Rand Health Research Highlights. Guns in the Family: Firearm Storage Patterns in U.S. Homes With Children

Abstract

Many children in the United States have access to firearms in their homes, and the consequences can be tragic. Recent headlines tell a sad and increasingly familiar story: "Boy charged with attempted murder in shooting of 14-year-old girl," "Boy, 4, shot by 6-year-old," "Just a routine school shooting....Public health agencies, organizations representing children, and groups representing firearm owners offer consistent guidelines about how to store firearms to make them inaccessible to children: unload them, lock them up, and store them separately from ammunition. However, a RAND analysis of data regarding firearm ownership and storage patterns found that of the families in the United States with children and firearms, fewer than half store their firearms unloaded, locked, and away from ammunition. Using nationally representative data from a large interview survey by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), RAND researchers examined the prevalence of firearms in U.S. homes with children under 18 years old and learned how those firearms are stored.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA389875

Entities

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • African Americans
  • Ammunition
  • Children
  • Data Analysis
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Families (Human)
  • Health
  • Health Care
  • Physicians
  • Public Health
  • School Violence
  • United States
  • World Wide Web

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Gender and Food Studies
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.