High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence: A National Survey

摘要

Recent shootings by students of peers and teachers in school settings, where such events were markedly unexpected, have provoked fear and outrage in America. For many, the youth-gun problem seems to be spreading beyond inner cities to suburbs and small towns and from bad boy cultures (i.e., those characterized by relatively high poverty, crime, unemployment, and school dropout rates) to good boy cultures (characterized by fewer such social ills). Yet, generalizable and systematic knowledge about gun-related violence among youths is relatively scarce. Most national studies to date have asked only the broadest questions about weapon-related behavior. Studies using more select samples have provided more information but, in turn, have been hampered by questions of generalizability. The most detailed studies available, for example, are based on samples of the most serious confined offenders and recently arrested youths (hardly populations from which to generalize) and students from inner-city schools previously identified as having gun-related problems (rendering questionable the extent to which the results pertain to other students, whether from the suburbs or inner cities). The firearms experience of the average youth based on results from an NIJ-funded 1996 survey of male 10th and 11th graders from 53 high schools nationwide. Previous studies have yielded very little knowledge about firearm-related behavior applicable to the average youth, either because the study focused on select populations, or because it asked only the most general of weapon-related questions.