitimate or quasilegitimate businesses (gun shops, pawn shops). Most 

of the remainder was sold on the street. Of course, 

not all stolen guns entered these channels of distribution; as noted earlier, about two thirds have kept 

at least one gun for their own use. 

As we reported earlier, about 46% of the sample's most 

recent handguns were definitely stolen (including the ones stolen directly by the felons themselves), and an additional 2496 were "probably stolen." A crosstabulation of this question with the questions on where and how their most recent handguns were obtained 

gives some additional sense of the commerce in stolen 

guns. 

For this purpose, we ignore the direct thefts and 

focus on the handguns acquired through other means. To illustrate, 70 men reported that they had either 

rented or borrowed their most recent handgun; of 

these, 39 (5696) were rated as "probably" or "definitely" stolen. Of the 349 handguns ''bought for 

cash," 52 were "definitely stolen" and 101 were "probably stolen." Thus, about 4496 of the cash purchases 

made by these men involved stolen guns. Even among 

the 112 guns received in trades or as gifts, 5196 were considered likely to have been stolen. Overall, of 

the 531 handguns our respondents obtained other than 

through a personal theft, 259, or 4996, were judged 

either definitely or probably stolen. In short, 

stolen firearms circulated freely through all the 

mechanisms of exchange exploited by these men. 

Men who told us they had stolen at least one ~un in 

their careers were asked about the sources from which 

these guns had been stolen. These data show that 

about half the thefts involved street crimes, residential burglaries, or other crimes against strangers, 

and that about a third of them involved friends or family of the respondent. l;t roughly one theft in 

ten, the victim was an ostensibly le~itimate firearms 

outlet--gun shop, pawn shop, department store, or, in 

a few cases, the military. The remaining thefts, 

about 796 of the total, involved illicit sources: fences, drug dealers, and black market operators. 

We asked tl'Je gun thieves not only about the sources 

but also about the locations of their gun thefts. The 

modal response was "from a home or apartment," men- tioned by 84%. In other words, 8496 of the men who h

ever stolen at least one gun had stolen a gun directly 

from a private residence. This fraction varied little across the categories of the typology. 

About half the gun thieves (51%) indicated that they 

had stolen a gun "from a car;" this was especially common among the Handgun Predators. The next most common response was "from a store," mentioned by ab

a third of all gun thieves and by half the two Predator groups. Stealing a gun "directly off a person" 

was admitted by 2796; most of these thefts involved th

serious gun abusers (Sporadics and Predators). 

"Off a truck during shipment" was mentioned by 15%; 

1496 claim to have stolen a gun directly from a police

man. In both cases, the Predators showed the highest 

percentages of all groups. About 896 of the gun 

thieves reported having stolen from manufacturers; 

again, the Predators led the list. 

In terms of the number of thefts, then, most involved residences and vehicles, although thefts from 

commercial establishments, shippers, and manufacture

also seem alarmingly common. In terms of the total 

number of guns stolen, however, it is possible that 

theft from residences is less important and theft from 

these other potential high volume sources is more important. The frequency with which these men reporte

thefts against potential high-volume sources argues in 

favor of additional research •on this aspect of the gun 

theft problem. 

Patterns ot Firearms Acquisition 
, ..•... ·· """-,. ~ 

Handgun Controls and Weapons Substitution 

One among several widely debated issues in the area of 

guns and criminal violence concerns the likely re- sponse of the criminal population to various gun con- trol measures. Some (e.g., Zimring, 1968) have argued 

that in the complete absence of all guns, criminals 

would substitute knives. Since knives are generally 

less lethal than firearms, the suggestion is that such a measure would cause the rate of violent killings to 

decrease. Others (e.g., Kates, 1978; Kleck, 1983) 

have argued, in contrast, that the option to ban all 

firearms is politically unrealistic, that in the existing political climate, the more likely policy option is to ban all handguns (or certain restricted 

classes of handguns), and that in the complete absence 

of handguns, criminals would tend to substitute 

shoulder weapons instead, suitably modified (if the 

need be) to make these weapons adequately concealable. 

Since, in general, shoulder weapons are more lethal 

than handguns, the suggestion is that such measures 

might well cause the rate of violent killings to in- crease. Arguing from this general perspective, Kleck 

has suggested that "handgun only" controls could well 

be, in his words, "a policy disaster In the making." 

Of course, no one knows for sure just what criminals 

would do if society could somehow attain the hypothetical "no handguns" condition, or some close variant (i.e., no cheap handguns, no Saturday Night 

Special handguns, etc .) The possibility that a substantial fraction would substitute more lethal weapons 

instead is, however, sufficiently real that some inquiry into the matter is in order. Although the 

felons In our sample may not be the best and most re- liable source of information on what might happen 

under certain future circumstances, their views on 

these issues are certainly of some relevance. 35 

Under the provisions of existing Federal law, it Is 

already illegal for a convicted felon to acquire a 

firearm. It is of some Interest and pertinent to the concerns of this volume to see how the likely postrelease firearms behavior of our sample would be con- strained by this fact. Interestingly, most (73%) of 

35. It cannot be stressed too heavily that all these questions are entirely hypothetical; responses must be understood in this framework. These data, in short, are suggestive but by no means definitive. 

Some have maintained that the options posed in our questions are extremely unrealistic, especially the option to carry sawed off 

rifles and shotguns. The claim is that even cut down, such weapons are far too bulky for typical criminal use. Bulk, to be sure, 

would be a serious, but not necessarily prohibitive, problem. 11.1any 

shotguns on the market (especially those with pump actions) simply 

cannot be cut down to any convenient or readily concealable size. 

Many others, however, and in particular the very popular one shot 

breech loaders, can be cut down to a size not much larger than at 

least some of the larger handguns. Many of the felons in our sample, the Shotgun Predators to be precise, already used sawed 

off shotguns in lieu of handguns. Other felons could presumably 

do the same. 

the men in our sample were aware of this restriction. 

