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.
I stand in awe - in AWE - of this man's intellect!
"Guns at college Matthew Miller; Journal of American College Health; Jul 1999; Vol. 48, Iss. 1; pg. 7, 6 pgsAbstract:
A random sample of more than 15,000 undergraduate students from 130 4-year colleges answered a mailed questionnaire concerning firearm possession. Approximately 3.5[percent] of the sampled students reported they had a working firearm at college. Students with guns were more likely to be male, White, or Native American; to binge drink and need to start the day with alcohol; to be members of a ..."
Now, this article is from 1999 and it's news today? Or did this guy do the study over? Notice the article say 3.5% of students said they had a working firearm at College and they include Indians with whites. What happened to them in the article?
Huh? Not in my experience...
Of course this "study" is academic bilgewater of the lowest grade. Peer-review should have chopped it up into Julienne fries, but, as this is the squishy "sciences," they'll get away with it...
I was kind of wondering if the good Doctor had excluded Vermont, New Hamphire and Maine (to say the least) from New England.
By the way, it was reported today that 222 moose had been taken in the four day VT moose hunting season. Perhaps they were downed with evil SUV's since guns are so rare up here.
I can hear the bar chippies now...
"Is that a .44 Magnum with an 8" bull barrel in your pocket?
Or are you just glad to see me?"
This is absolute nonsense.
I can see you aren't real familiar with the esoteric art of Zen statistical analysis. You see: if you build it, they will come... if you don't demand a cure for aids, you will contract it... Opposition to homosexuality means you are one... you must support welfare or you will become poor... Up is really down and left is really right, if you are but deep enough to comprehend it. Liberal logic is far too deep to make sense.
From gunchicks.com
Is that a new wildcat I haven't heard about yet? And where can I get one?!?!?!?
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