Taking crime guns seriously: A socio-material perspective

Abstract

This article argues that guns, as objects used in and for crime, have received insufficient criminological attention. It proposes a socio-material perspective for taking crime guns seriously as material agents in the ways many serious crimes are planned and executed. Drawing in part upon affordance theory, the perspective links the ‘objective’ physical properties of guns to their allure and take up for the purposes of carrying out crime. Guns are powerful organising objects in the commission of crime, it is argued, capable of provoking as well as enabling a range of threatening and harmful activities. The perspective is developed drawing upon interview data from a large qualitative study of convicted gun criminals. These data enable the notion of materiality to be considered at different stages of criminal career, particularly prior to first criminal gun use through to enforced or voluntary desistance. The article concludes with a consideration of policy options suggested by the socio-material perspective. In a post-Covid 19 world in which guns have gained greater salience in many countries, it is argued that the need to ‘dematerialise’ gun attraction and use has never been greater.

Keywords

Affordances guns materiality serious crime socio-materiality

Introduction

Guns have been described as ‘the most significant, highly charged register of material culture in the world today’ (Springwood, 2007: 2). They are widely marketed, trafficked and regarded as highly desirable possessions. It is generally accepted that ‘access to guns increases lethality of violence, particularly in cases of murder, domestic violence, and suicide attempts’ (Cukier and Eagen, 2018: 109). Aside from their role in the infliction of violence, guns more often induce a sense of fear and intimidate audiences by their sheer presence (Overton, 2016). As well as being shown to elevate aggressive thinking and hostile appraisals (Benjamin et al., 2018), they can also provoke feelings of attachment and affection (Mencken and Froese, 2019; Springwood, 2007). Guns, then, are serious objects.

It is somewhat remarkable, therefore, that consideration of their materiality and related implications for serious gun crime has gone largely unexplored within criminology. More commonly, there has been a focus on the individual and social drivers of criminal violence, whether in relation to specific crimes such as drug dealing (e.g. Reuter, 2009), homicide, and armed robbery (Wright and Decker, 1997a) or to gang activity (Contreras, 2013). Comparatively little attention has been afforded to the role of weapons, even guns, in these analyses. In this article, we will suggest, the materiality of crime guns matters because, as objects, they uniquely afford, indeed solicit and invite, uses linked to generating fear and inflicting serious physical harm.

Drawing partly upon data from our in-depth interviews with 75 offenders convicted of serious crimes involving guns, we shall develop a socio-materialist framework for examining the question of ‘how [crime] gun possession can affect one’s sense of self and agency’ (Selinger, 2012). This framework proposes that we look at the role of crime guns relationally, accepting that the ‘materiality [of guns] is integral to organizing, positing that the social and the material are constitutively entangled in everyday life’ (Orlikowski, 2007: 1437). Support for these proposals will be drawn from our data as well as from other literatures in archaeology, anthropology, psychology and material cultures that deal with the nature of objects in social relations.

The framework, developed further below, draws extensively upon the notion of affordances, conceived of as prompts, as well as possibilities, for action (Withagen et al., 2012). In considering how guns afford certain actions, we propose to examine the materiality of crime guns in terms of (1) the materials used to make guns, and their physical properties (or features); (2) what purposes and uses (affordances) are attributed by people to guns as artefacts in social use (materiality); and (3) how guns materialise through the organising of social life; in other words, how guns under certain conditions influence interactions in significant ways, shaping interpretations of events and practical outcomes (Leonardi, 2018).

This article consists of five parts. In the next section (section ‘The criminology of guns’), we consider the state of gun criminology to date. The limited scope given to the material implications of crime guns is demonstrated so that the gaps in need of theoretical attention are identified. While some of this literature is not silent on the material nature of guns, many of the implications are left implicit and unaddressed. In section ‘An affordance perspective of crime guns’, we outline a framework for a materialist analysis of crime guns. A version of affordance theory is outlined for this purpose. This perspective enables us to link particular physical properties and .potentialities of guns to the different criminal uses of guns, and to look in particular at how some aspects of the former shape how gun users see themselves, decide what they want to do, and how to go about it.

A socio-material analysis is explicitly interested in how guns exercise an allure to some people, especially many young men, and how that allure gets translated into particular forms of display and practical use. In section ‘The life stages of crime gun affordances’, after briefly outlining the study from which our qualitative data comes, we draw upon the data to explore how affordances of different guns demonstrate material agency. In this section, we propose a ‘lifecycle of crime guns’. Through an examination of the different phases of exposure to crime guns, we show how it is possible to identify a range of gun affordances. These affordances, we argue, can inform a more detailed appreciation of guns in criminal life and associated interactions. The data, as well as our analysis, refer principally to the crimes concerned in armed robberies and drug dealing. In section ‘Conclusion’, we conclude first by offering some suggestions for further inquiry into crime gun affordances. We then briefly consider some policy implications arising from our materialist analysis.

