Criminal law and criminology: a survey of recent books.

• Author: Ferrall, Bard R.

FIREARM LEGISLATION

BERNARD E. HARCOURT, ED., GUNS, CRIMES AND PUNISHMENT IN AMERICA (New York, New York University Press, 2003) 436 Pp.

While gun control is often treated as a simple yes/no issue, the debate has become highly polarized. The essays collected here examine nuances in the different types and possible degrees of gun control. Important developments over the past forty years include: development of academic research expertise in the historic and current empirics and statistics of gun ownership and use (including empirical research offered to support the position that gun ownership by law-abiding citizens reduces crime); debate about the meaning of and history behind the Second Amendment; required pre-purchase background checks; offender-targeted legislation, such as enhancement penalties; aggressive social control initiatives related to illegal gun ownership; and negligence and public nuisance suits against gun manufacturers.

Several contributors discuss the cultural symbolism of firearms and how this directs the public debate. One contributor argues that the cultural debate has been masked behind econometrics and consequentialism, and that such debate should be made explicit. Another contributor examines the view of the firearm as the "great equalizer" among individuals in frontier history, and presents an alternative view that the Nineteenth Century revolver's use was primarily not by one individual citizen against another, but rather a means by which a few could kill many. Under this view, the revolver became a method of control against the enslaved and Indian populations, and was later used to control the social upheavals caused by immigration, urbanization and industrialization. Through analysis of inmate remarks at a youth detention center, the current meaning of guns to today's youth is sought by another contributor. These remarks reveal a strong desire for guns as a means to independence and self-reliance.

Policy interventions of different kinds are considered by several authors. A program was developed in the 1990s, where locally seized guns were submitted to the ATF to determine how that gun was obtained. According to one author, the development of trace data under this program produced important data which can help form strategies aimed at preventing gun acquisition by criminals, identify and target the sources of criminally used guns, and help evaluate gun control legislation. This author also describes the data analysis process and presents the important findings, in addition to discussing the most effective policies based on these findings and the argument that gun tracing is useless because of widespread firearm availability. Another author looks at the "order maintenance program" adopted in the mid-1980s, which included a policy of aggressive stop-and-frisk to seize illegal handguns. The author concludes from the data that the program stigmatized individuals of minority groups, especially African Americans--the data does not...