New research suggests that a more restrictive gun law environment was associated with a reduced likelihood of youth carrying guns.

An average of 15,000 teenagers 12 to 19 years old died annually in the United States from 1999 to 2013. The three leading causes of death among teenagers were unintentional injuries, homicide and suicide. Among these fatal youth injuries, 83 percent of homicides were gun-related and 45 percent of suicides involved a gun.

"Gun violence poses a substantial public health threat to adolescents in the United States. Existing evidence points to the need for policies to reduce gun carrying among youth. We find that the strength of gun policies including both adult-focused and youth-focused policies is inversely associated with youth gun carrying. These findings are relevant to gun policy debates about the critical importance of comprehensive state-level gun law environment to prevent youth gun carrying," the study concluded.

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which includes representative data from students in grades nine to 12 from 2007, 2009 and 2011. Youth gun carrying was defined as having carried a gun on at least one day during the 30 days before the survey. To characterize the gun law environment, researchers used state gun law scores ranging from 0 to 100 points, with the greater value representing a more restrictive gun control environment.

They found a variation in state-level gun law scores with average scores across 2007, 2009 and 2011 ranging from a low of 1.3 in Utah to a high of 79.7 in California. In 38 states with data on youth gun carrying, the average aggregate prevalence was 6.7 percent, ranging from 1.4 percent in New Jersey to 11 percent in Wyoming.

They found that a 10-point increase in the gun law score was associated with 9 percent lower odds of youth gun carrying. Higher adult gun ownership levels also were associated with a higher prevalence of youth gun carrying.

The findings are detailed in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.