A teenager raised in Queens during the 1970s and 1980s obtained his first pistol illegally in the mid-1980s through a neighborhood contact whose relatives supplied firearms. He had grown up in a Brooklyn-born household of poor Irish immigrants that kept no firearms and banned even toy versions after negative television coverage.

His father had been assaulted and robbed twice on the subway. At 16 he asked the contact for a compact .22 or .25, having read about models such as a Beretta 950 or Bauer 25, because larger pistols cost thousands of dollars and were harder to hide. The relatives more often offered .32 Walthers priced around one thousand dollars; he lacked that sum and settled on the smaller calibers.