ABSTRACT
The relationship between technological development in firearm design, manufacture and marketing and the deadly consequences of firearm misuse on the streets can be extremely close. Data compiled by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reveals the rapidly changing composition of the US handgun market during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Around this time law enforcement weapon procurement was shifting away from revolvers to semi-automatic (self-loading pistols – SLPs) handguns (Diaz 1999). In turn, those new pistols were also entering the civilian markets, and a growing number were turning up at crime scenes. The year 1993 marks the high-point for handgun homicide in the USA (Squires 2014a: 166–8) while US DOJ data for the immediately preceding years reveals the marked shift to SLP production and marketing and the increasingly rapid adoption of these firearms as criminal and ‘gang’ weapons of choice. In particular the newer SLP calibres (.32, .38, 9mm. and .40), with larger magazine capacities, especially those produced for the cheaper mass civilian market, were significantly enhancing the street lethality of the illegal firearm inventory (US Department of Justice 2011). Some trauma survey evidence suggests that larger capacity SLPs have been associated with increased numbers of gunshot victims and higher numbers of gunshot strikes per victim (Wintemute 1996; Reedy and Soper 2003). Most significant of all, ATF firearm tracing data exposed the accelerated ‘time to crime’ (the time between the initial purchase of a firearm and its first ballistic trace in an offence) of the cheaper mass-market SLPs and the increasing likelihood that these weapons would turn up in the hands of youthful offenders (ATF 2000). Overall, the technological upgrade in firearm supply had major consequences for the quantity and nature of violent firearm victimisation.
