Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/gun-violence/page/4/)
Ghost guns — so-called because they are nearly impossible to trace — are sold in parts and assembled by the buyer. Until recently, they were not classified as firearms, meaning there were no background checks and dealers didn’t have to be federally-licensed.
That has opened the door for traffickers, teens and people with felony records to get ghost guns.
Few among us are oblivious to the suffering that results from certain crimes committed by youthful offenders. As researchers and citizens, we agree that those who harm another person must be held accountable. However, the immaturity of a young person must be considered in meting out an appropriate punishment.
A person's brain must be fully developed before it can be discerned whether that individual will continue to offend or was just a child who make a horrible mistake.
After running toward the sound of a gunshot that still haunts her, Marentha Sargent watched her 14-year-old, Adrienne Lambert, bleeding from the chest as she collapsed. Moments earlier, the 14-year-old son of Gene Roessler, Sargent’s friend, had ejected the magazine from Roessler’s gun, pointed its barrel at Adrienne and pulled the trigger. The boy didn’t realize, according to police records, there was a bullet in the chamber of his father’s handgun, which he’d grabbed from the kitchen table of their suburban Houston home while the adults were in the garage watching football on TV.
Between Jan. 1, 2022 and April 25, 2022, Little Rock, Ark. — the 24th most violent of 65 cities, according to the FBI's most recent data — counted 24 homicides. That compared to 21 homicides during the same period in 2021, according to the Little Rock Police Department’s most recent count. A disproportionate number of those murders involved guns, continuing a trend. Blacks — mainly males — accounted for all homicide victims under 30 years old in Little Rock.
On April 12, Georgia became the 22nd state allowing unlicensed gun-owners to carry a concealed weapon, one in a spate of so-called constitutional carry laws that have supporters and detractors, with the International Association of Police Chiefs among opponents.
The day they came face-to-face with the teen who accidentally shot and killed their son, Brad and Meagan Hulett confirmed, in their minds, that prison was the last place the shooter should end up.
The past couple of years have been some of the deadliest for many major U.S. cities. Murder rates have spiked and gun sales have surged.
We want the violence to stop. However, our chosen means of addressing violence prevention are shaped by who's leading that conversation. Too often, the results of those discussions have tended to be punitive in nature, resulting in over-policing and mass incarceration.
With suicides, including those by gun, the second-leading cause of death for 10- through 34-year-olds — and suicides surging by 35% during 20 years ending in 2019 — it’s important to raise awareness that suicides are preventable and that most of those survive an attempt do not try another.
That’s according to the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, whose early December report, “Convergence Dialogue on Guns and Suicide Prevention,” highlights interventions, including safe gun storage and efforts to safeguard the mental health of young people and others who may be suicidal.
Adrift after his father was shot and killed during an argument with a man at a Jacksonville, Fla. bar, then 14-year-old Robert LeCount spent several years burnishing his reputation as a drug-dealer and star athlete.
“We had football rivalry, we had basketball rivalry, we had baseball rivalry. That's how we dealt with a lot of things. Our energy was in the sports and in different activities.” said LeCount, now 63, a Disciples of Christ pastor whose son, then 22, was shot in their Florida hometown in 2003.
Any shooting in a school – like any homicide, suicide, fatality or injury anywhere – unquestionably is a tragedy. For that very reason, we need to stop the self-defeating commentary about gun violence that occurs in schools that hardly tells the whole story: Gun violence in schools amounts to a fraction of gun violence in America. Adults kill more kids than do teen gunmen.
Politicians, media talking heads and others have so fanned the flames on this subject that a Pew poll found that “a majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school.”