The term ‘crime guns’ is used in this article to refer to all types of firearms used in relation to the commission of crimes, from single-shot to automatic guns of all sizes and calibres. We also include replicas and non-functioning guns. As our longitudinal analytical framework requires, we are interested in crime guns as objects of interest for potential future criminal use as well as those actually used for crime.

The criminology of guns

Guns play an important part in the commission of many serious crimes, including murder, serious assault, robbery and intimidation. Yet, as we have suggested earlier, much of the criminological literature neglects guns. Even ethnographic studies of crime gangs involved in drug dealing or armed robbery mention guns relatively rarely and co-incidentally (Anderson, 1999; Bourgois, 1996). Few have considered their enabling and provocative features as objects in the social lives of gang members or other criminals. Katz (1988) briefly refers to guns as part of (but not the only examples) the ‘paraphernalia of power’ of the badass, noting in passing that ‘(t)hese things excite by attesting to a purpose that transcends the material reality of power’ (emphasis added) (Katz, 1988: 106). While Wilkinson and Fagan (1996) propose the need to see guns as elements in the staging of crimes, the focus of many such gun offender studies is more upon on motivations for seeking and using guns (e.g. Pogrebin et al., 2009; Sheley and Wright, 1993), as well as the significance of gun availability on crime rates and harms (Lizotte et al., 2000; Melde et al., 2009). There is a substantial, mainly American, body of research relating to gun availability, and especially to what is termed a ‘weapon’ (or gun) effect (Benjamin et al., 2018; Cook, 1991; Keil et al., 2020; Kleck and McElrath, 1991). While other environmental factors are considered (e.g. peers, criminal opportunities, gang rivalries), there is little account of how different gun types exert influence over the social organisation of crime, perturbing and disrupting social settings. Nor do we find much attempt to explore the allure of these objects more generally as a factor in the staging of crime.

A gesture in the direction of a materialist analysis of crime guns can be found in work looking at crime guns as empowering tools (e.g. Kleck and McElrath, 1991). Kleck and McElrath (1991) proposed some important functional distinctions of relevance to our analysis: (1) facilitation – empowering older, weaker persons to do things they wouldn’t or physically couldn’t do without a weapon, and also enable attacks from a greater distance; (2) triggering – the sight of weapon may trigger aggression in those present; (3) inhibition – guns used to frighten or intimidate victims, thereby avoiding killing or harming them directly; and (4) redundancy – possessing and presenting a gun can enable other objectives to occur such as the compliance of employees in a bank hold-up (Luckenbill, 1981). Also relevantly, Zimring (1972) examined the independent contribution of gun calibre size to the lethality of gun attacks, as well as noting the ambiguous intentionality around many such attacks, making the kind of gun selected (large vs small calibre, automatic vs manual, etc.) often significant in determining the outcome. However, these studies tend to view crime guns principally as instruments extending the intentionality of the gun carrier, whereas we suggest that guns express forms of agency that are important in understanding both the allure and the ways in which they present and are used in crime interactions. Without yielding to a hard determinism that the ‘gun squeezes the trigger’, we seen guns as enabling of crime, even soliciting and inviting certain uses. In many crime-related interactions, they become ‘forceful catalysts’ (Kivland, 2018: 363) in motivating, planning and the staging of serious crimes.

An affordance perspective of crime guns

Affordances have been conceived broadly as properties of environments, offering identifiable ‘opportunities for action’ (Gibson, 1979: 127). An objectivist account locates those opportunities in the physical properties of particular settings. These settings comprise objects as well as spatial (e.g. open vs closed spaces) and other physical features (e.g. a wall, an alley way, a park). The physical properties of objects, as well as other features of settings, provide both opportunities for, and constraints upon, action. If we take a Colt 45 revolver as our example, it is made principally from heavy metal (forged steel or stainless steel); its size and weight (around one kilogramme) make it potentially usable as a paper weight, but useless as a floating bath toy. In other words, the materials constrain some uses while enabling others.

This points to another feature of (post-Gibson) affordance theory; affordances as partly constituted by the frames shaping human perceptions of what opportunities are present and accessible in a particular setting. Very few people would see a gun and think to use it as a paper weight (even fewer, presumably, as a bath toy); rather, they would see it as a weapon used for pointing, threatening or discharging. As we explore further below, in part by reason of culture and past experiences, the presence (or even sighting of an image) of guns can promote or suggest certain meanings and uses, and preclude others. The social significance of guns generally, and specifically in respect to what we call crime guns, should be seen as ‘a joint production between materials and cultural practices that eventuate in the construction of perceptions’ (Leonardi, 2018: 285). While the physical properties of guns remain relatively stable over time (so long as they are not damaged or neglected for long periods), uptake and exploitation of particular affordances will depend upon the availability of perceptions relating to their use or suitability for particular purposes (Norman, 1988).

