'Gotta Make Your Own Heaven' Guns, Safety, and the Edge of Adulthood in New York City

• NCJ Number: 309798
• Author(s): Rachel Swaner; Elise White; Andrew Martinez; Anjelica Camacho; Basaime Spate; Javonte Alexander; Lysondra Webb; Kevin Evans
• Date Published: August 2020
• Length: 69 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2016-IJ-CX-0008
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Award: The Gun Epidemic Reconsidered: Creating a Foundation to Reduce Firearm Violence Among Urban Youth

Annotation

In this study, researchers investigated the experiences of youth in New York City at high risk for gun violence.

Abstract

This project investigating the experiences of New York City youth ages 16-24 at high risk for gun violence found that youth in the study were mostly carrying to increase their feelings of safety. Many had been shot or shot at, had been attacked physically with a non-firearm weapon, or had someone close to them be shot. They held a widespread belief that they could be victimized at any time, and guns served to protect them from real or perceived threats from other gun carriers—often rival gang members, residents of different housing projects, and the police. Their wholesale distrust of the police stemmed partly from historical overpolicing. The hypervigilance that seems apparent in many participants’ excerpts may constructively be understood as a trauma reaction, in a causal relationship to the death and threat-of-death they live with daily. Gun carrying served as one mechanism of self-preservation. These data indicate that street-involved youth of color are caught in double-binds: they are potential targets both of other youth and of agents of the state theoretically in place to protect them. Further, efforts they take to provide for their own safety merely serve to increase their vulnerability from both these sources. This community trauma is shared by those who carry guns and those who do not. It factors into nearly every gun-related decision these young people make. Policies and programs must contend with this context and the sobering conditions these young people live in. Youth participants were recruited from three neighborhoods with historically high rates of gun violence when compared to the city as a whole—Brownsville (Brooklyn), Morrisania (Bronx), and East Harlem (Manhattan). The researchers explored the complex confluence of individual, situational, and environmental factors that influence youth gun acquisition and use.