An Examination into the Covariates Surrounding Children and Teen Firearm Homicide Victimization

Scholars have found that firearm-related deaths are the third leading cause of death in 2019 overall among U.S. children and teens between ages 1 and 19, surpassing the number of deaths from other diseases including the flu and heart disease. Despite this, recent scoping reviews have highlighted the limited knowledge in the field surrounding the impact of risk factors for firearm homicide victimization for children and teens at the situational- and community-level. Those that have researched children and teen firearm violence have focused mainly on individual-level risk factors and largely ignored situational and community-level factors, such as the impact of the presence of domestic violence and other interpersonal conflicts within the home. Moreover, researchers who have examined risk factors and correlates for firearm homicide have yet to include gun laws as a covariate of firearm homicide in conjunction with individual, situational, and other structural factors. Given the clear need to remedy these gaps in our understanding of firearm homicide, in this dissertation, I seek to examine what the correlates are for children and teen firearm victimization and how these two age groups differ. Children and teen victims are examined in the context of risk factors at the micro-, situational, and macro-level. I examine three research questions: What are the significant individual and situational variables for firearm homicide among children and teens? How do the individual and situational covariates of firearm homicide differ for children relative to teens? Controlling for differences in state and year, what are the most salient covariates of firearm homicides involving children relative to teens? Findings from this dissertation demonstrate the importance of the disaggregation of homicide typologies. Differences were discovered at the individual and situational levels for child and teens. The results of this dissertation demonstrated that firearms were less likely to be used in incidents involving child victims. Further, race, sex, gang-involvement, engagement in delinquency, and the victim-offender relationship were particularly important for predicting the likelihood of a child or teen being killed in a homicide. When compared to teens, children were more likely to be killed with a non-firearm weapon within the home by a family member. In the multilevel models, individual and situational level factors were the most salient predictor of firearm homicide among children and teens during the study time period. Results of the multilevel models showed that states that had laws requiring a permit to purchase a firearm and domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) firearm laws outside of the automatic prohibition of a DVRO subject from possessing a firearm had a decreased likelihood of the firearm being used in a child or teen homicide.