In considering crime guns, we intend also to propose a non-static, longitudinal view of their affordances, linking changes to their physical properties to variations over time in the settings in which they appear and are used, and the different meanings associated with particular uses. In other words, a gun used in a particular crime will be attended by the user’s past experiences with the same gun as well as potentially other types of guns, as well as her or his cultural disposition and attitudes towards guns. Those personal histories and cultural associations will affect, among other considerations, the guns chosen and carried, and the uses to which they can (and will) be put. First, though, in order to explicate the notion of affordances even further, we expand upon the three-dimensional materiality framework suggested by Leonardi (2018), and apply it to our analysis of crime guns.

The materials of crime guns

The materials from which guns are made matters in pretty obvious ways. Chiefly, they impact the action capabilities of the object. Guns, as noted earlier, are usually constructed from metal. They need to be strong enough to handle the explosive force unleashed when the gun is loaded and the trigger is squeezed. Obviously, the metal or other material used has to be shaped in particular ways to enable its operation as a firearm. The exploratory production of guns using 3-D printers in recent years has implicated the use of other materials particularly plastics in gun manufacture (see Daly et al., 2020). From a purely functional point of view, it unless perhaps when metal is used, it remains unlikely that 3D printed guns will be durable enough to withstand repeated discharge (Hassan, 2020).

Particular properties as well as configurations of materials can be said to offer ‘features’, ‘properties’ or capabilities that differentiate one class of gun from others. Thus, metal formed into a rifle results in a firearm with a long barrel, offering different performance and storage possibilities from say a revolver or pistol. The former is inevitably more difficult to conceal, but will be more effective in some applications, such as hunting. Similarly, the phenomenon of ‘ghost guns’, guns assembled from parts sourced and/or manufactured in a range of places, draws attention to the material significance of guns’ potential for assembly from, and disassembly into, a number of parts. This material potentiality contributes to a range of possibilities for sourcing and assembly as well as concealment; from a gun control perspective, such material features render guns as ‘under-governed objects’, enabling their circulation within communities as well as for trafficking purposes, and rendering them more difficult to stop or restrict (Martin, 2019). Objects therefore impose constraints on action possibilities as well as enabling and encouraging (affording) others. These material variations exist independently of the potential or actual gun user. The gun can be said to have ‘material agency’ in respect of the ‘things that a feature [of a gun] does that is not completely within the user’s control’ (Leonardi, 2018: 282). The properties of gun accessories, such as silencers and bump triggers, as well as ammunition used, also fall into this category. While not explored here, in principle, the smell of gunpowder, before and after discharge, ought also to be considered another aspect of guns’ physical materiality.

The materiality of crime guns

While possessing certain action possibilities (and limitations) afforded in part by their physical properties and technical capabilities, as noted, these objects also need to be incorporated into social life. Guns, like other objects, take their social significance not directly from the material properties that they possess, but rather from the perceptions brought to, and activated in, encounters between people and guns. Guns are seen, desired, and carried, they are manipulated, they are incorporated into speech and gestures in social interactions. These interactions can be said to be multimodal, in that communication and meaning are ‘embedded in, and incorporate [. . .] material settings rich in artefacts, technologies and external representations’ (Streeck, 2015: 420). The post-Gibsonian concept of perceived affordance is useful here in explaining the co-production of meaning and uses by users, objects and other elements of the setting. As and because people bring different experiences and goals to the perception of guns, they will potentially ‘see’ different affordances in those guns which will shape the uses made of the gun. To quote Leonardi (2018: 285), ‘people have perceptions, artifacts have materiality, and affordances or constraints are created when people construct perceptions of an artefact’s materiality’.

As an example, the use of a pistol to ‘pistol whip’ (rather than shoot or threaten) someone is an action possibility suggested in part by, but not limited to, the appreciation of the weight and hardness of the gun. Previous direct and vicarious experiences with guns and cultural influences shape the perceptions that lend particular saliences to, and suggest potential uses for, crime guns. As we will see below, some affordances emphasise the intra-action of human and gun (e.g. embodied modes of carrying, display and use), while others focus on the interaction between the gun, the persons present, and other features of the situational setting, implying a co-production of action by distinct entities. The embodiment constituted between the crime gun and the gun carrier or user is a theme we explore further below.

