How do you feel the majority of criminals obtains firearms?

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

PlayboyPenguin

member
Joined
Feb 5, 2006
Messages
1,717
Location
Portland, OR
I pose this question because it is something I was thinking about today. I know that most gun crime is committed by non-legal guns. I was curious how most poeple belive these "illegal guns" get into the hands of criminals. Also, could someone post any studies on gun crime and whether the guns were legally owned. The poll is not meant to decide how they get them, just to gauge peoples opinion on how. Them maybe someone who might know som e facts can post them to see how peoples opinions match up.
 
A few years ago there was a survey taken of inmates in the Chicago area IIRC. The breakdown was 39.?% from straw purchases or in exchange for drugs, 39.?% 'given' by family or lovers, 12% bought legally, and the rest a mishmash of "other".
I'll see if I can find the actual documentation.
 
I think the crooks get their weapons by thieving & knowing the right person in the right bar at the right time.
 
V4Vendetta said:
I think the crooks get their weapons by thieving & knowing the right person in the right bar at the right time.
Click to expand...
But where do these guns come from? I doubt the criminals are forging them in their basement blast furnace.
 
Straw purchases. What that means is someone who is otherwise law abiding is breaking the law by providing a firearm to a criminal.


Person A goes to the dealer, buys a firearm legally, and gives it to person B, who is a criminal. Straw purchase.

Either that or stealing are the main sources, I'd say. No amount of laws will stop stealing.


Of course, murder is illegal too, yes?



EDIT: I think PlayboyPenguin is a troll, based on the recent questions and the 29.82 posts/day average.
 
PP

After being in these forums for a little over a week now, and asking over 200 questions and posts, today you ask something that makes me begin to wonder what your real motives are here.

I don't even like the questions you asked. They set us up to fail. I think criminals get guns through crime! Illegal possession, transfer, sales from one criminal to another.

Answering your questions implies that the manufacture, sale or use of firearms by law abiding citizens is responsible for crooks having guns.

The reasoning behind your question easily translates to "well if we didn't make them or sell them, criminals wouldn't have them".

That's bull. That's when you'd start seeing some illegal guns start flooding in from out of country from little gunshops all over the world. It would be as big a business as drug importation is now.

Beside the fact that you seem to dominate the discussion around here lately, you have just asked a most moronic question in the worst possible way for a true gun rights affecianado.

Maybe you should go back to your batman dolls and action figures, and leave the guns alone. I'm beginning to think that YOU are the kind of person I wouldn't want to have a gun, 10 year military veteran and all. I don't want to turn this into a personal attack, but you set off a little concern on my end today when I read your question. Sounds like the kind of question asked in the way a paid worker for handgun control might ask it.

You've posed some pretty interesting stuff here, but the sheer volume of your posts were beginning to turn me off. Now your search for insight has really done it for me.
 
How do I feel... How do I _feel_...

Go back to the halls of academia, where "feelings" are what matters, and cold, hard facts are incidental.

I _know_ that criminals by and large obtain their weapons via criminal activity.
 
bogie said:
How do I feel... How do I _feel_...

Go back to the halls of academia, where "feelings" are what matters, and cold, hard facts are incidental.

I _know_ that criminals by and large obtain their weapons via criminal activity.
Click to expand...

"Criminal activity" is a b to vague for me. I accidently posted thise question twice trying how to word it best and someone posted this on the other thread.

bogie said:
Posted by Telperion
Bureau of Justice Statistics Firearm Use by Offenders

Purchased from a retail store, 8.3 percent.
Purchased at a pawnshop, 3.8 percent.
Purchased at a flea market, 1.0 percent.
Purchased in a gun show, 0.7 percent.
Obtained from friends or family, 39.6 percent.
Got on the street/illegal source, 39.2 percent.
Click to expand...

And like I said there...those numbers would seem to take the wind out of the sails of alot of people that thought gun shows were so bad (seemed like it was on the news alot not too ong ago)...I must admit I thought alot more came from gunshows than this indicates. I might have to look some things up and change my opinion a little.
 
