Abstract
Individuals who sustain nonfatal gunshot wound (GSW) injuries are at substantially increased risk of subsequent firearm injury. There is a dearth of literature examining what, if any, firearm-related behavior changes occur among adults as a result of GSW injuries. Using survey data on firearm-related behaviors from an ongoing randomized controlled trial, we sought to describe changes in reported firearm-related behaviors among GSW patients following their injury. Our results suggest that patients with a GSW, especially firearm owners, may change their firearm-related behaviors following injury, some by increasing firearm-related safety and others by increasing frequency of behaviors that may place them at increased risk of subsequent injury. This study highlights the need for further examination of firearm-related behavior change among GSW patients and development of interventions to promote firearm safety among this population.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Elizabeth Griffin, MSW, Alvaro Martinez, Manal Jmaileh, Tamara Almira, and Navya Gunaje for their valuable contributions to this study.
Funding
Funding for this study was provided by the City of Seattle (contracts DA16-1570, DA17-1570, DA18-1570, and DA19-1570) in 2016-2019, Arnold Ventures in 2017–2018, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (UL1 TR002319 and TL1 TR002318) in 2018–2019. The views expressed in this report are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.
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Vivian H. Lyons, Frederick P. Rivara, Alice Ning-Xue Yan, Cara Currier, Erin Ballsmith, Kevin P. Haggerty, Lauren Whiteside, Anthony S. Floyd, Anjum Hajat and Ali Rowhani-Rahbar declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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Appendices
Appendix A: Firearm Survey Supplement Questions
Note: Branching logic is in italics.
Appendix B
See Table 4.
Appendix C
See Table 5.
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Lyons, V.H., Rivara, F.P., Yan, A.NX. et al. Firearm-related behaviors following firearm injury: changes in ownership, carrying and storage. J Behav Med 42, 658–673 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00052-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00052-1