ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the weapons motivations of "the criminal class"; it is misleading to look at strictly criminal behaviors as divorced from the broader day-to-day style of life that characterizes the criminal population. Most of the information on the motivations to acquire and carry weapons was obtained by directing questions to respondents according to their special circumstances. The lead-in to the "motivations" questions read as follows: there are many different reasons why a person might decide to carry a gun or weapon while doing a crime. The chapter focuses on the responses of the Gun Criminals. As these men told it, the single most important reason why they decided to carry a gun while doing crime was, "if they carry a gun their victim doesn't put up a fight, and that way they don't have to hurt them". Results for the Armed-Not-with-a-Gun Criminals were similar in some respects but quite different in others.
