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IMPORTANT NEW FINDINGS COULD
HELP US UNDERSTAND WHY
PEOPLE CARRY WEAPONS
Social media, drill music and
middle-class drug use have been
variously blamed for the sudden
increase in knife-related murders
of young people in England and
Wales. But not only are these
assertions about why people carry
knives almost certainly wrong,
they are also far too simplistic to
explain this complex behaviour.
Despite the great harm that weapons
can cause, we only have a very
rudimentary understanding of what
drives someone to carry one. There
is some truth in the idea that people
carry knives because they fear being
attacked with a knife if they don’t,
but that’s far from the full picture. My
research shows that weapon-carrying
in England and Wales is driven much
more by being involved in violence
than by fear or past victimisation.
I’ve also found that when someone’s
peers are involved in crime and when
a person distrusts the police, they are
more likely to carry a weapon.
It also shows that there is a surprising
degree of similarity between young
people who carry a weapon. That can
help us to better target interventions
to prevent this dangerous behaviour.
Finding a pattern
The relatively little research about
weapon-carrying that does exist
has been done in the US. There are
different laws and cultures around
weapons there, which means
that research may not apply to
other countries. In order to better
understand why young people in
England and Wales carry weapons,
I analysed the largest available
survey of young people’s offending
behaviour and looked for differences
between those who had carried a
weapon and those who had not.
I found that weapon-carrying was
By Iain Brennan, The University of Hull
rare – around 4% of 10- to 25-year-
olds who were surveyed reported
carrying a knife or gun in the year
before they were surveyed. The
analyses found that the peak age for
weapon-carrying was 17 – and being
male tripled the risk. People who had
a recent history of violence or drug
use, who had little or no trust in the
police or had lots of peers who had
been in trouble with the police were
each more than twice as likely to
carry a weapon. Compared to these
factors, being a victim of violence or
feeling that one’s neighbourhood
is dangerous were not strongly
associated with weapon-carrying –
although the actual extent of disorder
in the person’s neighbourhood was a
good predictor.
The link between carrying a weapon
and distrusting the police is an
important new finding. While trust
of the police is a complex topic, it’s
possible that young people who live
in high-crime neighbourhoods or
who are already involved in crime may
not see the police as being able or
willing to protect them from harm. In
those situations, it is unsurprising that
a young person would see carrying a
weapon as justified or necessary.
These findings demonstrate that
weapon-carrying is a complex
behaviour and that it is influenced
by factors at many levels: individual
factors like a history of violence,
interpersonal factors like peer
offending and community factors
like neighbourhood disorder. Each of
these levels exert their own influence
on the decision to carry a weapon.
Many of the risk factors that have
been shown to influence carrying a
weapon in England and Wales are
similar to the risk factors for carrying a
gun in the US. This indicates that there
are some common causes for carrying
a weapon in different countries, which
means that some of the successful
interventions that have been used in
the US may well be effective here.
It should be said that while this study
is based on the largest available
survey of young people’s offending,
the data were collected between
2004 and 2006 – before Youtube,
WhatsApp and Snapchat became
popular ways for young people to
communicate. It was also gathered
before the advent of austerity, which
has resulted in dramatic cutbacks
to public and charitable services for
young people. We don’t know what
impact these developments have
had on weapon-carrying and other
violent behaviours.
The finding that a large amount of
weapon-carrying can be explained
by a small number of factors suggests
that weapon-carriers are quite
similar to each other – or at least that
weapon-carrying has some common
causes. For those working to prevent
weapon-carrying, this is useful to
know. While some interventions like
social media campaigns try to target
large sections of the population,
these findings suggest resources
would be more effectively spent
helping young people who exhibit
many of the risk factors for carrying a
weapon or supporting those people
who have already carried a weapon
to change this behaviour.
Based on this research, working with
peer groups of at-risk young people,
rather than individuals, and building
trust between these young people
and authorities, should yield positive
results as part of a long-term public
health-informed strategy to reduce
youth violence.
Article originally published on
www.theconversation.com