answering the questions. If a respondent indicated having used the nonexistent drug or having been "not honest at all" in completing the survey, he or she was removed from the sample. Additionally, some respondents were found to have self-reported an impossibly high amount of drugs, and some respondents did not respond to a large number of questions. These questionnaires were also removed from the sample. Seven hundred six (5.4 percent) surveys were eliminated, leaving a total of 12,203 questionnaires for analysis.
Measures
The questionnaire given to students was developed as part of a larger project called the Six-State Consortium, led by the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington. The Consortium's goal was to develop a survey instrument that could be used by all six of its statespercent of 8th grade gun carriers, 19 percent of 10th grade gun carriers, and 16 percent of 12th grade gun carriers feeling unsafe. Although the number of friends who carried guns remained stable across grades among non-gun carriers, the number of friends of gun carriers who also carried guns increased with the grade of the respondent. Approximately 49 percent of 8th grade gun carriers had at least one friend who carried a gun, compared to 54 percent of 10th grade gun carriers, and 64 percent of 12th grade gun carriers. Gun carriers were much more likely to believe that they would be viewed as cool if they carried a gun, but this belief decreased as the respondent's grade increased. In the 8th grade, about 20 percent of gun