Abstract
Rates of youth firearm exposure and carriage are well-established, but less work has examined how exposure to police violence and firearm violence, as victim or witness, may be associated with beliefs in gun ownership for society or access to guns. This study used survey data from a multiracial sample of 276 youth living in New Orleans, Louisiana (M age = 17.76) to examine these associations. Results from binary logistic regressions confirmed a significant association between higher belief in gun ownership for safety and all violence exposures, directly and indirectly. We did not find support for an association between gun access and any violence exposures. The findings shed light on pathways to firearm violence risk and provide critical information on youth firearm attitudes.
Youth firearm violence is rapidly increasing across the U.S. Firearm violence increased 46% between 2019 and 2022 (from 2.4 to 3.5 per 100,000), when firearms became the leading cause of death among youth ages 19 and younger (Roberts et al., 2023; Wilson et al., 2023). Risk factors for youth firearm violence include individual and community-level influences such as aggressive attitudes, poor academic achievement, substance use, prior arrest, intimate partner violence exposure, racial residential segregation and residence in socioeconomically distressed neighborhoods, and higher density of neighborhood liquor stores (Buggs & Zeoli, 2022; Ding et al., 2002; Tracy et al., 2019). Further, significant racial and ethnic disparities exist in firearm violence exposure; the rate of firearm related death is six times higher for Black youth compared to White youth (Martin et al., 2022). Black and Hispanic youth faced a two-fold increase in firearm related deaths from 2018 to 2022, whereas their White and Asian counterparts experienced stable rates (L. K. Lee et al., 2022). Exposure to firearm violence, as victim (i.e., directly), or witness (i.e., indirectly), is associated with adverse developmental effects, including poor mental health and academic outcomes, anxiety and depression, and increased substance use (Panchal, 2024).
Louisiana is tied for the highest firearm death rates among youth (8.8 per 100,000 from 2020 to 2022; Panchal, 2024). Further, 73% of youth firearm-related deaths are homicides, compared to 58% of all firearm deaths among youth nationwide (Centers for Disease Control, 2018). Racial disparities persist, as Black male youth ages 15 to 34 in Louisiana have a firearm homicide rate 17 times higher than their White counterparts (Centers for Disease Control & National Center for Health Statistics, 2021). Black youth in Louisiana are also more likely to encounter police, with a recent study indicating police stop-and-frisk encounters and juvenile violations were more than twice as high for Black youth and adults compared to White residents (Theall et al., 2022).
Access to firearms is a key risk factor for firearm violence (Beseler et al., 2020; Schmidt et al., 2019). For example, a study by Miller et al. (2007) reported that for every 1% increase in household gun ownership, youth firearm-involved homicides increased by 2.4%. Further, nationally representative samples of youth indicate that guns are easy to obtain (Wilkinson & Fagan, 2001). Sokol et al. (2021) found that early after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, parents who reported they were more likely to store their firearms in a more accessible manner to protect from threats including civil unrest also reported higher rates of community violence exposure compared to parents who did not make their firearms more easily accessible. Further, risk factors for firearm access overlap with risk factors for firearm violence (i.e., substance use and delinquent peers; Mattson et al., 2020), indicating that violence exposure may also influence access. Additionally, perceived access to a handgun is a risk factor for handgun carriage for Black youth (O’Connor et al., 2023). Exposure to guns likely differs by gender and race; boys are more likely than girls to be exposed to firearms (Downey et al., 2013), and Black youth report greater exposure to firearms than White youth (Finkelhor et al., 2013). Given the racial disparities in gun access and gun violence exposure, it is possible that the two are related.
An emergent body of literature has centered youth firearm-related attitudes to delineate the risk of firearm violence for etiologic and prevention efforts (Shapira et al., 2022; Wamser-Nanney, 2021), but the literature remains scant (Beseler et al., 2020). Over the last thirty years, the primary motivation for gun ownership among U.S. adults has been personal protection (Parker et al., 2017). This finding has been replicated in youth samples, who have endorsed the notion of firearm use for personal protection (Carter et al., 2017; Hink et al., 2022; Wilkinson et al., 2009). Although gun beliefs are undoubtedly shaped by childhood socialization (Shapira et al., 2022), cultural norms (Lantz & Wenger, 2021), and availability (Wamser-Nanney, 2021), little recent work has documented these beliefs among youth with high exposure to community violence. Thus, it is not yet known how gun attitudes function in relation to well-known risk factors (i.e., gun access, firearm violence) and to emergent areas of scholarship, such as police violence.
