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Abstract
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Efforts to ban the small, cheap guns known as Saturday night specials (SNS) will not have a significant impact on crime and could even be counterproductive.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a SNS was a gun that cost less than $50 in 1976, was of .32 caliber or less, and had a barrel length of 3 inches or less. Surveys of guns confiscated by the police or of incarcerated felons do not give accurate indicates of the use of the SNS, because these surveys include either guns or criminals not involved in violent crimes. Applying available survey information to crime data from the Uniform Crime Reports for 1980 indicates that only 1.5 percent to 7 percent of all violent crimes involve SNS. An estimated 7.9 million SNS have entered the weapons stock since 1967. However, the probability that any given SNS will be used in even one crime in any given year is probably only between .9 percent and 3 percent. Since SNS are not useful for sport and are rarely used for crime, they are probably owned mainly for personal protection by low-income persons. Measures to reduce the availability of SNS would have only a slight impact on crime and would have their greatest impact on the law-abiding poor. Gun control measures directed only at SNS might also be counterproductive, because felons have said that they would use more lethal handguns if they could not obtain SNS. (NCJRS abstract) |