The materialisation of crime guns

Beyond the particular applications of guns (choice of weapons, style of carrying, etc.), there is the issue of the impact of guns on situations, and particularly on others present in those situations. Skolnick (1966) describes the situation of a man backing out of a jewellery store with a gun in one hand and jewellery in the other. As he comments, ‘To the policeman [sic] in the situation, the man’s personal history is momentarily immaterial. There is only one relevant sign: a gun signifying danger’ (Skolnick, 1966: 46) (emphasis added). This is an example of how guns materialise social encounters (Leonardi, 2018). As the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology teach us, certain objects can prompt ritualistic uses and exert a spiritual influence in social settings, as well playing a practical use in everyday life (Hodder, 2012). The expectancies of others present, shaped by background culture and past experiences, are also relevant in term of the effects of the gun production on the course of the encounter and its outcome.

The social influences of guns, as Skolnick’s example shows, may be momentary but powerful, ‘creating the illusion of impending death’ (Wright and Decker, 1997b) and quickly securing the compliance of those being victimised (Luckenbill, 1981). There is also, more diffusely, the influence of guns held by certain persons or groups routinely in some social settings. For example, in neighbourhoods dominated by armed gangs or militias, the prospect of encountering an armed person exerts powerful social organisational influences in terms of establishing hierarchies, inducing fear and causing others to seek guns as well (Kivland, 2018). Gun materialisation, as a factor of social organising then, can be seen to take various forms and operate on more than one level, and with more or less overtness.

The life stages of crime gun affordances

We now turn to a mapping of the ‘lifecycle’ or longitudinal perspective of crime guns, informed by the three dimensions of affordances just outlined. We will draw substantially upon qualitative data collected in Australia from 75 persons convicted of various serious gun crimes, mostly armed robbery or related to serious drug dealing.¹ These interviews generated data relating to the development of first awareness of guns, early engagements with guns for crime-related purposes, the entrenchment of guns as part of criminal lifestyles, and current and prospective attitudes towards crime guns. The main life-cycle stages we propose are as follows: (1) attraction and interest, (2) initiation and experimentation, (3) embodied engagement and entrenched use, and (4) disposal, decay and desistance. In relation to each stage, we shall seek to identify key features and affordances related to gun use (broadly considered to include possession, display, curation, threats to use, and actual discharge). Given our data set, this analysis will deal primarily with the crimes of illicit drug dealing and armed robbery.

Attraction and interest: Crime guns must first be noticed, and be of sufficient appeal to those seeing them, to lead to acquisition and longer-term use. The role of advertising, the popular media, and youth cultures play key roles here (Barrett, 2013; Overton, 2016), raising awareness of particular guns and promoting certain aesthetic and performance features as appealing. The physical features that make them attractive to novices are also relevant later in the career of crime guns, influencing choices made by established users to select them over other guns or weapons. From the field of design studies, we can posit that guns, like other objects, possess and exude ‘interaction aesthetic’ properties, referring to visual and tactile qualities that make them both more (or less) likely to be noticed and more (or less) likely to become the focus of attraction from potential users (Xenakis and Arnellos, 2013). These properties can also be considered as reception affordances, relating to their prospects for being noticed, desired, and deemed appropriate for particular uses (Nahl, 2007). Such qualities evoke emotional responses as well as practical considerations, as some accounts of crime gun users, reported on below, will show.

Aesthetic appeal emerges as significant in explaining the appeal of guns. For example, one of our interviewees (44) described the attraction to a Springfield Armoury .45 pistol, saying he’d ‘liked the look of the .45, it was just a nice chrome [one], it had a leather handle on it, it was just sexy’. While the marketing of guns for legitimate purposes can also be expected to make a contribution to the evocation of positive attitudes towards guns and gun possession, the role of popular culture in shaping preferences for particular gun types, uses and forms of display is indisputable. One example that fits closely with crime gun use relates to the Glock pistol, celebrated in gangsta rap music as well as popular movies such as Die Hard 2 (Barrett, 2013). A more culturally pervasive influence supporting the legitimacy of guns in a range of contexts can be located in the central place of guns in so many popular movies and television series (Mencken and Froese, 2019). As criminologists, we have shown relatively little interest in the aesthetics of crime, and none at all in relation to the ‘reception affordances’ (Nahl, 2007) of objects of criminological significance such as guns. Instead, as we saw in section 2, there has been more of a focus upon their functional value in terms of self-protection, status, and compliance. For many of the teenage participants in Harcourt’s (2006) study, the aesthetic allure of some physical properties of the gun were compelling. Many, he reported, ‘like[d] the way guns handle. . .the feeling of shooting a gun. . .the action of the gun’ as well the way they looked (Harcourt, 2006: 47).

