Solutions Sought in Boston
Boston, like other major U.S. cities, struggled with the problem of youth violence in some of its poor, innercity neighborhoods. Gun violence intensified when young people began selling crack cocaine in the 1980s and carrying guns as protection and as a part of the dynamics of gang activity. During the first half of the 1990s, the city experienced 155 youth homicides by gun and knife, most of which were gun victimizations of young African-American men.
In an effort to contain gun violence in Boston, in 1996 the National Institute of Justice launched Operation Ceasefire, a problem-solving initiative to disrupt the illegal firearms markets and deter serious youth violence. Working together with many groups, including gang out-reach and mediation specialists (known as "street workers"), the intervention team first analyzed the supply and demand for guns. The tracing of crime guns pointed to the existence of a flow of new guns diverted into the illicit market very close to the time of first retail sale. This showed that the majority of guns were not stolen but rather obtained illegally from gun traffickers or straw purchasers (legal buyers who then sell to those who cannot pass background checks) who purchase several guns at a time to resell.
Looking at the demand side, the team found that both homicide victims and offenders were often participants in criminally active neighborhood gangs. Most youths were well known to the criminal justice system. More than half (55%) had been on probation; in fact, 25% of the offenders were on probation at the time they committed murder.
The team then crafted intervention strategies to curtail serious youth violence. For instance, in one particularly tough neighborhood, the street workers told the gang members to stop the shootings and give up their guns or they would face severe restrictions. They were told that officials would shut down drug markets, serve warrants, overrun the streets with law enforcement officers, conduct bed checks on probationers, confiscate unregistered cars, pursue disorder offenses such as drinking in public, and send parole officers to search rooms.
When the threats were actually carried out, stunned gang members turned over their handguns, and the neighborhood became quiet. The intervention team let it be known that shooting people, terrorizing their neighborhoods, and possessing or selling guns would not be tolerated. In addition, gun suppliers learned that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was tracing recovered firearms, getting information from arrestees, and following up on the results.
Youth violence in Boston fell substantially. In the second full year of implementation of Operation Ceasefire, through May 31, 1998, there was a 71% decrease in homicides by persons age twenty-four and under and a 70% reduction in gun assaults for all ages. According to a DOJ study (David M. Kennedy, Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project's Operation Ceasefire: Developing and Implementing Operation Ceasefire, NCJ 188741, September 2001), the height of Operation Ceasefire activity occurred during 1996 and 1997. In that time its implementation was associated with a 60% decrease in youth homicides per month, a 32% decrease in shots-fired calls for law enforcement service per month, a 25% decrease in gun assaults per month, and a 44% decrease in the number of youth gun assaults per month in the highest risk district (Roxbury). The study credited Boston's combination of social outreach and youth programs—and very tough law enforcement. Similar programs have been initiated in other cities plagued by juvenile crime, including Indianapolis, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Detroit.
Tracing Juvenile Crime Guns
The Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative, developed by the ATF, is a voluntary project designed to reduce youth firearms violence. The initiative analyzed guns recovered from crimes and traced them to their original sources. According to findings reported in Crime Gun Trace Reports (2000) National Report (Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Washington, D.C., July 2002), in 2000 there was a total of 88,570 crime gun trace reports from forty-six participating cities with populations exceeding 250,000 (up from 64,637 reports from thirty-two cities in 1999). About 8% of crime guns were recovered from juveniles younger than seventeen. About 33% of crime guns were recovered from young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.
As was true in Boston, the ATF found that many recovered firearms move rapidly from first retail sales at federally licensed gun dealers to a black market that supplies juveniles with guns. When crime guns are recovered within three years from the time of sale, they can be more easily traced to their illegal sources than older guns, which are more likely to have passed through many hands before entering the illegal market. According to the ATF, these "new" crime guns made up nearly one-third of all firearms recovered in 2000.
A 2004 study (Garen Wintemute et al., "The Life Cycle of Crime Guns: A Description Based on Guns Recovered from Young People in California," Annals of Emergency Medicine, vol. 43, June 2004) analyzed data from ATF gun tracing records in order to follow the life cycle of 2,121 crime guns recovered in California in 1999. The analysis had several interesting conclusions:
- Guns recovered from individuals younger than eighteen years old were most often purchased by persons aged forty-five years or older;
- Small-caliber handguns made up 41% of handguns recovered from this group;
- For 17.3% of crime guns recovered from teenagers, the median time from sale to recovery was less than three years, which indicates deliberate gun trafficking; and
- A minority of retailers and straw purchasers are disproportionately linked to the sale or transfer of crime guns.
A growing source for juveniles to acquire firearms is the Internet. A 1999 investigation showed that some gun sellers on the Internet will send firearms across state lines without even asking the buyer's age (A. Orr, "U.S. Gun Buyers Dodge Controls by Shopping Online," Reuters, May 30, 1999). As of 2004, legislators have yet to address this issue.
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