ABSTRACT
In any substantive area, patterns of human behavior provide important guides to social policy, providing descriptive information on the nature of the problem in question that should be taken into account in whatever policy may be constructed. This chapter suggests that some sort of effective controls were enacted that substantially reduced the ability of criminals to obtained handguns or certain kinds of handguns. Absent handguns, it is possible that many felons simply would get out of the crime business altogether and stop carrying weapons of any sort. Key issues are the extent to which criminals can find effective and efficient substitutes for firearms and how such substitutes might affect both crime rates and the total social costs of crime. In interpreting the ensuing data, the differences between their sample of prisoners and the total population of street criminals should especially be kept in mind.
