Reducing Gun Violence

 

Project Muse conducted a study on ways to deter gun violence in the U.S. in which criminals have been surveyed and found that most of their armory consists of weapons purchased by friends or family. With that being said straw purchases or illegal purchases in which a friend or girlfriend purchase firearms for their significant other family members. Depending on the gun dealer and shops finding bad sales practices can be hit or miss most times. While some dealer’s sales are linked to hundreds of deaths or crime some dealers hardly have weapons that are recovered from crime. In Milwaukee a dealer was linked to most of the city’s crime guns and due to negative publicity by changing shop practices more than half of new guns were deterred from criminals and a little under half of all new gun crimes were reduced. While shop practices can be a major tool to deter criminals state and or local regulation of gun dealers play a significant role as a gun deterrent. When shop owners are subjected to correspondence and feel the pressure from authorities they are less likely to participate in illegal sales of weapons. Litigation has proven to help reduce gun sales to criminals in recent years as local governments began suing arms dealers whom had negligent selling practices or divulged in illegal sales practices. In suing these gun shops the rate of new guns flowing to cities and gun crimes had drastically decreased as a result of litigation. The involvement of local policing authorities also helped in reducing gun crime in their respective cities. NYPD following the deaths of fellow coworkers set up stings for straw sells in which a male and female undercover would attempt to buy weapons, in these instances the female would be off to herself the male would pick the guns and the female would buy the weapon. Once the evidence was collected the dealers were prosecuted and a series of correspondence ensued in which dealers agreed to follow the procedures of the NYPD and be held accountable to their programs and initiatives to deter guns from the illegal market.