This notwithstanding, most of them did not anticipate 

much trouble In acquiring a handgun once released fro

prison.36 

First, as in polls of the general public, most of the 

men in our sample (82%) agreed that "gun laws affect 

only law-abiding citizens; criminals will always be 

able to get guns.n37 In like fashion, most (88%) also 

agreed that "a criminal who wants a handgun is going 

to get one, no matter how much it costs." A more direct question sequence posed the followin~~; hypothetical situation: "Suppose now that you have · been released from this prison and you have decided that you 

need to get a handgun for some reason. Let's alSo 

suppose you don't already have one. How much trouble 

do you think It would be for you to get a handgun 

after you get out of this prison?" Follow-up questions 

asked for details--how much would it cost, how long 

would it take, where would you go to get it, etc. 

Overall, the modal response for the ''how much trouble?" question was "no trouble at all," the answer 

given by 59%. Another 16% said that it would be "only 

a little trouble." Thus, three quarters of the sample 

believed they could obtain handguns with little or no 

trouble subsequent to their release from prison. This was the result for the total sample. Men who were experienced in using firearms to commit crime antic!-

pated even less difficulties: among the Predators, 

for example, more than four-fifths thought they could arm themselves with little or no trouble, and much the 

same held for the Sporadic Handgun Users as well. 

Whether these are realistic judgments or not is cer- tainly an open question, but at the moment, we have n

evidence to suggest that they are not. Clearly, many 

of these men, especially the firearms abusers, had 

acquired firearms in the past, and given an average of 

3 prior incarcerations, many would have at some previous point been exactly in the situation in question. 

Therefore, it is likely that these data represent re- ports of past experience as much as judgments of future possibilities. For this reason, we are Inclined 

to accept them as accurate. 

A follow-up question asked how much each man felt he 

would have to pay to get the handgun he wanted. Many 

of the men responded "nothing" at this point, adding 

that they would simply steal one. Among those who 

36. Retail sale of a firearm to a convicted felon is forbidden 

under the provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968. The transfe

of any firearm to a felon, whether through retail sale or any 

other less formal means, is forbidden under the provisions of the 

Omnibus Crime Control and Sate Streets Act. In sum, any transf

of a firearm to a convicted felon Is an illegal act. 

37. In a 1978 poll conducted by Patrick Caddell, 7896 agreed tha

"gun control laws affect only law abiding citizens; criminals will 

always be able to find guns," virtually identical to the felons' 

responses. Likewise, the 1978 DMI poll found 85-9096 agreeing th

"registration of handguns will not prevent criminals from acquiring or using them for Illegal purposes." Consensus on the point 

thus nearly unanimous among felons and non-felons alike. 

Handgun Controls and Weapons Substitution 
stated a specific dollar price, the modal response was $100, and· the overall sample mean response = $114. 

Acquiring a hand~un subsequent to release was neither 

especially troublesome ·nor especially expensive, at 

least as these men saw it. 

We also asked how long they thou~ht it would take. 

The modal response was "a few hours." Nearly 80% of 

the sample said they could ~et a handgun in a few days 

or less; among the Predators, the fi~ure rose to about 

90%. Over half the Predators said they could arm themselves in a few hours. 

The final questions in the sequence asked how and 

where they would go about trying to obtain a hand~un. 

About three-fifths figured they would simply buy one 

for cash, another fifth thou~ht they would just borrow 

one, and a tenth said they would ~o out and steal one. 

These patterns were essentially identical across the 

categories of the typology. 

As to where they would go to obtain a handgun, informal sources predominated. l\1'ost said they would have 

attempted to get one from a friend, and this was 

especially the case for the Predators. In the total 

sample, the next most likely sources, in order, were "on the street" (42%), from a fence (35%), on the 

black market (31%), "my drug dealer" (20%), a pawnshop 

(19%), a gun shop (16%), from a family member (15%), 

from a hardware or department store (8%), and from 

mail order outlet ( 5%). It is worth noting that where 

these men said they would go to get a handgun on release was very similar to where their most recent 

firearms had in fact been obtained. 

In sum, given the existing firearms market, most of 

the felons in our sample did not anticipate much trouble in arming themselves upon release. Suppose, however, that key features of the existing market were changed in significant ways. How mi~ht the men in 

this sample respond? The study explored several options in this regard, each relevant in one or another 

way to at least some jroposed solutions to the problem 

of handgun violence.3 

All these questions are highly and unavoidably hypothetical, and one may properly wonder just how many of 

these men would in fact do what they say they would do 

if such situations existed. Still, given the nature 

of this sample, their responses even to hypot'tletical 

possibilities are of more than passing interest. Data are shown in Table 22. 

One much-discussed policy option is to "tax the bottom 

out" of the handgun market, i.e., to greatly increase 

the pr!ce of the cheapest available handgun. This 

proposal is rooted in the belief (but see tl)e earlier 

discussion) that cheap handguns are over-represented 

among the handguns used to com'llit crimes. Panel 1 of 

Table 22 shows the responses of the sample to the 

pricing strategy. 

In the aggregate, the modal response was no't to carry 

any weapon, mentioned by 36%, seemingly an optimistic 

38. In interpreting the ensuing data, the differences between our sample of prisoners and the larger population of street criminals 

should be especially kept in mind. Our felons, to emphasize, are older, more violent and more hardened than the average street 

criminal would be. How our sample might respond to some of the 

offered options is, for that reason, not necessarily indicative of 

how criminals in general might respond. 

42 Handgun Controls and Weapons Substitution 

finding. Note, however, that this response was heav

ly concentrated among the less predatory categorie

especially among the Unarmed Criminals (60% of wh

said they would not carry any weapon under this co

dition). Among the Predators, the number who sai

they would not carry any weapon in the face of the 

pricing strategy was on the order of 10%, and for t

Sporadics, on the order of 20%. Thus, while at lea

some of these men would apparently be affected by 

ceptionally high handgun prices, 80-90% of them ap

parently would not be. 

