According to a study, 6 percent of Florida teenagers own guns, a 65 percent rise in just 20 years

Protestors rallying for gun control and increased regulations on guns – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by Heidi Besen

The number of teenagers with guns has climbed, according to new research, despite growing worries about an increase in gun deaths among children.

From 2002 to 2022, Florida’s adolescent general handgun carrying rate rose by 65 percent, from 3.7 percent to 6 percent, according to a report released Monday in the journal Pediatrics. The groups that made the biggest contributions to the growth were white students, middle school-aged adolescents, and females.

“These findings indicate the need to specifically tailor earlier prevention strategies focused on handgun access and carrying toward female and middle school students, with ongoing attention to rural and male adolescents across racial and ethnic identities, who still have the highest prevalence of carriage after a 20-year period,” the researchers wrote.

The Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey, a cross-sectional survey of middle and high school students in Florida, provided the researchers with the data they used. Over 700,000 student responses were examined in all.

The study found that while overall handgun carrying increased, school-based carrying fell by 60 percent, from 1.1 percent to 0.4 percent. The study also discovered a 39 percent drop in positive perceptions regarding school carrying.

The authors pointed out that given the rise in school shootings over the previous 25 years, both of these declines at first appeared incongruous.

“Ongoing research should explore factors influencing regional and sociodemographic differences in these trends, such as the increases in school safety measures (eg, controlling access to buildings, requiring visitors to sign in, using security badges) or increases in the presence of security or law enforcement officers,” the authors stated.

They also pointed out the study’s shortcomings, such as its reliance on self-reporting, which is subject to bias.

In the US, firearms are the primary cause of mortality for kids and teens, and starting in 2020, the number of deaths among those aged 15 to 19 sharply increased. According to another recent study, the number of nonfatal gunshot injuries among minors under the age of 18 rose by 113.1 percent between 2011 and 2021.

According to a research that was published last month in JAMA Pediatrics, states with loose gun laws had an increase in child gun fatalities, and other states saw an increase in child gun deaths after changing their gun control legislation. In the meantime, pediatric deaths related to guns either stayed the same or, in certain situations, decreased in the states with the strictest legislation.


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