Early Household Gun Exposure and Youth Violence Perpetration

Abstract

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I estimate the effects of early household gun exposure on violence perpetration examined in youth and adolescents. Specifically, I predict the effects of being an individual living in a household with a gun(s) accessible on the odds of pulling a knife or gun on someone, shooting or stabbing someone, participating in a group fight, engaging in physical fighting, and using or threatening to use a weapon to get something from someone. Results suggest that early household gun exposure is a significant predictor of violence perpetration during the time closest to the incidence of the exposure. However, when accounting for a specified set of controls, all of which are based on findings in preexisting literature, the magnitude and significance of these estimates were greatly reduced.