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The salience of neighborhoods in shaping crime patterns is one of sociology's most robust areas of research. One way through which neighborhoods shape outcomes is through the creation and maintenance of social networks, patterns of interactions and relationships among neighborhood residents, organizations, groups, and institutions. This paper explores the relationship between network structures generated through acts of co-offending—when two or more individuals engage in an alleged crime together—and patterns of neighborhood gun violence and gun availability. Using arrest data from New York City, we create co-arrest networks between individuals arrested in the city between 2010 and 2015. We analyze these network patterns to, first, understand the overall structure of co-offending networks and, then, assess how they impact neighborhood levels of gun violence and gun availability. Results show that local and extra-local networks play a central role in predicting neighborhood levels of shootings: neighborhoods with a greater density of local ties have higher shootings rates, and neighborhoods that share social ties have similar rates of violence. In contrast, the network dynamics involved in gun recoveries are almost entirely local: co-offending patterns within neighborhoods are strongly associated with the level of gun recoveries, especially the clustering of co-offending networks indicative of groups. Contrary to previous research, spatial autocorrelation failed to predict either shootings or gun recoveries when demographic features were considered. Social-demographic characteristics seem to explain much of the observed spatial autocorrelation and the precise measurement of network properties might provide better measurements of the neighborhood dynamics involved in urban gun violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firearms violence results in hundreds of thousands of criminal investigations each year. To try to identify a culprit, firearms examiners seek to link fired shell casings or bullets from crime scene evidence to a particular firearm. The underlying assumption is that firearms impart unique marks on bullets and cartridge cases, and that trained examiners can identify these marks to determine which were fired by the same gun. For over a hundred years, firearms examiners have testified that they can conclusively identify the source of a bullet or cartridge case. In recent years, however, research scientists have called into question the validity and reliability of such testimony. Judges largely did not view such testimony with increased skepticism after the Supreme Court set out standards for screening expert evidence in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Instead, the surge in judicial rulings came more than a decade later, particularly after reports by scientists shed light on limitations of the evidence. In this Article, we detail over a century of case law and examine how judges have engaged with the changing practice and scientific understanding of firearms comparison evidence. We first describe how judges initially viewed firearms comparison evidence skeptically and thought jurors capable of making firearms comparisons themselves-without an expert. Next, judges embraced the testimony of experts who offered more specific and aggressive claims, and the work spread nationally. Finally, we explore the modern era of firearms case law and research. Judges increasingly express skepticism and adopt a range of approaches to limit in-court testimony by firearms examiners. In December 2023, Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence was amended, for the first time in over twenty years, specifically due to the Rules Committee's concern with the quality of federal rulings regarding forensic evidence, as well as the failure to engage with the ways that forensic experts express conclusions in court. There is perhaps no area in which judges, especially federal judges, have been more active than in the area of firearms evidence. Thus, the judging of firearms evidence has central significance for the direction that scientific evidence gatekeeping may take under the revised Rule 702 in federal, and then state courts. We conclude by examining lessons regarding the gradual judicial shift toward a more scientific approach. The more-than-a-century-long arc of judicial review of firearms evidence in the United States suggests that, over time, scientific research can displace tradition and precedent to improve the quality of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans have a reoccurring discussion about firearms and gun culture in America with no policy changes. We used data from Pew Research fielded just after the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012 to conduct a latent class analysis of gun policy positions and assess how demographic characteristics, such as religion, impact belonging to particular gun policy latent classes. Unlike much previous research, we analyzed not just individuals' viewpoints on gun policy but also the actions they take regarding their viewpoints. In this attempt to understand why a seemingly dominant view (i.e., a desire to change gun laws) never seems to move forward, we found that the largest latent class is respondents favoring gun control but who are not active. Further, unlike those within the active gun control class, respondents in the active pro-gun latent class are more likely to contribute financially rather than just sign petitions or speak out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, Pittsburgh had the 21st highest murder rate in the USA at 18.6 murders per 100,000 population. By 2022, its murder rate had declined to 12.32 per 100,000, ranking it number 58 among American cities with greater than 100,000 residents. The article's principal concern is with identifying factors that may have contributed to mitigations of gun violence in metro-Pittsburgh, and especially with how local anti-violence mobilizations within and between key sectors may have contributed to these violence reductions. Activist cadres of youth, social service organizations, governmental decision-makers, foundation leaders, and faith leaders are examined, with attention to how their respective sectors may have been pushed beyond established scopes of concern to take up the fight against gun violence. Drawing upon original interview data from 30 local leaders and from published formal statements and policy issuances from relevant institutional sectors, the article investigates Pittsburgh gun violence and responses, emphasizing the importance of strategically positioned leaders who possessed commitments and capabilities to leverage Pittsburgh's ample institutional resources on behalf of anti-gun violence objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The firearm mortality rate in West Virginia (WV) increased over the past four years and is currently 50% higher than the national rate. These alarming statistics, combined with the urban-to-rural shift in firearm injuries, prompted this 10-year epidemiologic overview. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the current study stands alone as the only report of its kind on firearm injuries in the rural setting of southern WV. Firearm injuries were common in White males within the age range of 20–49 years. Assault, which is typically identified as an urban problem, was found to be the most common injury in the study population. In our data series, injury severity score was the strongest predictor of mortality, followed by self-inflicted cause of injury and trauma to the neck/head region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: A comprehensive scene reconstruction requires forensic investigators to examine the impact marks left on various surfaces to identify whether a projectile produces a specific hole. Subsequently, it is further necessary to determine whether a particular ammunition has caused the impact. Throughout history, designs of ammunition have evolved with the intended effects, which could leave different impact marks on a target surface, especially by ammunition with a nonconventional design. Careful examination on impact marks and determination of their specific characteristics on sheet metal of vehicle would provide crucial forensic information. Aim: This study was aimed to physically characterize bullet impact holes made by 11 types of 9-mm caliber ammunitions. Materials and Methods: Two automotive doors were shot with different ammunitions from the same firearm, and the morphological features of bullet impact holes were observed and compared. Results: Bullet impact holes produced by the various ammunitions could be differentiated through careful observation of bullet hole circumferences, presence of petalling effect, metallic ring and triangular peak at the edge, and deposition of residue at the peripheral area of bullet impact holes. Ammunitions with nonconventional design such as Inceptor-Polycase and GECO Hexagon showed observable morphological differences and discriminated them from bullet impact holes made by conventional ammunitions. Conclusion: A thorough physical examination could aid in distinguishing bullet impact holes and predicting the possible types of ammunition that had made an impact hole on a surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Wraparound referrals are a cornerstone of hospital-based violence intervention programs, which have proven to be an effective public health approach for mitigating violence and recidivism. We hypothesized that replacing a manual referral process with an electronic referral application would increase the number of generated referrals and improve compliance with follow-up visits.Study Design: The population for this single center quantitative study was a convenience sample of firearm-injured patients. Data from 74 patients were collected using the electronic health record, the electronic referral application, and the trauma registry before and after the intervention.Results: Post-implementation of the electronic referral application showed an increased number of generated referrals, increased emergency department and inpatient utilization of trauma recovery center services, and an increase in second follow-up visit compliance.Conclusion: This study demonstrated an increase in the number of referrals and greater likelihood of completion of post-injury follow-up visits after implementing the electronic referral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass murder, especially involving a firearm, has been a subject of increasing interest among criminologists over the past decade. Lacking an existing and reliable data resource for studying these crimes, several organizations have launched their own database initiatives with, unfortunately, little consensus on definition. As a result, there is confusion regarding the nature and trends of such events. In this paper, we rely on the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database, which provides the widest coverage of incidents in the U.S. with four or more victim fatalities, regardless of location, situation, or weapon. First, we present trends in incidents and victimization of mass killings from 2006 through 2020, followed by an examination of various incident, offender, and victim characteristics, distinguishing among the major subtypes. Next, we detail a motivational typology of mass murder and identify the common contributing factors. Finally, we consider the potential effects of certain policy responses related to media coverage, mental health services, and gun restrictions on the prevalence of mass killing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gun violence has long been an intractable policy problem in the United States, pitting gun rights advocates against public health experts against a backdrop of modern Second Amendment jurisprudence. The Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Heller had the long-term effect of freezing federal firearm statutes in place, even as the number of guns in circulation continues to spiral upward, and mass shootings, gun accidents, and suicides have a detrimental impact on our communities. This Article reexamines longstanding proposals for minimally intrusive regulatory approaches, such as universal background checks and restrictions on certain military-style rifles, which have the pedigree of popular support in an otherwise divisive area. More importantly, this Article revisits the issue of tort liability for gun manufacturers and dealers, and the new wave of court decisions allowing such cases to move forward in spite of a federal statute designed to grant the firearms industry immunity from such lawsuits. An area of tort litigation that was mostly dormant for fifteen years has now become increasingly active, with far-reaching implications for gun policy. As courts find workarounds for the federal immunity statute or apply the statutory exceptions more broadly, gun manufacturers and retail distributors alike may need to rethink their product lines, marketing, and relationship to the secondary market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firearm homicide and suicide deaths for 2014 were examined in Harris County, Texas, for spatial variation and socio-economic correlates. Higher firearm homicide rates were found closer to central Houston than firearm suicide rates. Local hot spots were identified for both types but overlapped at only two locations. A Poisson–Gamma–Exposure regression model showed the homicide rate was associated with higher percentages of persons who are Black, aged 15 to 29 years, and living in poverty whereas the suicide rate was associated with a higher percentage of persons of non-Hispanic White ethnicity. Firearm policies that reduce homicides may also reduce suicides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the historical regulation of assault weapons, magazines, and silencers in the U.S. Topics discussed include the history and modern debate over gun silencers, the history of bullet magazine regulation and the functionality of magazines, and contemporary assault weapons concerns including mass shootings, police killings, and gang and criminal activity.