Initiation, imitation and experimentation: Having achieved visibility and entered into the consciousness of potential future gun users, we turn to the features and affordances associated with first access, experimentation and early use of guns in crime. Though aesthetic considerations remain relevant, novices typically are exposed to guns directly as a matter of convenience; first access to guns depends typically on having older siblings or associates with a supply of guns. Quality and fashion considerations are often sacrificed for more prosaic considerations; if the object is sufficiently configured to signify a ‘gun’, that may be enough or all that is available. One interviewee told us that his early armed robberies had been successfully carried out with replica weapons (50). Given that guns are more commonly carried and displayed than actually discharged in many criminal encounters, even a convincing toy gun may suffice in order to intimidate or rob someone. The performance of the gun in combination with its possessor, who is acting as if the gun is real, may well allow the form of desired interpersonal impact that had been intended (e.g. the successful execution of a bank holdup).

For many of our interviewees, acquisition of a gun in their teenage years essentially operated as a form of status passage. As well as providing reassurance and protection (Harding and Blake, 1989), getting guns often was seen as part of being taken seriously by adult criminals. One interviewee (69) told us about his aspiration to acquire a gun; ‘I always wanted a gun, growing up in the criminal world, you know, a gun is always there, (it was) something that everybody used to do’. Another was presented with a set of pistols by his father on his eighteenth birthday. For many young men in their mid- or late teens, early access to guns is valued and pleasurable. Bernard Harcourt’s (2006) study of 30 adolescent offenders found that half of his group reacted to photographs of handguns with what he described as ‘immediate, spontaneous desire’ (Harcourt, 2006: 37). The desire already felt from seeing guns is readily reinforced by the ‘rush’ many felt when carrying or using guns. Such biochemical rewards undoubtedly push young gun carriers into repetition, prompting more habitual exposure to and use of crime guns. One interviewee (23) told us, ‘for me, it was adrenalin’. Making money from robberies became less important than the rush; ‘just hitting that rush, like “wow, this is mad”’.

Guns also play an important part in countering the apprehensions frequently felt by newer participants in criminal activities. Inflicting violence, and indeed, committing a serious crime, is not for the faint-hearted (Ben-Ari, 2017; Collins, 2008; Pitts, 2007). Some crime gun users attest to the fact that having access to a gun influenced them to undertake a crime more serious than those they had undertaken before, or assisted them to challenge someone who was making threats or demanding their subjugation in some way. The gun here plays the part of an extension of personal power, a prosthesis strengthening the timid and the weak (Blanchfield, 2018).

Many of our interviewees spoke of the expanded sense of personal autonomy that they felt with a gun. As one told us (39), ‘I was a different person with a gun in my hand’. Crime gun users discovered that people who previously looked intimidating often became humbled in the face of a produced gun. Compliance and cooperation were more readily achieved (Harding and Blake, 1989; Luckenbill, 1981). Many acknowledged the ‘equalising’ capability offered through gun possession. One interviewees (27) told us he felt ‘unstoppable’ when carrying a gun, adding ‘you can have a bloke who’s 130 kilos . . . a MMA [Mixed Martial Arts] fighter, he’s never been beaten . . . but he comes up to me and I’m loaded . . . he’s just a scared little girl because he knows I’ll just put him to sleep’. Another interviewee (39) agreed, noting that with a gun, ‘you think you’re a gangster, you feel strong’. He added that he was otherwise ‘not a person who can fight very well’.

An interesting sequela of this empowerment was observed by the previous interviewee quoted (27). He said he’d noted that many persons in jail for shooting other people asked to go into the protection wing upon entering prison because they knew they couldn’t fight effectively without a gun. However, so long as they remained free and had access to guns, the sense of personal potency was accessible and valued. First-time and early users often came to realise that they could achieve the same or better outcome without putting their bodies at risk through person-to-person contact. As one armed robber (23) told us, ‘I started off just running in and hitting people but when I got my hands on a gun [shotgun], I ended up realising that wow, [there is] a sense of authority and people do start to [cooperate]’.

Experimenting with the embodied carry and use of crime guns is also evident among initiates and potential recruits to more serious gun crime. Posing with guns on social media, as well as in front of the mirror, are activities prompted in some young men by the conjunction of gun availability and the local and wider cultural affordances accessible to them, favouring and educating gun display as well as use under a wide range of conditions. One of our interviewees, in addition to admitting to feeling awe at the engineering of a handgun he used (‘impressive’, ‘sexy’), conceded that he had posed in the mirror with the gun after acquiring it, accompanying his physical posturing with the gun with self-talk of ‘who you talking to? You fucking talking to me?’ (37). Crime guns don’t ‘perform’ simply of their own accord; aside from their physical potentialities they rely upon scripts for their use and display, or what can be called ‘ideational know-how’ (Pelegrin, 1990, cited in Hodder, 2012: 20). Such scripts provide suggestions or guidelines for imitation and improvisation with the guns in their possession.

