Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Observational Study
. 2016 Aug;22(4):302-7.
doi: 10.1136/injuryprev-2015-041856. Epub 2015 Oct 23.

Alcohol, drug and other prior crimes and risk of arrest in handgun purchasers: protocol for a controlled observational study

Garen J Wintemute  1 , Philip H Kass  2 , Susan L Stewart  3 , Magdalena Cerdá  1 , Paul J Gruenewald  4
Affiliations
Observational Study

Alcohol, drug and other prior crimes and risk of arrest in handgun purchasers: protocol for a controlled observational study

Garen J Wintemute et al. Inj Prev. 2016 Aug.

Abstract

Background and objective: Alcohol abuse is common in the USA and is a well-established risk factor for violence. Other drug use and criminal activity are risk factors as well and frequently occur together with alcohol abuse. Firearm ownership is also common; there are >50 million firearm owners in the USA. This study assesses the relationships between alcohol and drug abuse and future violence among firearm owners, which no prior research has done.

Design and study population: This records-based retrospective cohort study will involve all persons who legally purchased handguns in California in 2001-approximately 116 000 individuals-with follow-up through the end of 2013.

Methods: The principal exposures include prior convictions for alcohol-related and drug-related offenses. The primary outcome measure is an arrest following handgun purchase for a violent Crime Index offense: homicide, rape, robbery or aggravated assault. Subjects will be considered at risk for outcome events for only as long as their residence in California can be established independently of outcome events. Covariates include individual characteristics (eg, age, sex, criminal history, firearm purchase history) and community characteristics (eg, demographics, socioeconomic measures, firearm ownership and alcohol outlet density). We will employ survival analytic methods, expressing effects as HRs.

Discussion: The results of this large-scale study are likely to be generalisable and to have important implications for violence prevention policies and programmes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests

None declared.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Behavioral risk factor surveillance system: prevalence data and data analysis tools. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; [accessed 21 Aug 2015]. http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/data_tools.htm.
    1. Wintemute GJ. Alcohol misuse, firearm violence perpetration, and public policy in the United States. Prev Med. 2015;79:15–21. - PubMed
    1. General Social Survey. Data analysis using SDA (1972–2010) National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago; [accessed 13 Apr 2011]. http://www3.norc.org/GSS+website/
    1. Institute of Medicine, National Research Council. Priorities for research to reduce the threat of firearm-related violence. Washington DC: The National Academies Press; 2013.
    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; [accessed 14 Mar 2015]. http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html.

Publication types

MeSH terms