I’m not sure what you mean by “obtained passively.” To frame this in a most ridiculous manner, is the tooth fairy is leaving guns under the pillows of violent criminals? In any case, doesn’t it seem likely that criminals are getting their guns, passively or actively, from “local” sources? Thru theft from legal owners? To obtain guns from a non-local source (especially on an island such as Australia) wouldn’t it mean that the average criminal with a gun is either smuggling them in himself, or getting them from an organized international smuggling ring? I kinda doubt Joe Thug has those kind of connections.
All guns possessed by criminals, at some point were owned legally. Even if the only owner is the manufacturer. Since known criminals are cannot purchase guns legally, they must be getting them illegally. (The other option is that someone who legally owns a gun, turns criminal, but let’s ignore that for the moment since it is outside your debate.) So, how do criminals obtain guns. There are only a very few methods available to them
Theft from a legitimate owner (gun dealer, manufacturer, sporting goods store, licensed shooting club, the cops/military, etc.)
So called “straw purchases” (a criminal persuades someone permitted to legally own firearms to buy one from a licensed dealer and give it the criminal)
An otherwise legitimate gun dealer (a licensed dealer is selling guns directly to persons in a manner outside that prescribed by law)
International smuggling
We can ignore for this argument, I think, the various ways a criminal may obtain a gun from an illegitimate local source. We can do this because that particular gun must already have moved from the legal world to the illegal thru one of the 4 means above. Although perhaps we may find it necessary to consider that a single gun is “owned” and used by several criminals; whoever thinks he wants it for a particular venture, gets it from his compadres. If this were happening there could definitely be more gun crimes than there are crime guns - if you follow me (and maybe this is what you meant by “obtained passively”).
Anway, looking at the list above, we see that 3 of the 4 potential avenues for guns to move from the legal to illegal world are “local.” Only one is not.
There is a fifth source of illegal guns: manufacture by the criminal community itself. This can be something as simple as a zip gun or something as complex as using home-hobbyist type machine tools to manufacture suppressed 9mm subguns. The second isn’t as outlandish a possibility as it may seem. I am acquainted with a fellow who served a federal jolt for doing just that.
Good point. There’s a fifth source I failed to identify even tho’ it was explicit in tagos post above. Illegal manufacture, or conversion of disabled/replica, firearms. The conversion of replicas (at least in England) is becoming more widespread.
Or 5) (as my posts demonstrate is the UK case) Convert deactivated, replica and certain makes of air powered weapons to firearms.
But I agree with USAF, the situation in the USA is totally different to other countries and so parallels aren’t possible. In the UK we can severely cramp the style of criminals by making it harder for them to get real fire arms and harder still once amnesties and bans take replicas and deactivated ones off the market and sale of convertable air guns, replicas etc are banned.
The USA is way past that point. If I was in the USA I’d support gun ownership. Not here, yet, though.
I know from indirect experience how easy it was to buy real guns in the UK if you knew where to look, at not too shabby prices. Not any more. Demand is up due to the rise of drug and gang culture and supply way down.