Citation

Wu C. Soc. Sci. Res. 2020; 91: e102449.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssresearch.2020.102449

PMID

32933647

Abstract

This article examines how Americans' actual experience of gun victimization affects their trust in others and how this further connects to the widely-discussed association between gun crime and trust at the place level. Analyzing data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), I find that, regardless when it occurred in life, Americans who were victimized by guns trust much less in others than those who had no such experience. In terms of the size of the effect, repeated gun victimization has the strongest effect, followed by adulthood victimization, and then childhood victimization. I also find that individuals who later achieve higher socioeconomic status are better able to recover from the psychological effect of childhood gun victimization, lending support for the experiential theory of trust that people can update their trust according to changing experiences later in life. Finally, combing the GSS data with data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I also show that higher percentages of nonfatal and fatal gun violence victims lead to lower levels of trust both across and within the U.S. census divisions over time.

FINDINGS of this study demonstrate that America's gun violence affects not only just those killed, injured, or present during gunfire, but it can also sabotage the social and psychological well-being of all Americans.

Language: en

Keywords

Victimization; Gun violence; Life course; Trust