UConn researcher takes a look at relationship between women and guns

It might sound like the start of an off-color joke – if a man and a woman were each shot and killed in separate homicides, where is the most likely place they would be found – but the answer to the question is anything but funny.

And for researchers like Jennifer Dineen, interim director of UConn’s Center for Advancing Research, Methods, and Scholarship (ARMS) in Gun Violence Prevention, the riddle sadly isn’t very difficult to explain.

“Men are more likely to be killed by a firearm in a homicide outside of their home by a peer, community member, or someone they don’t know,” Dineen says. “Women, if they are going to die by firearm homicide, are more likely to have that happen in the home and at the hand of somebody they know.”

Those differences require distinct policy responses, Dineen says, one designed to keep the community safe, the other to preserve safety inside the home.

But because men in the U.S. are killed by firearms at a higher rate than women and since they also they own firearms at a higher rate, researchers and policymakers long have considered firearm violence and injury a male issue, she notes.

“When we focus on the male aspect of firearm injury and violence, we are missing significant parts of the problem, which we then are not addressing,” Dineen says. “When we frame the problem as a male issue, many of the questions we ask about that problem have a male focus, and the solutions that we pursue often have a male focus.

“I don’t want to imply that we shouldn’t focus on men,” she continues, “but when we don’t ask questions about how this is different for women, we then don’t look for policy solutions that will help address the part of this epidemic that women bear. This isn’t one/or, it’s yes/and.”

To encourage researchers and policymakers to reframe their responses, Dineen and Kerri Raissian, executive director of the Yale School of Public Health’s Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative, partnered with the journal Vital City to publish a special issue, “Women and Guns: A Complicated and Changing Relationship,” that includes more than a dozen pieces on topics from gender and police firearm use to domestic violence.

Interdisciplinary Look at Problem

Dineen says she and Raissian, who formerly headed ARMS, started to talk about the need for an in-depth look at women and firearms a handful of years ago after they put on a webinar series about how women tend to bear the burden of firearm violence and injury more significantly than men.

After connecting with Vital City, they put out a call for papers and received myriad inquiries from those working in the diverse fields of health and medicine, law, sociology, political science, and psychology.

“It’s very interdisciplinary,” Dineen says of the issue. “It looks at women in the home, outside of the home, older women, younger women of childbearing ages, women in community. There are a lot of people asking or curious about how firearm violence and injury is working differently for half our population.”

One essay considers how women fare in court cases that invoke stand-your-ground laws and the Castle Doctrine, which each allow a person under certain circumstances to defend themselves. It says 40% of men who used stand-your-ground laws were convicted, while 80% of women were.

Another essay talks about the rising number of women who are becoming gun owners and why that’s happening – in many cases, much like men, it’s for self-defense, but, unlike men, it’s because women consider it part of their caretaking responsibility.

“If men are more likely to die of firearm homicide outside of the home in the community, then women are going to be the ones who are more likely to carry both the burden and trauma associated with survivorship,” Dineen says, detailing an essay on surviving gun violence. “When we think about the impact of firearm violence in America, we often focus on the individual who dies, for very good reason. But when an individual dies, they leave a community that is also traumatized, and they leave a family.”

There’s both a personal and financial cost of surviving, she goes on to say. Survivors oftentimes have weak or poor long-term health outcomes, the result of expensive mental or physical health crises. Dineen says a survivor not only feels strain due to the loss of a loved one, but in many cases one that was a breadwinner or other financial contributor.

“And if the person who was shot survives, then they’re dealing with the compounding idea of significant caretaker responsibilities – and that is all more likely to fall on women,” she says.

Common Problem, Different Impacts

While the goal of the issue was to spearhead a conversation about women and guns, it also was meant for policymakers and practitioners to use in their decision-making and day-to-day work.

After all, Dineen argues, motor vehicle test dummies once were sized as males before someone suggested that women, with smaller frames, also travel in vehicles, so perhaps their needs should be considered.

“This is part of that evolution of America noting that we’re not all the same and that we can have a common problem that has many different impacts and effects on all of us,” she says.

For instance, while overall crime rates have decreased and the number of homicides is down, which Dineen acknowledges is a big win, the drop in homicides comes about because fewer men are being shot. The number of women being killed hasn’t changed, which means they now comprise a larger share of the overall total, she says.

How long will it take for the research to catch up? It’s impossible to know, Dineen says.

Funding seems to ebb and flow, and right now is in an ebbing cycle. The thing to be excited about is that the researchers themselves are becoming more diverse both in representation and discipline, which supposes the questions they ask will be different than previous generations.

“My research tends to be from the perspective of a political scientist and survey methodologist,” Dineen explains. “I ask questions from the perspective of how the individual who’s been affected experiences this or perceives this. Putting together this special issue certainly has broadened my thoughts about the scope of firearm injury and the cost of firearm injury. It’s made me think about just how pervasive this is beyond what I think was a pretty narrow description of the problem prior.”

Funding for the project came from Arnold Ventures, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Niskanen Center.