A few men in all categories said they would respond 

the pricing option by carrying knives or clubs--the

represented about 8% of the total sample, some 15% 

the Improvisors, 21% of the Knife Criminals, and le

than a tenth of everyone else. The simple expedie

of borrowing the handgun one needed was mentioned 

25% of the total sample and by approximately a thir

of the three most predatory groups. Among the Sp

ics, in fact, borrowing the necessary weapon was th

modal response, followed by stealing one (26%) and 

carrying anything (22%). 

Among the Handgun Predators, the pattern was som

different: most (36%) would steal the handgun they 

wanted, about the same proportion (34%) would bor

it, and 13% would saw off a shoulder weapon. Amon

the Shotgun Predators, sawing off a shoulder weapon was the modal response to the pricing strategy (giv

by 35%), followed in turn by borrowing a handgun 

(29%), then stealing one (19%). Given the above p

terns, it is clear that most of these men thought th

could readily evade the pricing strategy. 

The answers given in response to the pricing questi

moreover, are not unrealistic. As we saw earlier, 

most of our sample, especially the more predatory 

ones, associated with other men who also owned and 

carried firearms, so the possibility of borrowing a handgun would usually be open to them. (To be sure

not everybody can borrow; there have to be some o

around to borrow from.) Open too is the option to 

steal a gun, as we have seen. We have more to say 

later about the final option, sawing off a shoulder 

weapon, but it too turns out to be a real one. Whether these men can actually be counted on to ac

they said they would act is not known, but there is 

certain consistency between these reports and what 

they told us elsewhere in the questionnaire. 

A proposal similar in many ways to the pricing stra

gy is a ban on the so-called Saturday Night Special

the small, cheap, low-caliber little handguns. We 

have already noted that the characteristics of the 

Saturday Night Special are not especially high on th

list of things these men looked for in a handgun; 

still, a fair amount of crime is committed with chea

handguns, and it is an interesting and relevant que

tion to ask what might happen if no cheap handguns 

were available. 

Panel 2 of Table 22 shows the response of the samp

to the "ban SNS's" strategy. Overall, the modal response was to obtain a bigger and more expensive 

gun, mentioned by 45%. Amon~ the Handgun Predat

this option was chosen by 68%, among the Sporadic

63%, and among the One-Timers, by 47%. The next 

frequent response in the aggregate was not to carry 

any weapon, mentioned by a third, but again, this r

sponse was heavily concentrated in the less predat

categories (especially the Unarmed Criminals, amon
Table 22 

Weapons Choices Under Various Handgun Control Policies 

TOTAL UNARMED IMP KNIFE 1-TIME SPORADIC HG PRED SG PRED 

1. "Suppose the cheapest handgun you could find cost more than you could possibly afford to 

pay for it. What would you do then? 

STEAL A HANDGUN 

SAW OFF A SHOULDER GUN 

BORROW A HANDGUN 

CARRY A KNIFE OR CLUB 

NOT CARRY ANY WEAPON 

(N=) 

20 

11 

25 

8 

36 

(1538) 

11 

7 

17 

5 

60 

(563) 

12 

8 

23 

15 

42 

(65) 

22 

12 

17 

21 

28 

(112) 

16 

10 

27 

9 

38 

(207) 

26 

8 

36 

7 

22 

(230) 

36 

13 

34 

6 

10 

(276) 

19 

35 

29 

6 

11 

(85) 

2. "Let's suppose that the handgun you really wanted was a small, cheap, low caliber little 

handgun, but that there just weren't any of them around for you to get. If you thought 

you wanted such a handgun, but found vou just couldn't get one, what do you think you would do instead? 

GET BIGGER, MORE 

EXPENSIVE 

SAW OFF SHOULDER 

WEAPON 

CARRY KNIFE OR CLUB 

NOT CARRY 

45 

12 

10 

33 

34 32 

6 9 

19 36 

40 24 

(N=) (1495) 

30 

7 

6 

57 

(539) (67) (110) 

47 

9 

10 

35 

(204) 

63 

9 

10 

18 

(218) 

68 

18 

8 

6 

r2n) 

38 

45 

8 

9 

(85) 

3. "Some people say that if there were no handguns at all, criminals would carry knives or 

clubs instead. Other people say that if there were no handguns, criminals would tarrv 

rifles and shotguns that had been sawed off so you could hide them. Which of these 

comes closest to your own beliefs? 

CARRY KNIVES OR CLUBS 21 

CARRY SAWED-OFF 64 

NOT CARRY 7 

CARRY KNIVES AND 8 

SAWED-OFF 

25 

59 

12 

5 

39 32 

43 53 

7 4 

11 11 

19 

66 

7 

9 

17 

67 

5 

11 

10 

75 

2 

12 

10 

82 

1 

7 

(N=) (1644) (611) (74) (119) (229) (236) (288) (87) 

4. "And how about you personally ••• If you wanted to carry a handgun but you just couldn't 

get your hands on one, which of the following do you think you would do? 

CARRY KNIFE OR CLUB 

CARRY SAWED-OFF 

NOT CARRY 

24 

40 

37 

18 

22 

f;() 

32 '50 

27 31 

41 19 

26 

33 

41 

26 

51 

23 

20 

72 

B 

14 

74 

12 

(N=) (1636) (607) (71) (119) (228) (233) 

whom it was chosen by 57%). Among the Predators, the 

option not to carry in the face of the SNS ban was chosen by less than ten percent. About a fifth of 

the Handgun Predators would shift to sawed-off weap- ons. 

Zimring (1972) has analyzed death from handgun as- saults as a function of caliber. The result is 

straightforward: as the caliber increases, so does 

the death rate. Since more expensive handguns tend to 

larger caliber weapons, and since they are typically 

designed to handle hotter ammunition loads, one may 

presume that the rate of death would also increase 

with the quality of the weapon as well. Thus, the 

possible shift to "bigger, more expensive handguns" in 

the face of a Saturday Night Special ban, as reported 

by our sample, would probably involve a shift from 

less lethal to more lethal firearms. 

