Just living near gun violence – even without direct exposure or injury – significantly hurts quality of life, according to a study published in the Journal of Urban Health. This finding from the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University reveals that shootings take a toll on millions of Americans who don’t show up in traditional victim tallies.
Survey data from 7,785 adults in nine states, including New Jersey, examined the effects of four types of gun violence exposure: being threatened with a gun, being shot, having a friend or family member get shot and witnessing or hearing about a neighborhood shooting. “We found that witnessing or hearing about a shooting in your neighborhood was the most common type of gun violence exposure, and it was associated with a decrease in quality of life across all five domains we measured,” said lead author Jennifer Paruk, a research associate at the research center.
The study revealed that 37 percent of participants reported at least one type of gun violence exposure, and the study population was representative of the overall population from those nine states, which means that more than a third of all people in those states – Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington – face exposure to gun violence. To read the full story.