Empirical evidence also connects both direct and indirect experiences of community violence with gun carriage (L. K. Lee et al., 2020; Oliphant et al., 2019; Spano & Bolland, 2013). Indirect exposure to community violence predicted gun carriage in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents (Baiden et al., 2024). Similarly, a longitudinal study of adolescents in high poverty neighborhoods found that gun and non-gun-related direct violence victimization predicted the initiation of gun carriage (Spano & Bolland, 2013). Further, direct violence victimization by peers is significantly associated with gun carriage for Black young adults (Walsh et al., 2023). Conversely, a longitudinal study of 1,170 juvenile offenders showed that direct and indirect non-gun-related violence exposure, such as being beaten up or chased, did not significantly predict gun carriage (Beardslee et al., 2018). However, scant contemporary literature has centered youth’s gun beliefs (Beseler et al., 2020), or examined if gun beliefs and gun violence exposure differ according to gender and race.
Police violence is a facet of community violence that has been understudied when considering youth firearm beliefs and behaviors. Most research to date has looked at youths’ attitudes toward police as a predictor for firearm carriage or firearm violence exposure (Brunson & Wade, 2019; Cunningham et al., 2022; Sokol et al., 2022). However, given that community violence exposure predicts youth firearm violence risk, police violence exposure may influence youths’ attitudes toward firearms and/or decision to carry. For example, Sokol et al. (2022) found that youth were more likely to carry a firearm if they perceived greater levels of community violence and had higher levels of mistrust in the police. In addition, Cunningham et al. (2022) found that youth who reported carrying a weapon were more likely to hold negative attitudes toward police officers. These youth were also more likely to report victimization both at school and in their neighborhood than peers who did not report carrying a weapon, yet they reported similar rates of perceived risk of victimization. Brunson and Wade’s (2019) qualitative interview study highlighted how both direct and indirect negative experiences with police contribute to distrust of police officers, and subsequently, the desire for self-protection. More research is needed to explain how police violence exposure may influence gun beliefs or access.
The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of exposure to direct and indirect gun violence and police violence, as well as both gender and racial differences in gun beliefs, access, and experiences of violence among youth experiencing high rates of firearm violence. We hypothesized that all forms of violence exposure, and direct (i.e., as victim) and indirect (i.e., as witness) exposure, would be associated with stronger beliefs in firearm use for safety, as well as greater perceived ease of firearm access. This study is grounded in Ng-Mak et al.’s (2004) thesis of pathologic adaptation, which posits that youth exposed to high levels of community violence are prone to develop a desensitization to violence that promotes engagement in aggressive, and sometimes lethal behaviors. This study analyzed community survey data from a multiracial sample of youth and young adults to investigate these questions.
Methods
Data were drawn from an ongoing youth participatory action research study designed to evaluate the Enrichment to Empowerment (E2E) Program, a participatory enrichment and sociopolitical development intervention to prevent violence exposure among adolescents. The current study’s participants include the baseline sample recruited to evaluate E2E. The study protocol was reviewed and approved by Tulane University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Participants
The sample for the current study comprised 276 youth and young adults ages 14 to 24 years old (M = 17.76, SD = 2.38). Just over half identified as cisgender (i.e., non-transgender) girls/women (54%, n = 149) and 40.6% (n = 112) identified as cisgender boys/men; the remaining 5.4% (n = 15) identified as transgender. White youth made up 34.8% (n = 96) of the sample, while Black/African American participants were 31.5% (n = 87), Asian Americans were 10.14% (n = 28), Hispanic/Latine youth were 14.5% (n = 40), and 9.1% (n = 25) reported their race/ethnicity as Native American/Indigenous, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or North African/Middle Eastern, which were grouped into the category “Other Races.”
Recruitment
The study’s research team recruited participants through fliers distributed by email, social media, e-newsletters, and listservs maintained by the Louisiana Department of Health Institute at Tulane University beginning in July 2023; recruitment lasted for approximately two weeks. Eligibility for survey participation was limited to youth ages 14 to 24 years old, whose primary residence was New Orleans, Louisiana, the focal city for the ongoing parent study. Recruitment materials described the survey as a “research study to improve programming and understand exposure to community and police violence in New Orleans.” The recruitment materials also stated that participants would complete two 20-min surveys online, before and after the violence reduction campaign, and provided information about remuneration for participation.
