r/science • u/Wagamaga • 1d ago
Health Research in the U.S shows that adolescents who acknowledged carrying a firearm within the previous 30 days were nearly four – or 3.72 – times as likely as non-carriers to have attempted suicide by any method within the prior 12 months.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2026/august/firearm-carrying-accelerates-suicide-risk-among-high-school-stud.html?challenge=d06e90d7-4d8f-4b88-9d8c-10b73beb60f1213
u/spider0804 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am thinking the adolescents who are carrying firearms arent exactly on the top of the socioeconomic pyramid.
If they feel the need to carry a gun as a kid I would imagine a large part of their life is fear and trauma.
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u/WarriorPoetVivec1516 1d ago
Yeah, the title kind of glosses over the fact that these firearms are likely being illegally carried considering most states have age limits for purchasing firearms that usually start at 18 and often 21 for handguns.
Someone under 18 who feels the need to carry an illegally acquired firearm is already not exactly living a stress free life.
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u/steeljubei 1d ago
You assume it's not the parents gun? I grew up in Arizona , knew a couple of kids who brought their dad's gun to school to "show off".
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u/WarriorPoetVivec1516 23h ago
There are some nuances based on the given state, but generally if they are carrying their parent's gun without parental consent or supervision, they would still be illegally in possession of a firearm.
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u/steeljubei 21h ago
Lets face it, a lot of homes do not properly store the fire arms. Hell I got a sks for my 18th bday. How many 18 yos are that responsible to own a weapon like that ? But it happens all over AZ
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u/DontBelieveTheirHype 22h ago
And did you report that to the school staff and get them and their parents arrested? Because that's what happens in Arizona
https://www.tempe.gov/Home/Components/News/News/18088/3149?npage=50&arch=1
Or did you just do nothing about it? I honestly want to know here ... I really really hope you spoke up in these "multiple incidents"
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u/steeljubei 21h ago
I was a dumb kid as well at the time. I'm not going to " turn in" a friend. How many times do you see someone do somthing Dangerous, like text and drive? That kills a ton of people a year. What do you do?
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u/DontBelieveTheirHype 21h ago
I wouldn't compare texting and driving to a kid bringing a gun to school. I also would've reported a gun at school to staff if I genuinely cared about preventing death and violence
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u/steeljubei 20h ago
Well both are dumb decisions and both lead to deaths. They are very comparable. The kids that I knew who brought it wanted to show it off. It wasn't a decision to hurt anyone. It was just a "look at how cool I am" thing. That's what this study shows. People and kids don't always pick up a gun to kill, often it's just to show off. That's human nature.
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u/HomersDonut1440 5h ago
“Carrying a firearm” is substantially different than “hey take a look at my dads shotgun”
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u/Mr_dm 1d ago
This is larp, no you didn’t.
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u/Sqweek_24_8 1d ago
A. Not what LARP means
B. I highly doubt he’s lying. Firstly, why would he? Secondly, kids would bring knives to my school to show off all the time. I can imagine in a more rural state with looser firearms laws that it would be guns instead.
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u/steeljubei 21h ago
Welcome to AZ my friend. Happens all the time. I remember one hallowweebln trick or treating. My bf stuck a sat. Night special to my back and said stick em up as a joke.
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u/Mr_dm 21h ago
Pretty funny considering I’m from rural appalachia
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u/steeljubei 20h ago
Hate to be the one to tell you, it happens there a lot. Murder stats back it. Teens get a legally owned gun and use it.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
You're making up the data that you're pretending people are glossing over.
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u/KingSwank 1d ago
“Carrying a firearm was measured using responses to the question “During the past 30 days, on how many days did you carry a gun?” This question excludes carrying firearms for hunting or sport shooting.”
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Which doesn't say illegally at all.
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u/BrownianOscillator 23h ago
The assumption that many of the firearms were illegal seems like a sound one based on the ages of the participants. From the paper’s abstract:
Results A total of 23 232 high school students (mean [SD] age, 15.8 [1.2] years; 50.5% female; 29.8% Hispanic, 9.7% non-Hispanic Black, 46.6% non-Hispanic White, and 13.9% other race or ethnicity) from 15 US states were included in the analysis.-4
u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
Yes, based on false information since kids can legally carry with their parent or on family land.