A final possibility we explored was a complete ban on all handguns. Responses of the sample to this option are shown in Panels 3 and 4. In the aggregate, 

the modal response (given by 40%) was to carry a sawe

off weapon, followed by not carrying anything (37%), 

with the knife or club option being the least popular (24%). 

Handgun Controls and Weapons Substitution 4
As before, the option not to carry was mentioned most 

often by men who did not carry in any case--by 60% of 

the Unarmed Criminals, by 41% of the Improvisors, and, 

interestingly, by 41% of the One-Timers as well. Also 

predictably, the Knife Criminals would continue to 

carry knives. Among the Sporadics, just about half 

would "move up" to sawed off equipment, about a quarter would carry knives or clubs, arid about a quarter 

would go unarmed. Among the Predators, the result was 

even worse. Three quarters of them said they would 

carry sawed off shoulder weapons if there weren't any 

handguns around for them to carry instead. 

Ttiere is at least some reason to take these men seriously when they say they would substitute a sawed-off 

rifle or shotgun under the various specified conditions. Many of the men who said that this is what 

they would do also said that they had in fact sawed 

off rifles and shotguns in the past. 

First, most of the men in the sample agreed with the 

hypothetical possibility that "if a criminal wants a handgun but can't get one, he can always saw off a 

rifle or a shotgun." Agreement with this sentiment ran from 80-90%. Again hypothetically, most of the men in 

the sample thought it would be "easy" (39%) or "'!ery 

easy" (32%) for them to saw off a shoulder weapon, and 

in the Predator categories, the fraction thinking it 

would be easy or very easy ran upwards to about 90%. 

We also asked, "Have you personally ever sawed off a 

rifle or shotgun?" Overall, 29% of the sample had, a fraction that varied from 9% of the Unarmed Criminals 

up to about 70% in the two Predator categories. 

Perhaps more directly to the point, 50% of the men in 

the sample who said they would carry a sawed off weap- on in the face of a complete handgun ban also said 

they had themselves actually sawed off a weapon at 

some point in their lives. This was the aggregate re- sult across all seven categories. Among the Handgun 

Predators specifically, 77% of those who said they 

would carry sawed off equipment also said they had 

sawed off a rifle or shotgun at some time. 

'\1en who indicated that they had sawed off a rifle or 

shotgun were asked a few follow-up questions. About 

70% of those who had ever sawed off shotguns had done 

so more than once; among the Predators, this was true 

of about 85%. On average, the men who had ever done so were about 18 years old at the time. Among those 

who had ever done so, 56% reported that they had used 

a sawed off weapon at least once in committing a crime, a percentage that varied in a remarkably linear 

manner from 6% of the Unarmed Criminals to 75% of the 

Handgun Predators and 92% of the Shotgun Predators. 

In short, here as in the other options discussed 

earlier, there is a certain consistency between what 

these men said they would do and what they said they 

had in fact done at other times in their lives. 

Certainly, some of the responses obtained in this 

question sequence ha:ve to be discounted as bravado; 

others, with equal certainty, are genuine. The message these men seem to be sending is that their predatory designs on other human beings will not be 

thwarted for lack of the appropriate equipment. Our 

view is that this message ought to be taken seriously. 

41 Handgun Controls and Weapons Substitution 
Implications 

In an oft-quoted article published in 1976, BruceBiggs characterized the perennial debate in American 

political life over what to do about firearms as "The 

Great American Gun War," suggesting, correctly in this 

case, a rather more rancorous and hotly contested arena of public policy than one might normally expect 

to encounter. There may be some issues in American 

politics where feelings run more strongly, but not 

many; few issues evoke such passion or have had a longer run on the political Playbill than what to do 

about crime and the guns with which crimes are com- mitted. 

Although there is no love lost among the contestants 

in this particular public policy arena, there is at 

least some agreement among a:ll contending groups that one policy goal should be to rec:luce significantly the use of firearms in crimes of all sorts. No one denies 

that the American crime rate is unacceptably high or that the use of firearms to commit crimes Is a pressing national problem. The issues at the heart of 

contention are whether and how this goal can best be 

reached. 

Broadly speaking, the methods available to achieve the 

agreed-upon goal fall into two categories: (i) re- ducing the ability of criminals to obtain firearms in 

the first place; and/or (ii) reducing the criminals' use of guns in committing crime once guns have been 

obtained. Clearly, the issues are closely related: if we could accomplish (i), (ii) would then be moot. 

Hence, the second issue is only an issue because of 

the presumption that complete success at preventin'l' 

criminals from obtaining firearms will probably not be 

possible. 

Both available methods are rife with complexity. It 

is easy to agree, for example, that one goal of policy 

should be to ''keep guns out of the hands of criminals." Indeed, other than the criminals themselves, It 

Is hard to imagine anyone who would not agree. But 

this presumes that criminals can somehow be easily 

identified before the fact, a task that has occupied 

criminologists for a century with little success. 

Unacceptably adverse consequences to non-criminal gun owners represent the single greatest barrier to the 

design of effective policy in the "gun crime" area. A 

stiff tax on hanc:lguns Imposed at the point of production would no doubt raise the price of handguns enough 

to drive some criminals out of the handgun market, but 

it would also drive millions of non-criminals out of 

the market as well. The cheap, low quality handgun 

that Is not available for use in crime Is also not 

available to Impoverished families in high-crime 

neighborhoods who feel (correctly or otherwise) that 

they need a gun to defend against the predation rampant on .their streets. A jurisdiction that requires a week long waiting period to obtain a handgun while the 

police run the appropriate criminal records check will come across an occasional criminal attempting to obtain a handgun through customary channels and enormous numbers of other people for whom both the waiting period and the records check were altogether Immaterial. 

Aside from the spill-over of effects onto the noncriminal population, there is also the problem of unintended effects on the target (criminal) population. 