Survey Procedure
Youth enrolled by accessing an electronic survey hosted by Qualtrics through links and QR codes on the recruitment materials. Participants immediately viewed an assent/consent script to which they had to indicate agreement before beginning the survey. Per Tulane University’s IRB determination, parental consent was waived for participants under 18. The survey took approximately 20 min to complete. Participants provided demographic information including their age and residential address, which was later verified by the research team; ineligible participants were taken to a landing page stating that they were not eligible to participate. Participants received a $40 e-gift card upon completion of the entire survey, or a $20 e-gift card for partial completion.
Survey Scales
Demographics
The survey collected information on neighborhood, age, grade in school, race/ethnicity, and gender. Participants first completed an item with the following question stem: “Below is a list of areas within New Orleans. In the grid, please select the part of New Orleans in which you. . ..” with the following prompts: live; work; attend school; attend church or religious services; hang out with friends; hang out with family. Participants selected from 15 different neighborhoods provided. Gender was assessed with the question: “With which of the following genders do you identify?” and the following options: Female, Male, Non-binary, Trans, Gender queer, Gender fluid, Gender variant, Questioning, Unsure, Prefer not to answer, and My gender is not listed (Please specify). Participants that selected any response outside of “Male” or “Female” were grouped into the category “Transgender” for analysis.
Additional Measures
Participants completed scales not analyzed for the present study that measured their racial identity (Sellers, 1997), critical consciousness (Diemer et al., 2017), and several scales developed by Dookhoo (2015) that measured activism identification, online activism, online versus offline activism, and social media use.
Outcomes
Gun Beliefs
Attitudes about the use of firearms for safety and was measured with a single item: “I would feel safer if more people living in my community had guns.” Participants indicated their agreement on a four-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”). The item was recoded into a binary variable, where 1 indicates those who selected “strongly agree” or “agree” to represent positive gun beliefs and 0 indicates “strongly disagree” and “disagree” responses to represent negative gun beliefs.
Perceived Ease of Gun Access
One item was used to assess the ease with which respondents felt they could obtain a gun (“how easy do you think it would be to get a gun if you wanted one?”). Participants selected their response from a four-point Likert ranging from “almost impossible” to “very easy.” The item was dichotomized for analysis so that “fairly easy” or “very easy” were defined as high perceived ease of gun access (1) and “almost impossible” or “very difficult” (0) were defined as low perceived ease of gun access. We also examined moderation by perceived ease of gun access in the exposure-gun belief relationships.
Exposures
Direct Gun Violence
Direct gun violence was measured with two yes/no items taken from Brennan et al.’s (2007) Exposure to Violence (ETV) scale with the introductory text: “The next section asks questions about YOUR personal experience with violence happening in neighborhoods or at school over the past 6 months.” The items were: “over the past 6 months, have YOU been shot? This does not include being shot with any type of toy gun (ex. BB gun, paint gun, airsoft gun, pellet gun, etc.)” and “Over the past 6 months, have YOU been shot at, but not actually wounded?” These items were operationalized as a binary variable for analysis, where 1 represents any “yes” response and 0 indicates a “no” response to both questions.
Indirect Gun Violence
Indirect gun violence assessed experiences of witnessing gun violence or personal connections to a victim with the same two yes/no items from Brennan et al.’s (2007) ETV scale used to measure direct gun violence. A sample item is: “Over the past 6 months, have you seen SOMEONE ELSE get shot at, but not actually wounded?” These items were operationalized as a binary variable for analysis, where 1 represents any “yes” response and 0 indicates a “no” response to both questions.
Direct Police Violence
Direct police violence exposure was operationalized as a summary of six dichotomous (yes/no) items from DeVylder et al.’s (2017) Police Practices Inventory, indicating whether they had experienced violence at the hands of a police officer in the past 6 months. A sample item is: “Has a police officer in the past 6 months hit, punched, kicked, dragged, beat, or otherwise used physical force against YOU?”. A summary score was created. The Cronbach’s alpha analysis for the scale was .72, indicating good reliability.
Indirect Police Violence
Indirect police violence exposure was measured with six dichotomous items taken from DeVylder et al.’s (2017) Police Practices Inventory, indicating whether, in the past 6 months, a police officer had perpetrated violence against a close friend or family member(s). A sample item is “Has a police officer in the past 6 months engaged in non-physical aggression towards a close friend or family member, including threatening, intimidating, stopping them without probable cause, or using slurs?”. The items were totaled to create a summary score. The reliability analysis for Cronbach’s alpha was .72, indicating good internal consistency.