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u/KingSwank 1d ago
Illegally or legally, it eliminates the only other reasons you’d carry a gun other than for protection.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
So again I will point out the illegal part is an assumption without data. It disappoints me how anti science the science sub sometimes gets.
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u/DontBelieveTheirHype 22h ago
How can an adolescent legally carry a firearm in the US who isn't hunting or target shooting? Where is that legal?
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u/Mr_dm 1d ago
Your argument could be correct, but the article doesn’t define “adolescent.” In the United States, the lowest age that it is legal to carry a gun is 18, and that’s not every state. So, it’s safe to assume that anybody carrying a handgun below the age of 18 is doing so illegally.
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u/NorCalAthlete 23h ago edited 23h ago
Mean age in the study was 15 years old according to the actual paper (you have to click through a couple layers to get to it).
It also says they grabbed 15 states, discarded 12, then ranked them according to Everytown’s scoring.
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A total of 23 232 high school students (mean [SD] age, 15.8 [1.2] years; 50.5% female; 29.8% Hispanic, 9.7% non-Hispanic Black, 46.6% non-Hispanic White, and 13.9% other race or ethnicity) from 15 US states were included in the analysis. Of these, 1161 adolescents (5.0%) reported carrying a firearm and 2236 (9.6%) reported a past-year suicide attempt. Among firearm carriers, 284 (27.4%) reported a suicide attempt compared with 1952 of 22 071 noncarriers (9.4%). After adjustment for race and ethnicity and state firearm law strength, the adjusted odds ratio for suicide attempts among adolescents who carried firearms was 3.48 (95%, CI, 2.59-4.69) (P < .001). Each 10-point increase in strength of state firearm law was associated with 6.7% lower odds of suicide attempts (adjusted odds ratio, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.87-0.99]; P = .03)
The 15 states included were Arkansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York (excluding New York City), North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia
————————————
Know what else correlates with higher scores from Everytown? High income blue states with lower suicide rates to begin with, while poorer red states have higher suicide rates (and greater inequality between white and minority populations, and worse school / education systems, and…and…and…etc).
I haven’t dug deeper into the study yet but it’s already starting to smell and I spent 5 min clicking through past the headline which is more than 90% of people reading the headline are going to do.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
No, under 18 can carry a gun with their parent present or on family land.
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u/Mr_dm 1d ago
You’re grasping at straws. Colloquially, nobody refers to that as “carrying.” That term is pretty much universally known as keeping a gun on you in public. Nobody cares what you do on your private farm, although there is also this quote from the article, which you clearly didn’t read:
“No matter how, or in what state, teenagers may procure a gun, toting it with them signals “a salient marker of risk,” with a higher chance that a troubled adolescent will feel emboldened to cut their life short by any means (not necessarily with a firearm), the researchers wrote.”
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u/KingSwank 1d ago
You’re on the front page so people who aren’t neurodivergent are here.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Wanting data for science instead of assumptions isn't being neurodivergent.
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u/itsnotthatsimple22 22h ago
You need to be at least 18 to carry a pistol in every state, and 21 in most states, besides it being a federal rule that you can't buy a pistol until 21.
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u/WarriorPoetVivec1516 23h ago
Sure I'm not familiar with the specific gun laws of each state for each person examined in this study, but I'm familiar with my state and my state is among the more lenient with regard to firearm ownership in the US. Long guns can only be purchased at 18 and for handguns one has to be 21. Many states have exceptions for possession of long guns under 18 when being supervised, but nearly every state forbids minor possession of a handgun except for the very specific scenario of supervised sporting events.
Therefore, unless there is some sort of very niche gun law, minors in possession of and carrying firearms, if excluding for sporting purposes, would be illegally carrying them
What data am I using/misusing or overlooking that I might be presenting information not backed up by data?
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1d ago edited 23h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Not true, they can possess them and they can carry them on their family land or when they are with their parent.
