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.
Know what you mean. I've been shooting guns since I was seven years old, and the only place I ever saw crack cocaine was on TV. Also, I must have been attending the wrong colleges for the last twenty years. Bud, we have been missing out on all the excitement, where does it happen on some other planet or something ?
I was brought up in eastern MA, and believe me, these Boston area academics think Framingham is western MA.
They were given whiskey and water; gin and water; vodka and water and brandy and water.
Since in each test the subjects got drunk, the researchers concluded that water makes people drunk.
These guys are SO good at establishing facts!
Is that a new wildcat I haven't heard about yet? And where can I get one?!?!?!?
LOLOL That's right it's a new wildcat. I'm sorry to say you can't get one though.
In an effort to sneak around the looming "sniper rifle" ban (and because I can't afford a .50 BMG) I decided to create the .222 Moose. I made a mold for a 500 grain .22 caliber bullet and necked down a 200 mm cannon shell. Using a length of 12" drill stem 'borrowed' from an oil field I bored a 72" bbl. I won't bore you with the details of fabricating the action but suffice it to say it is a single shot.
(The first model was a blowback semi-auto but it trashed the 1 ton pickup frame I mounted it on.)
The cartridge requires .267 lb.'s of Hodgdon's RETUMBO, so it's not cheap to shoot. But the expected accuracy should go out to twenty five miles (although the range is considerably further). Problems develop at lower altitudes with "meteor" effect. The atmosphere is so dense below 3,000 ft that even brass solids tend to 'flame out' before reaching targets further than ten miles.
I say 'expected accuracy' because I have yet to find quality optics that can overcome the mirages that occur when looking through more than fifteen miles of air, even at below freezing ambient temp's. It's also hard to find friends willing to spot targets more than twenty miles from the firing line. They complain that it's "boring" and "when do I get to shoot it?". I don't know why they can't see that with the driving times involved no one would get more than one shot per day. Where's the fun in that?
But I digress. Your question was "Where do I get one?".
So far my applications for an FFL have been rejected (what gets me is the unprofessional manner they use to notify me ... "Don't bother us again." " Where did you get our address?" "If you send us another application we'll send a SWAT team to your mother's house." ) Sooooo...I can't make one for you. I understand Saddam has an expert, or did, in long range guns but I think he only works with rather large calibers, ten inches and up. But with a little patience and some basic hand tools you can make your own .222 Moose.
My next wildcat is going to be a 1.357 Buffler Magnum pushing a 2,200 grain lead wadcutter out to a mile at over 3,000 ft. p. second. A short range bison bowling round.
Just watch. Some dimbulb at ATF will see this and I'll be getting a 4:AM wake up call tomorrow morning.
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