Data Analysis
Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariable statistics were calculated, with chi-square tests for categorical variables and t-tests for continuous variables utilized to compare characteristics between youth with negative and positive gun beliefs and perceived ease of access, separately. As fewer than 5% of values were missing for most variables, cases with missing data were removed automatically in the regression models and no missing data imputation was applied. Logistic regression was employed to analyze the association between direct and indirect experiences of firearm violence and police violence and gun beliefs and perceived ease of gun access, both for crude models and multivariable adjusted models, separately. We also examined a full model with all types of violence exposure, direct and indirect, with tests for collinearity. The adjusted models included age, gender, and race as covariables. For the analyses, “Latine” refers to participants that indicated their ethnicity as “Hispanic/Latine” and their race as “White.” Effect modification by perceived ease of gun access in the gun beliefs/exposure relation, as well as effect modification by gender and race were tested with two-way interaction terms. All analyses were performed using SAS 9.4 for Windows (SAS Institute, n.d.)
Results
Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. The overall mean for gun beliefs was slightly higher than the scale midpoint, M = 2.63, SD = 1.07; a total of 46% of the sample endorsed beliefs in gun ownership for safety. Gun beliefs also differed significantly across racial groups, according to the Chi-square test (p = .0001). Chi-square tests indicated that the positive gun beliefs groups reported significantly higher experiences of direct and indirect gun violence exposure (p < .0001). In addition, t-tests showed that the positive gun beliefs group experienced significantly greater experiences of direct and indirect police violence exposure (p < .0001) compared with the negative gun beliefs group. However, there were no significant differences by age (p = .21), and no differences between genders (p = .18). In terms of perceived ease of gun access (M = 2.66, SD = .91), 57% of the sample indicated that it was easy or very easy to get a gun. We observed no differences in perceived ease of gun access across age (p = .17), gender (p = .59), or race (p = .08). Results also indicated no differences in perceived ease of gun access for indirect gun violence exposure (p = .60), direct police violence exposure (p = .69), or indirect police violence exposure (p = .51). There were no differences in perceived ease of gun access for direct gun violence exposure (p = .53.) Most participants reported no direct gun violence exposure (55.43%, M = 0.55, SD = 0.5). The average indirect gun violence exposure total was 1.88 (SD = 1.63). Direct police violence exposure was slightly higher (M = 2.19, SD = 1.49), and indirect police violence exposure indicated an average of two incidents of police violence (M = 2.34, SD = 1.45).
Characteristics of Youth Survey Participants by Gun Beliefs and Perceived Ease of Gun Access (N = 276).
Note. = Cisgender Boys and Cisgender Girls are shortened to Boys and Girls. Perceived ease of gun access is shortened to High Gun Access and Low Gun Access. SD = standard deviation.
p < .05 based on chi-square or t-test, comparing characteristics between youth with positive and negative gun beliefs and high and low gun access, separately.
The results of the association between direct and indirect experiences of firearm violence and police violence experiences and gun beliefs are shown in Table 2. According to crude models, the likelihood of positive gun beliefs is nearly six times greater among those youth with direct gun violence experience (95% CI [3.33, 9.43]) and 53% higher for each increased indirect gun violence exposure (95% CI [1.30, 1.80]). Similarly, in crude models, the likelihood of negative gun beliefs increased by 76% for each direct police violence exposure event increase (95% CI [1.46, 2.13]) and 82% for each indirect police violence exposure event increase (95% CI [1.50, 2.21]). The magnitude, significance, and direction of the associations between direct and indirect experiences of firearm violence and police violence experiences on gun beliefs remained similar even after accounting for age, gender, and race.
Results from Regression Models to Examine Associations between Exposure to Violence, Positive Gun Beliefs, and High Perceived Ease of Gun Access (N = 276).
Note. Perceived ease of gun access is shortened to High Gun Access and Low Gun Access. Adjusted models are adjusted for age, gender, and race. OR = odds ratio; CI = confidence interval.
p < .001.
The results of the association between direct and indirect experiences of firearm violence and police violence experiences and perceived ease of gun access are also depicted in Table 2. As shown, there were no significant associations between direct and indirect experiences of firearm violence and police violence experiences and gun access, according to crude and adjusted models.
In a full model with all forms of direct and indirect violence exposure, we found that direct firearm violence exposure played the largest role in gun beliefs as shown in Figure 1. While all forms of violence exposure were associated with more positive gun beliefs, only direct firearm violence exposure was statistically significant after considering other forms of exposure, with a more than three-fold likelihood of positive gun beliefs for youth exposed to greater direct firearm violence exposure (95% CI [1.56, 6.17]). Collinearity tests revealed no significant collinearity with all forms of violence in one model.
