A new study has found that among 15 million students attending high school in the US, one in 18 teens carries a gun with them.
The study revealed that one in 18 high school teens in the US goes to school armed with a gun. With around 15 million kids attending high school, this roughly translates to 1 million teens bringing a potentially deadly weapon to school.
However, the researchers argued that having universal background checks could cut down those numbers. They discovered that while gun-toting teens can be found in every state, 83% of them were located in states not implementing universal background checks.
Lead researcher Teresa Maria Bell said: "After accounting for student demographics as well as state laws and characteristics, we found that high school students who reported feeling threatened were over four times more likely to carry a gun than students who did not report being threatened."
Aside from fear being the primary reason teens bring guns to school, Bell also said that boys were more likely to be armed than girls.
The researchers, who examined almost 180,000 high school students, determined that the most effective way to keep teens from bringing guns to school is combining federal and state regulations. They discovered that the odds of teens carrying guns fell by 25% in states that had the U.S. National Instant Criminal Background Check System and state background checks.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, showed that federal background checks alone and state background checks on their own were both ineffective in curbing the number of teens bringing weapons to school but have more impact when combined.
Bell pointed out that background checks were most effective when they could quickly access "a national background check system containing complete criminal data on gun buyers."
In the US, the second leading cause of death for children and teens are firearm wounds.
