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 Stronger gun laws were linked with lower odds that kids had been
threatened or injured with any kind of weapon at school, had
themselves carried a weapon, or had missed school because they felt
unsafe, researchers found.
The data came from 926,639 teens in 45 states who participated in
the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a biennial survey of 9th through
12th graders conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
Between 1999 and 2015, seven percent of students reported having
been threatened or injured with a weapon at school, 5.5 percent
reported having carried a gun at any location and 6.1 percent
reported having missed at least one day of school due to feeling
unsafe, according to survey results published in the Journal of
Epidemiology & Community Health.
Marco Ghiani from Boston College and colleagues assigned scores to
each state based on criteria such as ease of gun access, presence or
lack of gun safety laws, and the extent of gun manufacturers'
liability.
Stronger gun control was associated with a 0.8-percentage point
decrease in the probability of being threatened or injured with a
weapon at school, a 1.9-percentage point decrease in the probability
of carrying a weapon at any location, and a 1.1-percentage point
decrease in the probability of missing school due to feeling unsafe.
During the study, gun laws became stricter in 17 states, weaker in
17, and stayed the same in 11 states.
"A strengthening of gun laws . . . was associated with a decrease in
the probability that an adolescent reported being threatened or
injured with a weapon at school, missed at least one day of school
due to feeling unsafe, or carried a weapon at any location," the
authors reported.
"When people think about . . . gun laws and school safety, the first
issue that comes to mind is school shootings," Ghiani told Reuters
Health by email.
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His coauthor Christopher Baum, also from Boston College, commented
in a separate email, "There is no real reason for civilians to be
walking around with AR-15s. They are not hunting weapons. . . Do we
really want our children to be exposed to this kind of threat?"
The study, however, doesn't prove that gun legislation - or lack of
it - actually impacted school environments and students' experiences
in the study. Furthermore, the researchers lacked information on
students' socioeconomic characteristics, and the students' survey
responses might not have been accurate, the authors acknowledge.
Still, said Dr. Michael Siegel, Professor at Department of Community
Health Sciences in Boston University School of Public Health, who
wasn't involved in the study, the findings highlight intermediate
outcomes that are not typically thought of and set a new agenda for
firearm research.
The researchers agree. They conclude, "The analysis of state gun
laws showed that, over the last two decades, 17 states in our sample
experienced a weakening in gun control laws. Such policy actions may
facilitate adolescents' access to guns and increase levels of
violence at school. The results indicate a path for future research
to investigate whether stricter gun laws can be an effective policy
instrument to improve school climate."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2CMZNu9 Journal of Epidemiology & Community
Health, online March 21, 2019.
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