A growing body of literature has explored the ‘life course’ of crime guns, with particular focus on the time between initial point of sale of firearms and their eventual recovery by police following a crime. We contend that this examination is incomplete, with limited consideration given to the period between a firearm’s first known use in a criminal offense and its recovery by police—which we refer to as time in crime. Increased understanding of this time frame is important given that crime guns are frequently recirculated among criminally involved groups and the recent finding that time in circulation following first known use in a crime is a significant predictor of multiple uses of crime guns. We add to the literature through application of negative binomial regression to a sample of 310 crime guns used in offenses in a city in the Southeastern United States to examine how neighborhood context and initial incident characteristics influence the number of days that firearms remain in circulation after their first known use in a crime. We find that increased levels of concentrated disadvantage and gang involvement during the original incident correspond with significant increases in time in crime, while increased levels of residential stability and the ability of police to identify suspects are linked with more rapid recovery of crime guns. Notably, these findings hold even after inclusion of popular time to crime covariates, including firearm quality, caliber, and status as a stolen gun.

越来越多的文献探讨了犯罪枪支的“生命历程”，特别关注枪支最初销售点到犯罪后警方最终收回枪支之间的时间。我们认为，这项检查是不完整的，只考虑了枪支在刑事犯罪中首次使用和被警察收回之间的时期（我们称之为犯罪时间）。鉴于犯罪枪支经常在涉及犯罪的团体之间再流通，并且最近发现首次已知的犯罪用途后的流通时间是犯罪枪支多次使用的重要预测因素，因此加强对这一时间范围的了解非常重要。我们通过对美国东南部城市犯罪中使用的 310 支犯罪枪支样本应用负二项式回归来补充文献，以研究邻里环境和初始事件特征如何影响枪支在使用后仍然流通的天数。首次在犯罪中使用。我们发现，在最初的事件中，集中劣势和帮派参与程度的增加与犯罪时间的显着增加相对应，而住宅稳定性水平的提高和警察识别嫌疑人的能力与更快地追回犯罪枪支有关。值得注意的是，即使在纳入了流行犯罪时间协变量（包括枪支质量、口径和被盗枪支状态）后，这些发现仍然成立。