Researchers at Rutgers University have found that adverse childhood experiences can make people more sensitive to potential threats from others, which in turn increases their risk of engaging in defensive gun use in adulthood. Their study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, used cross-sectional data from a subsample of 3,130 adults with firearm access drawn from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults.
Those surveyed were asked about their childhood experiences with abuse and neglect, their levels of social distrust and sensitivity to perceived threats, depressive symptoms and their self-reported use of a gun for self-defense. The authors first assessed the association between adverse childhood experiences and adulthood defensive gun use. They then evaluated the role of depressive symptoms and threat sensitivity in that relationship.
“Research that links risk factors from childhood to problems later in life often neglects the role that situational and cognitive factors might play,” said Sultan Altikriti, a postdoctoral fellow at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and lead author of the study. “We tried to unpack the cognitive factors through which experiences from childhood affect behavior in adulthood.” To read the full story.