Search

This article focuses on the Guns and Violence Symposium held on February 3, 1996 at the Northwestern University School of Law in Evanston, Illinois. Relative to some of the discussions that occurred in the first session of the Symposium, such as the remarks by researcher Alfred Blumstein regarding the illicit drug industry and guns, and the remarks by researcher Alan Lizotte on gang membership, the author refers to the longitudinal, birth cohort study in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 1945 birth cohort included nearly 10,000 boys born that year who lived in Philadelphia from at least ages ten to eighteen. In the second stage of the analysis of the 567 interviews, researchers found that there were practically no guns used by the cohort born in 1945 and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. They however found the capacity to examine the sequence of events longitudinally, that is, whether being a gang member preceded being arrested as a delinquent or followed being arrested as a delinquent, or whether being a victim of a crime preceded or followed being arrested.

The article presents the author's opinion on research concerning guns and violence in the U.S. I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. We hypothesized that if a victim resists in some manner, there may be a greater likelihood of an uncompleted robbery. Of the 166 offenses in which the offender threatened the victim with a knife, only 30 percent of the victims resisted either orally, by physical force or by displaying their own weapon. There was more resistance to a gun threat, 40 percent. Among those cases in which there was no resistance, nearly three quarters suffered no physical harm. When a gun was the instrument of intimidation, only five percent of the non-resisters but three times as many resisters were seriously hurt. Defensive gun usage, as reported in the current study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, includes mostly robbery and burglary, in which offenses there is little mutual combat compared to homicides. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology.

Details the need for corrections to rekindle professional leadership and the continuing struggle to end capital punishment in America. Rationale of punishment; Correlation of death and retribution; Evaluation of the role of correctional systems; Account on proportionality and deprivation of liberty; Conclusion.