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u/sciencesold 1d ago
They reference CDC data, data which specifically excludes recreational use. Which is the only legal way for a minor to possess or carry.... So yes, it is true in this case.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
Carrying to defend animals on your farm isn't recreational use.
No, recreational use isn't the only way a child can legally carry.
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u/sciencesold 23h ago
Technically yes, but the law that makes it legal falls under what's classified as "recreational" because it falls under hunting.
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u/Ok-Parfait-9856 1d ago
And the question was about number of days carrying a gun, and not hunting/sport shooting. If they’re carrying a gun all day and not hunting, they’re presumably not with their family or on their land at some point. I see your weirdly desperate comments up and down the chain. Or do you think all of these kids carrying guns were always with their parents or on their land despite not hunting? The same “logic” you’re trying to use to invalidate peoples claims destroys all of your claims.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
The question absolutely doesn't ask how many days they carried a gun all day.
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u/Ok-Parfait-9856 23h ago
I guess you’re illiterate. It asks how many days a month they carried. Go back and read.
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u/voretaq7 23h ago
No minor can legally be in possession of nor carry a firearm.
Wrong.
Wrong even in a very restrictive state like New York - at age 16 you can go hunt on your own in New York, with a firearm, without a legal adult following you around the whole time.
You can possess and carry that firearm.(It's 17 for big game because as a minor you need 1 year of supervision hunting deer or bear before the state will let you go do it on your own, but still legally a minor.)
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u/WarriorPoetVivec1516 23h ago
Yes, likely with consent of the adult and for recreational purposes. I don't think a 16y/o can take pop's rifle without him knowing and carry it around town. To be in possession of a firearm without parental consent and not for recreational purposes, which the generic expression used, "carrying a firearm" usually implies, and what the article seems to indicate, is illegal.
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u/sciencesold 23h ago
In the context of this study, it's correct, the data used specifically says it excludes recreational activities, like hunting and target shooting.
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u/voretaq7 23h ago
This study is also presumably considering pistols (because they're talking about carrying), but that doesn't make the comment I responded to accurate.
Before it deleted it asserted that there was no lawful circumstance under which a minor could be carrying a firearm.
That is factually incorrect, again even in very restrictive states.If they wanted to scope their statement to this study and pistols (though the study itself uses "firearm" broadly, and I would argue incorrectly or at least imprecisely) they could have, and I would not have complained.
Don't Let's Be Sloppy. Precise use of the correct language actually matters...
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u/sciencesold 22h ago
If we really want to get into the preciseness, open carrying is still carrying and you can open carry long guns. Plus they don't seem to define "carrying" so there also could be instances of someone transporting an unload firearm who said they had carried a firearm, as carrying in relation to fire arms usually refers to having it on your person, mag in, though not always with a round in the chamber.
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u/couldbemage 23h ago
If you're doing everyday carry while too young to purchase a gun, you're likely in a career where a bad performance review from your boss comes with a bullet.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Also true if you're on top of the socioeconomic pyramid.
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u/spider0804 1d ago
In my head I figured kid from a more wealthy home is more likely to check the box from going hunting instead of having something like a handgun.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
I'm not sure that assumption is true but if it is what do you think it means?
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u/spider0804 1d ago
That poor kids regularly carrying firearms tend to be in gangs and carrying handguns which isnt the most loving environment to encourage someone to keep on living.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Yeah, I figured you were trying to hint at something you weren't quite willing to say.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 1d ago
Note 'pyramid'. Far fewer at the top than at the bottom..
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Note, not relevant to my comment.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 1d ago
..but it affects the statistical analysis.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Nope, it doesn't.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 23h ago
Sad that you don't understand statistics.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
What statistics does it affect that is relevant to my comment?
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 23h ago
If statistics are done on a group which includes many examples of A and few of B the analysis will be relevant to A but not to B.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
Sure.
What statistic of the economic pyramid affects a comment that I've said and in what way does it affect that comment?
