TABLE 2.2
| What are the different types of firearms? | |
| Types | |
| SOURCE: Marianne W. Zawitz, "What Are the Different Types of Firearms?" in Guns Used in Crime, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, July 1995 | |
| Handgun | A weapon designed to fire a small projectile from one or more barrels when held in one hand with a short stock designed to be gripped by one hand. |
| Revolver | A handgun that contains its ammunition in a revolving cylinder that typically holds five to nine cartridges, each within a separate chamber. Before a revolver fires, the cylinder rotates, and the next chamber is aligned with the barrel. |
| Pistol | Any handgun that does not contain its ammunition in a revolving cylinder. Pistols can be manually operated or semiautomatic. A semiautomatic pistol generally contains cartridges in a magazine located in the grip of the gun. When the semiautomatic pistol is fired, the spent cartridge that contained the bullet and propellant is ejected, the firing mechanism is cocked, and a new cartridge is chambered. |
| Derringer | A small single or multiple-shot handgun other than a revolver or semiautomatic pistol. |
| Rifle | A weapon intended to be fired from the shoulder that uses the energy of the explosive in a fixed metallic cartridge to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger. |
| Shotgun | A weapon intended to be fired from the shoulder that uses the energy of the explosive in a fixed shotgun shell to fire through a smooth bore either a number of ball shot or a single projectile for each single pull of the trigger |
| Firing action | |
| Fully automatic | Capability to fire a succession of cartridges so long as the trigger is depressed or until the ammunition supply is exhausted. Automatic weapons are considered machine guns subject to the provisions of the National Firearms Act. |
| Semiautomatic | An autoloading action that will fire only a single shot for each single function of a trigger. |
| Machine gun | Any weapon that shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger. |
| Submachine gun | A simple fully automatic weapon that fires a pistol cartridge that is also referred to as a machine pistol. |
| Ammunition | |
| Caliber | The size of the ammunition that a weapon is designed to shoot, as measured by the bullet's approximate diameter in inches in the United States and in millimeters in other countries. In some instances, ammunition is described with additional terms, such as the year of its introduction (.30/06) or the name of the designer (.30 Newton). In some countries, ammunition is also described in terms of the length of the cartridge case (7.62 × 63 mm). |
| Gauge | For shotguns, the number of spherical balls of pure lead, each exactly fitting the bore, that equals one pound. |
for use by American civilians that year, including 465,903 handguns, 298,894 rifles, and 331,985 shotguns.
Table 2.4 shows the countries from which firearms were imported in 2000. Note that no rifles or handguns came from China. This marked a major change from the 1990s, when the number of imported firearms increased partly because of greater levels of trade with China and the former communist countries. According to Tom Diaz in Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (New York: New Press, 1999), imports of inexpensive Chinese rifles increased dramatically between 1992 and 1994. In
TABLE 2.3
| Firearms imports, 1986–2000 | |||
| 1986 | 2000 | Percent Change | |
| SOURCE: Exhibit 3. Firearms Imports (1986–2000)," in Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002," U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 2002, http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/firearmscommerce/exhibits.pdf (accessed October 7, 2004) | |||
| Handguns | 231,000 | 465,903 | 102% |
| Rifles | 269,000 | 298,894 | 11% |
| Shotguns | 201,000 | 331,985 | 65% |
| Total | 701,000 | 1,096,782 | 56% |
1992 China sold 164,271 rifles to the United States; in 1993 it sold 490,399. Chinese rifles accounted for nearly two-thirds (64%) of all rifles imported in 1993, then fell to 49% of rifles imported in 1994. That was the year President Bill Clinton imposed a ban on the import of Chinese guns (except shotguns) as a condition of renewing China's "most favored nation" trading status. By 2000, guns from China represented less than 1% of the total imported.
Many Chinese-made firearms have been imported illegally. In May 1996 the ATF and the U.S. Customs Service found that thousands of guns had been manufactured and shipped by two state-controlled companies in China to the United States—a clear violation of a trade pact between the two countries. The Chinese companies had covered up the origin of the guns by shipping them out of rarely policed ports in the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. In order to prevent illegal trafficking in firearms, ammunition, and explosives, the United States and its partners in the Organization of American States signed an agreement in 1997 (the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms). The agreement ensures that imported and exported guns are properly tracked.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States removed import restrictions on the former Iron Curtain countries (Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany). Consequently, the number of guns these countries shipped to the United States increased immediately and significantly. According to the ATF's figures, the number of rifles imported from Russia grew from fewer than three thousand in 1993 to more than a quarter of a million in 1994. In 1996 Russia and the United States signed a trade agreement in which Russia agreed not to flood the U.S. market with the type of cheap, easily concealed guns that are attractive to criminals. By 2000 Russian firearms imports had fallen to a little over fifty thousand.
For nearly two decades, five countries—Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Austria—were the top exporters of handguns to the United States. Brazil was the foremost
TABLE 2.4
| Firearms imported into the United States by country, 2000 | ||||
| Country of Export | Shotguns | Rifles | Handguns | Total Firearms |
| a/On May 26, 1994, the United States instituted a firearms imports embargo against China. Shotguns, however, are exempt from the embargo. | ||||
| b/Imports of fewer than 1,000 per country. | ||||
| SOURCE: "Exhibit 5. Firearms Imported into the United States by Country (2000)," in Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 2002, http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/firearmscommerce/exhibits.pdf (accessed October 7, 2004) | ||||
| Austria | 7 | 9,328 | 245,869 | 255,204 |
| Brazil | 55,605 | 31,486 | 160,548 | 247,639 |
| Italy | 171,536 | 10,911 | 41,325 | 223,772 |
| Germany | 5,976 | 7,655 | 114,876 | 128,507 |
| Canada | 3 | 87,250 | 15,151 | 102,404 |
| Japan | 7,070 | 57,163 | 0 | 64,233 |
| Russia | 39,683 | 9,603 | 1,150 | 50,436 |
| Czech Republic | 115 | 19,425 | 19,006 | 38,546 |
| Argentina | 0 | 0 | 32,237 | 32,237 |
| Turkey | 30,308 | 0 | 0 | 30,308 |
| Belgium | 519 | 22,067 | 2,004 | 24,590 |
| Romania | 0 | 21,060 | 2,000 | 23,060 |
| Israel | 23 | 125 | 22,373 | 22,521 |
| Finland | 0 | 18,954 | 0 | 18,954 |
| Spain | 6,382 | 2 | 11,935 | 18,319 |
| Hungary | 13 | 3,100 | 12,200 | 15,313 |
| Philippines | 282 | 1,356 | 11,310 | 12,948 |
| United Kingdom | 4,539 | 5,169 | 3 | 9,711 |
| Chinaa/ | 9,320 | 0 | 0 | 9,320 |
| Switzerland | 2 | 2,178 | 6,118 | 8,298 |
| Bulgaria | 0 | 300 | 6,429 | 6,729 |
| Croatia | 0 | 0 | 5,500 | 5,500 |
| France | 98 | 396 | 1,738 | 2,232 |
| Sweden | 511 | 694 | 0 | 1,205 |
| All Othersb/ | 691 | 45 | 890 | 1,626 |
| Totals: | 331,985 | 298,894 | 465,903 | 1,096,782 |
exporter until it was overtaken by Austria in 1996. By 2000, 66% of imported weapons came from three countries—Austria, Brazil, and Italy. (See Table 2.4.)
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