IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/1994844561-564_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Homicide, handguns, and the crime gun hypothesis: Firearms used in fatal shootings of law enforcement officers, 1980 to 1989

Author

Listed:
  • Wintemute, G.J.

Abstract

Objectives. Many policies seeking to limit handgun violence rest on the largely untested 'crime gun hypothesis,' which holds that subclasses of handguns differ in their risk for use in violent crime. This study tests that hypothesis for handguns used in homicides of law enforcement officers and describes the population of homicide-involved handguns. Methods. A cross- sectional study was done of civilian (criminal) handguns used in homicides of law enforcement officers from 1980 to 1989. Life tables were generated for each year's cohort of new handguns to estimate gun-years at risk, analogous to person-years, for rate and relative risk calculations. Results. Four hundred thirty-five deaths involved 428 civilian handguns. Revolvers were at greater risk than pistols. For both, risk was lowest for .22-caliber handguns. Risk was greatest for .32-caliber pistols and .38-caliber revolvers. Forty-six percent of handguns had a barrel length of 3 in or less. Conclusions. Subclasses of handguns differ substantially in their risk for use in fatal shootings of law enforcement officers. Such epidemiological data may be useful in formulating efforts to prevent these and similar instances of firearm violence.

Suggested Citation

  • Wintemute, G.J., 1994. "Homicide, handguns, and the crime gun hypothesis: Firearms used in fatal shootings of law enforcement officers, 1980 to 1989," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 84(4), pages 561-564.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1994:84:4:561-564_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1994:84:4:561-564_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.