A new study that finds handgun carriage by adolescents has gone up significantly over the past two decades. The jump 41% was especially pronounced among rural, white, and higher-income adolescents, according to the study, which was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study was based on nationally representative surveys conducted annually from 2002 to 2019 of about 300,000 12-17-year-olds.
“The big finding was that [gun] carriage increased substantially. That translated to hundreds of thousands of adolescents,” said Naoka Carey, a co-author of the study and a doctoral candidate at Boston College.
While male teens are still more likely to carry handguns than females, the rate at which girls and young women are carrying handguns is rising more quickly, a study published earlier this year in the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests.
“This is probably the newest trend,” said the Rev. Kenny Irby, community intervention director for the St. Petersburg Police Department.
In conversations he’s had with young women, they’ve said they no longer want to be “trap queens,” a term with roots in hip-hop culture. They say they're going to be “the queens,” Irby said.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Dr. David Baum, an obstetrician in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, described the “horrific scene” when a gunman rained rifle shots down