NCJ Number
196782
Journal
Future of Children Volume: 12 Issue: 2 Dated: Summer/Fall 2002 Pages: 55-71
Date Published
2002
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This document focuses on how guns are manufactured, marketed, and sold in the United States.
Abstract
The legal and illegal gun markets are intimately connected and make guns easily accessible to youth. The domestic gun industry is small and has experienced declining sales in recent years. However, it has significant political clout and a large market for its products and has engaged in aggressive marketing to youth. The industry is working to recruit future customers through advertising campaigns and even video games. Guns can move quickly from the legal gun market into the illegal gun market, where they can be acquired by young people, because of lax oversight of licensed firearm dealers and little or no regulation of private sales between gun owners. Guns can quickly move from the regulated, legal market into the illegal market, through corrupt retailers, bulk transactions and “straw” (surrogate) purchasing, sales on the unregulated secondary market, or theft. Certain guns, especially inexpensive, poorly made small handguns, are particularly attractive to criminals and youth. Popular guns tend to be powerful, new semiautomatic pistols. Of the top 10 crime guns recovered from persons under age 18 in 1999, 5 had a median time to crime of 4 years or less; and 2 had a median time to crime of just 1.6 years. In 1999, only 11 percent of recovered crime guns were possessed by the people that had first purchased them from a licensed gun retailer. Several policy innovations hold promise for decreasing the flow of guns into the hands of youth. These include tracing crime guns, strengthening regulation of licensed dealers, and screening prospective buyers. Other strategies, such as limiting gun sales, regulating the secondary market, registering guns and licensing owners, and banning some types of weapons, are being tried in a number of States. These strategies should be further refined to ensure that young people no longer have access to a steady stream of guns from both legal and illegal sources. 4 figures, 2 tables, 54 endnotes