A restrictive gun environment may reduce the likelihood of teens carrying firearms, a recent study says.
The researchers have analyzed data on teen gun possession from a survey of U.S. high school students in 38 states and examined it against the state's aggressiveness in regulating firearm policies such as background checks before sales, minimum age for purchase, bans on military-style assault weapons and limitation of usage in public areas, Reuters reports.
The study discovered that states with stricter gun policies have 5.7 percent of students carrying firearms compared to states with permissive gun laws, which have 7.3 percent.
The researchers also grade each state's gun control laws on a scale of zero to 100 and compared that score against the data from a federal survey that asked kids whether they had carried a gun at least once in the previous month, according to U.S. News.
They learned that for each 10-point increase in the state's gun law score, there was a 9 percent decrease of chances that a teen would report carrying a gun.
According to the background information of the study, an average of 15,000 teenagers between 12 to 19 years old die in the United States annually from 1999 to 2013. The three leading causes of death among teenagers include unintentional injuries, homicide and suicide, Medical Xpress has learned.
Among the youth casualties, most homicides were gun-related (83 percent) and about half of the suicide cases involved a gun (45 percent).
"By reducing the availability of guns, potentially you can have a substantial impact on public safety," said lead author Ziming Xuan, an assistant professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, per U.S News.
The report suggests that if the rate of adult gun ownership decreases, then the teens are less likely to carry guns. As Bindu Kalesan, an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University's Maliman School of Public Health in New York City puts it, "basically saying, adult gun ownership is the real problem." Kalesan is not involved in the study.
"It's very likely explained by the fact that the youth are getting their guns from adults," said Xuan. "If a state with strong gun control is able to reduce the amount of adult gun ownership, it will reduce the number of kids carrying guns."
The study provides a powerful evidence that the state's gun control law has an impact to the kids. "The tendency of youth to carry firearms is related to the legal environment they're growing up in," said Sam Bieler, a research associate with the Urban Institutue of Washington, D.C. "This is something that states should be keeping in mind as they consider their gun control laws."
The study was published on Sept. 21 in JAMA Pediatrics.