A policy designed to prevent the transfer of firearms 

to felons through customary retail channels (such as the Gun Control Act of 1968) might only result in an increase in the rate of gun thefts by felons from non- felon owners, or an increased level of activity in the 

informal non-retail market. A policy intended to prevent criminals from carrying small, cheap handguns 

might cause them to carry bi~, expensive, and more lethal handguns instead. The intended effect of 

virtually every piece of "gun crime" legislation passed in the 20th Century has been along one or the 

other of the lines suggested earlier: to prevent 

criminals from obtaining guns, or to prevent them from 

using guns once obtained. And yet, the number of 

armed criminals and the amount of armed crime has 

tended to Increase, not abate. The !!£!!!!! effects, 

In other words, have clearly not been the intended ones. 

The preceding comments are not intended to create 

despair, and much less to enumerate exhaustively all 

of the complications that are inherent in this particular public policy area. Our point, rather, is to 

illustrate that the issues involved go well beyond 

anything that can be learned from data supplied by a sample of state prisoners. IVluch, in fact, ~oes well 

beyond what could be learned from any studv; and many 

relevant empirical questions cannot be answered with 

data on prisoners alone. 

Research of the sort reported here is often very good 

in describing the nature of a problem and rather poor 

In suggesting adequate solutions. This study is no exception: we have tried to obtain reasonably accu- rate readings on certain facets of the criminal acquisition and use of guns, but by themselves, the findings of the research do not immediately suggest any 

effective solutions. "Policy Implications" are just 

that: Implications that derive from one particular 

Interpretation of a set of research findings, certainly not policy conclusions or recommendations whose 

wisdom is self-evident now that the findings are In 

hand. 

In order to prevent criminals from obtaining guns, we 

need to know where and how their guns are obtained; to 

prevent them from carrying guns and using them In 

crime, we need to know why they carry and how they us

them, or In short, the role that firearms play In the 

lifestyle of the felon population. 11/lost of the policy 

Implications of this study derive from the Information we have assembled on these topics. 

Again, we must emphasize once more that the implications discussed In this section--as the findings on which they are based--apply only to the particular 

criminal population represented by our sample of 

adult male felons incarcerated in state correctional 

Institutions. Other offender groups--such as juvenile 

offenders, first offenders, female offenders, and less 

lmpllcatlons 4
serious (non-felony) adult male offenders--may have 

very different patterns of firearms acquisition, 

ownership, and use from those of the criminal population to which our implications are directed and thus 

may be targeted more appropriately by other tyoes of 

criminal jvstice policies and practices. 

The Nature of the Illicit Firearms Market 

Firearms manufacturers are, of course, the ultimate 

source of virtually all the guns that are ever used 

for any purpose. This obvious fact means that ~uns 

come into the hands of criminals by means of a system 

of distribution that connects manufacturers and criminals through a chain of transfers. The early links in 

this chain ordinarily involve firearms wholesalers and 

retailers, a fact that tempts policy makers to con- sider using these intermediaries as points to detect 

potential firearms abusers and thereby to prevent 

firearms from falling into improper hands. The ultimate efficacy of such an approach depends to a considerable extent on the length of the chain of transfers 

and the location of retail outlets within the chain. 

The findings from our study cast some light on the 

nature of the tl"'8.nsfer chain: we cannot reconstruct 

the e.omplete chain from manufacturer to criminal consumer, but we have considerable detail on the last 

link in the chain, the transfer of a firearm into 

criminal hands. From the viewpoint of policy, two 

features of these data stand out: 

(i) Legitimate firearms retailers play a minor role 

as direct sources of handguns for adult felony offenders. 

Not more than about one in six of the most recent 

handguns acquired by our sample was obtained through a customary retail transaction involving a licensed 

!irearms dealer; the market, rather, is dominated by 

mformal, off the record, transactions, mostly involving friends and associates, .family members and 

various black market sources. The means of a~quisi­ tion from these informal sources include cash purchase, swaps and trades, borrowing and renting, and 

often theft. (Indeed, our impression is that the 

verbs, "borrow," "take," "steal," and "rent" were blurred and indistinct in the vocabularies of our re- ~p~ndents.) Whatever the verbal ambiguities, however, 

It IS clear that our sample was enmeshed in a largely 

informal market in firearms that served as the immediate source of their supply. 

The implication of this result is clearly not that we should give up on our efforts to interdict criminal 

acquisition of handguns at the point of retail sale. 

To so argue would be equivalent to arguing that we should stop the airport metal searches because they 

only r.arely detect a. weapons-carrying passenger. Restrictions at the pomt of retail sale, that is, may serve a useful preventative function; at minimum the 

acquisition of a firearm by a felon should be som'ewhat 

more complicated than just walking into a gun shop and 

buying one. The implication, rather, concerns the 

ultimate effect of such efforts, which is not to 

prevent (or, we suspect, even seriously ooplicate) 

the acquisition of guns by criminals but rather to 

force them out of the retail market and into other and 

less formal channels of distribution. The further implication, of course, is that if we do intend seriously to complicate the acquisition of guns by felons, 

46 Implications 

then methods must be found for intervening in the 

formal firearms market. The transfer of a firearm 

a felon, whether formal or informal, is already illegal, so legislation to make it illegal is clearly 

not the answer. By their very nature, such transa

tions are difficult or impossible to detect, so "stricter enforcement" of existing laws. is also prob

bly not the answer. One might as a matter of Fed

policy require that every firearms transaction be r

ported to the cognizant authorities, and the approp

ate criminal records check undertaken; but one qu

senses that this measure would have little or no ef

feet on the criminal users whom we are. trying to i

terdict and a considerable effect on legitimate use

among whom a large informal market also exists. 

There is, in short, some ree.son to doubt whether a

politically acceptable, implementable, effective,. an

Constitutional method of intervening in the inform

market can be found; the implication of our results 

not a method by which this could be done, but rath

the information that it must be done if we are to p

vent or even seriously hamper the acquisition of f

arms by criminals. 

(ii) Our study also confirms the critical role that 

gun theft plays in connecting the adult felony offender market to its firearms supply. 

Half the men in this sample had stolen at least on

gun at some time in their lives; many had stolen m

than one; a few had stolen guns in extremely large 

numbers. At least 40%, and perhaps as much as 7

the most recent handguns owned by this sample we

stolen weapons. · 

For various (more or less obvious) reasons, the id

"gun crime" policy is one that impacts directly on 

illicit user but leaves the legitimate user pretty 

much alone. This, however, presupposes a sharp d

tinction between the licit and illicit markets, a di

tinction that is seriously eroded by the apparently 

heavy volume of gun theft. To leave the legitimat

user "prettv much alone" at least implies a ~uarant

of the right to acquire firearms under some set of 

prescribed conditions; and yet, all else equal, any 

gun that can be legitimately possessed by a legal 

law-abiding owner can be stolen from its owner and 

subsequently fall into criminal hands. 

Again, our data suggest little by way of a method 

through which the gun theft problem could be attac

In terms of the total number of thefts, thefts from 

homes and apartments are sufficiently numerous to 

gest as one approach that legitimate gun owners b

made more aware of the problem and the strategies 

available to them to prevent theft of their weapon

Police chiefs. who are empowered to issue permits 

own or purchase firearms might be one point at wh

this information could be imparted; information boo

lets produced by the manufacturers for inclusion w

shipped weapons would be another. 

Legitimate gun owners might also be induced to ex

cise greater caution in storing their weapons in re

latively theft-resistant ways--for example, by tax 

credits or insura,nce discounts similar to those giv

for energy conservation measures or the installatio

of home fire detectors. 

Finally, some jurisdictions have begun to consider 

liability of a legitimate owner whose gun is stolen 

and subsequently used to commit a crime. Our data 
not speak directly to the advisability or likely consequences of such measures, but certainly, the right 

to own guns must be accompanied by certain corollary 

responsibilities, and perhaps these responsibilities 

include all reasonable precaution in storing one's 

weapons in relativ~ly theft-proof ways. (To be sure, 

one would still want to insist that the liability of 

the thief exceed the liability of his victim.) 

Although house and apartment thefts are numerous, they 

may not account for the largest number of stolen weapons that enter the illicit market. A distressingly 

large number of our respondents also reported having 

stolen guns from potential high-volume sources: manu- facturers, shippers, wholesalers, retailers, and even military establishments. 

The "scale" problem is pertinent in this case: one successful hijacking of a truck during shipment could 

well net as many total firearms as would be netted in a few thousand household thefts; consequently, the 

prevention of one hijacking is a_s useful to society as a whole as the prevention of a few thousand household 

thefts. All else equal, then, resources might be 

directed disproportionally to preventing thefts from 

high-volume sources. Unfortunately, our data cannot 

show whether high-volume sources account for more of 

the total volume than household thefts, only that they 

may; this, therefore, is an area that requires further 

research before the policy implication is obvious. 

At minimum, society as a whole could increase the 

penalty for the crime of gun theft, perhaps by making 

gun theft a felony whatever the intent of the thief. 

In most jurisdictions at present, the theft of a gun 

from a household or store is considered to be a no more serious crime than the theft of any other object 

of equivalent value. 

Whatever the methods one might imagine, however, the 

nature of the task that society confronts i!l made 

reasonably clear by our results: if we are to make 

headway in preventing the acquisition of guns by criminals, we must find some way to intervene in the informal gun market and to close off the supply of guns 

obtained, directly or indirectly, through theft. 

Crime Guns: Quality and Price 

Many "gun crime" proposals that have surfaced in re- cent years are targeted to particular classes of fire- arms: to handguns in general, or somewhat more commonly, to certain restricted classes of handguns, 

particularly those of the small, cheap, low-quality 

variety. The rationale for such proposals is twofold: (i) legitimate owners have little or no need 

for such firearms, and (ii) illegitimate owners do. 

To assess the nature of the criminal demand for these 

kinds of handguns, we asked for considerable information both on the characteristics our sample preferred 

in a handgun and on the characteristics of the most 

recent handgun they had actually possessed. Neither 

of these represents perfect data on the nature of the 

criminal handgun demand: the "preferred characteristics" questions may tell us more about our sample's 

fantasies concerning the "perfect" handgun than about 

the true nature of their demand; the characteristics 

of the most recent handgun may or may not generalize 

to the typical handgun that felons own, carry, and use 

to commit crimes. Still, neither source of data suggests much interest among our sample of felons in 

small, cheap handguns; such interest as we observed was concentrated among felons who had never used fir

arms to commit crimes. The criminals in our sample 

both preferred to carry, and actually carried, relatively large, well-made weapons. 

The average price paid by our felons for their most 

recent handguns was not especially high, falling in 

the $100-150 range; still, the average quality was 

well beyond the level of the "cheapies." The most com- mon among the recent handguns was a Smith and Wesso

.38 equipped with a four inch barrel; no more than 

about 1596 of the most recent handguns would qualify a

Saturday Night Specials. A comparison between the 

average dollar cost and the average apparent quality 

suggests that prices in the informal and black markets 

are heavily discounted, in all likelihood because of 

the dominance of stolen weapons in these markets. 

Whatever the price paid or the mode of acquisition, 

however, one result is clear: the more a felon used 

his guns in crime, the higher the_ quality of. the 

equipment he carried. Among the truly predatory crim

inals in the sample, the small, cheap handgun was not 

the weapon of choice. 

Given the rate of gun theft reported by the sample, it 

is also no surprise that price was not a very important consideration. Our interpretation of a question 

on how much they would be willing to pay for a suitable handgun is that felons are willing to pay the 

going rate. For what it is worth, far more interest 

was shown in matters such as accuracy, firepower, 

untraceability, and quality of construction than in 

price. 

The implication of these findings is that the strategy 

of purging the market of small, cheap weapons may 

simply be irrelevant to predatory felons, who are most 

likely to use their guns to commit crimes. In addition, the apparent price insensitivity argues against 

a policy that stresses raising the price of guns to 

keep them from criminal hands. Either or both of 

these strategies may well prove advisable for other 

reasons; it is possible, for example, that small, 

cheap handguns are much more important to first offenders, juveniles, or other classes of criminals who are on average younger, less hardened, and less violent than the men in our sample. So far as the sorts 

of men who end up doing time in state prisons are con

cerned, however, it is fairly clear that they do not 

have much interest in small, cheap firearms in the 

first place. 

Why Criminals Carry and Use Guns 

"As long as you got a lot of fire power, you're all 

right. There was a rule with me that I always have a 

gun at all times, 'cause sometimes you'd be out in the 

street and the opportunity just present itself where 

you see a lot of money. Then you want to be armed. 

( ••• ) So I had the gun always on me to take advantage 

of opportunities--and to protect myself. A gun is 

like a part of me. I could wake up in the morning, 

and before I get out of the bed to go into the bathroom, I strap my shoulder holster over niy shoulder. 

never would go out of the house without it." 

Implications 
The preceding is not a quotation from one of our re- spondents, although it certainly might have been. It 

is, rather, a passage from John Allen's Assault with a Deadly Weapon: The Autobiography of a Street Criminal (Allen, 1977: 179-180). 

John Allen is typical of the predatory felons in our sample in many ways: he was urban, black, and uneducated, commenced his life of crime in his early teems, 

acquired his first firearm at age 13" by stealing it 

from his grandfather, was a heroin addict on several 

occasions and a heavy abuser of drugs, had a lengthy 

criminal record as both a juvenile and an adult, spent 

much of his life in prison, was prone to fits of violent rage, and seldom passed by an opportunity to com- mit a crime, be it armed robbery, car theft, drug 

dealing, pimping, housebreaking, or whatever. 

His motives for owning and carrying guns, as exores~ed in the above passage, are also typical of the motives 

expressed by our sample: when armed, one is preoared 

"for anything that might happen"--an opportunity to 

commit a crime or a need to defend oneself against the 

assaults or predations of others. His behavior in re- gard to the weapc;m is also perhaps typical: as his 

comment concernmg the mornmg regimen indicates, 

carrying a gun was an habitual part of his daily 

routine. 

The possession and carrying of firearms by felons is 

part and parcel of their day-to-day existence, no more unusual in their circles than the carrying of wallets or purses would be in others. The motivation to do so goes well beyond the instrumental use of guns in com- mitting crimes, although as Allen's testimony and our data make clear, this is assuredly one important 

motive. Survival in an uncertain but hostile and 

violent world is, with equal assurance, another. 

Most of the gun owning felons in our sample grew up 

around guns, were intnduced to guns at an early age, 

and had owned and used guns ever since. Most also 

hung around with other men who owned and carried guns. 

In such circles, a handgun is at least an acceptable 

article of attire, if not a de rigeur requirement. 

Not to suggest that these handguns are strictly orna- mental: our felons tended in the majority to keep 

their guns loaded at all times, and to fire them at a fairly regular rate, often enough at other people: 

half the men in our sample claimed to have fired a gun 

at someone at some time; half also claimed to have 

been fired upon. 

It is therefore no surprise that their major acknowledged motive for acquiring and carrying guns was for 

the purpose of self-protection. In an environment 

where crime and violence are pervasive, and where many 

of one:s friends and associates routinely carry guns, · there IS plenty to "protect" oneself against. "Self 

protection," in this context at least, must be interpreted with some caution, of course. Part of it no doubt Implies protection against being preyed upon or continually hassled by others who are better armed; 

another part, perhaps the larger part, means protection against armed innocents, against the police, 

against the prospects of apprehension during a crime, 

and so on. The "Insurance" that many of these men 

seek in carrying a gun is the insurance that they will 

always be the perpetrator and not the victim of the 

sorts of crimes they so regularly commit. 

·I 

A third of our sample (of Gun Criminals), like John 

Allen, made It a practice to carry a gun more or less 

48 Impllcatlons 

all the time; half carried whenever the circumstanc

seemed to suggest it: when doing a drug deal, whe

going out at night; when they were with other men 

were carryil)g a gun, or more generally, whenever t

ability to defend themselves might be at issue. One 

in five of the Gun Criminals claimed that they carr

only when they intended to commit a specific crime

For these reasons, it appears quite clear that the d

cision to carry is the critical decision point, not 

the decision to use. Therefore, the decision to ca

may be the most effective point of intervention. 

How one might intervene in the decision to carry, h

ever, is a rather difficult question to contemplate. 

Unlicens.ed carrying of concealed weapons is alread

illegal everywhel,'e. Stricfer enforcement of the CC

laws--for example, by periodic shakedowns of peopl

the streets or in the bars--is a theoretical possibi

ity but raises obvious Constitutional issues; such 

dragnets. would also net large numbers of otherwise 

legitimate people who are carrying a weapon sheerl

out of fear. The largest handguns, and even some sawed off shoulder weapons, can be carried more o

less unobtrusively; the smaller the weapon, the mo

true this becomes. A patrol officer might have som

suspicions about a particular person, but anything 

short of open display would probably fail the criterion of probable cause. 

If one accepts the idea that self-protection in a hostile and dangerous world is a principal motive fo

the ownership and carrying of guns among felons, t

it follows that relevant policies to discourage the 

practice are those that would reduce the hostility 

danger endemic to the social worlds inhabited by th

men, that is, poor, urban neighborhoods in the main

As is well known, these neighborhoods produce not 

most of the perpetrators, but also most of the vic.,-

tims, of crime; crime, violence, and routine handgu

carrying are distinguishing features of urban slum 

existence. 

Unfortunately, there are few issues in law enforcem

that seem more intractable than that of substantial

reducing violent crime in high crime areas: it is n

at all clear just how such a goal might be attained

nor is it clear that communities would even suppor

the effort by paying the added taxes that would be 

required. 

