Community-Based Development of Tools to Assess Firearm-Related Attitudes and Beliefs: Associations with Firearm-Related Practices, Social Influences, and Violence Exposure
Krista R Mehari, Albert D Farrell, Jasmine N Coleman, Lindiwe S Mayinja, Colleen S Walsh, Phillip N Smith · 2026
Read Community-Based Development of Tools to Assess Firearm-Related Attitudes and Beliefs: Associations with Firearm-Related Practices, Social Influences, and Violence Exposure by Krista R Mehari, Albert D Farrell, Jasmine N Coleman, Lindiwe S Mayinja, Colleen S Walsh, Phillip N Smith (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13480196.txt.
Description
Mehari and colleagues built four new survey measures of firearm attitudes and beliefs in 2026 through participatory research with gun owners and people from communities hit hard by gun violence. They tested the measures first in a pilot sample of 550 United States adults, then checked the structure again in a nationally representative sample of 1,674 adults. The samples averaged about 48 years old and were close to evenly split by sex.
Each measure resolved into a clear structure, from general attitudes toward firearms forming a single factor to three factors for beliefs about defensive gun use. Those defensive beliefs split into respect enforcement, defensive escalation, and compensatory force, capturing distinct reasons people give for using a gun in conflict. The structures held across sex and ethnicity in the second sample, and scores lined up sensibly with ownership, carrying, storage, and violence exposure, supporting the tools for prevention research.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Krista R Mehari, Albert D Farrell, Jasmine N Coleman, Lindiwe S Mayinja, Colleen S Walsh, Phillip N Smith |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 75 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |