A Person-Centered Approach to Understanding Firearm Injury Risk Among Asian Americans

Background Firearm mortality has risen sharply in the United States, with firearm homicide and suicide rates increasing by 16% and 28%, respectively, between 2019 and 2023. Firearm ownership among Asian Americans has grown amid rising exposure to violence and mistreatment in recent years, yet this population remains understudied. This study used a person-centered approach to identify patterns of psychological and behavioral indicators of firearm injury risk among Asian American household firearm owners and examined whether two contextual stressors, exposure to violence and interpersonal and cultural mistreatment, predicted higher-risk profile membership. Methods This study used national survey data collected in 2024 from a probability-based sample of U.S. Asian adults. Latent profile analysis was conducted among a subsample of household firearm owners (N = 386) using four indicators: firearm carrying, firearm storage practices, heavy alcohol use, and mental distress. Models were estimated with full-information maximum likelihood and poststratification weights; profile solution was selected using fit indices and entropy. We ran multinomial logistic regressions to examine associations between exposure to violence and interpersonal and cultural mistreatment, respectively, and profile membership, adjusting for age, gender, and education. Results A three-profile solution balanced fit and interpretability. The compound-risk profile (9.5% of owners) showed the highest probability of firearm carrying, lowest rates of secure firearm storage, and elevated alcohol use and mental distress. The distress-dominant profile (10.4%) showed the highest mental distress but low alcohol use and the highest rate of secure storage. Remaining owners (80.1%) fell into a lower-risk profile, with the lowest probability of firearm carrying and lowest mental distress. Relative to the lower-risk profile, greater violence exposure was associated with higher odds of classifying into the distress-dominant (aOR = 1.42) and compound-risk profiles (aOR = 1.65). Greater exposure to interpersonal and cultural mistreatment was also associated with higher odds of classifying into the distress-dominant (aOR = 1.22) and compound-risk profiles (aOR = 1.30). Conclusions Asian American firearm owners differ in their patterns of firearm injury risk. Moreover, exposure to violence and interpersonal and cultural mistreatment were associated with membership in profiles marked by greater firearm injury risk. Firearm injury prevention for this population should pair individual-level strategies, such as secure storage promotion, with efforts to address upstream contextual stressors.