South Middlesex Times

Researchers at Rutgers University have discovered a link between adverse childhood experiences and an increased risk of engaging in defensive gun use in adulthood. The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, analyzed data from 3,130 adults with firearm access from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults.

Participants were questioned about their childhood experiences with abuse and neglect, social distrust levels, sensitivity to perceived threats, depressive symptoms, and self-reported gun use for self-defense. The study aimed to understand how adverse childhood experiences influence adult behavior regarding defensive gun use.

Sultan Altikriti, a postdoctoral fellow at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and lead author of the study, stated: “Research that links risk factors from childhood to problems later in life often neglects the role that situational and cognitive factors might play. We tried to unpack the cognitive factors through which experiences from childhood affect behavior in adulthood.”

The research found that adverse childhood experiences heightened threat sensitivity and depression in adulthood. However, only threat sensitivity was linked to defensive gun use. Further analysis indicated that threat sensitivity partly explains the increased risk of defensive gun use among those with adverse childhood experiences.

Altikriti explained: “Sensitivity to threats from others and hypervigilance can cause people to see threats where they do not exist. This sense of threat sensitivity can then lead to overreactions in neutral or ambiguous situations, which might lead to unnecessary gun use.”

The researchers emphasized that reducing adverse childhood experiences could mitigate immediate harm and long-term psychological impacts. They suggested interventions targeting downstream mechanisms as potentially effective ways to address negative outcomes stemming from these early life experiences.

The study's coauthors include Daniel C. Semenza, director of Interpersonal Violence Research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers School of Public Health; Michael D. Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers; Alexander Testa, assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; Dylan B. Jackson, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.