Embodied engagement and entrenched use: Experimentation with gun display and use is often followed (or even proceeded) by deeper attachment to guns as objects (Ben-Ari, 2017; Springwood, 2007), reflected in greater embeddedness of guns in criminal lifestyles and serious crimes. While we have touched already upon aspects of the embodied use of guns, more needs to be said. More entrenched involvement provides opportunities for further encounters with guns and the development of greater gun-related skills, including deportment and display of guns as well as actual firing of guns. These repertoires of possible action are enabled by guns, as we have seen already. It points to a form of agency in the gun itself. Guns, while technically voiceless, are capable of speaking, often very directly. To quote Turner and Turner (2002: 5), ‘embodiment [with a gun] allows us to use a wealth of non-verbal mechanisms and to make assumptions about the perceptual resources and scope of action of other embodied beings’. ‘When they got guns on them, believe me, you don’t gotta do much talkin’. The gun speaks for itself’ (Contreras, 2013: 138). Similarly, Wright and Decker (1997a): quote one interviewee, ‘Prauch’: [The 9 mm] got that look about it like it gonna kill you. It talk for itself. ‘I’m going to kill you’.

The agency of guns, however, has to be managed. For example, guns may speak too loudly at times. As Katz put it, ‘if the robber is to succeed, he must announce publicly and clearly that he is trying to commit a crime’ (Katz, 1988: 168). Armed robbers know that the sight of a gun stuns the victim; they are ‘pressed to make explicit their criminal definition of the scene not because their display of the gun is too silent but because it is too loud’ (Katz, 1988: 177). In several of our interviews, it was clear that for robberies, pump action shotguns, often with sawn-off barrels, spoke loudly, and thus were highly regarded for what one interviewee described as ‘crowd control’ (44), another as the ‘scare factor’ (36)

Another manifestation of the significance of gun materiality is that not all guns are easily carried or concealed. More seasoned criminals realise, for example, that sometimes sawing off of barrels on rifles and shotguns is required in order to make them more concealable. Features that make guns easier to carry around on a regular basis are valued especially by those deeply involved in criminal activities. However, in some countries such as the USA, local legitimate gun markets are readily geared to meeting a range of personal carry demands, including for women seeking more compact and concealable, as well as aesthetically pleasing, guns for self-defence (Yamane, 2019: 187–191).

The embodied carry of guns is a field in need of further study, given its likely influence upon the probability of gun carrying and forms of gun display (Springwood 2014). Such variations in embodied use are highly likely to influence the sequalae from more ready access and resort to guns. As an example, one of our interviewees described how, in order to keep his armed status discreet, he relied upon handguns. However, a relatively small object like a handgun affected his deportment while carrying; ‘even with a handgun, I’d go to sit down, I’ll position it on my body [so] I can sit down’. A drug dealer we interviewed (17) admitted he had a preference for a .32 Bayard Peiper pistol, a gun manufactured in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, because it could easily be concealed, in a cigarette packet if necessary. He admitted carrying it more often however down his trousers, but also attested to its reliability: ‘it’s small, no hammer, just cock it and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, never jammed on me once. It was very nice’. However, choosing guns by reference to their size and portability has another aspect in the thinking of more committed gun criminals. Another interviewee (25) surprised us by pointing out that smaller guns were also easier also to import illegally, and that several handguns imported in a consignment would fetch a higher price on the black market than a similarly sized consignment with a rifle. Gun availability is an important variable here. It has been said, for example, that the greater access to semi-automatic pistols in the late 1980s and early 1990s played a direct role in the increase in handgun homicides in Chicago during that period (Squires, 2018: 36).

Carrying guns, especially more powerful guns with bigger clips and more destructive ammunition, also affords the ready escalation of threat and potential harm in any confrontation. One interviewee (17) retrieved his modified automatic rifle in order to confront a large group of men assaulting his brother, spraying fire around the room in which his brother was being held. Patently, not all guns are the same. How they vary in their construction, their capabilities as well as their allure and popularity, all are of analytical importance as they ensure that some guns will be more sought after, and inflict greater damage, than other guns.

The properties of guns can sometimes result in self-imposed restrictions. As one interviewee in our study (51) told us, he was nervous about carrying guns for a long time, even for committing bank robberies. He stated,

I didn’t want to have one. I didn’t want to go and do something, and it goes off and I shoot someone by accident. I didn’t trust myself, not that I thought I was going to shoot someone but . . . say you get in a scuffle with someone and it went off.