Full adjusted model of direct and indirect violence exposure and association with positive gun beliefs.
We also examined effect modification by perceived ease of gun access in the gun belief-violence exposure association, given the potential influence that access to guns may have on beliefs. The results of full models with all forms of violence exposure included, stratified by gun access, are shown in Figure 2. As in the full sample, among youth with high perceived ease of gun access, direct violence exposure was most strongly associated with positive gun beliefs (aOR = 14.84, 95% CI [3.97, 55.50]). Among youth with lower perceived gun access, indirect police violence exposure was most strongly associated with positive gun beliefs, although marginally significant (aOR = 1.43, 95% CI [0.92, 2.23]).
The association between violence exposure and positive gun beliefs, stratified by perceived ease of gun access.
We also examined effect modification by gender and race in the full models. While interaction terms were significant, stratified analyses was only possible for groups with at least 30 observations. Among cisgender boys, indirect police violence was marginally associated with positive gun beliefs (aOR = 1.65, 95% CI [0.99, 2.73]). Among cisgender girls, direct gun violence was significantly associated with gun beliefs, with a more than five-fold likelihood of positive gun beliefs for girls with greater exposure to direct gun violence (aOR = 5.24, 95% CI [1.97, 13.96]). With respect to race and ethnicity, among Black youth, direct gun violence was also most strongly associated with positive gun beliefs (aOR = 5.09, 95% CI [1.26, 20.50]), while among White youth, indirect police violence exposure was significantly associated with positive gun beliefs (aOR = 1.98, 95% CI [1.12, 3.47]). Among Latine youth, indirect gun violence exposure was most strongly associated with positive gun beliefs (aOR = 3.95, 95% CI [1.01, 15.50]).
Discussion
The study sought to investigate the associations between firearm-related beliefs and perceived ease of firearm access to both firearm and police violence exposure among a multiracial sample of youth in New Orleans, Louisiana. We hypothesized that direct and indirect exposure to firearm violence and police violence would both be associated with more positive beliefs regarding firearm ownership for safety and greater perceived ease of firearm access. Although we found confirmation for the association between all forms of violence exposure and stronger endorsement of gun ownership for safety, we did not find confirmation of any relation between ease of firearm access and any violence exposure.
Both direct and indirect exposure to firearm violence and police violence were associated with endorsement in the belief that more community gun ownership would increase safety. Empirical literature of youth in urban centers has confirmed an association between firearm violence exposure and firearm carriage (Baiden et al., 2024; Spano & Bolland, 2013), but it is notable that we found that positive gun beliefs were significantly associated with direct and indirect gun violence exposure. Youth, particularly Black youth, have reported significant psychological distress from indirect exposure to firearm violence (Mitchell et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2020), and a recent review suggests that community firearm violence exposure has deleterious behavioral effects similar to direct violence involvement (Bancalari et al., 2022). However, even though young people from high-violence communities are deeply troubled by community firearm violence, these results may reflect societal norms about the utility of guns for protection, a deeply entrenched belief in the United States (Pogge et al., 2021). Future research should seek to uncover how firearm beliefs are associated with firearm carriage, firearm use, and violence exposure. In addition, although this study defined “indirect” exposure as knowing someone involved with firearm violence, future studies should take a more granular approach to fully capture how witnessing firearm violence differs from knowing a victim, and hearing about an incident of community firearm violence (see Bancalari et al., 2022 for typology).
Police violence exposure has been a growing subject of empirical study in recent years. This study provides a novel contribution with an examination of how direct and indirect police violence relate to beliefs in carrying guns for protection. Our findings align with a recent study that showed that mistrust in police predicts firearm carriage among youth, although for Black youth, firearm carriage was irrespective of mistrust in police (Sokol et al., 2022). Witnessing or experiencing violence by law enforcement may strengthen the notion that firearms are needed for safety if the institution of policing cannot be trusted to provide protection. It is possible that the specificity of cultural norms in the American south may have strengthened stronger beliefs in guns for safety after police violence exposure (Lantz & Wenger, 2021), or it may be influenced by high levels of media exposure about police killings of unarmed civilians (Campbell & Valera, 2020). Future research should explore pathways for beliefs in defensive gun ownership in relation to police violence exposure. The type of firearm violence may be influential; for example, exposure to news about school shootings may lower endorsement of the use of firearms for safety among today’s youth.