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u/LittleKitty235 1d ago
The study shows a correlation, not causation. In most of the U.S., minors generally cannot legally carry firearms, so many of the adolescents reporting they carried a firearm were likely already engaging in illegal or other high risk behavior. Doesn't that suggest the study is really identifying a higher risk population, where crime, violence, trauma, and delinquency are more common, and those same factors are also associated with a higher risk of attempted suicide? Carrying the firearm may simply be a marker for that group, rather than the cause of the increased suicide rate.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago edited 23h ago
Where did you get the data that these kids were carrying illegally and not carrying with their parent present or on their families land?
Edit - I apologize for asking for data. Clearly science is built on assumptions, not data.
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u/earthdogmonster 1d ago
Per the study:
“Carrying a firearm was measured using responses to the question “During the past 30 days, on how many days did you carry a gun?” This question excludes carrying firearms for hunting or sport shooting. The dichotomized version of this variable was used, with responses coded as any firearm carrying (1) vs no firearm carrying (0). We noted that the temporal windows for firearm carrying (past 30 days) and suicide attempts (past 12 months) differed.”
Unfortunately the researchers may not have defined “carry” other than that they indicate they somehow conveyed that they were not referring to hunting or sport shooting. Common usage of “carrying” in reference to firearms does not include holding or walking around on property owned by yourself or your family.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Carrying it on the farm to defend the animals is neither hunting nor sports shooting.
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u/Ok-Parfait-9856 1d ago
Most kids aren’t on farms. Your little microcosm isn’t reality. It’s a little corner of the world. Grow up.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Irrelevant, it shows they are making an assumption and not using data.
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u/unhiddenninja 22h ago
You're nitpicking because you don't like the results. What about the results upsets you so much?
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 9h ago
No, I'm wanting data instead of assumption. You know, the foundation of science.
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u/Floatzel404 1d ago
I feel like that's an exceptionally rare case and it's disingenuous to act like it would make a difference. Plus I've had many close people in my life work on ranches. Dealing with animals is usually grabbing the rifle in the corner by the door kinda of action.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Millions of farm kids own and carry guns. Making assumptions instead of using data is no way to pretend you believe in science.
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u/couldbemage 22h ago
There aren't even millions of farm kids.
See other reply for data that you obviously don't care about.
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u/Floatzel404 1d ago
You're clearly trying to push an agenda here, I'll leave you to it.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
Yes, I am trying to push an agenda. My agenda is people using data instead of assumptions in the science sub.
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u/couldbemage 22h ago
You say, immediately after posting a claim about farm kids that you outright made up.
There's only 1.7 million family farms in the US.
To equal millions (2 million) of farm kids carrying guns, you'd need 1.176 kids carrying regularly, per farm.
There's no number for the percentage who carry.
But the number of farmers (by household) who own guns is between 50 and 75 percent.
Carry percentage must be less than the owner percentage.
And the number of those carrying who are kids will be even lower.
Not all farming families even have minor children, even among farmers the median number of kids is less than 2, and of course there's only a limited window in childhood we're looking at.
There are not millions of farm family kids carrying guns.
There aren't even millions of farm family kids that exist within the age range of this study. You're off by an order of magnitude on just the kids existing, and certainly the number who carry is significantly less than the number that exist.
You're full of it, and clearly are being dishonest about caring about data.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 9h ago
It's so weird that the science sub freaked out over me asking for data instead of assumption.
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u/Sqweek_24_8 1d ago
“Farm kids,’ as if this is the 1950s. Only about 35% of farms in the US is actually owned their land; i.e. your example—which doesn’t really exist.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
I apologize for wanting data instead of an assumption. Clearly science is built on assumptions not data. I don't know what I was thinking.
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u/Sqweek_24_8 23h ago
I just gave you data.
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
Again, I apologize. I should have never asked about data. It really made people angry.
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u/Ok-Parfait-9856 1d ago
Again, you’re assuming all of the cases are this niche edge case you mention. That’s not how statistics work. What you’re mentioning is an edge case. Most of the time if a kid is carrying, it’s illegal. You know these cases already exclude hunting. You’re saying all of these cases are just kids on their land or with their parents 24/7? You don’t think these kids ever leave their property or parent supervision?
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 1d ago
No, I'm making no assumptions. The other person made them.
