The first of research led by the 天美影院 into handgun carrying by young people growing up in rural areas has found six distinct patterns for when and how often these individuals carry a handgun.
The patterns, or 鈥渓ongitudinal trajectories,鈥� suggest that youths in rural areas differ in some ways from their urban counterparts when it comes to handgun carrying and provide information for programs designed to help prevent firearm violence and injury.
鈥淏ecause firearms in many rural areas are such an integral part of a robust gun culture, understanding how youth engage with firearms in those settings is incredibly important,鈥� said principal investigator and senior author聽, a 天美影院professor of epidemiology and the 天美影院Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence. 鈥淪trikingly, until now there has been almost no research into the longitudinal patterns of handgun carrying in rural areas.鈥�
In these communities, young people carry handguns at nearly twice the rate as in urban settings, the researchers point out. And urban youths and rural youths do not necessarily have the same cultural context, motivations and use of firearms.
鈥淎 key takeaway of our study is that about one in three youth in rural areas report carrying a handgun by age 26,鈥� said , lead author and acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the 天美影院School of Medicine who holds a doctorate in economics. 鈥淪o, this is a prevalent behavior among these youth during adolescence and early adulthood. For those who carry, about half say they did so only one time, but another portion is carrying quite frequently, 40 times or more a year.鈥�
Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this study of handgun carrying among youth in rural areas is based on interviews with roughly 2,000 young people who started answering survey questionnaires in the sixth grade. Participants took repeated surveys over a roughly 15-year period, 2005 to 2019, as part of the UW鈥檚聽. That larger study is designed to evaluate the university鈥檚聽聽program, which helps communities take a broad approach to preventing youth problem behaviors.
These study results are the first in a series of related 天美影院studies that are funded by the CDC and part of a wider range of focusing on firearm violence and injury prevention. Investigators at the 天美影院Social Development Research Group, Washington State University, Seattle Children鈥檚 Research Institute and Arizona State University collaborated on the current 天美影院study.
The researchers identified these six patterns, which are based on 10 chronological waves of survey data (click on each image for a description):
The researchers add that in these patterns of carrying that emerged over the 10 nearly annual waves of surveys, some participants reported first carrying at an early age, as young as 12 years old. Consequently, they said, educating young adolescents about firearms, firearm violence, injury and conflict resolution may be suitable, especially if it connects to the firearm culture of that community.
鈥淐ertainly this behavior is very episodic, but adolescence is the age when other behaviors such as bullying and physical violence emerge,鈥� said Ellyson, who is also a principal investigator at Seattle Children鈥檚 Research Institute . 鈥淐arrying a handgun concurrently with bullying or physical violence may increase the risk, and those behaviors could escalate into more severe violence. More research is needed to measure the potential consequences and health risks of handgun carrying.鈥�
Related 天美影院studies
Rural kids carrying handguns is 鈥榥ot uncommon鈥� and starts as early as sixth grade
At gun safety events, 40% of gun owners reported not locking all household guns 鈥� even around kids
The study emphasizes that nearly all current interventions focused on handgun carrying are related to crime, which may not work for most youth in rural settings, where handgun carrying may occur with different motivations, circumstances and consequences.
鈥淏efore this study, we knew that there is a certain fraction of youth in rural areas who carry handguns,鈥� said Rowhani-Rahbar, co-director of the at the Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center. 鈥淏ut with this study, we provided evidence that there are distinctive and different patterns of handgun carrying. The discovery of these patterns in rural areas is the first step toward prevention, because knowing when this behavior starts as well as its frequency and duration may provide important points of intervention for injury prevention.鈥�
In 2020, for the first time in nearly 30 years, the CDC聽聽$7.8 million in funding for more than a dozen national studies to understand and prevent firearm violence. The UW鈥檚 proposal to study handgun carrying among rural adolescents was awarded roughly $1.5 million. The current study is one of four areas of focus in the UW鈥檚 proposal and involved surveys from 12 communities across 7 states: Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
Next, the 天美影院researchers will focus on improving understanding of the cultural context of handgun carrying among young people in rural areas. What are the reasons they pick up a handgun? What are the settings in which they do? What does 鈥渃arrying鈥� a handgun mean to them? After that, the researchers hope to examine what happened before a person carried and what happened after. What were the consequences? Finally, they hope to test the effectiveness of the Communities That Care prevention program.
鈥淭here is a very strong safety culture around the use of firearms in rural areas, and some of these young people are very well exposed to and trained in the safe use and handling of firearms, but some of them are not,鈥� said Rowhani-Rahbar. 鈥淭his type of research really sheds light on the fact that you have to think about context, you have to think about setting, you need to consider community-based factors that should drive and inform the prevention efforts that you design.鈥�
Co-authors are Emma Gause and Julia Schleimer, with the Firearm Injury and Policy Research Program, 天美影院Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center; Vivian Lyons, with the 天美影院Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center and the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan; Schleimer, also Department of Epidemiology, 天美影院School of Public Health; Margaret Kuklinski, John Briney and Kevin Haggerty, Social Development Research Group, 天美影院School of Social Work; Sabrina Oesterle, Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, School of Social Work, Arizona State University; and Elizabeth Weybright, Department of Human Development, Washington State University.
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For more information, contact Rowhani-Rahbar at rowhani@uw.edu.
Brian Donohue, public information editor at 天美影院School of Medicine, contributed to this story.