Reply #25: No I read it all [View All]

[Withergyld]

I quoted from the section "Part II. Measuring the Impact of Operation Ceasefire" which starts on page 55

The sub topic I quoted from was "Examining rival causal factors" starts on page 59

This is the complete section on tha causal effects of gun trafficking found on pages 61 and 62

"Anti-trafficking effects. Finally, the degree to which violence reduction in Boston should be attributed to the prevention of illegal firearms trafficking must be questioned. Trafficking was, of course, a principal original focus of Boston’s Gun Project, and attention to trafficking was one of Operation Ceasefire’s two fundamental planks.

Study investigators believe that evaluating the particular contribution ofsupply-side interventions in Boston is essentially impossible.Anti-trafficking efforts were implemented at the same time as violence deterrence efforts, and both might be expected to influence, for example, gun carrying, gun use, and the mix of illegal guns found on the street.A stand-alone trafficking prevention intervention would not face these difficulties and could lead to definitive answers on the impact of supply-side interventions. Operation Ceasefire, however,was not a stand-alone trafficking prevention intervention.

Here, as well, the distinctive characteristics of the decline in homicide and shootings in Boston offer the best insight into what might have happened. Two things are certain. First, supply-side efforts cannot be responsible for the abrupt reductions in gun-related violence during the summer and fall of 1996. Most Boston trafficking cases followed that reduction, rather than anticipated it. Second, anti-trafficking efforts in Boston did nothing to reduce
the existing stockpile of illegally acquired and possessed firearms in Boston.

The guns held by gang members in Boston in May of 1996 were, for the
most part, still held by them several months later when the violence reached its new, lower level. The change that had occurred was not in the extent of gun ownership but in gun use. The principal impact, therefore,was almost certainly a demand-side, deterrence-based effect rather than a supply-side effect. It may well be that anti-trafficking efforts strengthened and prolonged that impact.Whether any such effects were large or small cannot be independently
established in this case."