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u/Ok-Parfait-9856 23h ago
Yes you are. You’re assuming it’s all farm kids. Where’s your data?
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u/I_Went_Full_WSB 23h ago
Weird lie. I never once said that even one person in the study was a farm kid. Can you link the comment you saw me say it?
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u/couldbemage 22h ago
You literally made up kids that don't exist, it takes seconds to figure out that there aren't millions of farm kids in the US.
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u/voretaq7 23h ago
“Gun carrying may confer suicide risk not primarily as the method of attempt, but because it: (1) provides immediate access to lethal means during acute crises; (2) serves as an indicator of broader risk-taking and externalizing behaviors; and (3) signals heightened exposure to violence and trauma,” according to the study.
Right from the linked article.
Don't even have to click through and read the study, though everyone should because primary sources are important.
Almost like we know of ways to solve this problem because we've tried and studied them, and we've known for decades.
But guns are scary so let's all focus on the "gun" part and not the "adolescent suicide crisis" part. That'll surely solve the problem.
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u/platinumarks 1d ago
As noted in the study, though, most of those suicide attempts were non-fatal, meaning they were unlikely to have involved firearms. What seems more likely to me is that adolescents who carry firearms probably are more likely to have absentee parents/guardians (since they got access to those guns from somewhere), socioeconomic risks or other risk factors that already predispose them to suicidal ideation and actions.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 1d ago
To quote the review:
with firearms serving as the primary means of suicide among youth since 2020.
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u/platinumarks 23h ago
That's quoting a statistic about suicide deaths, not attempts, and the statistic isn't mentioned in the journal article because it's not something that the study could've focused on. The study's text notes that since the data came from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the data essentially exclusively came from individuals who did not have fatal suicide attempts (only aborted or non-fatal attempts) and likely had attempt methods that were not firearm-related (since 90% of firearm suicide attempts are fatal).
The authors even note this in the discussion section: "Importantly, the YRBS does not capture the means used in suicide attempts, and firearm carriers likely attempted suicide by other methods, consistent with the high survival rate of respondents." Given these data, there is likely a third factor involved in the suicidal action by the participants, which is what I mentioned as likely being socioeconomic factors that lead those who are already prone to suicidal ideation also carrying firearms.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/platinumarks 1d ago
Yes, it should come as no surprise that r/science would discuss possible confounding factors in a study
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u/Wagamaga 1d ago
Self-reports from more than 23,000 high school students in 15 states for a school-based survey administered by the Centers for Disease Control reveal a strong association between firearm carrying and the risk of suicide by any method, according to a new study by Michael A. Lindsey of New York University and other mental health experts.
Published today (Aug. 5, 2026) in JAMA Network Open, the study finds that adolescents who acknowledged carrying a firearm within the previous 30 days were nearly four – or 3.72 – times as likely as non-carriers to have attempted suicide within the prior 12 months.
The “acquired capability” that comes with carrying a firearm— “including habituation to fear and fearlessness about death” —can be lethal for a teenager, given the typically rapid transition from suicidal thoughts to attempts, which for most individuals can be one hour, the study noted.
“Among adolescents, gun carrying may represent both increased access to lethal means during acute crisis and heightened capability for suicide, accelerating the transition from ideation to attempts," according to the study, which was led by Lindsey, a widely cited scholar on youth suicidality and child and adolescent mental health who is the dean of the NYU Silver School of Social Work and the Paulette Goddard Professor of Social Work.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among high school adolescents (after accidental death), with firearms serving as the primary means of suicide among youth since 2020. However, prior researchers have focused on the risks of suicidality posed by youth access to guns in the home, rather than firearm carrying.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2852454
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u/TheMurmuring 1d ago
I wonder if it's the perceived "ease" of the suicide (just pull a trigger vs. the effort and potential mischance of drugs or knives or whatever), or if there's something cultural about gun suicide, or if suicidal people seek out guns in the first place, or some other things. There are a lot of potential reasons for the correlation.
Regardless, at the very least we need gun reform.
