Bibliographic record
Abstract
Over the past 10-15 years, although the overall use of firearms in violent crime has declined, handguns have increasingly become the firearm of choice in both Australia and other English-speaking countries. Handguns are often used as a means of protection, particularly among people involved in gangs and the drugs market, and their concealable nature, high firepower and large calibre are often cited as features prompting their acquisition by the criminal community. This paper describes the use of handguns to commit lethal and non-lethal crime in Australia; and in light of recent legislative restrictions on handgun ownership and use, the legal status of handguns used in these crimes. Overall there appear to be low ownership rates among offenders in Australia. However, handguns currently account for around half of all firearm-related homicides and are distinguishable from other homicides, particularly with regard to location (non-residential), relationship between victim and offender (known but not related), and alleged motive (money or drugs). Handgun- perpetrated armed robberies are also found to be distinct from robberies committed with other weapons, with a higher proportion targeting organisations and netting greater monetary yields. The majority of handguns used in crime appear to be illegal. Available data suggest many are acquired from friends or family, and diversion, including theft from legal sources, may represent an important source of handguns (and other firearms) into the illegal market and their subsequent use in crime. Judy Putt General Manager, Research Introduction A study of firearm possession and use among organised crime gangs in the United Kingdom noted that 'criminals at all levels favour handguns' (SOCA 2006). Weapon use data from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (New South Wales) also suggest a preference for handguns, with firearm homicide, attempted murder and robbery largely committed with handguns, rather than rifles or shotguns (Dauvergne & Li 2006; FBI 2007; Kaiza, Coleman & Reed 2007; Williams & Poynton 2006). While the overall use of firearms in violent crime has declined in these countries, the proportional use of handguns has increased. Factors prompting weapon choice and use have received some attention in the literature, but rarely those that specifically influence firearm choice, although cost, ease of procurement and concealment, need for protection, and status are possible determinants. For example, US prisoners stated a preference for firearms that are easily concealable and of a large calibre (e.g. handguns - Wright & Rossi 1994). Handgun ownership and use among young men, particularly those in gangs or involved in the drug trade, has become commonplace in the United States and United Kingdom due to increased access and need for concealable protection, and as a status symbol (Blumstein 1995; Hales, Lewis & Silverstone 2006). In New Zealand, prisoners incarcerated for armed robbery related a tendency to use sawn-off shotguns rather than handguns (Newbold 1999). Handguns, in contrast to sawn-off shotguns, were expensive and much more difficult to procure in New Zealand, and were acquired primarily for prestige, self-defence and security purposes rather than as a weapon for use in crime. Firearm-related crime is relatively low in Australia. However, high-profile violent incidents involving handguns renew debate about handgun violence in Australia and, in the context of recent legislated restrictions on handgun ownership, whether legally or illegally owned handguns are used to commit most handgun crime in Australia. Using data from four Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) monitoring programs - National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP), National Armed Robbery Monitoring Program (NARMP), Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) and National Firearms Theft Monitoring Program (NFTMP) - this paper describes the use of handguns to commit lethal and non-lethal crime (specifically homicide and armed robbery), and estimates the level of illegal handgun use among criminals, as it applies to recorded data. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".