From: [c d t] at [sw.stratus.com] (C. D. Tavares)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Home Made Firearms (Was: Hungerford Facts TRAIN SPOTTERS
Date: 4 Nov 1993 00:38:57 GMT

[m--t--w] at [tadtec.co.uk] (Matthew Sweet) writes:
> When criminals are habitually armed, as seems to be the case
> in the USA, I see no reason why the populace should not be so
> also, however I think that careful thought about why criminals
> all "have" to be armed is necessary. Your police forces are
> all always armed, therefore to even things up your criminals
> all want to be armed, therefore to even things up your public
> want to be armed. This makes getting _and_carrying_ guns very
> easy.

No, our criminals are not armed to achieve parity with the police.
This is an appealing legend, but has no basis in fact.

Excerpts from "The Armed Criminal in America," by James D. Wright:

One reason criminals acquire and carry handguns is because many crimes
are easier to commit if armed than if not.

In fact, many respondents stated that a man who is armed with a gun is
"prepared for anything that might happen" -- an opportunity to commit
a crime or the need to defend oneself against the assaults or
predations of others.  Therefore, while handgun carrying among felons
is in part a rational response to the nature of their criminal
activities, it is, in equal measure, an element of the lifestyle
arising from early socialization and from fear.

Given these results, it is not surprising that the major motive
acknowledged for acquiring and carrying guns was self-protection.
Concerning their most recently owned handgun, 58 percent of those who
had ever owned a handgun cited "self-protection" as a very important
reason for the acquisition; "to use in my crimes" was very important
to only 28 percent. ("Self-protection," in this context at least must
be interpreted with some caution.  Part of it no doubt implies
protection against being preyed upon or continually harassed by other
criminals who are better armed.  Another part implies protection
against armed victims, against the police, and against the prospects
of apprehension during a crime.)

In this connection, about two-fifths of the sample had at some time in
their careers encountered an armed victim; an equivalent percentage
had at some time decided /not/ to commit a crime because they had
reason to suspect that the intended victim was armed.  (These findings,
too, must be interpreted with caution.  Although the survey did not
ask who those "intended victims" were, it is likely that many would be
the felons' own "colleagues," since men of the sort studied in this
research are clearly not above preying upon one another.)

A third of the sample (of gun criminals only) made it a practice to
carry a gun more or less all the time, as shown in Figure 2.  This
ranged from about 10 percent for the one-time gun users to more than
50 percent for the handgun predators.  Another half carried a gun
whenever the circumstances seemed potentially dangerous -- when doing
a drug deal, when going out at night, when they were with other men
carrying guns or, more generally, whenever their ability to defend
themselves might be an issue.  Only one in five of the gun criminals
claimed that they carried a gun /only/ when they intended to commit a
specific crime. 
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