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.
Quit profiling me, you size-ist meanhearted pig! :^)
Just as stunning. Most colleges probably ban guns in on-campus housing, so OF COURSE most guns owners will live off campus. And since more men than women own guns, of course most will be male. And since whites are the dominant race, of course they will predominate. And since so many students cohabitate off-campus, of course that will be a factor as well.
This would be a much more revealing analysis if the idiot researchers ever bothered with the concept of a denominator - to factor in whether or not a certain segment was over- or under-represented against the baseline. The fact they didn't do that here speaks volumes as to their objectivity, or lack thereof.
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."
Yep, they're working overtime to prove their pet equation that gun owners = nutbars, and society would be better off if us nutbars didn't have those horrible nasty guns that make me want to climb into my SUV, fatten up at the Mickey D's drive through, smoke my crack and then cut loose a clip at pedestrians, all in the name of a little fun.
What an absolute crock - they really did their best to twist the facts to come up with a correlation here, namely by ignoring countless other factors that might have provided light instead of just heat.
Interesting conclusion. Anyone here want to take the negative side of the bet that it was obtained by correlating the postive answers to two questions such as?:
11)Do you have a gun for protection
17)Have you been threatened by a gun at college.
Would the study have drawn this conclusion?
"For example, students have been threatened with a gun at college were more likely to own guns for protection."
"Harvard University reported eleven sexual assaults in 1999. However, a recent survey by UHS indicates that the number of rapes in the undergraduate community may be far higher than reported."
"Approximately 481 female undergraduates replied to a recent UHS survey, of whom approximately four identified themselves as victims of "involuntary sexual penetration," and approximately nineteen more identified themselves as victims of "attempted involuntary sexual penetration."
"In The Crimson, representatives of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence estimated that if the UHS survey is representative of the undergraduate population, approximately fifty-two rapes took place last year."
The only reason that Dr. Matthew Miller of Harvard University in Boston and his colleagues think that gun ownership is low in NE is because they think Boston and Martha's Vineyard comprise all of NE.
What with deer season either ongoing or about to open in all six states, I suggest the good professor get himself a nice suede jacket and take a nice little woodland stroll up around Moosehead Lake just to prove his point. Someone might find his remains after the spring thaw.
They were also more than twice as likely to have been threatened by a firearm at college.
So someone knows they have guns, so they get a gun and threaten the gunowners? It don't add up, brothers and sisters, it don't add up.
I don't know, but any Al Qaeda or other nutballs that want to break up my nightclass with an AK are gonna have a nasty surprise in the form of the .357 in my front pocket and the Beretta 92FS in my backpack. The secret to success in college: carry lots of ammo.
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.
IF (big if) this were true then the guns would be off the street in short order. After all, doesn't Massachusetts have some pretty tough anti-gun laws?
The first thing I think of babies in day care, latch key kids and/or kids who raised themselves. SOMEONE should do a study of the effects of kids who get dumped in questionable day care centers from age 6 weeks on up to age 5, and whether a high percentage of those kids grow up angry, depressed, hostile, anti-social and prone to substance abuse. And whether the highest percentage of kids on Ritalin has anything to do with "babies sent to day care"(not ALL---some)
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