Interesting Report on Reducing Gun Violence

The National Institute of Justice has been funding studies to try to find ways to reduce gun violence. I have found the report of one of these studies.

"This Research Report is part of the National Institute of Justice’s {NIJ’s) Reducing Gun Violence publication series. Each report in the series describes the implementation and effects of an individual, NIJ-funded, local-level program designed to reduce firearm-related violence in a particular U.S. city. Some studies received cofunding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; one also received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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The Research Reports should be of particular value to anyone interested in adopting a strategic, data-driven, problem-solving approach to reducing gun violence and other crime and disorder problems in communities.
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Analyses suggest that the Ceasefire intervention was associated with statistically significant reductions in all time series, including:
 A 63-percent decrease in the monthly number of youth homicides in Boston.
 A 32-percent decrease in the monthly number of citywide shots-fired calls.
 A 25-percent decrease in the monthly number of citywide all-age gun assault incidents.
 A 44-percent decrease in the monthly number of District B–2 youth gun assault incidents.
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Operation Ceasefire’s Working Group understood that law enforcement agencies generally do not have the capacity to “eliminate” all gangs or powerfully respond to all gang offending in gang-troubled jurisdictions. 28 Pledges to do so, although common, are simply not credible. The Working Group recognized that, for the strategy to be successful, a credible deterrence message must be delivered to Boston gangs. Because the Working Group could deploy, at best, only a few severe crackdowns at a time, the Ceasefire intervention targeted those gangs that were engaged in violent behavior rather than expending resources on those that were not. Through this focused application of deterrence principles, Operation Ceasefire suggests a new approach to controlling violent offenders."

Large PDF file
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/188741.pdf

The results highlighted above were achieved by enforcing existing laws, and a comprehensive effort to get to the root causes of gun violence in Boston.

1. Enforcing existing laws.

2. Working on eliminating root causes of violence, including such factors as poverty, racial tensions, and unemployment.

3. Standardized purchase requirements nationwide, to reduce gun-running.

4. Additional laws as needed to fine-tune the system.

"Over the next several months,YVSF and ATF built a case against a Cape Verdean named Jose Andrade, whose family lived on Wendover Street and who went to college in Mississippi.Andrade turned out to be using a network of straw purchasers to buy guns while he was at school, and he was bringing the guns back to Boston during school vacations to sell to the loose street crew with which he associated."

"Analysis confirmed the belief of Working Group members that young people in Boston had a taste for new guns; slightly more than 25 percent of traceable guns and some 33 percent of guns associated with gang members were less than 2 years old at the time of recovery. This fact defied the common belief in law enforcement and other circles that such guns were invariably old, either borrowed from their own homes or stolen in house burglaries. Further, more than half of the traceable guns were semiautomatic pistols, and these tended to be newer yet; this was even more true of guns associated with gang members, particularly the .380 and 9mm models identified by the Working Group as guns of choice on the street.Where popular models of semiautomatic pistols were concerned, the time from purchase to recovery by police was often very brief.

In all probability, these guns had been deliberately diverted from gun stores into young people’s hands. Finally, nearly 20 percent of all guns recovered from youths had obliterated serial numbers—a marker of illicit firearms trafficking. Analysis disproved the belief, on the other hand, that all youth crime guns in Boston were coming from southern States. More than 33 percent of traceable guns had first been sold at retail in Massachusetts; the next largest source State was Georgia, at only 8 percent. Guns originating in all southern States combined equaled a volume slightly below that of Massachusetts."

"Here, as well, the distinctive characteristics of the decline in homicide and shootings in Boston offer the best insight into what might have happened. Two things are certain. First, supply-side efforts cannot be responsible for the abrupt reductions in gun-related violence during the summer and fall of 1996. Most Boston trafficking cases followed that reduction, rather than anticipated it. Second, anti-trafficking efforts in Boston did nothing to reduce the existing stockpile of illegally acquired and possessed firearms in Boston. The guns held by gang members in Boston in May of 1996 were, for the most part, still held by them several months later when the violence reached its new, lower level. The change that had occurred was not in the extent of gun ownership but in gun use. The principal impact, therefore,was almost certainly a demand-side, deterrence-based effect rather than a supply-side effect. It may well be that anti-trafficking efforts strengthened and prolonged that impact. Whether any such effects were large or small cannot be independently established in this case."

The tactics employed by the police significantly changed HOW the firearms were used (or not used) but did not significantly affect the number of guns AVAILABLE to criminals.