NCJ Number
148551
Date Published
1994
Length
197 pages
Annotation
Testimony was presented by various government and private agency officials on the proposed legislation (S.1087) to amend Title 18 of the U.S. Code to prohibit the possession of handguns by juveniles.
Abstract
The proposed bill is referred to as the Youth Handgun Safety Act of 1993. Hearing statements focused on the growing juvenile crime problem, the use of guns by children to commit violent acts as well as suicide, the presence of guns in schools, and juvenile gang violence. Media reports were included at the hearings that addressed child safety, television violence, gun sales, behavior modification, school security, and the murder of police officers by juveniles. Additional testimony concerned violence-related injuries, the need to convince children not to carry weapons, the prosecution of juvenile offenders, constitutional rights of juveniles, effects of violence on victims and their families, the parental role in violence prevention, and gun control. Other presentations covered loopholes in Federal and State firearms laws, model legislation to ban the unsupervised possession of firearms and ammunition by minors, age-specific and race-specific arrest rates for selected offenses over the 1965-1988 period, and gun violence in inner cities. An appendix contains additional hearing submissions for the record. Footnotes, tables, and figures