Gun owners in the United States carry loaded hand guns with them without concealing. The number is now approximately 9M who carry these guns on a monthly basis and about 7M between 1994 and 2015 have hidden carry permits. While 3M report carry them on a daily basis. Many people stated that self-protection is the sole reason for carrying a loaded fire weapon.
The study is the first in over 20 years to assess carefully the reason behind this and in which way US gun owners are carrying weapons with them. These are among the findings from a new study led by Northeastern professor Matthew Miller and his colleagues, published Thursday afternoon in the American Journal of Public Health.
The practice of open carry, where gun owners openly carry firearms while they go about their daily business, has seen an increase in the U.S. in recent years. In the United States, open carry refers to the practice of “openly carrying a firearm in public”, as distinguished from concealed carry, where firearms cannot be seen by the casual observer.
Today in the United States, the laws vary from state to state regarding open carry of firearms. Data from the showed that the people from Southern US who carry loaded guns are younger and more often male who are aged in between 18-19. They are grown up in firearm-owning households and had a self-identity of politically conservative. Race, income, education, and veteran status were not noticeably different in gun owners who carried compared with those who didn’t.
It also scrutinizes the way how the hand guns are carried in a concealed manner across states of US depending on their laws. This open carrying varies from one state to another depending on state law a weapon may be considered “loaded” or “unloaded”.
Ali Rowhani Rahbar, an associate professor at the University of Washington and a lead owner at the American journal of public health, said that – Carrying firearms in public places can have significant implications for public health and public safety.
An important first step to examining the consequences of firearm carrying at the national level is an accurate measurement of the occurrence of this behaviour and characterisation of those who engage in it.
In 2015, Miller, professor of health sciences and epidemiology, helped developing the comprehensive survey that he and his colleagues used in the current study of 1,444 handgun owners. His collaborators included researchers from the University of Washington School of Public Health, the University of Colorado-Denver, and the Harvard School of Public Health.
In the study conducted 80% of contemplated handgun owners who carried their handgun had a concealed-carry permit, and 66% said they always carried their handguns concealed, compared with 10% who agreed they always carry their weapons openly.
Miller stated that to understand the implications of the ownership of these handguns this study is the first important step. It documents the frequency of adults report carrying firearms and characterizes, in broad strokes, those who carry.
Few owners never reported that they are carrying a concealed handgun without a permit in states in which doing so was illegal.
“There is no credible evidence to suggest that allowing people to carry has any beneficial effect on crime and violence,” Miller said. “And although some recent studies suggest there may be harmful effects, there is a lot more we need to know before we can reliably place in perspective what those harmful effects are.”