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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.