The article examines the empirical and theoretical debates regarding firearms outside the home. Topics discussed include the methodological variation among studies of the effects of stand-your-ground laws on violent crime and the connection between stand-your-ground laws and increased violent crime and murder.

The article examines the connection between more guns in public and more crime. Topics discussed include a background of the quick and comprehensive movement over the last several decades that has expanded public carry of firearms, the undesirable social impact of expanded and loosened public carry laws, and a call for courts to take data on firearms and crime into account when adjudicating Second Amendment claims.

The movement to abolish nuclear weapons threatens to consume political capital better spent addressing more immediate threats to international security: conventional weapons such as combat aircraft, naval vessels, and small arms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the atrocious and mutilating practice of scalping in the frontier scene. Removal of scalp by the plains Indians as a token of war and as visible proof of the enemy's death; Need for portable trophies by warriors to show their prowess on the battlefield; Escalation of the incidence of scalping following the introduction of steel knives and firearms by the Europeans.

The article provides a report on provisional firearm homicide data for 2022, stratified by race and ethnicity, presented both annually and by month to document subannual changes in the U.S. Topics discussed include decrease in the national firearm homicide rate during 2022, notable differences in firearm homicide annual rates by race and ethnicity, and prevention efforts needed to mitigate risks and inequities.

In 2006, the state of New York imposed mandated additional prison time for any crime committed with a firearm and increased the mandated minimum jail time for anyone carrying a firearm illegally. Using several different estimation strategies, we find that robberies immediately declined compared with other U.S. states once these enhancements were enacted. Other crimes, which are less likely to be committed with a firearm, were unaffected. The most plausible explanation is that criminals were deterred from committing robberies using a firearm because of the cost associated with additional prison time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focusses on providing principled Humanitarian assistance to the non state Proscribed terrorist groups. Humanitarian operations for civilians under the effective control of non-state armed groups (NSAGs) have in recent years have increased, sanctions and counterterrorism measures requiring states to ensure that funds and other assets do not directly or indirectly benefit such groups. These are the groups that control civilian populations.

Abstract: Illegal guns circulating among high‐risk networks represent a threat to the security and well‐being of urban neighborhoods. Research findings reveal that illegal firearms are usually acquired through a variety of means, including theft and diversions from legitimate firearms commerce. Little is known, however, about the underground gun markets supplying the gang and drug networks responsible for a large share of gun violence in U.S. cities. In this article, we take a mixed‐methods approach, combining trace analyses of recovered handguns with ethnographic interviews of high‐risk gun users to develop new insights on the entry of guns into three criminal networks in Boston. We find that guns possessed by Boston gang members are of a different character compared with other crime guns; these guns are more likely to be older firearms originating from New Hampshire, Maine, and I‐95 southern states. The results of our qualitative research reveal that gang members and drug dealers pay inflated prices for handguns diverted by traffickers exploiting unregulated secondary market transactions, with significant premiums paid for high‐caliber semiautomatic pistols. Taken together, these findings provide an analytic portrait of the market for illicit guns among those most proximate to violence, yielding novel empirical, theoretical, and practical insights into the problem of criminal gun access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of right-to-carry laws on crimes. We relax the assumption that unobserved time effects have homogeneous impacts on states; therefore, states with right-to-carry laws may follow different time trends which might be stronger or weaker than those of other states including states with no right-to-carry laws. The heterogeneous time trends are modeled by a factor structure where time factors represent time-varying unobservables, and factor loadings account for their heterogeneous impacts across states. No assumption is imposed on the shape of the time trend. Crime statistics exhibit spatial dependence, and a state’s adoption of right-to-carry law may have external effects on its neighboring states. Using a dynamic spatial panel model with interactive effects, we find positive spatial spillovers in crime rates. Depending on a crime category, an average 1% reduction in crime rates in neighboring states can decrease crime rates by 0.069-0.287%, with property crimes exhibiting higher degrees of spatial dependence than violent crimes. We find that although the passage of right-to-carry laws has no significant effects on the overall violent or property crime rates, they lead to short-term increases in robbery and medium-term decreases in murder rates. The results are robust to the number of factors, a different sample ending point, and some alternative spatial weights matrices and model specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firearm injuries are common in the world today, in both military and civilian settings. Research into the effects different ammunition has on the human body has been conducted using tissue simulants such as Ballistics Ordnance Gelatine. Previous research has found that with low velocity projectiles, the tissue simulants only represent a selected few organs, as the human body and its organs/tissues are not homogeneous. The aim of this research was to determine which ballistic simulants best represent the abdomen and thorax, for the purposes of anatomical modelling. A mounted