It should be a top concern for the US to understand and stop youth gun violence. The need for policies that succinctly capture social order and confidence is reinforced by the ongoing rise in gun violence incidents in both inner city streets and schools. Notably, both murders and assaults with firearms are regarded as forms of gun violence. Moreover, the definition of gun violence includes self-harm injuries that are primarily the outcome of completed suicide. Gun violence also includes unintentional gun injuries that happen, for instance, when young children find firearms and shoot at their playmates. The main causes of gun violence include exposure to violence as well as the access and availability of firearms. Parent and school connectedness, state and federal laws, and monitoring social media have been credited with reducing gun violence among teenagers.
Factors that Enhance Gun Violence
There are several factors which increase a community's susceptibility to gun violence. To begin with, a setting including the home, community as well as school, have a significant influence on the development of individual risk factors for gun violence. A good number of American teenagers and young adults often report various instances of exposure to some violence in their settings. Exposure to violence encompasses direct exposure which involves personal victimization as well as indirect exposure which entails witnessing a traumatizing event. Violence exposure is associated with anxiety, depression as well as posttraumatic stress disorder. The psychological injuries that arise due to the exposure of violence are often overlooked. However, the history of violence exposure is a great determinant of future behavior among the youths. For instance, in a research conducted by Cook, Ludwig & Braga (2005), 42.6% of 884 cases of gun violence in the US had at least 1 felony conviction.
Similarly, ease of access to firearms is also a contributing factor in gun violence. It is evident that youths who have been involved in violence from their settings are at risk of getting engaged in assaultive conduct as and may carry weapons. Therefore, most of these youths nurture various forms of violence often beginning from physical forms to more complex and dreadful ones such as gun violence. Most youths and young adults who are involved in gun violence live in homes where firearms are present but not properly kept. Firearms are credited for being significant tools in homicide as well as suicide deaths among teenagers. According to Parsons and Johnson (2014), 21% of individuals who died through gun violence in 2010 were under the age of 25 where more than 6,500 cases reported. Notably, causes of death such as suicide are also characterized by the use of guns. Further, violence in neighborhoods makes youths fear and make them walk around with guns. Therefore, the availability of firearms increases the likelihood of being involved in youth gun violence. Additionally, factors such as social rejection from groups have been contended to be a major causative factor of school shootings. Street shootings, on the other hand, are influenced mostly by poverty, personality traits as well as family influences.
In the US, most of the gun violence perpetrators are white. This trend is observed in both the rural as well as suburban regions, and most of the perpetrators come from middle-class families. These shooters are exposed to several weapons which include automatic and semi-automatic rifles that are acquired legally by their family members. Conversely, youths who are involved in street shootings are mainly black, poor, and they hail from the inner city. Typical street shooters have several arrest records, and they use handguns which are not registered.
Gun Violence Mitigation Strategies
There are several measures that can be engaged to mitigate gun violence in the society. Parental guidance, as well as correct supervision, may help in regulating where and with whom teenagers spend their time with and consequently curbing the threat of violence exposure. Further, high education goals, as well as the physical interventions that are mainly found in academic institutions including the utilization of medical detectors, allows for the generation of safe connection to the institution's setting.
Additionally, the federal firearms act as well as the gun control act should be strictly implemented to regulate the buying and selling firearms. The state and federal laws should also be reviewed and determined whether they are effective in the reduction of gun violence, particularly in youth homicides as well as suicide. Similarly, monitoring the social media activities of teenagers may be effective in preventing school shootings and other youth gun violence incidents. Therefore, there should be efficient measures to ensure that information regarding something terrible that is about to happen should be brought to adults who have the ability to respond effectively.
Conclusion
Conclusively, it is evident that many teenagers are not only victims of gun violence but they are also capable of committing various gun-related crimes. The easy access as well as availability of firearms that the youths have across the US develops a chance for the teenagers to engage in confrontations as well as disagreements which often turn out to be fatal. The lives of young people change drastically after engaging in gun violence. Families are subjected to psychological torture considering that teenagers involved in the gun murder are likely to face long-term imprisonment. More information should be gathered through research, and more informed regulations should be implemented to efficiently address the problem of youth gun violence. In any case, the generation of young people is losing many of its members due to gun violence, be it victims or perpetrators.
Reference
Cook, P. J., Ludwig, J., & Braga, A. A. (2005). Criminal records of homicide offenders. JAMA, 294(5), 598-601.
Parsons, C., & Johnson, A. (2014). Young guns: How gun violence is devastating the millennial generation. Center for American Progress.