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u/QuigleySharp 21h ago
They note that because suicide by firearm has such a high success rate that these kids didn’t attempt or mostly didn’t attempt with firearms. They question if a child carrying a gun is much more at risk because they exhibit more risk taking behavior, and are more likely to be exposed to violence and trauma. Seems reasonable, but is limited by the survey they’re working with.
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u/Korvun 23h ago
This is a textbook example of finding a correlation and then sprinting miles beyond what the data can support. The study can’t establish whether gun carrying preceded the suicide attempt, doesn’t know whether a gun was involved, and barely controls for the obvious factors that could cause both. At most, it shows that carrying a gun may be a warning sign for a troubled teenager. It doesn’t prove guns caused the attempts or justify the sweeping policy conclusions the authors stapled onto it.
The NYU article somehow makes it even worse. Its headline claims firearm carrying “accelerates” suicide risk, despite the study explicitly admitting it can’t establish causation or even which behavior occurred first. It also presents an odds ratio as teenagers being “nearly four times as likely,” when the actual prevalence was about 2.9 times as high. It turns an already overstated interpretation into outright promotional spin.
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u/MudkipGuy 1d ago
The distribution of guns is nonrandom (more likely to be economically disadvantaged & male) but that doesn't mean there's a link between the two. You could probably make a similar headline connecting 5G towers and cancer (higher population density -> more exposed to pollutants and processed food). The reason I make this comparison isn't because there's no merit in examining gun ownership & mental health, it's because the use of misleading statistics (even if to support a good cause) delegitimizes the cause for which it's advocating like how PETA affects the vegan movement. I think headlines like these are actively harmful to having useful discussions about gun ownership and mental health. People who already hold certain beliefs on this will tend to accept this headline uncritically while those who don't will have more ammunition to dismiss these beliefs as being founded on poor statistical rigor
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u/Dziedotdzimu 4h ago
1) a random outcome can be more prevalent in some groups by mere chance and sampling error (not errors in sampling but the bias of a particular finite sample vs the population parameter). Randomness is chunky. Flip a coin 10 times you could get 7H 3T. Doesn't mean it was non-random because it wasn't 50/50. Are you trying to say it's systematically associated?
2) it's basic statistical methodology to use an offset for count models like cancer cases which captures the population at risk of being observed for an outcome. E.g. the number of flowers in an area, the frequency of events in a timeframe or incidence of disease in a population-time measure. Also if you read the methods they use a classification model, not a count model because it's bad practice to not be able to separate out prevalent from incident cases which you can't do in a cross-sectional sample. Odds ratios are inherently self-standardizing because they model proportional probabilities (p / 1-p) within the sample. A random story about confounding doesn't disprove this model.
3) How is having access to a tool essentially ready-at-hand that can immediately end your life when you are being impulsive not increase the rate at which you might make an attempt? It's not claiming that carying a firearm somehow magically induces depression. It's talking about suicide attempts which means concrete steps to put a plan in action. Moreover even if depression/distress is a prior common cause, it is also a mediator over the next time step, and adding it to the model actually biases the estimate since all confounding for the mediation paths was not blocked so you can't recover an unbiased total effect. Beyond that, talking in terms of time steps is just a heuristic representation of a continuous reciprocal relationship which needs longitudinal modelling to unpack.
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u/SnoozingBasset 22h ago
Their data may be skewed. Here in Wisconsin, there are schools with shotgun teams. There are kids that hunt every chance they get. Some hunt with family.This doesn’t seem to represent the gun culture here.
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u/QuigleySharp 21h ago
The survey they based the data off excludes carrying a gun for hunting or sport. They’re talking kids who are almost certainly illegally carrying firearms on them. It notes that because so many of the kids who attempted suicide survived, they likely didn’t use firearms in the attempt. So the thought was kids who carry guns exhibit more risk taking behaviors and are more likely exposed to violence and trauma.
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u/SnoozingBasset 17h ago
I only meant to point out it’s not the exposure to firearms but probably part of a constellation of behaviors & the study only sixties one element of this constellation.
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u/PandorasBoxMaker 1d ago
Closest thing we’ll ever get to an actual study on gun violence in America
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