When you consider that most gun-show sales are by FFL's (which involve an NICS background check and a BATFE Form 4473, just like buying from a gun store), the alleged gun-show-private-sale issue becomes even smaller, since the alleged problem at gun shows is the private sellers. Guess most criminals don't find much use for Mosin-Nagants...

You can also regroup the stats this way: New or used doesn't really matter so much as whether the transaction involved an FFL or not (since FFL sales involve the NCIS background check); I'm assuming that's what you meant by primary and secondary sale. Let's break down the data a little differently, lumping known FFL sales together and considering that the category "obtained from friend or family member" is a subset of private sales.

Purchased through FFL NOT at a gun
..show (retail store, pawn shop)........12.1%
Purchased at a flea market
..(presum. not from FFL).................1.0%
Purchased at a gun show (incl. both
..FFL and private sales).................0.7%
Private-sale NOT at a gun show,
..buyer known to seller.................39.6%
Obtained on the street/illegal source
..(incl. illegal private sales;
..buyer not known to seller)............39.2%


The private-sale-not-at-a-gun-show category would include both legal private sales, and sales in which someone knowingly sold a criminal a gun because he personally knew the criminal. Many straw purchases and gunrunning would probably fall into this category.
 
Theft, straw purchase, illegal purchase of black market guns and legal purchase (either made before individual racked up a criminal record or before crime was committed) - not necessarily in that order.
 
Obviously white Republicans drive around "da hood" handing guns out to poor disadvantaged minorities as a means of destroying them. :rolleyes:
 
Third_Rail said:
Straw purchases. What that means is someone who is otherwise law abiding is breaking the law by providing a firearm to a criminal.


Person A goes to the dealer, buys a firearm legally, and gives it to person B, who is a criminal. Straw purchase.

Either that or stealing are the main sources, I'd say. No amount of laws will stop stealing.


Of course, murder is illegal too, yes?



EDIT: I think PlayboyPenguin is a troll, based on the recent questions and the 29.82 posts/day average.
Click to expand...

I think your right on the money, especially on your last point. This thread may confirm some of your suspicions.http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=181410

JH
 
According to 'Armed and Considered Dangerous' a survey of felons and their firearms by James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi:
"About 33% obtain their firearm by direct theft by the felon himself."

Excellent book full of information concerning the career criminal.:)
 
Although it's from several years back, I doubt that criminals have notably changed their patterns:

Federal testimony before Congress stated that some 86% of firearms used in crime were illegally obtained: Theft, or purchase from a thief.

Of the remainder, a majority were purchased long before use in a crime, at a time in a person's life when he could legally purchase. Some were borrowed from a lawful owner (The most notable example is Sirhan Sirhan, for the murder of RFK).

The acquisition from a private owner or from a gunshow is a very small percentage of the total. Somewhere in the realm of 3%, total.

Again, numbers from the various federal folks who collect all this data.

Art
 
My question is this. Who cares?

No amount of legislation is going to stop people from breaking the law. By definition, that's what criminals do.

It's illegal to kill people, but they do it. Why does anyone think making it illegal for them to have guns will stop them from having them?

There's no way to keep guns off of "the streets". Period. It can't be done. You can't uninvent firearms technology. Even if you outlawed everything, the black market would simply fill the void. Just like drugs. And if anyone has any delusions about the government's ability to control the black market, I need only point to the drug situation again.

Maybe in a small, homogenous society with tyrannical laws (like Singapore), but not here. Not in America. Not with 300 million citizens with widely varying opinions, beliefs, motivations, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, most of whom don't like each other. Not in an open society with any semblance of freedom.

Personally, I think one of the reasons America's crime rate is, and has always been, so high is because we don't have any set of national values or a unifying national identity. Americans are a mish-mash of everyone in the world, a nation united by nothing but citizenship. Small, homogenous societies like Japan, Singapore, and Sweeden have an easier time with this stuff than we do. But that's a topic for another time. (In any case, even those places have their law-breakers.)

