DIFFERENTIAL INDICATORS OF DEFENSIVE WEAPON OWNERSHIP - A COMPARISON BY GENDER

While the majority of studies examining defensive weapon ownership ide ntify, variables related to ownership, these studies suffer from sever al methodological problems. Inclusion of sporting influences into a me asure of defensive weapon ownership and errors in attribution of demog raphic variables weaken the results in many of these studies. In order to overcome these obstacles, only those respondents claiming to live alone were included in this analysis, and respondents were asked speci fically if they had purchased a weapon for self-protection. Sepal-ate probit equations were estimated for males and females to assess differ ential indicators for men and women. Results indicate that although ha ving a prior victimization was a significant positive indicator of sel f-help for men, women did not display similar relationships. Variables dealing with neighborhood characteristics, such as the percent of sin gle parent households with children aged twelve through twenty and per ceptions that crime is increasing in the neighborhood were significant predictors of defensive weapon ownership for women. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.