In Wright and Decker (1997a)’ study, one interviewee acknowledged the real risk of almost unintentionally discharging a gun in the heat of the moment; “when you’re doing something like this, you just real edgy; you’ll pull the trigger at anything, at the first thing that go wrong.”

In some accounts of crime gun use, guns materialise as partners in crime, something larger than simply a prosthetic. This is the idea of the gun as what we might term a quasi-other (Verbeek, 2005). Crime guns, as indeed guns more generally (Springwood, 2007), are sometimes viewed anthropomorphically, as a working partner or even as a life partner. Guns arouse erotic feelings in some gun users; this affective appeal is reflected in references to guns feeling ‘sexy’ and being viewed as objects of desire. As one interviewee (44) told us, ‘I swear I looked at it like my girl, probably showed it more respect than my girl too’. Such sentiments may take a homoerotic or fraternal form. Luke (2019: 89–90) quotes the US Marines Rifleman’s Creed from 1941, in which the rifle is said to be ‘my best friend’ and ‘my life’. The creed further refers to the rifle as the recipient of the owner’s love’ and being human ‘as a brother’. The affordance of the gun thus can bring forth an intimate relation with the human owner or user. Such an intense bond between gun user and gun may be viewed then not just in terms of dependence (like a prosthetic device) but also dependency (Hodder, 2012). We know from various accounts provided by gun users that the absence or loss of the gun can induce feelings of anxiety and vulnerability (Blanchfield, 2018: 203).

Finally, and especially at this stage of full embodied gun use, we need to say more about the wider background affordances for crime gun use. In their various forms, they provide strategic direction, justification, and even inspiration for particular uses. These can be referred to as cultural affordances. A cultural affordance is ‘a feature or set of features which arises from the making, using or modifying of the artifact and in doing so endowing it with the values of culture from which it arises’ (Turner and Turner 2002: 6). These affordances may exist at the broader societal-cultural level (e.g. in Hollywood movies) or relate more closely to the subcultures and local communities to which gun users belong (e.g. Kubrin, 2005). While many gun-related affordances fit more readily in the realm of know-how, these cultural affordances more often are forms of knowing-why. Societies with strong gun cultures (for hunting, sport, self-defence, etc.) already make available to potential future gun users a bedrock of attitudes and world-views normalising gun possession and use for approved purposes (Mencken and Froese, 2019; Yamane, 2019). More mundanely, Wilkinson and Fagan (1996) have referred in their studies of young men and crime guns to these ideational devices (affordances) as ‘violence scripts’ made up of proximate danger, masculine identity, and the valorisation of guns in everyday life. To ‘adopt a technology’, it has been suggested more generally, ‘is, insidiously to adopt the world-view in which the technology is embedded’ (Callicott, 1989: 205). Studying crime guns thus demands we look at how they are embedded in local, subcultural as well as broader cultural world-views that will shape which affordances are perceived and how they are put into action.

Disposal, decay and desistance: Many guns, if looked after, can have a lifespan of several generations. However, not all gun users view their tools as ‘partners’ or objects of aesthetic value. Their value is often short-term instrumental in nature, so that they are vulnerable to being discarded or handed on to others. One theme we explored in our interviews was their sense of personal future with and without guns. While there was a range of responses, many found it difficult to imagine there not being a need, and hence a place, for guns after their release from prison. In some cases, guns had previously been part of legitimate activities (e.g. hunting) as well as being used for crime. In most instances, they recognised they would probably never be able to hold a gun licence because of their criminal records. Nonetheless a gun was seen as necessary by some for self-protection after release, given lingering unresolved grievances and unpaid debts owed from their drug dealing days.

Experienced gun users were more likely to think about modifying or disposing of guns in order to reduce risk of being held responsible for crimes. Choosing guns without serial numbers, or actively removing those numbers from guns, was mentioned by several interviewees. These interviewees displayed a keen understanding of the ability of police to link different types of guns to certain crimes. Having traded extensively in illicit firearms, despite also admitting that he loved Glock pistols, one noted that ‘revolvers are the best . . . You still keep your . . . cartridges . . . That’s why I used to carry a shottie [shotgun] around with me all the time’. He also added, ‘a pistol . . . that sort of thing’s more for show, and I mean, like, with it, it’s tracked. Anything that you do with it can be tracked’. The ability to reduce risk of detection by law enforcement in these ways therefore can be linked back to both know-how and knowledge about law enforcement capabilities, also directly raising the issue of gun configuration and physical features of crime guns related to potential detection and apprehension.