You can't stop those who willingly do harm to their fellow man (for profit or entertainment or whatever) from using weapons in the process. You can't stop them from using cars for transportation, phones for communication, or medicines to let them live longer, either.

The price of freedom is people taking advantage of it. Punishing everyone else because a few abuse their freedom is nonsensical collectivist thinking. I used to hate it when they did that in the Army; one guy'd screw up and they'd punish the whole squad. We're all individuals. What Mr. Felonious Felon does should have no bearing on what I'm able to do.

Trying to prevent crime through preemptive legislation leads only tyranny. Crime can be dealth with, the perpetrators punished, or even reformed, but you can't stop it from happening on a societal level. There are just too many people out there that think society's rules and niceties are for other people.
 
One of Prof. James D. Wright's studies involved interviews of
1874 convicts in 18 prisons in ten states.

Way over half the convicts got guns from full-time dealers in contraband:
drug smuglers, fences, in short: people who did black market deals
for a living.
About 12 percent personally stole the guns they used.
7 percent bought used guns from private sources.
6 percent got guns from relatives.

I believe the source is Under The Gun, Aldine, 1981, James D. Wright,
Peter Rossi, et alia. A book I helped typeset at Kingsport Press.

I grew up in a "dry" county and fifty years ago bootleggers were a
prime source of cheap pistols, often old cop guns or war veteran
souvenirs.

The sources for crime weapons are the sources that least likely will
comply with gun laws; gun laws affect the lawabiding, not the outlaw.
 
I am willing to bet that some of these guys are purchasing these weapons legitimately and just haven't been caught in the past to trigger an alert on the background check.
 
Chinese freighter, Empress Phoenix, Oakland, California:
2,000 full auto AK47s not declared or papered.

SanDiego California, shipping container marked "sewing
machine parts": according to customs and atf, full auto
weapons and grenade launchers: not your
granma's sewing machines :)

Some of the ones that got caught. How many get away?
 
Nightcrawler said:
My question is this. Who cares?

No amount of legislation is going to stop people from breaking the law. By definition, that's what criminals do.

It's illegal to kill people, but they do it. Why does anyone think making it illegal for them to have guns will stop them from having them?

There's no way to keep guns off of "the streets". Period. It can't be done. You can't uninvent firearms technology. Even if you outlawed everything, the black market would simply fill the void. Just like drugs. And if anyone has any delusions about the government's ability to control the black market, I need only point to the drug situation again.

Maybe in a small, homogenous society with tyrannical laws (like Singapore), but not here. Not in America. Not with 300 million citizens with widely varying opinions, beliefs, motivations, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, most of whom don't like each other. Not in an open society with any semblance of freedom.

Personally, I think one of the reasons America's crime rate is, and has always been, so high is because we don't have any set of national values or a unifying national identity. Americans are a mish-mash of everyone in the world, a nation united by nothing but citizenship. Small, homogenous societies like Japan, Singapore, and Sweeden have an easier time with this stuff than we do. But that's a topic for another time. (In any case, even those places have their law-breakers.)

You can't stop those who willingly do harm to their fellow man (for profit or entertainment or whatever) from using weapons in the process. You can't stop them from using cars for transportation, phones for communication, or medicines to let them live longer, either.

The price of freedom is people taking advantage of it. Punishing everyone else because a few abuse their freedom is nonsensical collectivist thinking. I used to hate it when they did that in the Army; one guy'd screw up and they'd punish the whole squad. We're all individuals. What Mr. Felonious Felon does should have no bearing on what I'm able to do.

Trying to prevent crime through preemptive legislation leads only tyranny. Crime can be dealth with, the perpetrators punished, or even reformed, but you can't stop it from happening on a societal level. There are just too many people out there that think society's rules and niceties are for other people.
Click to expand...

+1:cool:
 
Nightcrawler said:
My question is this. Who cares?

No amount of legislation is going to stop people from breaking the law. By definition, that's what criminals do.

It's illegal to kill people, but they do it. Why does anyone think making it illegal for them to have guns will stop them from having them?

