Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/96875096081
Laurence S. Fine
Laurence S. Fine is a Government Major and sophomore at Wesleyan University who is very proudly from New Jersey. He first joined Students Demand Action after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in February, 2018. Since then, he led Students Demand Action Bergen County for three and a half years and served on the Students Demand Action National Advisory Board for two years. He has organized countless protests, campaigns, voter registration drives, and meetings with lawmakers at the municipal, county, state, and federal level to discuss gun policy. Last summer, Laurence interned for U.S. Senator Cory Booker, a champion for gun safety in the U.S. Senate.
Abstract:
My research exposes the relationship between age and gun ownership across shotguns, rifles, and pistols. My analysis indicated a positive relationship between age and gun ownership across all three of these gun owners groups. Age best increased the chances of owning a shotgun, followed by rifles and then pistols. When examining the impact of fear of walking at night as a moderating variable, it was negatively associated with gun ownership, yet the least negatively associated with pistols. In other words, while fear decreased the odds of owning a gun, fear had a weaker impact on reducing the odds of pistol ownership than shotgun and rifle ownership, possibly identifying pistols as being a gun of choice for those who own guns because they are scared to walk at night.
This type of data can prove useful to gun violence prevention organizers who are seeking ways to market gun-specific gun safety measures. In general, gun violence research is widely underfunded, especially given that over 48,000 Americans died from guns in 2021 (National Center for Health Statistics, 2023).
Guns