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Youths' Involvement With Guns
Motivation vs Availability
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2004;158:705.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings. |
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Gun policy is endlessly contentious, but there is at least one area of general agreement: unsupervised children and adolescents should not go armed in public. In fact, federal law stipulates a minimum age of 18 years for handgun possession and 21 years for purchasing a handgun from a dealer. But in practice, youths, especially older adolescent boys, are extensively involved with guns in the United States. For example, the National Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM) found that 11% of boys aged 15 to 19 years reported carrying a gun at least once in the preceding 30 days in 1995.1 The decision by youths to go armed is usually motivated by a felt need for self-defense. That fear is grounded in realityfor example, 20% of the boys in NSAM said they had had a gun or knife pulled on them in the previous yearbut the aggregate effect of widespread gun carrying . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Philip J. Cook, PhD
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Neighborhood Predictors of Concealed Firearm Carrying Among Children and Adolescents: Results From the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
Beth E. Molnar, Matthew J. Miller, Deborah Azrael, and Stephen L. Buka
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2004;158(7):657-664.
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