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38 J. Fam. Violence 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/jfamv38 and id is 1 raw text is: 


Journal of Family Violence (2023) 38:1-11
https://doi.org/l0.1007/si0896-022-00361-1

  ORIGINAL   ARTICLE



Firearm Availability and Parricide


Samantha   J. Mills'  Aaron J. Kivisto'


Accepted:11 January 2022 /Published online: 29 January 2022
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022


Abstract
The association between firearm ownership and homicide has been shown to be specifically related to homicides involving
intimate partners and other domestic relations. Prior research has shown that firearms are commonly used in parricide, and
in particular parricides perpetrated by youth. This study examined whether higher levels of firearm ownership are associated
with increased rates of parricide, and whether this association was stronger among youthful offenders. We used a longitudinal
design and negative binomial regression to model parricide as a function of household firearm ownership at the state level
using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Reports from 1981 through 2018. There were
8,916 parricide perpetrators in the study sample, and nearly half used a firearm (47.7%). Whereas parricides committed by
adults involved firearms in 43.5% of cases, almost two-thirds (64.8%) of parricides committed by youth involved firearms.
Each  1-percentage point increase in state-level household firearm ownership was associated with a 1.5% increased incidence
of parricide (95% CI= [0.6%, 2.4%], p =.001). Moderation analyses revealed that the association between state-level firearm
ownership and parricide was between 2.6- and 3.6-fold stronger for incidents perpetrated by youth relative to adults. Reducing
youth access to firearms in the context of conflictual parent-child relations represents one strategy for reducing parricide.

Keywords  Parricide - Firearm ownership - Youthful Offenders - Family Homicide - Patricide - Matricide


The manuscript  is based on data that have not been previ-
ously published or disseminated.
   Parricide is the intentional killing of one's father (patri-
cide) or mother (matricide) and accounts for approximately
2%  of all homicides in the United States (Heide, 2012).
Although  most parricide perpetrators are adults (Heide &
Petee, 2007a), more than 1 in 5 (21.7%) parricides involve
perpetrators under the age of 18, which is notable since this
group accounts for only 11.1% of all homicide perpetrators
in the U.S. (Cooper & Smith, 2011).
   Parricides are most commonly   committed  with  guns
(Heide & Petee, 2007a; Shon & Targonski, 2003), and the-
ory suggests that such weapon use might be particularly rel-
evant for youthful offenders. Wolfgang (1958) proposed that
weapon  usage might be explained by the physical strength
hypothesis, which posits that offenders with less physical
strength than their victim will tend to use guns or superior



   Samantha J. Mills
   donovans@uindy.edu
   Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology, University
   of Indianapolis, 1400 East Hanna Avenue, Indianapolis,
   IN 46227, USA


weaponry  to distance themselves from the victim and to off-
set the physical power differential. For children and adoles-
cents who commit parricide, disparities in physical strength
relative to their parents would typically be expected, as dis-
cussed by Heide (1993a, 1993b). Furthermore, it has been
suggested that the accessibility of firearms is one explana-
tion for the escalation from normal family discord to homi-
cide in the home (Hemenway  & Miller, 2000).



Firearms   and   Homicide in the U.S.

Cross-cultural  studies have shown  that gun  homicide
is considerably  more prevalent  in the U.S. relative to
other high-income  countries (Grinshteyn &  Hemenway,
2016,  2019). For  example,  in their study of 31 high-
income,  populous (i.e., at least one million inhabitants)
nations, Grinshteyn  and Hemenway (2019) found that
83.7%  of all firearm homicides and 91.6% of all women
killed by firearms were killed in the U.S. These differ-
ences  are attributable in part to the fact that there are
substantially more  civilian-owned firearms  in circula-
tion in the U.S. compared  to other developed  nations.


1  Springer

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