INDIANAPOLIS — One student advocacy group is trying to increase the conversation surrounding teens and guns after a number of violent juvenile gun crimes this week.
“A lot of students feel like these types of things are natural and normal to happen,” said North Central High School student Salsabil Qaddoura, founder of the school’s Students Demand Action chapter.
Qaddoura said she worries rising teenage violence has almost desensitized an entire generation.
“I think it’s important for people who are actually in these environments where it seems hard to get out of, to want to reach out for the help,” she said. “Because the only way we can give help to people is if they want to receive it.”
In 2023 alone, the Marion County Prosecutor filed 418 gun crime cases against juveniles.
Riley Hospital for Children also reports treating five juvenile shooting victims in the first two months of 2024 and 54 juvenile shooting victims in all of 2023.
This is why Qaddoura said her group, Students Demand Action, is focused on creating a conversation among other teens.
“What we want to do is make sure these people feel and understand that what’s going on is not okay, it should not be normal,” she said. “They should reach out to us and be able to have these conversations and realize they should not be waking up to gunshots or having their family killed from gun violence.”
At the same time, other groups like “Stop the Violence” are working to build a team of organizations that can problem-solve together in tackling juvenile violence. FOX59/CBS4 attended a meeting Thursday night where organization leaders held discussions over the same exact issue Qaddoura and her peers are trying to address.
“We’re doing a good job, but we need to do a better job of coming together with our community to address the problems and be able to get our teens and young adults additional things that are positive that they can become engaged in,” said True Vine Ministry Baptist Church Pastor Fred Dorsey.
That is why activists like Dorsey said it is great to see teens and young adults taking their own initiative.
“I think that’s awesome,” he said. “Because as we know, that’s that peer-to-peer relation and that peer-to-peer relation can sometimes be a lot greater than what we can offer.”
Students Demand Action said it is planning a “Peace Walk” on April 27 as part of “Youth Violence Prevention Week.”
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