NCJ Number
226407
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 25 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2009 Pages: 45-66
Date Published
February 2009
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This study explored urban hand gun ownership and its link to homicide rates in surrounding areas.
Abstract
Findings suggest that urban handgun ownership is a response to homicide, but not necessarily to fear of crime or the individual’s own prior victimization. Some people might roughly forecast their future chances of homicide victimization based largely on homicide rates and their correlates, including personally transmitted stories of homicides in their own neighborhoods or among their friends, family, and/or coworkers. A person’s own crime victimization may play little role in this informal forecasting process, and some may even fall prey to the “gambler’s fallacy” that past victimization means they have used up some of their bad luck. As to the effects of fear, gun acquisition for self-defense may be a relatively unemotional process based on resulting forecast without fear mediating the effect of homicide rates on gun ownership. Parallel findings of macro-level research reviewed earlier, found that violent crime rates appeared to have significant positive effects on gun levels. Pro-violent attitudes were unrelated to any kind of gun ownership among big city residents. However, attitudes favorable toward defensive violence were also unrelated to gun ownership, even to ownership of handguns, the gun type most likely to be owned for defensive purposes. Data were collected from 5,236 urban respondents to the General Social Survey over 12 years. Tables, notes, and references