There's no way to keep guns off of "the streets". Period. It can't be done. You can't uninvent firearms technology. Even if you outlawed everything, the black market would simply fill the void. Just like drugs. And if anyone has any delusions about the government's ability to control the black market, I need only point to the drug situation again.

Maybe in a small, homogenous society with tyrannical laws (like Singapore), but not here. Not in America. Not with 300 million citizens with widely varying opinions, beliefs, motivations, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, most of whom don't like each other. Not in an open society with any semblance of freedom.

Personally, I think one of the reasons America's crime rate is, and has always been, so high is because we don't have any set of national values or a unifying national identity. Americans are a mish-mash of everyone in the world, a nation united by nothing but citizenship. Small, homogenous societies like Japan, Singapore, and Sweeden have an easier time with this stuff than we do. But that's a topic for another time. (In any case, even those places have their law-breakers.)

You can't stop those who willingly do harm to their fellow man (for profit or entertainment or whatever) from using weapons in the process. You can't stop them from using cars for transportation, phones for communication, or medicines to let them live longer, either.

The price of freedom is people taking advantage of it. Punishing everyone else because a few abuse their freedom is nonsensical collectivist thinking. I used to hate it when they did that in the Army; one guy'd screw up and they'd punish the whole squad. We're all individuals. What Mr. Felonious Felon does should have no bearing on what I'm able to do.

Trying to prevent crime through preemptive legislation leads only tyranny. Crime can be dealth with, the perpetrators punished, or even reformed, but you can't stop it from happening on a societal level. There are just too many people out there that think society's rules and niceties are for other people.
Click to expand...
I care and so should anyone that cares about the right to own firearms. I think we can all agree that the biggest problem is criminals with guns using them for "evil" deeds thus giving all guns a bad rep in the mind of the average joe. So unless the pro-firearm community can come up with some good viable stategies to try and keep guns out of the hands of criminals we will never be able to win this war on firearm ownership. It especially looks bad when we say "oh well, what are you gonna do".
 
Actually, the biggest problem is people who think that outlawing guns will stop criminals from using them.

Even if, with legalization of firearms, the violent crime rate went up (there aren't any statistics that correlate as such, but just for discussion) I'd still be for it.

As I said, as far as I'm concerned, it's about MY RIGHTS. Not social problems like violent crime. Cracking down on black market, high-volume gun runners is the ATF's job, not mine. Maybe if they spent more time doing that and less time harrassing gun show patrons they'd actually make a dent in it.

I agree that if there were less crimes involving guns, gun rights would be easier to justify to the public at large. "See, it doesn't cause a problem," we could all say. (In truth, it isn't by any means the cause of the problem, but it's portrayed as such.)

But I'm not interested in justifying my rights to anyone. I'm an American citizen. My right to own a firearm and defend myself is not qualified by whether or not my doing so is convenient or justifable to anyone else. If I don't commit crimes with my firearms, what anyone else does with theirs is irrelevant to me. If they break the law, put them in jail!

But if the government, after 20+ years of trying really really hard, can't even begin to control the distribution of illegal narcotics, what makes anyone think they can appreicably make a dent in the black market arms business?

As I said before, what the black market does should have no bearing on what I'm able to do. If the government outlawed fast cars because criminals used them to run from police, there'd be a holy uproar. And it wouldn't solve the problem, would it? Punishing everybody for the actions of the few is illogical and ineffective. It only breeds resentment.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

P
  • Locked
  • Poll
Criminals and firearms
2 3
Replies
59
Views
1K
MrTwigg
M
M
  • Locked
How do criminals obtain firearms?
2 3
Replies
54
Views
2K
texasgun
T
P
  • Locked
Misunderstanding
Replies
20
Views
1K
Zundfolge
Zundfolge
P
  • Locked
Making guns illegal makes no sense
Replies
10
Views
608
Medusa
M
B
  • Locked
Do people know that you own?
2 3
Replies
56
Views
2K
bowl443
B
Back
Top