Gun Ownership, Community Stress, and Sleep Disturbance in America (original) (raw)
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Gun Ownership and Sleep Disturbance
Preventive Medicine, 2020
Although there is no empirical evidence linking gun ownership with better sleep, speculation is widespread in gun culture. We assess the direct association between gun ownership and sleep disturbance and whether gun ownership moderates the association between neighborhood fear and sleep disturbance. We use four waves of cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey (2010-2018) and logistic regression to model sleep disturbance as a function of gun ownership and test the statistical the interaction of gun ownership and neighborhood fear. Our analyses demonstrate that gun ownership is unrelated to sleep disturbance across sleep specifications. None of the statistical interactions between gun ownership and neighborhood fear reached statistical significance. Although being afraid to walk alone at night in one’s neighborhood is associated with restless sleep, owning a gun is no consolation. In ancillary analyses, we observed that gun ownership is unrelated to sleep disturbance across survey years and a range of subpopulations. In the first empirical study of gun ownership and sleep, we find consistent evidence to suggest that people who own guns do not report better sleep in general or in the context of living in a dangerous neighborhood. Our analyses are important because they contribute to our understanding of the epidemiology of sleep. They also challenge theoretical perspectives and cultural narratives about how having a gun in the home helps individuals and their families to feel safe, secure, and protected. Additional research is needed to replicate our findings using longitudinal data and more reliable measures of sleep disturbance.
Preventive Medicine, 2022
Numerous studies have demonstrated that neighborhood context contributes to variations in morbidity and mortality. This body of work includes a burgeoning literature that links adverse neighborhood characteristics (e.g., neighborhood poverty and perceptions of disorder and dangerousness) with poorer sleep outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many neighborhoods exhibited socioeconomic downturns and escalations in crime and violence. The question is the extent to which these changes in neighborhood conditions have impacted the sleep quality of residents. In this paper, we use original survey data from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (CHAPS), a national probability sample of adults living in the U.S., to formally test whether changes in perceptions of neighborhood dangerousness during the pandemic are associated with sleep quality during the same period. Regression analyses show that while reports of a neighborhood becoming safer during the pandemic are associated with better sleep quality, reports of a neighborhood becoming more dangerous are associated with worse sleep quality. Mediation analyses also indicate that the association between increased neighborhood dangerousness and poorer sleep quality is partially explained by a concurrent deterioration in diet quality, but not increases in alcohol or cigarette consumption. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for research and policy on neighborhood context and sleep.
Gun Ownership and Life Satisfaction in the United States
Social Science Quarterly, 2020
Objective. Although there is little empirical evidence linking gun ownership with personal wellbeing, speculation is widespread in gun culture. In this article, we test whether people who own guns are more or less satisfied with their lives than people who do not own guns. Methods. We employ data collected from three national surveys, the Baylor Religion Survey (2014), the Chapman University Survey on American Fears (2014), and the General Social Survey (2018) to formally assess this understudied association. Results. In adjusted models, gun ownership was unrelated to life satisfaction. This general pattern was consistent across surveys, different measures and specifications of life satisfaction, and a wide range of subgroups. Conclusion. Our analyses contribute to the growing study of gun ownership and personal well-being and challenge theoretical perspectives and cultural narratives about how owning a gun can contribute favorably to one's quality of life. It is well known that Americans own more guns per capita than any other country in the world. While the United States ranks first with over 120 firearms for every 100 residents, war-torn Yemen ranks second with nearly 60 firearms for every 100 residents (Karp, 2018). This year, during the coronavirus pandemic, gun sales have skyrocketed in the United States. In March alone, Americans acquired nearly 2 million new guns (Sacks and Bartels, 2020). So far this year, background checks for new gun purchases have increased 69 percent since 2019 (Fung, 2020). Why do Americans own so many guns? Although there are many ways to answer this question, there is a common belief that firearms can help their owners to feel safe, secure, and protected (Dowd-Arrow, Hill, and Burdette, 2019; Kleck, 1997; Stroud, 2012). In fact, 67 percent of gun owners report that "protection" is the "major reason why they own a gun" (Parker et al., 2017). If owning a gun truly contributes to feelings of safety and security, gun ownership should be at least theoretically related to greater overall personal well-being (Dowd-Arrow, Hill, and Burdette, 2019; Hill et al., 2020a, 2020b). Although cross-sectional studies consistently show that people who own guns tend to exhibit lower levels of fear in their lives than people who do not own guns (DeFronzo, 1979; Dowd-Arrow, Hill, and Burdette, 2019; Kleck, 1997), longitudinal research shows that acquiring a gun is unrelated to subsequent changes in fear of crime and victimization in one's neighborhood (Hauser and Kleck, 2013). Gun ownership is similarly unrelated to feelings of happiness and the experience of sleep disturbance (Hill et al., 2020a, 2020b).
Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Sleep Quality: A Global Analysis of Six Countries
Objective: Building on previous North American and European studies of neighborhood context and sleep quality, we tested whether several self-reported sleep outcomes (sleep duration, insomnia symptoms, sleepiness, lethargy, and overall sleep quality) vary according to level of perceived neighborhood safety in six countries: Mexico, Ghana, South Africa, India, China, and Russia. Methods: Using data from Wave I of the World Health Organization’s Longitudinal Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (2007-2010), we estimate a series of multinomial and binary logistic regression equations to model each sleep outcome within each country. Results: Taken together, our results show that respondents who feel safe from crime and violence in their neighborhoods tend to exhibit more favorable sleep outcomes than respondents who feel less safe. This general pattern is especially pronounced in China and Russia, moderately evident in Mexico, Ghana, and South Africa, and sporadic in India. Perceptions of neighborhood safety are strongly associated with insomnia symptoms and poor sleep quality (past 30 days), moderately associated with sleepiness, lethargy, and poor sleep quality (past 2 days), and inconsistently associated with sleep duration (past 2 days). Conclusions: Additional research is needed to replicate our findings using longitudinal data, more reliable neighborhood measures, and more direct measures of sleep quality. Future work should continue to investigate contextual variations in sleep patterns in understudied regions of the world, including Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, West Asia/the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a rapid and sustained negative impact on sleep and mental health in the United States with disproportionate morbidity and mortality among socioeconomically deprived populations. We used multivariable and logistic regression to evaluate the associations among sleep duration, mental health, and socioeconomic deprivation (social deprivation index) in 14,676 Ohio residents from 1101 zip code tabulation areas from the 2020 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey. Higher socioeconomic deprivation was associated with shorter sleep and poorer mental health after adjusting for covariates (age, sex, race, education, income, and body mass index) in the multivariable linear regression models. Those in the highest socioeconomically deprived areas had 1.6 and 1.5 times higher odds of short sleep (duration < 6 h) and poor mental health (>14 poor mental health days), respectively, in the logistic regression models. Previous res...
Gun Ownership and Firearm-related Deaths
The American Journal of Medicine, 2013
BACKGROUND: A variety of claims about possible associations between gun ownership rates, mental illness burden, and the risk of firearm-related deaths have been put forward. However, systematic data on this issue among various countries remain scant. Our objective was to assess whether the popular notion "guns make a nation safer" has any merits. METHODS: Data on gun ownership were obtained from the Small Arms Survey, and for firearm-related deaths from a European detailed mortality database (World Health Organization), the National Center for Health Statistics, and others. Crime rate was used as an indicator of safety of the nation and was obtained from the United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends. Age-standardized disability-adjusted lifeyear rates due to major depressive disorder per 100,000 inhabitants with data obtained from the World Health Organization database were used as a putative indicator for mental illness burden in a given country. RESULTS: Among the 27 developed countries, there was a significant positive correlation between guns per capita per country and the rate of firearm-related deaths (r ¼ 0.80; P <.0001). In addition, there was a positive correlation (r ¼ 0.52; P ¼ .005) between mental illness burden in a country and firearm-related deaths. However, there was no significant correlation (P ¼ .10) between guns per capita per country and crime rate (r ¼ .33), or between mental illness and crime rate (r ¼ 0.32; P ¼ .11). In a linear regression model with firearm-related deaths as the dependent variable with gun ownership and mental illness as independent covariates, gun ownership was a significant predictor (P <.0001) of firearm-related deaths, whereas mental illness was of borderline significance (P ¼ .05) only. CONCLUSION: The number of guns per capita per country was a strong and independent predictor of firearm-related death in a given country, whereas the predictive power of the mental illness burden was of borderline significance in a multivariable model. Regardless of exact cause and effect, however, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.
Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide Across the 50 United States
Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection & Critical Care, 2007
Background: The current investigation explores the association between rates of household firearm ownership and suicide across the 50 states. Prior ecologic research on the relationship between firearm prevalence and suicide has been criticized for using problematic proxy-based, rather than survey-based, estimates of firearm prevalence and for failing to control for potential psychological risk factors for suicide. We address these two criticisms by using recently available state-level survey-based estimates of household firearm ownership, serious mental illness , and alcohol/illicit substance use and dependence. Methods: Negative binomial regression was used to assess the relationship between household firearm ownership rates and rates of firearm, nonfirearm, and overall suicide for both sexes and for four age groups. Analyses controlled for rates of poverty, urbanization, unemployment, mental illness, and drug and alcohol dependence and abuse. Results: US residents of all ages and both sexes are more likely to die from suicide when they live in areas where more households contain firearms. A positive and significant association exists between levels of household firearm ownership and rates of firearm and overall suicide; rates of nonfirearm suicide were not associated with levels of household firearm ownership. Conclusion: Household firearm ownership levels are strongly associated with higher rates of suicide, consistent with the hypothesis that the availability of lethal means increases the rate of completed suicide.
Sleep
Study Objectives African Americans have faced disproportionate socioeconomic and health consequences associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study examines employment and its association with sleep quality during the initial months of the pandemic in a low-income, predominantly African American adult sample. Methods In the early months of COVID-19 (March to May 2020), we administered a survey to an ongoing, longitudinal cohort of older adults to assess the impact of COVID-related changes in employment on self-reported sleep quality (N = 460; 93.9% African American). Participants had prior sleep quality assessed in 2018 and a subset also had sleep quality assessed in 2013 and 2016. Primary analyses focused on the prevalence of poor sleep quality and changes in sleep quality between 2018 and 2020, according to employment status. Financial strain and prior income were assessed as moderators of the association between employment status and sleep quality. We plotted trend line...