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A non-partisan non-profit organization working to make criminal justice and public safety policies and practices more effective through innovation, research, and education. |
Illegal Gun Crime Overview | Large Capacity Ammunition Magazines | Interstate Strike Force on Illegal Weapons Microstamping | Guns=Prison Campaign The Crime Commission develops interventions against gun violence and illegal guns. The Crime Commission seeks to address the question of how government, law enforcement, criminal justice, and community-based programs can work more effectively to prevent illegal gun trafficking and deter gun violence. Large Capacity Ammunition Magazines Criminals armed with weapons equipped with large capacity ammunition magazines, have gone on numerous shooting sprees causing mass fatalities across the United States. When ammunition magazines are available in large sizes, capable of holding as many as 100 rounds of ammunition, the lethality of these attacks is significantly increased. Restricting an average citizen's ability to load more than 10 bullets is common sense. A ban on large capacity magazines would not only reduce the capacity, but more importantly reduce the lethality of firearms. read more » Interstate Strike Force on Illegal Guns Since gun trafficking crosses a number of state boundaries, complicated jurisdiction and investigative issues abound, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is simply too small to work on the large number of trafficking cases. The Crime Commission is working with state law enforcement agencies along the Interstate 95 corridor to mobilize and form an interstate illegal gun strike force. read more » Microstamping In many cases, a spent bullet casing is the only critical piece of evidence recovered by police. Until recently, without the firearm it came from, police were left with minimal leads to identify the shooter. Enhanced technology has been developed, however, to assist law enforcement in linking bullet casings found at a crime scene with the gun that fired them—without needing the gun itself. The technology, known as microstamping, equips every semi-automatic handgun firing pin and breach face with a unique code that becomes imprinted on a bullet casing each time the gun is fired. When police collect the bullet casings they can connect the bullet back to the firearm's last legal owner—providing an immediate lead in the case and eliminating the need to recover the firearm at the scene. read more » Guns=Prison Campaign In 2007, the Crime Commission launched a public service campaign to fight gun crime. The campaign, with the tag line GUNS=PRISON, highlights the 3½-year prison sentence for carrying an illegal loaded handgun in New York. The poster advertisements are displayed across the city on phone kiosks, in buses and subways, in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs and on billboards. read more » 
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