By The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC_

Since 2020, guns have been the leading cause of death in the United States for children and teens. While the proliferation of gun access and gun violence often dominate national, state and local headlines, little has been done to understand the views young people have on these pervasive issues.

To address this gap, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) and SPLC came together to study young people’s access to guns, experiences with gun violence, feelings of safety and mental wellbeing, as well as their views on male supremacy, racial resentment and the Second Amendment.

Our U.S. Youth Attitudes on Guns Report provides groundbreaking insights into young people's perceptions, fears and proximity to guns and gun violence. This nationally representative survey of 4,156 Americans aged 14 to 30 and qualitative focus groups lay bare the ubiquity of guns and gun violence in the lives of young Americans.

Montgomery, AL: SPLC, 2023.

By Brent R. Klein,

Joshua D. Freilich and

Steven M. Chermak

The American School Shooting Study (TASSS) is an ongoing mixedmethod project funded by the National Institute of Justice to catalog US school shootings. It has amassed data based on open sources and other public materials dating back to 1990. This brief presents new insights from TASSS, diving deeper into the database’s potential to examine the locations, timing, and student involvement of youth-perpetrated gun violence.

Although statistically rare, fatal and nonfatal shootings in the United States at elementary, middle, and secondary schools remain important crime problems with significant public policy implications. Indeed, the impact of such violence exceeds the devastating fatalities and immense sorrow that survivors, families, and communities experience. Even one gunshot fired at a school can subject numerous individuals to the traumas of gun violence.1 Recent polls indicate that school shootings can also sway broader public views on crime, including attitudes toward violence reduction.2 As a result, school shootings have become a focal point of US politics, sparking crucial debates on the most effective strategies for preventing and responding to gun violence, both inside and outside K-12 schools.

Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute of Government, 2023. 21p.

By Elise White, Basaime Spate, Javonte Alexander, and Rachel Swaner

In 2020, while the world was wrestling with how to keep safe from a new contagious respiratory virus, many young, urban Americans were navigating how best to protect themselves from another public health crisis: a steep increase in gun violence. Long before these dual pandemics came to dominate media coverage, researchers at the Center for Justice Innovation [the Center] had been grappling with understanding gun violence in cities around the country: Why are young people carrying and using guns? What factors—social and structural—are creating and impacting gun culture? What cultural strategies do youth develop in response to gun culture, and how can those strategies be leveraged to stem the violence? To answer these questions and build on the Center’s previous study of New York City youth gun carrying (Swaner et al. 2020), the Center received funding from the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research to conduct an exploratory, participatory action research study of the socio-cultural roots of gun violence in four cities (Brooklyn, NY; Wilmington, DE; Philadelphia, PA; Detroit, MI) that will each produce site-specific findings. This report focuses on the findings from the Brooklyn, NY site, where we conducted interviews with 103 youth ages 15-24 who had carried a gun in the previous year. Data were collected between February 27, 2020, and March 30, 2021.

New York: Center for Justice Innovation , 2023. 72p.