Four in ten California teens fear gun violence, a worry tied to suicidal thoughts

What happened

A new commentary in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, looks at how teenagers’ fear of gun violence relates to their mental health. In “Firearm Violence Worry and Firearm Access: Implications for Suicide Prevention,” Ilana Lavina, Emma D. Whitmyre and Shilpa J. Patel respond to a study by Hindmarch and colleagues at UCLA in the same journal.

According to the study’s abstract in Pediatrics, researchers analyzed 2021 and 2022 California Health Interview Survey data from a representative sample of 2,154 California adolescents. Thirty-nine percent said they worry about experiencing firearm violence. Worry was more common among girls, gender-diverse youth, lower-income teens, teens who see their neighborhood as unsafe and teens who report firearm access or know peers with a gun. Teens with a firearm at home, or who had ever used one, worried less. Worry was linked to 1.6 times the odds of past-month psychological distress and 1.7 times the odds of past-year suicidal thoughts, the abstract reports.

The commentary authors call the split between access inside and outside the home one of the study’s most important contributions. They write that asking teens about their worries and where they feel unsafe, along with questions about firearm access, could surface hidden risks and open the way to mental health support and safety planning. They also point to lethal-means counseling, which limits a young person’s immediate access to dangerous items, noting an established body of evidence behind it and that “suicidal crises are often brief and impulsive.”

The study is cross-sectional, a single snapshot showing association rather than cause, according to its abstract, and the commentary calls for further research. An earlier UCLA Center for Health Policy Research analysis of the same survey, covering ages 15 to 24, likewise found that young people worried about gun violence were nearly twice as likely to report suicidal thoughts.

Our reflection

Four in ten. That is how many California teenagers in this survey said they carry the fear of being shot, and the weight falls hardest on girls, gender-diverse kids, families with less money and young people who come home through blocks they do not trust. This research ties that worry to distress and to thoughts of suicide.

The teens who worried most were also the ones who could get a gun within two days. The study cannot say which came first. It does show fear and access living on the same streets.

Now the part about the rest of us. Many adults have made peace with numbness. We ask our kids about grades and rarely ask where they feel unsafe. Numbness passes for peace, and it is a counterfeit. Some of us feel calm because a gun sits in the closet. Calm and safe are separate questions, and a family that loves a struggling teenager has to ask both.

Jesus knew dread from the inside. In Gethsemane he told his friends his soul was “very sorrowful, even to death,” and asked them to stay awake with him (Matthew 26:38). They slept. When the soldiers came, Peter grabbed the sword within reach. Jesus told him to put it away, then touched the wounded man’s ear and healed it (Luke 22:51). Fear reached for a weapon. Jesus reached for the wound. And after the empty tomb he cooked Peter breakfast over a charcoal fire and gave him work to do. That is the Christ who sits up with a frightened fifteen-year-old, and he is calling the rest of us out of our sleep.

Change here is practical. Any adult who spends time with teenagers can ask them where they feel unsafe, then ask about guns. A pediatrician can do it in an exam room. A coach can do it on the walk to the car after practice. Lethal-means counseling has evidence behind it, and it can start with a family choosing to lock up or remove firearms when a young person is in a dark stretch. Our JCVI work exists for the same reason: reach young people at first contact, before a record exists, and stay. A mentor will not end gun violence. A mentor can be the adult who stays awake.

This week, ask one young person where they feel unsafe and listen to the end. If a young person you love is talking about suicide, call or text 988 today. Then take one of the steps below.

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.

Zechariah 8:5

Source: Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics), “Firearm Violence Worry and Firearm Access: Implications for Suicide Prevention”