Gun Use and Control

There has long been an urban dimension to gun use and control in the United States, especially in regard to handguns. Gun ownership, especially of rifles and shotguns, tends to be concentrated in rural areas, but handguns and assault weapons—military-appearing, semiautomatic firearms—account for much gun ownership and use in urban areas. Since the 1960s, especially, guns have proliferated in America's inner cities, leading to a rise in gun violence of which young minority males are the chief perpetrators and victims. The title of Geoffrey Canada's 1995 memoir of growing up in New York City, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, recapitulates the increasing lethality of weapons used by young men in the inner city. Gun control initiatives in urban areas have been tied to the recent upsurges in violence in America's cities and to the increasing availability of firearms. For example, in 2005, Boston developed new policing initiatives to attempt to deal with an upsurge in gun violence.

City-based efforts at gun control in the United States are not new but have been tied to concerns about urban crime dating back to the 19th century. Films and television present an image of ubiquitous guns and widespread gun use in the Old West, but laws regulating and often prohibiting the carrying of weapons were among the first passed in new western towns. In the 20th century, one of the earliest gun control laws was the Sullivan Act, passed in New York State in 1911, but clearly aimed at New York City. This law gave police chiefs discretion to issue gun permits, a discretion they usually exercised to prevent immigrants from owning firearms. The law, which strictly limits the right of anyone to carry a concealed handgun, is seen by many scholars as a xenophobic response to an influx of immigrants, especially Italians, into the city. The National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, the first comprehensive federal gun law, was a reaction to widespread urban mob violence and the use of machine guns in that violence. The act regulated machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.

To understand gun use and control in American urban history and in the contemporary United States requires consideration of some basic facts and the larger context of intense debates over guns, gun violence, and gun control. These facts and debates frame proposals for gun control policy, at urban and other [Page 320]levels, and inform evaluations of the relative success of urban efforts at gun control.

Basic facts to keep in mind are the high levels of lethal violence, especially gun violence, in the United States, coupled with the extremely high numbers of firearms; lack of comprehensive national-level gun control regulation; and a highly developed gun culture, which sees the issue of gun ownership as inextricably intertwined with that of basic rights. The U.S. is also a highly urbanized nation characterized by extremes of wealth and poverty, high levels of past and present discrimination against racially defined minority groups, and continuing high levels of residential segregation, with poor African Americans and Latino/as most likely to live in inner cities. Social and economic trends in recent years, combined with the above factors, have created urban environments characterized by numerous social problems, including poor education, lack of jobs, high levels of crime, and inadequate public safety. Add the widespread availability of firearms to this situation and the linkage of gun violence and cities is understandable.

...