The results did not support our second hypothesis, as there were no significant associations between perceived ease of firearm access and direct and indirect gun and police violence exposure. This finding was unexpected, given that firearm violence and police violence disproportionately affect predominantly minoritized communities (Bottiani et al., 2021; DeVylder et al., 2022), and youth of color also report higher access to firearms and higher rates of firearm carriage (Teplin et al., 2021). It is possible that gun ownership is so widespread that firearm violence exposure is irrelevant to access, given that firearms are easy for adolescents to obtain (Wilkinson & Fagan, 2001). Although the present study used a cross-sectional sample, violence prevention researchers may want to focus on firearm carriage or gun violence perpetration to fully elucidate firearm risk and for potential protective factors.
In examination of all forms of direct and indirect violence together, we found that in this sample, direct firearm violence exposure played the largest role in firearm carrying beliefs. This is not surprising given the impact of direct gun violence exposure. Furthermore, we observed differences in the association between direct and indirect forms of violence and firearm carrying beliefs by perceived ease of gun access, as well as by gender and race/ethnicity for select groups given sample size. For cisgender boys, indirect police violence was most strongly associated with high firearm carrying beliefs, whereas among cisgender girls, direct gun violence played the largest role. Overall, boys are more likely to have greater weapon involvement girls among adolescents from diverse racial/ethnic groups (Shetgiri et al., 2016). Warner (2020) found among adults who do not own a gun, men reported their future gun ownership to be motivated by feeling respected and in control, whereas women were more likely to report protection as the reason for future gun ownership. Thus, the observed difference between cisgender boys and girls in the current study could be due to emotional and practical motivations associated with gun carrying beliefs and behaviors. Future studies should examine the psychology of firearm carriage decisions across gender that include but also extend beyond direct and indirect violence exposures.
Direct gun violence exposure also was most strongly associated with greater firearm carrying beliefs among Black youth; while among White youth, indirect police violence played the largest role and among Latine youth, indirect gun violence exposure. We know very little about firearm carrying beliefs according to sociodemographic groups and these results do provide some insight into the heterogeneity in forms of violence exposure by gender and race or ethnic groups that may be linked to firearm carrying beliefs. Future research can use qualitative research to explain the nature and potential antecedents of these race-based differences.
Limitations and Future Directions
Despite important findings, this study has some limitations. First, this was a cross-sectional sample and thus is not necessarily generalizable to all U.S. adolescents and young adults. Second, although the sample was inclusive of transgender participants, targeted sampling is needed to fully draw conclusions about how violence exposure and gun beliefs intersect for gender minorities. Third, our survey did not measure gun carriage or violence perpetration. These are two key risk factors for firearm-related injury, and undoubtedly provide a more comprehensive understanding of how gun beliefs and access relate to violence exposure. These limitations should not obscure this study’s contributions to the limited literature on gun beliefs, gun violence exposure, and police violence exposure—especially among youth. Although this work is not generalizable, it does offer important insight into firearm exposure and risk factors among youth in a Southern city with high firearm violence. Future research should use longitudinal methodologies and sample multiple cities to produce representative data. Similarly, our inclusion of transgender participants provides analysis of their experiences, which have been virtually unexplored (Combs, 2022). Studies focused on gender identity as a function of youth violence should include firearm-related measures to build out the scant literature. Finally, because perpetration and other relevant covariates (i.e., substance use, delinquency, parental firearm carriage) were not measured, future research should include these factors to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how they may guide perceived firearm access and firearm-related beliefs.
Policy and Practice Recommendations
Lastly, we offer a recommendation to apply these findings for policy and practice. Because direct and indirect exposure to gun violence is associated with stronger beliefs in using firearms for safety, prevention programs that promote young people’s feelings of safety could be developed and supported. Previous research has found that youth’s feelings of community safety are associated with a clean and functioning built environment (e.g., sidewalks and parks; Moss et al., 2024) and social support (Anderson et al., 2018). Therefore, programs that serve youth could target building connections, such as youth sports or mentorship program. In addition, “beautification efforts” could also be leveraged to support youth’s feelings of safety (Stewart et al., 2019). Overall, more work should center how to mitigate the effects of firearm exposure. As this type of violence maintains dominance in the U.S., practitioners will require tools that will adequately address the particular trauma of firearm violence.
Footnotes
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available to protect participant confidentiality, but deidentified data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Data collection and personnel support were supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH, R01ES020447) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, U01CE003384).
Ethical Approval
This study was approved by the Tulane University and Louisiana Department of Health Institutional Review Boards.
