Pistols grew from 28% of handgun production in 1973 to 46% by 1985 and to 80% by 1993. 5– 7 During recent decades, there has been a shift away from production of revolvers to production of semiautomatic pistols in the civilian handgun market. Handguns are heavily involved in firearm violence, accounting for 80% or more of guns used in urban crimes and homicides. 1, 3 The lifetime medical costs of gunshot injuries total approximately two billion dollars a year, with the majority of these costs stemming from criminal assaults. Although rates of gun crime have fallen substantially in recent years, 1, 2 over 10 000 persons were murdered with firearms in 2000 and another 49 000 assault victims were treated in hospitals for non-fatal gunshot wounds. However, available data did not permit an assessment of whether the associations between gun types and assault outcomes are mediated by characteristics of incidents and actors.Ĭriminal misuse of firearms continues to be one of America’s most serious crime and public health problems. Pistol use was not related to the number of wounds per gunshot victim.Ĭonclusions: The findings provide limited evidence that recent growth in the production and use of pistols has contributed to higher levels of gunshot victimizations. Although pistol use was unrelated to the probability that an incident resulted in any injury or death, it was associated with a 15% increase in the number of wounded victims in those cases in which people were shot (1.15 per pistol case, 1.0 per revolver case), implying that the total number of gunshot victims may have been 9.4% lower had pistols not been used in any attacks. Results: More shots were fired in attacks with pistols (average = 3.2 to 3.7) than in attacks with revolvers (average = 2.3 to 2.6). Methods: Using police records on fatal and non-fatal handgun assaults, t tests and χ 2 tests were employed to determine if attacks with pistols result in more shots fired than those with revolvers, leading to more gunshot victims and more severely wounded victims.

Setting: Jersey City, New Jersey from 1992 through 1996.

Objective: To examine whether gun assaults committed with semiautomatic pistols are more injurious and lethal than those committed with revolvers.

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