Alcohol use and subsequent handgun carrying were positively associated during adolescence and young adulthood among individuals who grew up in rural areas, similar to findings in urban areas. Reducing alcohol use may be an important strategy to prevent handgun carrying and firearm-related harm among young people in rural areas.

In the rural United States, an adolescent who drinks heavily has a 43% greater probability of carrying a handgun in the following year, according to a study published this month in The Journal of Rural Health.

“While there has been a lot of research on this correlation in urban areas, little is known about the association between alcohol use, particularly heavy drinking, and handgun carrying in rural areas,” said lead author Alice Ellyson, an acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and investigator in UW Medicine’s Firearm Injury & Policy Research Program.

  • zepheriths@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think the to are related if it only presented itself in rural America and no where else. If a similar thing happened in either urban US, or rural Russia, it could be more easy to link it to it being drinking that causes that. This study has to many variables