In-school weapon -carrying: Associations with aggression, environmental threat, and social cognitions

Recent in-school shootings have given rise to a heightened concern about children carrying weapons to school. There has been a proliferation of studies evaluating the correlates of youth weapon-carrying. Although these studies have provided important descriptive information about youth weapon carriers and have shed light on some of the correlates of youth weapon-carrying, very few have been guided by explicit theoretical notions that can help to explain the processes responsible for in-school weapon-carrying. The purposes of the current study were to evaluate personal (i.e., aggression) and environmental (i.e., experiencing threats with weapons) influences on in-school weapon-carrying, and to evaluate the social-cognitive processes that may be responsible for these associations.;Participants were 414, primarily Latino, 6th--8 th grade boys and girls. Participants completed two self-report questionnaires, one assessing children's social cognitions about weapon-carrying, and another assessing weapon-carrying and experiences of being threatened with a weapon. They also completed a peer nomination inventory assessing aggression and weapon-carrying.;Results indicated that both aggression and experiencing weapon threats independently predicted cognitions about weapons and weapon-carrying behavior. Children's cognitions about weapon-carrying predicted weapon-carrying behavior, but primarily for self-reported weapon-carrying. Some support was found for a mediational model in which children's aggression and experiences of weapon threats predicted weapon-carrying, with the association being mediated by their social cognitions about weapon-carrying. The strongest support was garnered for the association of weapon threats with self-reports of weapon-carrying, as mediated by social cognitions about weapon-carrying. The moderating effects of grade and gender were explored and discussed.;The results shed light on the processes that may be responsible for in-school weapon-carrying. Future studies are needed to clarify the direction of effects and to more thoroughly test the emergence of weapon-carrying as a developmental process. The results from this study have important implications for prevention and intervention. Interventions aimed at targeting children's social cognitions about weapon-carrying may help to prevent children from beginning to carry a weapon and to deter those who have already begun.