Conclusion

We have suggested in this article that the organisation of serious gun crimes has an ‘inextricably material nature’ (Orlikowski, 2007: 1445). This focus contributes in novel ways to explicating the appeal of guns and their prevalence generally, their uses in criminal life, and to better understanding their ‘under-governed’ status (Martin, 2019). Crime guns are not neutral stimuli (Benjamin et al., 2018). Instead they ‘transform situations, people, [and] ideologies’ (Overton, 2016: 310). They direct those who carry and use them ‘toward scenarios of action and reaction that might not have been otherwise conceivable’ (Kivland, 2018: 364). As the reputed car bumper sticker says, ‘Guns don’t kill people, they just make it much easier’.

The socio-materialist perspective developed here has sought to examine the ways in which crime guns encourage, invite, and even provoke people to act more aggressively and inflict serious harms. We have only offered a tentative framework for examining the socio-materiality of crime guns. There is much more that can be done, especially in advancing the conceptualising of gun affordances and grounding them empirically in qualitative data. The embodiment of crime guns in specific interactions is something we have only touched upon which could be further pursued, as could the multisensory properties of crime guns – the sounds they make, the feel in the hand, the odours arising from their discharge, and so on (Mondada, 2019). We attempt in Figure 1 to sum up much of the discussion in this regard. We also indicate some of the perceived action possibilities suggested by our data and the wider literatures pertaining to crime gun use.

Figure 1.

Grid: features and affordances of crime guns.

While we have urged the need for criminologists to look more closely at the enactment of gun crimes in terms of their socio-material features and other features of the immediate setting, it is crucial that we also take into account broader cultural worldviews on gun use, as well as at the more localised, sub-cultural expressions of gun activity, and the accounts provided to justify and explain crime gun use. In a country such as the United States where gun control policy provokes such strong feelings, we should not be surprised by the ready availability of accounts to justify gun use in a variety of contexts, or that guns also provoke many potential and established offenders in ways conducive to crime. Closer study of crime gun accounts could provide insights into how local and broader justifications for gun use are formed, disseminated, and deployed in particular contexts. In this regard, the impact especially on young men of gun advertising and the representations of guns in popular culture needs greater study, not least in terms of the formation of their attitudes towards, and interests in, guns as desirable personal possessions. Developing further and moving beyond the more familiar criminological ground of techniques of neutralisation around crime gun use (Pogrebin et al., 2009), there is clearly scope for more work on the allure of guns to young persons already at risk of moving into serious crime. Here the aesthetic appeal of certain guns and features of guns can be explored through a socio-material analysis as outlined here.

Finally, from a policy perspective, self-evidently guns need to become less salient and valued in the lives of the vast majority of the civilian population. Attempts to reduce the harms arising from the incidence, accessibility, and use of guns in serious crime could pay more attention to how we might move to ‘dematerialize’ guns by making them less attractive as well as harder to access and safer to use (restricting certain potentialities and vulnerabilities to careless use). In places where the possibility or actuality of effective gun supply restrictions exist, then gun buyback schemes may offer some possibility of reducing gun possession through the exchange of cash or other resources for the guns surrendered, whether those guns are legal or illegal in status.

In order to make crime guns less attractive, a broad suite of changes is needed to make social dependence on guns less necessary as well as less prized. Addressing more effectively the ongoing appeal of illicit drugs to so many (and hence, drug crime); as we showed, most of our interviewees imprisoned for serious gun-related crimes had been deeply mired in illicit drug trafficking. An important part of reducing the appeal of crime guns also relates to tackling the sense of marginalisation and economic precarity that can promote gun attachment (Carlson, 2015; Contreras, 2013; Mencken and Froese, 2019). Given pre-existing youth vulnerabilities to loss of employment, especially in the Covid-19 environment and beyond, programmes targeted at young males are especially important in terms of ensuring that gun attachment does not surge further in this group (see Levine and McKnight, 2020) and that ultimately these attachments are reduced in frequency and intensity.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: The research for this study was funded by the Australian Research Council under DP150100619, Understanding and reducing gun crime.

ORCID iD

Andrew Goldsmith

Notes

Author biographies

Andrew Goldsmith is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Crime Policy and Research (CCPR) at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. His research interests include organised crime, cybercrime, policing and corruption.

Mark Halsey is Professor of Criminology and a member of CCPR at Flinders University. He undertakes research on desistance from crime, indigenous imprisonment, youth justice and organised crime.

David Bright is Associate Professor of Criminology and Deputy Director of CCPR at Flinders University. His research work most recently lies at the intersection of Social Network Analysis and organised crime. He has previously worked as a prison psychologist as well as undertaking research on drug policy.

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