Survey reveals new data that may help firearm injury prevention

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A quick content warning: Today’s episode includes discussion about firearms and sensitive topics related to firearm injury prevention research. Listener discretion is advised. 

Seven percent of Americans have thought of shooting someone, but many either told someone, are open to giving their gun to someone for safekeeping, or didn’t have a firearm at the time. Read the full article here.

Transcript

Host: 

Welcome to Health Lab, your destination for news and stories about the future of healthcare. 

A quick content warning: Today’s episode includes discussion about firearms and sensitive topics related to firearm injury prevention. Listener discretion is advised. 

Researchers in firearm injury prevention have been studying how many Americans have thought of shooting someone else, and in a recent study, U-M researchers found that millions of Americans have thought about shooting someone, and if they didn’t already own a firearm, some of them went further and thought about getting one to make their thoughts a reality.

The study found that of the Americans who had thought of shooting someone, many either told someone, were open to giving their gun to someone for safekeeping, or didn’t have a firearm at the time they were having those thoughts.

The data showed that over 7% of adults in the United States say that at some point in their life, they have thought about shooting someone else. This percentage equates to approximately 19.4 million people.

Over 3%, or about 8.7 million adults, said they have had thoughts of shooting someone in the past year. 

According to the findings published in the journal JAMA Network Open and based on a nationally representative survey, firearm owners were no more likely to have had these thoughts than people who didn’t own firearms. 

However, 8% of people who had thoughts of shooting someone - approximately 1.5 million individuals - who had thought of shooting someone had gone so far as to bring a firearm to a specific place to potentially carry out a shooting. 

Among non-firearm owners, 21% of those with thoughts of shooting someone said they had thought of getting a firearm to carry out their thoughts. 

Whether or not someone has access to a firearm, the study findings point to important opportunities for keeping these harmful thoughts from turning into potentially deadly actions. 

For example, 21% of those who had thoughts of shooting someone told another person what they were thinking – potentially creating an opportunity for intervention before anyone could be harmed. 

And while only 7% of those with thoughts of shooting someone said they had given their gun to someone else for safekeeping, another 21% said they would consider doing so in future. 

Brian Hicks, Ph.D., the psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry at the U-M Medical School who led the study, says the findings illustrate the scope of the danger of firearm violence, and the need to determine if people who have these thoughts are at high risk for acting on them.

In Michigan and 20 other states, extreme risk protection order laws, also called “red flag” laws, provide a judicial procedure for temporary removal of firearms from people at high risk of harming themselves or others, based on their behaviors, statements or writings. 

Hicks also notes that the findings are consistent with policy efforts to implement background checks and waiting periods for firearm purchases to prevent suicides and homicides among those acting on impulse. 

Hicks says, “While most people who have these thoughts don’t act on them, the number is so high that the small proportion who do act turns into tens of thousands of fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries each year. That does not include the toll of self-harm with firearms, which accounts for over half of firearm-related deaths. The more we can understand factors that can reduce risk, the better.”

The study also dove deeper to look at who was having thoughts about shooting someone, and about whom these thoughts were about.

Hicks and coauthor Mark Ilgen, Ph.D., continue to study data from the survey of more than 7,000 adults, called the National Firearms, Alcohol, Cannabis, and Suicide Survey.

The new paper contains their initial analysis of some of the demographic factors that were associated with thoughts of shooting another person.

This initial analysis showed that men were far more likely than women to have such thoughts. So were people of younger age, those living in Midwestern states and those living in urban areas. Dr. Hicks also noted that Black Americans are six times more likely to be homicide victims than white Americans. 

The data also showed that people with household incomes under $50,000 were more likely to have had thoughts of shooting someone in the past year. 

However, there were no significant differences found between political ideology.

When asked who they had thought of shooting, 51% said an enemy, while 25% said someone they didn’t know, such as a stranger they had a conflict with or people in a public place, 14% said a government official or employee, 10% said a family member, 10% said a former spouse or romantic partner, and 9% said a current spouse or romantic partner, and smaller percentages gave other answers. Respondents were also able to give multiple answers to this question.

The survey was conducted in 2025 in English and online, potentially limiting its applicability and accessibility to populations with limited English proficiency or Internet access.

Hicks notes that future analyses will examine other factors that might be related to thoughts of shooting others, such as mental health and substance use problems, and other firearm behaviors, such as storage practices, gun carrying, and risky behaviors such as firing a gun after using alcohol or drugs.

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