Young heavy drinkers are more likely to carry handguns

Photo by Tom Def, Unsplash

A young person in rural America who drinks heavily is 43% more likely to carry a handgun in the following year, according to a study conducted in seven states over 15 years and published in The Journal of Rural Health.

The study defined "heavy drinking" as consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks in a row at least once in the two weeks before the question was asked of 2,002 youth, aged 12 to 26, from 12 rural communities in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Survey responses were collected annually from 2004 to 2019 starting with children who were in fifth or sixth grade, as part of the university's national Community Youth Development Study (CYDS).

Lead author Alice Ellyson, an acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, told The Rural Blog that no Southern states were included in the study because the Southern communities that participated in the survey consortium that helped develop the CYDS "chose not to continue as part of the community-randomized trial portion where we obtained our data for this study."

The university says, "Recent evidence suggests that rural adolescents may start carrying a handgun earlier and carry with a higher frequency and duration than their urban counterparts. Handgun-carrying is associated with bullying, physical violence, and other risk factors for violence. Understanding youth behaviors associated with carrying a firearm has significant safety implications. In 2020, suicide and homicide were among the leading causes of death among U.S. individuals ages 12-26 years. About 91% of homicides and 52% of suicides among this age group involved a firearm."

Communities That Care is a program for preventing these behaviors and their consequences in rural areas. It has no communities in Southern states, "but they would be very willing for that to change," Ellyson told The Rural Blog.