By David L. Snelling

Miami – Adults in Florida are not the only ones carrying guns for protection. Teenagers are packing handguns as well at an alarming 65 percent surge in the last 20 years, according to a survey.

Despite Florida law banning anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing handguns, teenagers have found a way to get their hands on firearms to protect themselves from neighborhood violence, threats, sexual assault and racial attacks, or commit crimes.

Despite teens carrying guns for protection, there has been an increase in gun violence including homicides among youths.

A study recently published in the Journal of Pediatrics discovered that 6 percent of 701,000 middle and high school teens in Florida were carrying guns in 2022, up from less than 4 percent in 2021.

Girls had three times the odds of carrying a gun in 2022 compared to 2002, while middle school students and white children had twice the odds.

“These findings indicate the need to specifically tailor earlier prevention strategies focused on handgun access and carrying toward female and middle school students, with ongoing attention to rural and male adolescents across racial and ethnic identities, who still have the highest prevalence of carriage after a 20-year period,” concluded the research team led by Erin Wright-Kelly, director of research and evaluation at the University of Colorado Injury and Violence Prevention Center.

And the plight of teens carrying guns goes beyond Florida.

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), teenagers in other states are also packing firearms for protection.

In 2023, 766 male and 209 female teenagers were caught carrying handguns in their neighborhoods, on school campuses and other popular hangouts for youths throughout the nation.

Black male teens had the highest percentage with 10.6 percent, followed by Hispanic (7.2 percent), and non-Hispanic White (6.1 percent).

Among females, gun carrying was more common among Hispanic (3.5 percent) than among Black (2.0 percent) and white teens (1.1 percent).

Gun carrying was significantly more prevalent among those students who had experienced violence, suicidal ideation or attempts, or substance use than it was among those who hadn’t.

The numbers of teens carrying guns in the U.S. have deadly consequences.

According to a study conducted by John Hopkins Blommer School of Public Health, in Florida, an average of 220 children and teens die by gun violence, with 68 percent being homicides and 29 percent suicide.

Black teens are twice as likely to die by homicide gunfire, which rose 5.6 percent from 2021 to 2022, and surpassing the gun suicide rate among white teens.

Nationwide, African American children and teens are over eight times more likely to die from firearm homicide than their white counterparts, as firearms have been the leading cause of death for Black youths for well over a decade.

Firearm suicide rates are highest among American Indian/Alaskan Native and white children and teens, compared to other racial/ethnic groups.

With teens carrying firearms, gun violence has spread to schools across the nation.

According to Gun Violence Prevention, in 2023, there were reportedly 38 school shootings in Florida that resulted in injuries and deaths.

Florida’s K-12 schools had 71 firearm incidents on campus in the decade ending in 2023, more than three times the prior 10-year 21 incidents.

Nationwide, in 2023, 227 people have been reportedly killed or wounded on school grounds from gun violence, which often occurs at schools with a high Black population.

Since the Columbine High shooting massacre in Colorado in 1999 that took the lives of 16 students and teachers, over 390 school shootings in the U.S. were reported, resulting in at least 203 deaths and 441 injuries among students, educators and others on school campuses.

The 2022 Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting was the most recent shooting massacre in which a former student killed 19 students and two teachers and injured 17 others.

The 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland was also among the worst massacres in U.S. history when 17 students and teachers were killed and another 17 seriously wounded.

As the nation is gripped with the gun epidemic, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami) who has been spearheading an anti-gun violence campaign among youths for the past several years, said he’s planning to reintroduce the Assault Weapons Ban Act of 2025.

She made the announcement during Gun Violence Awareness Month in June 2025.

Wilson said the Act would make it a crime to knowingly import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon or large capacity ammunition feeding device with some exemptions.

The bill was first introduced in 2022 and approved by Congress but didn’t advance in the Senate.

“There are too many damn guns in our nation and the gun violence epidemic needs to end now,” Wilson said on social media. “This Gun Violence Awareness Month, I’m wearing orange because gun violence continues to kill more children and teenagers than cancer and car crashes. It’s time to take action now.”