The Impacts of Firearm Violence Exposure on Youth in the U.S: Building the Evidence and the Solutions

Abstract

Firearm violence, adverse childhood experiences, youth well-beingFirearm violence persists as a public health crisis in the United States (U.S.). Approximately 100,000 individuals are shot with firearms every year, over 40,000 of whom succumb to their firearm-related injuries (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024). And these numbers don't include the thousands of youth who are exposed to indirect forms of firearm violence: for example, witnessing gunfire or losing a parent or other family member to gun violence. Data from the Washington Post estimate that more than 383,000 school-aged youth have been exposed to gun violence specifically in K-12 schools since the Columbine mass shooting in 1999 (Cox, et al., 2019). Firearms are currently the leading cause of death among children and teens in the U.S. and this violence is disproportionately placed on youth of color. Indeed, racial disparities in exposure to firearm violence among youth have long persisted in the U.S., but recent research has highlighted that these disparities in childhood gun violence exposure have only gotten worse since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Martin et al., 2022).