Background: Approximately one third of older adults (aged ≥65 years) in the United States own a gun (1); some of them will develop dementia or other impairments that limit their capacity to handle firearms safely (2, 3). Little is known about the extent to which older gun owners have considered future firearm transfers. Objective: To use a nationally representative survey to describe the frequency of advance planning by older gun owners to transfer their firearms to someone else if they can no longer handle them safely or if they die. Methods: Data were obtained from the second National Firearms Survey, conducted online from 30 July to 11 August 2019 by the research firm Ipsos (4). The survey was conducted among a sample of participants in the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a probability-based web panel of approximately 55 000 noninstitutionalized, English-speaking adults (aged ≥18 years) designed to represent the U.S. population, excluding persons in active military service. The survey sample comprised adults living in a home with firearms, regardless of whether they were gun owners themselves; however, we restricted our analysis to older adults who owned firearms. Participants received points for an Ipsos incentive program, and the Harvard University Institutional Review Board approved the study. Questions assessed whether respondents had a plan for transferring their firearms to someone else in the event of death or their inability to handle guns safely. Participant characteristics included demographics, caregiving for someone with dementia, and firearm-related measures (such as type and number of guns owned, reasons for ownership, training, and frequency of handling). Using the weight variable provided by Ipsos and weighting commands in Stata (version 16.1; StataCorp), we summarized the responses with descriptive statistics. We used study-specific poststratification weights to adjust for nonresponse and under- or overcoverage from the study-specific sample design, demographic distributions (from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey or American Community Survey), and such characteristics as gun ownership (from weighted KnowledgePanel data, for characteristics not available from the national surveys). Findings: The National Firearms Survey included 1001 respondents aged 65 years and older who were living in homes with firearms and were firearm owners themselves (completion rate, 71%; Table 1). These respondents had a median age of 71.0 years and owned a median of 3 firearms. Most were married (74.6%), white (81.4%), and male (73.7%). Although nearly half had handled a firearm once or less in the past year, 18.0% reported carrying a loaded handgun in the past month ...
Language: en
", language="en", issn="0003-4819", doi="10.7326/M20-2280", url="http://dx.doi.org/10.7326/M20-2280" }