Daniel Webster
Professor Of Health Policy And Management, Johns Hopkins University
Key Findings
- The risk factors for gun violence in youth include negative family influences, abnormal neurobiological factors, low academic achievement, exposure to media violence, ready access to guns, substance use, and negative social relationships.
- Protective factors that reduce youth gun violence include increasing self-control and social competence skills, strengthening family-bonds, reducing the effects of violent media, reducing access to guns, reducing substance use, and increasing school climate.
Description
In the review, “Youth Violence: What We Know and What We Need to Know,” Webster and his co-authors examine youth gun violence to determine how to differentiate between violent and aggressive behavior and risk factors in youth. The authors define aggression as the intention to physically harm another person that doesn’t want to be harmed. They also distinguish between school rampant shootings and street shootings. School rampant shootings are classified as large-scale shootings perpetrated by a marginalized youth from a rural area in a public place, and the perpetrator takes their life. Street shootings are categorized by taking place in high-crime and low-income areas where the shooters obtain guns from their friends or family. The risk factors for gun violence the authors describe include negative family influences, abnormal neurobiological factors, low academic achievement, exposure to media violence, ready access to guns, substance use, and negative social relationships. Protective factors that reduce youth gun violence include increasing self-control and social competence skills, strengthening family-bonds, reducing the effects of violent media, reducing access to guns, reducing substance use, and increasing school climate. The researchers note that recent approaches to targeting at-risk youth involves using hotspots policing and individual-based surveillance such as social media data mining. In conclusion, the researchers note the need for more research on each of the risk factors to prevent both street and school rampant shootings.