This study, combined with the rise in juvenile gun crimes, raises serious questions about two juvenile crime bills currently working their way through Congress. Put another way, the entire growth in the juvenile homicide rate during that ten year period was handgun-related. In 1990, one in 20 students reported carrying a firearm during the previous 30 days.
Teenage boys are now more likely to die from gunshot wounds than all natural causes combined.
These data have led criminologist Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University to suggest that a juvenile arms race is taking place. Children in our inner cities are arming themselves, not so much to cause deliberate harm as to protect themselves from other armed students. Given that scenario, what used to be school yard brawls resulting in bloody noses are now shoot-outs which too often take the lives of innocent bystanders. Yet despite the huge contribution guns are making to the rise in violent juvenile crime, Congressional juvenile crime bills are ominously silent on the gun issue. In 1994, for example, when Virginia tried relatively few juveniles in adult court, it still had one of the lowest rates of violent juvenile crime in the country.