firearm was used to fire specially made ammunition containing a sabot and steel spherical projectile at medium (∼500m/s) and high (∼900m/s) velocities. Test specimens of 50mm cube porcine tissues (lung, liver, kidney and heart) and ballistics simulants (20% and 10% Ballistics Gelatine and Clear Gel) were shot at and the energy loss determined using Doppler radar, optical infra-red sighting screens and high speed video. This study determined that the conclusions drawn from studies in these tissue simulants may not be an accurate representation of what occurs in human tissues and that different impact velocities produce differing results. New simulants are required to better represent the energy loss of a projectile through the organs of the abdomen and thorax and the results of this study may guide this development. Further experiments will be required to determine different concentrations of gelatine and their accuracy at representing the heterogeneous nature organs of the human body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though gun violence is a global issue, the risk of firearm death is substantially higher in the United States than in other high-income nations. Guns are deeply rooted within American culture; however, different subcultures exist along the urban-rural divide. Such differences between urban and rural communities related to gun culture have been dubbed "firearm localism." We investigated firearm localism in a state that has the highest proportion of firearm-related domestic violence homicide and a large rural area representing a subgroup of rural culture: Appalachia. Specifically, key professionals reported issues related to domestic violence gun control in their communities. We conducted phone and in-person surveys with a sample of community professionals (N = 133) working in victim services and the justice system in urban and Appalachian communities. Despite evidence of a strong gun culture in the rural communities, both urban and rural professionals estimated that about two-thirds of their community would support restricting abusers' firearm access. Additionally, rural professionals were more likely to show concern for abusers' Second Amendment rights when discussing unintended negative consequences of gun confiscation; urban professionals were more likely to point out that gun confiscation can provide a false sense of security for victims. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the best kept secrets and one of the least explored in the firearms public policy field is that the vast majority of American state legislatures through the policy of preemption prevent municipalities from enacting any firearm regulations whatsoever, including in Parkland, Florida, where the latest mass public shooting has plunged the country (once again) into a heated gun control debate. Led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), most state legislatures have nearly complete control over anything related to firearms from purchase to concealed carry permits. The research here concludes that this policy contributes to higher mortality rates by firearm and that a federal law should be enacted stripping states of preemption power in this area and restoring home-rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal firearm violence is a leading cause of death and injuries in the United States. Identifying community characteristics associated with firearm violence is important to improve confounder selection and control in health research, to better understand community-level factors that are associated with firearm violence, and to enhance community surveillance and control of firearm violence. The objective of this research was to use machine learning to identify an optimal set of predictors for urban interpersonal firearm violence rates using a broad set of community characteristics. The final list of 18 predictive covariates explain 77.8% of the variance in firearm violence rates, and are publicly available, facilitating their inclusion in analyses relating violence and health. This list includes the black isolation and segregation indices, rates of educational attainment, marital status, indicators of wealth and poverty, longitude, latitude, and temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses whether improvements in healthcare that have taken place since the second half of the twentieth century have contributed to a decrease in the number of homicide victims in Germany. Our study accessed data on healthcare medical resources, mortality, and life expectancy primarily from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Statistics, as well crime data from Interpol’s International Crime Statistics and the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics. The results corroborate the hypothesis when the analysis takes into consideration a time span of more than half a century and remains plausible when it covers the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a shared understanding across the European Union (EU) that access to firearms by the general public should be restricted, detailed legislation regarding the ownership, use and trade of firearms varies between EU member states. It is unclear, however, how such variations impact on the policing of gun-enabled crime. By using qualitative data generated from interviews with police, policy and decision makers from 13 European countries, we aim to determine how stakeholders perceive that national variations in firearms legislation affect the policing of gun-enabled crime within and across EU countries. Four main themes were identified from the qualitative data: disparities in legislation, disparities in the priority given and the resources allocated to investigations into gun-enabled crime, as well as interventions. Owing to the aforementioned disparities, cross-national investigations into incidents of gun crime are at risk of remaining impaired in their effectiveness. Therefore, more legislative coherency as well as sustainable long-term interventions will be needed to successfully reduce ownership and use of firearms in the criminal world. In this context, a departure from an exclusive use of an economic model of gun crime is recommended to allow for a better understanding of the dynamics of the black gun market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]