Posted on 10/28/2002 12:58:34 PM PST by Pharmboy
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Approximately 4% of US college students own guns, and those that do are more likely than others to engage in certain high-risk behaviors, such as binge drinking, new study findings show.
Dr. Matthew Miller of Harvard University in Boston and his colleagues found that gun-owning college students tend to drink higher amounts of alcohol at a time, and when doing so, are more likely than others to have unprotected sex and run-ins with police.
Other high-risk behaviors more commonly noted in gun-owners included driving while drunk and using crack and cocaine. Students were also more likely to own guns if they were attending college in a part of the country where gun ownership was more common in the general population.
Miller told Reuters Health that the study did not assess why gun-owners are more likely to show high-risk behaviors in college than those without guns, but he speculated that this tendency "may reflect a disposition to both own guns and engage in risky behavior."
Alternatively, the researcher suggested that some gun-owners may become "emboldened" by their weapons, and may consequently act in ways they would not if they didn't own guns. However, he noted that the behaviors seen in the study--binge drinking and unprotected sex, for example--are not commonly seen as behaviors of an emboldened person.
Miller and his team obtained their findings from questionnaires completed by more than 10,000 undergraduate students from 119 colleges throughout the US.
The authors discovered that 4.3% of college students--and 8% of male students--said they brought guns to college. Half of gun-owners said they purchased a firearm for protection.
The authors discovered that gun-owners in college were most often white men who lived off campus with a significant other.
Gun-owning college students also tended to have more exposure to guns and gun violence than those who did not own firearms, the authors report in the recent issue of the Journal of American College Health. For example, students who owned guns for protection were more likely to be threatened with a gun at college.
Students who hailed from states in which many people own guns--such as states in the East South Atlantic region, where 38% of households have guns--were more than three times as likely as those from New England, where gun ownership is rare, to bring a gun to college. They were also more than twice as likely to have been threatened by a firearm at college.
"I suspect that many administrators are surprised that, on average, across the US 4% of students have guns," Miller told Reuters Health in an interview.
The researcher said that he hopes these results inspire administrators to investigate further what compels students to bring guns to college, and how this tendency might have an impact on violence committed on college campuses.
SOURCE: Journal of American College Health 2002.
Who in the HECK do they PAY to come up with some of these results????
Interesting that this is the only place where race is mentioned in the article. Specifically there is no mention of racial correlations with the "activities" such as smoking crack, only with gun ownership in general. When reading such articles, the most important thing one ought notice is what is not said.
As this poor excuse for a study shows no causality whatsoever, this can best be described as one-man's opinion. This is a perfect example of the 'Post Hoc Ergo Procto Hoc' logical falicy.
In a related study, it was revealed that college students who repeatedly shop in "big & tall" clothing stores tend to have more exposure to bigness and tallness than those who do not, and tend to exhibit those traits. The research did not address the reasons behind this trend.
Well, this stupid survey just raised the race card, so I'll see them and raise them a buck. Why was there no racial breakout of the problem gun owners versus the ones without these problems? I think I know the answer to that one.
Fat chance this "study" will do anything other than cause college administrators to place greater emphasis on how they will penalize students found to have guns.
The issue of real crime won't be mentioned (can we say assault on campus, boy and girls?) College security departments tend to hide information about "real" crime on campus (not good for student recruiting.)
Students were also more likely to own guns if they were attending college in a part of the country where gun ownership was more common in the general population.
Stunning.
Well, there's the problem! This isn't a "study" its a propaganda tool. 4%. I'm willing to bet that there is NO statistical correlation of student gun ownership to ANY of the so-called behaviors listed by the 'good' professor. Considering that college students drink a lot, and want to have sex a lot, and maybe use drugs a lot, if you flatten out the results from the other 96% of students, you get - nothing. The worst part of this is that the so-called journalists just go along with anything that fits their preconceived bias'.
This is absolute nonsense. A better question might be, "Of those who brought a gun to campus, how many were victims of rape in the last year?"
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