ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that many felons use guns in legitimate as well as illegitimate applications. National household surveys have been the major source of data on civilian gun ownership and have consistently shown that about one-half of all households own at least one firearm. Gun-owning criminals were also much more likely ever to have owned handguns than gun-owning families at large. Most of the gun owners in the sample made it a practice to keep their gun loaded at all times; how this compares with normal practice among legitimate gun owners is unknown. The fraction armed during the conviction crime varied from a low of about three-fifths among the Improvisers to a high of about four-fifths in the more predatory groups. A small majority of the gun criminals said that they carried only a gun when they committed their crimes; a large minority carried other weapons as well, typically, one or another kind of knife.
