Where do Thugs Acquire Guns From (Research Paper Sample)

Topic: Guns and Crime: Where do thugs acquire guns from?
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Introduction
Despite the advancements in technology that helps in fighting theft, the reported cases of robbery have not remarkably declined. From the researches done to identify the tactics used by thieves to steal from their victims, a number of discoveries have been made. As explained in (Hg.org, 2015), theft can mainly be categorized as robbery or fraud. The author further explains that, robbery involves the use of force or violence to acquire items from the victim, whereas fraud involves deceiving the victim, hence giving out their properties willingly.
Depending upon the nature of the theft, arms may be used. In the crimes of the fraud nature, the robbers are hardly armed. This is the case because the robbers use tricks as opposed to violence. On the other hand, in the robbery, the robbers are usually armed, and in the process of the robbery, the victim may be left hurt or even dead. There are different types of weapons used by robbers. In many sophisticated robberies, however, firearms [guns] are the commonly used type of arms.
Under normal circumstances, it is expected that firearms should be owned by the government, for use in peacekeeping. In such cases, it is expected that, firearms should be only seen in the possession of police officers. Contrary to this expectation, thugs carry with them guns similar to the ones used by the police officers. The question arises, where do thugs acquire guns from? This paper proposes a research that would seek to answer this question.
Statement of the problem
The rates of robbery have been on an increase, especially when compare with fraud. Among the reported robberies, firearms were the reported main weapon that was used in most of the cases. Analysis of the reported cases has been done on a number of occasions, in the efforts of determining the common arm used in robberies.
According to the statistics published by the National Institute of Justice in 2011, the percentage of the crimes committed with firearms were at 68% (National Institute of Justice, 2015). From this report, it is clear that, most of the robberies committed involved the usage of guns. From the report, only 32% of the crimes did not involve the use of guns. However, the author further explained that, most of the cases in which guns were not used, involved crimes of the fraud nature.
In the reports published by the National Institute of Justice between 1993 and 2010 show that the largest percentage of the crimes involved the use guns. The report indicated that, within that period, almost 95% of the gong-related homicides involved the use of guns. In a report published by FBI (2011), the percentage of the crimes in US, which involved the use of firearms were reported to be at 67.7%. (FBI, 2015).
In a report published by the Scottish government on November 20, 2013, the percentage of the crimes in which firearms were used was high above any other. The government reported that, despite there being a remarkable decline in the overall number of crimes in which firearms were used, there was still a concern over the high number of crimes involving firearms (Gov.scot, 2013).
Looking at the statistics of the crimes in which firearms were used, it is clearly a point of concern, and hence need to research. While many pieces of research have been done in this area, most of the researchers have maintained their focus on the trends of crimes. Most of the researchers have based their researches on the crime patterns, with the aim of identifying the causations of the patterns. For instance, (Chiricos, 1987) conducted a research on the relationship between crimes and unemployment. In this case, the aim of his study was to find out if unemployment had an effect on the rates of crimes. This study was followed by many other researchers, such as Phillips & Land (2012) who sought to examine the relations between unemployment and crimes. However, despite the fact that the author identified a strong correlation between crime and unemployment, no efforts followed to study the nature of arms (if any), used in those crimes.
In their research, (Williams & Poynton, 2006) focused on the scenarios in which firearms are used. The authors explain that robbers use firearms in scenarios where they would need to scare/hurt/kill any person who would attempt to prevent them from stealing. Despite this research explaining how and when the robbers use the firearms, they failed to do research on "how the robbers acquire their guns.”
Since no sufficient research has been done on th...