Benign neglect is, of course, one possibility, one 

that has in fact been followed in at least some of o

major cities from time to time. Here, the strate~~;y i

for the police to withdraw in force, hoping to conta

the crime problem within certain boundaries. "Containment" has not proven· to be a very effective str

egy, however; crime has a habit of spilling over Int

the more atnuent (and politically powerful) commun

ties. A humane society should also not be indiffere

to the victimization by crime of those who can leas

afford it and who are also victimized by many of 

society's other institutions and practices as well. 

We conclude that a viable policy designed to reduce 

the criminal use of guns will have to find means of 

reducing the violence that is characteristic of many 

urban neighborhoods. That Is, the reduction of crim

in high-crime neighborhoods has to be as much In t

center of law enforcement concern as protecting mi

class citizens from the Incursions of predatory crim

nals. 
One might also simply ~ive up dealing with the causes 

of gun carrying among felons and deal directly with 

the behavior itself, for example, through policies 

designed to encoura~e criminals to leave their weapons 

at home when they "go to work." Here, the effort would 

be concentrated on making the carrying and use of guns 

as difficult and as costly· to the felon as possible. 

One strategy presently in use in many jurisdiction-s, 

one that also enjoys overwhelming popular support 

(Wright et al., 1983: Ch. 12) is to provide enhanced 

(mandatory "add-on") penalities for the use of a ~un 

(or other weapon) in committing crime (or, as in the 

Massachusetts case, a mandatory penalty for unlicensed 

carrying, whatever the actual usage or intent). 

How successful this tactic has been in reducing the use of guns in crime has yet to be definitively as- sessed. Often, or so it appears, judges working with 

mandatory add-ons reduce the sentence for the main 

charge by an equivalent number of years, so that .the 

total penalty remains much the sa 'Tie. ~oreover, the 

add-on is often a small fraction of the main charge: a typical sentence for an armed robbery (assuming a lengthy prior record) might be ten to thirty years; a 

one or two year mandatory sentence enhance'Tient mi~ht 

not alter the sentence enough to make any difference 

in the subjective calculations of the criminal.39 

Ultimately, increased sentencing; runs UP against 

prison overcrowding as the limiting condition: it 

does no good to add additional years to a felon's 

sentence when the state corrections system has no prison space for him in any case. 

Another problem in using mandatory add-ons for felonious gun use as a deterrent to the practice of carrying weapons is that most criminals do not expect to be 

caught in any case; what might happen to them once they are caught therefore cannot be much of a concern. (It should be added, nonetheless, that many of the 

non-gun criminals in our sample mentioned the prospect of a stiffer sentence when caught with a weapon 

as a very important reason not to carry one.) 

A final problem in deterring the routine carrying of 

guns (whether throu~h sentencing or throu~h other 

measures), at least among the more predatory men in 

our sample, is that many of the crimes these men commit are directed towards victims who may themselves be 

armed. John Allen notes, "during the times when I was 

down, though, I would mainlY rob the other dealers to 

get the drugs or the scratch I needed to buy my drugs" 

(1977: 176). Why an addict would rob his own dealer 

(or fellow dealers) is not hard to fathom: they have 

the drugs and they carry a lot of money. But to do so 

unarmed would be the height of folly, since the dealer 

39. Most of what is so far known about the effects of mandatory 

sentencing for gun use is derived from studies of the Bartley-Fox 

amendment in Massachusetts; see Beha (1977), Deutsch and Alt 

(1977), and Pierce and Bowers (1981). Some assessment of the Detroit version has also been undertaken; see Loftin and McDowall 

(1981). None of these studies suggests dramatic effects on the 

violent crime rate, least of all over the long run. 

being robbed will doubtlessly be armed himself. (In 

discussing one robbery of a fellow dealer, Allen 

notes, "This was a way we often got weapons--we'd take 

people's guns when we robbed them" p. 177 . ) 

'V!ore generally, the presence of firearms amon~ a 

felon's associates and victims is probably a greater 

threat to his well-being than the prospect of an extra 

year or two in prison. It would therefore be sensible 

to run the risk of an enhanced prison term by carrying a firearm oneself. In this sense, the predatory felon 

must be considered to be largely indifferent to deterrence through after-the-fact punishments; relative to 

what might happen if he needed a gun but did not have 

one, most after-the-fact punishments would pale to 

relative Insignificance. 

Substitution and Other Neutralizing 

Side Effects 

Data presented above raise the possibility that some of the more commonly advocated "gun crime" policies 

could well prove to have negative and unwanted side 

consequences. Bans on certain kinds of weapons, as- suming a reasonable success rate, will cause some criminals not to commit the crimes they would have 

otherwise committed and will cause other criminals to 

commit the same crimes but armed with different weapons. The relative sizes of these two groups is a pertinent issue; so too is the question what these "different weapons" would be. 

All the data we have presented on this issue are conjectural, and so their implications are even "iffier" 

than usual. Still, the large majority of the more predatory felons in our sample told us they would re- spond to various partial or total handgun bans with 

either lateral or upward substitution--the weapons 

they said they would carry under these hypothetical 

conditions were either just as lethal as, or more lethal than, the weapons they would have otherwise 

carried in any case. One 'Tiay properly quarrel with some of the details, doubt the practicalities, or 

debate the probity and realism of these responses, but 

the major message comes through clearly: the felonious activities of these men will not suffer for lack 

of the appropriate armament. Their intent, so far as we can tell, would be to find substitutes that may be 

inconvenient but nevertheless highly effective. 

Perhaps the most telling implication of our data on 

weapons substitution is not in the substance of the 

results but in the more general lesson that !!!!Y_ 

social policy can have consequences that no one foresaw, intended, or wanted--consequences that, under the 

right conditions, worsen rather than improve the problem being addressed. Clearly, this study has not 

"solved" the problem of gun crime in American society; 

indeed, it has not even showed much about what the 

solution would look like. But it has attempted to 

provide some information about the nature and dimensions of the problem, information that we hope others 

will find useful in formulating workable solutions. 

Implications 4
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