Elsevier

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 36, Issue 2, May–June 2008, Pages 154-164
Journal of Criminal Justice

Carrying weapons to school for protection: An analysis of the 2001 school crime supplement data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2008.02.005Get rights and content

Abstract

This study focused on the reasons why adolescents bring guns to schools. It is argued that the etiology for carrying other weapons to school is not the same as that for carrying a gun to school for protection. Data from a nationally representative sample of school youth were analyzed with an appropriate analytic technique—multinomial logistic regression in dealing with nominal dependent variable. The results supported the hypotheses that both correlates and correlational strengths of carrying guns and other weapons to school for protection are different. Such factors as others' drug use, gangs at school, skipping school, perception, and age influence the probability of carrying other weapons to school, but are not related to carrying a gun to school. The three factors that relate to both carrying a gun and other weapons to schools are physical fights, peers' carrying guns, and gender. Their correlational strengths, however, are quite different.

Introduction

The fundamental purpose of government is to establish and maintain order, a situation that is especially important for the weaker groups in a society, such as the old and the young. The study of carrying weapons to school is important because it concerns the safety of one of the weak groups in society. When gunshots are heard on school campuses, they arouse people's strong emotions. The literature on why youth carry guns, however, is clouded. The burgeoning literature that focuses on weapon carrying aggregates less lethal weapon carrying and gun carrying into the same category (Bailey et al., 1997, DuRant et al., 1995, Forrest et al., 2000, Kulig et al., 1998, Rountree, 2000, Simon et al., 1999, Wilcox and Clayton, 2001). Most studies do not differentiate among purposes for carrying weapons (Cook and Ludwig, 2004, DuRant et al., 1995, Forrest et al., 2000, Kulig et al., 1998, Simon et al., 1999, Wilcox and Clayton, 2001). The studies are local in nature (DuRant et al., 1995, Kingery et al., 1996, Kulig et al., 1998, Lizotte et al., 2000, Lizotte et al., 1994, Rountree, 2000, Sheley and Brewer, 1995, Smith, 1996, Wilcox and Clayton, 2001), or statewide (Bailey et al., 1997, Hayes and Hemenway, 1999, Ruddell and Mays, 2003), or nonrandom (Braga and Kennedy, 2001, DuRant et al., 1995, Price et al., 1991, Sheley and Wright, 1995). There is a conspicuous absence of national studies on why guns are brought to school. This study attempted to address some of the problems in the current research on carrying guns and other weapons to school, and to advance the understanding of the characteristics of those who carry guns versus other weapons to schools.

Gun violence in the United States is both a public health problem and a criminal justice issue (Fagan and Wilkinson, 1998, Lizotte et al., 1994). Gun-related juvenile homicide peaked in the early 1990s (Greenbaum, 1997). Despite a decline in recent years, homicide rates in the U.S. remain high compared with other industrialized countries (Zimring & Hawkins, 1997). Firearms are still the weapons most frequently used for murder (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2002). The impact of gun violence is even more pronounced among juveniles and young adults. For persons between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, the homicide rate of 15.2 per 100,000 U.S. residents is higher than the combined total homicide rate of all other industrialized nations (Peters, Kochanek, & Murphy, 1998). From 1994 through 1999, about seven in ten murders in schools involved some type of firearm, and approximately one in two murders in schools involved a handgun (Perkins, 2003). Between 1994 and 1999, 172 students were murdered in school-associated violence in the United States (Anderson et al., 2001).

Although gun violence in schools is rare, it has devastating consequences when it occurs. It undermines the quality of learning experiences, it reduces the positive activities of people associated with the campuses, and it attracts negative media coverage. Local, state, and national newspapers and television swamp the schools to do stories on the incidents because gun violence is significantly different from less lethal forms of violence, such as fist fighting or even violence with a sharp weapon, like a knife or a razor. While a low level of violence has always been a part of the growing-up experience for teenagers, the presence of a gun has changed the dynamics of interpersonal conflict (DuRant et al., 1995). Whenever gunshots are heard on school campuses, whether people live in a leafy suburb or in an inner city, few can pretend that life is normal. When someone brings a gun to school, campus safety becomes a major concern, and the school is no longer perceived as a place with a special, erudite environment protected from hazardous worldly happenings. Due to the strong public reaction to the presence of guns in schools, a better understanding of the etiology of such behavior is warranted.

Section snippets

Literature review

Gun ownership is deeply rooted in the American culture. In fact, America is described as a nation under gun (Cao et al., 2002, Wright et al., 1983). This characterization reflects not only America's high rate of gun-related violence, but also the widespread ownership of firearms. There is a rich literature on why people own guns (Kleck, 1991, Wright et al., 1983), and many theoretical models have been developed to explain why Americans own guns (Cao, Cullen, & Link, 1997). More recently, some

The sample

The data from the 2001 School Crime Supplement (SCS, thereafter) were part of the National Crime Victimization Survey, available from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The Supplement was an effort to provide information about school-related victimizations on a national level so that policymakers as well as academic researchers and practitioners can make informed decisions concerning this issue. The

Dependent variable

The dependent variable refers to carrying a specific category of weapon (a gun, or other weapons) to school in the past six months. This three-category variable was created by reorganizing three items in the survey so that those who brought a gun to school were coded as 2, a knife and/or any other form of weapons as 1, and those who never carried any weapons to school served as the reference category in the analysis. The exact wording of these items were: (1) “Some people bring guns, knives, or

Results

Table 1 presents the descriptive sample characteristics. As expected, carrying a weapon to school for protection is a rare event. About 98 percent of students in the sample did not carry any weapons to school for protection in the past six months. Among those 2 percent who carried a weapon to school, the majority of them (1.3 percent) carried other weapons to school, and only .5 percent of them carried a gun.4

Discussion

By analyzing the 2001 School Crime Supplement data consisting of a nationally representative sample of school adolescents from ages twelve to eighteen, this study tested whether or not the social correlates of carrying other weapons and for carrying guns for protection to school are the same, and that when they share a correlation, whether or not the strengths of the correlation are different. Using an appropriate regression technique of analysis—multinomial logistic regression in dealing with

Acknowledgements

We want to thank Professor Alethea Helbig for polishing the language of the article. All viewpoints are those of the authors.

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