I'm not convinced these things are mutually exclusive. When you break down the statistics, 61 kids between the ages of 0-11 were killed so far in 2023 by gun violence (just typing that makes my stomach hurt...). In comparison, 355 teenagers (ages 12-17) were killed. (1) That's 6x the amount of death in an age bracket half the size.
The huge spike in death rate is largely linked to gang violence. Gangs often start recruiting around the age kids hit puberty. Take a look at the Gun Violence Archive's incident reports on mass shootings, and you find a huge percentage are tagged as "gang violence" and resulted in dead or injured teenagers. (2)
When you hear about "school shootings" happening in America, very few are Columbine style events. Most are gang related, and impact the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken student populations who have the least resources to deal with the resulting trauma. There is a reason poor, inner-city schools are usually the ones with metal detectors at their doors.
Gangs are still fueled by drug sales. Drugs and gun violence go hand in hand. I don't think we can solve one without solving the other.
We desperately need resources and reforms poured into both issues. But I think if we treat them as unrelated problems, we're doomed to fail.
Decrease the size of the industry that can't access state violence via the courts to solve it's petty business disputes (i.e. the illegal drug industry).
A huge amount of violent crime of all types in the US is a figment of drug distributors and dealers, and to some extent users robbing, shooting and beating each other to settle scores.
Hell, just making possession completely legal (none of this "civil infraction" bullshit) so that people can go to the cops when they're robbed instead of getting revenge on who they think done it would be a huge step forward.
I disagree. Gun deaths are. Children don't choose to use guns typically. Bullets are forced into them by others.
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-a...