A new long-term study that has documented the lives of a diverse sample of children over the past three decades shows that the majority of gun carriers began to carry in adulthood, not adolescence. These two groups — which the authors call “adult-onset carriers” if they began carrying after 21 years of age and “adolescent-onset carriers” if their carrying started prior to 21 years of age — have very different patterns in exposure to violence prior to carrying, persistence in carrying, and in actual gun usage.
In “Dual Pathways of Concealed Gun Carrying and Use from Adolescence to Adulthood over a 25-Year Era of Change,” researchers from the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University leverage data from a representative sample of children originally from Chicago who were tracked over 25 years (1995-2021).
Using these long-term data, the authors demonstrate the dual pathways of adolescent-onset gun carrying and adult-onset carrying. Although prior research shows that gun carriers are motivated by the idea of protection, the concept of protection from what may be starkly different among the two groups.
For adolescent-onset carriers, there is a strong association between being exposed to gun violence first-hand — either in witnessing a shooting or in being shot — with beginning to carry soon after.
By contrast, for adult-onset carriers there is no association between direct exposure to gun violence and gun carrying. This pattern suggests that gun carrying among adults may be linked to perceived threats of a more general nature, like the idea that there is an imminent civil war or that violence is justified to protect the American way of life.
Persistence in carrying over time also differs between adult-onset and adolescent-onset carriers. Most adolescent-onset carriers do not continue to carry later in life; only 37% percent carried in 2021 (the year of the most recent follow-up study). Meanwhile, adult-onset carriers are more persistent in their carrying, with 85% percent carrying in 2021.
The usage of guns – whether it be shooting someone, shooting at someone, or brandishing a gun in self-defense – differs among the two groups as well. By age 40, both groups of carriers reached similar levels of gun usage with around 40% of carriers having used a gun.
However, their trajectories to that point differed greatly. For all adolescent-onset carriers who had ever used a gun, their first time doing so was prior to age 21; in other words, no one who began carrying a gun before turning 21 ended up using it for the first time after age 21. Meanwhile, the adult-onset carriers continued a relatively steady rate of first usage over time, increasing the cumulative percentage of those who have used a gun by age 40 to close to that of the adolescent-onset group.
There are additional race and sex factors at play; by age 40, around 48% of males had carried a gun, compared to just 16% of females, and Black individuals had carried at rates over two times as great as those of Hispanic and white individuals. However, those least likely to be exposed to gun violence (i.e., white respondents) are the most likely to begin carrying a firearm in reaction to being exposed.
Although adolescent- and adult-onset carriers are similar in that they are more likely to have had an arrest history as compared to non-carriers, the differences among gun carrying pathways are stark in terms of beginning, continuing, and using the guns that they carry. This finding takes on new relevance given recent social changes in America. In 2020 and 2021 the nation saw a sharp increase in adult gun carrying, coinciding with an uptick in gun purchases following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd.
These trends may be related to deeper patterns in overall cynicism about the police and institutions, fears of a changing world, and eroding trust in society’s general safety. As political conflict intensifies and the deep divide over gun usage and restrictions continues, understanding the circumstances under which people begin and continue carrying, and the ways in which they differ across age groups, is essential.
