If a youth has a gun, he will use it
-Youth Violence-

Frank A. Jones

Americans seem to have a love affair with cars and guns. While both are dangerous, guns are inherently more dangerous than cars--their sole purpose is to shoot and kill. Yet both of these instruments are desired and commonplace for Americans.

Some young men do not feel that they can have a successful life unless they have a car. Cars are such a part of the fabric of our national identity that they are often thought of as a part of a young man's identity, even as his clothing is. But just as Americans have an obsession with cars, they also have an obsession with guns.

For years this nation has struggled with balancing its supposed right to have guns with its need to maintain a stable and non-threatening society. But America's problem has gone beyond the mere possession of handguns to the possession of assault rifles, war weapons, and other weapons used solely for killing human beings. Whereas, these extreme weapons have historically been in the hands of the police and military, now, however, they are in the hands of youths of all ages and races. Many white youths have gone beyond guns to bombs.

For many inner city youths, guns have become an intoxicant. The early age at which they possess them are almost unthinkable. It now seems as if anyone can buy a gun if he/she has the money. Furthermore, students are telling us that many young people possess guns to stop others from picking on them at school and other places; and they have guns because they don't want to be considered punks. In our courts, we see youths as young as 10 years old charged with possession and use of guns to maim and kill.

Beside possessing guns to stop others from picking on them, guns have become more. Guns are a new kind of drug. A drug of power and importance. The young thug depicted in the movie Grand Canyon asked the tow-truck driver (Danny Glover) if they would be having the conversation they were having (one that paid deference to him but was humiliating to the tow-truck driver) if he did not have his gun. When the tow-truck driver answered No, the young thug's response was from an intoxicated sense of himself: "That's what I thought; that's why I always carry my piece with me." The youth was important because he had a gun, hence, he had the clear ability to take the tow-truck driver's life or force him to do whatever he wanted him to do.

Whereas this is a movie, it realistically depicts the plight of a number of youths--those without a healthy sense of self in relationship to others. The gun provided the importance society had denied him; undeniably, he was in control of this situation and others depended on his decision and actions for their lives. That was raw Condign power he exercised, and it felt good to him. This was a feeling he was unaware of in the normal course of his life. Youths who have engaged in drive-by shootings have said that it was fun. Some have indicated that it gave them a sense of power, and it felt good. A gun makes people respect you. These are common notions among many inner city youths who carry guns. It is not behavior, not intelligence, not achievements, but a gun that gives respect. And these concepts of young people show the dire need of these youths to feel WORTH. A worth long denied them, and that denial could trigger the last option of Langston Hughes's A Dream Deferred.

The statement that people respect you when you have a gun indicates that without a gun, these young people do not feel respected, they do not feel of value, and they do not feel appreciated. Without help, these young people are too young to know and understand any other way that respect can be achieved. And they do not distinguish the difference between the fear that people have for them at the point of a gun and respect for them as a person without a gun. If it is not the same, they reason, it is a reasonable facsimile that feels the same, and it will do.

Although some youths feel a sense of respect with a guns, they guns are extremely lethal. Today they are killing more young people than ever before--they cause three times the number of fatalities of knives, 10 times the number of fatalities of any other type of weapon, and 20 times the number of fatalities of an unarmed offender. And while legal gun sales have been increasing each year, illegal gun sales are out pacing legal sales. It is estimated that half of the US homes have guns, and one in four of those is a hand gun. It is also estimated that 11% of students in grade school take guns to school with them on a regular basis. The death rates from guns are up, and the ones who are doing most of the dying are youths, especially young black males. Young black males have the highest rate of fatalities from hand guns of any group. And this high fatality rate is at the hands of other young black males. (See Dr. Jackson's article)

Although the fatality rate is great, there is another side to young males' intoxication with guns-- the injury rate. Injuries out pace the death rate, and in nearly every inner city community across this Nation, there is always at least one young man in a wheel chair to memorialize the devastation of guns in our communities. Workers in our hospitals know too well of the injury rates and the costs associated with gun injuries. It is approximately $14,000--17,000 to care for one person injured by a gun.

Whereas, most gun use is the result of alcohol, for the young tuffs in our courts, the intoxicant which influences their action is the power engendered by the possession of a gun.

Several years ago, the Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court asked me to observe a case of a young male who had unloaded his gun on a police officer and was trying to secure the police officer's gun to shoot him even more. The police man had on a bullet proof vest and was only knocked to the ground. Although conscious, he was not at full capacity, but he was competent enough to remove this gun from it holster and shoot the young assailant in the buttock. This case was particularly troubling for the Judge and for me as well.

The youth was the product of a relatively stable home--his mother was a Highway Patrol officer and had ample financial resources for the family. This 14 year old and some of his young friends were at a Seven-Eleven convenience store at 1:30 in the morning. They had been drinking, and the police officer came to the convenience store and asked what were they doing out so late at night. He attempted to frisk them all, but the last one had the gun. That youth pulled the gun and said that he simply pointed it at the officer, he did not pull the trigger; the gun simply started firing. However, testimony was that after he had finished unloading his gun on the police officer, he went toward him, attempting to get the officer's gun, and saying, "I'm going to kill this cop!"

This was a case of alcohol and guns mixing to bring about an almost deadly conclusion. In the hands of this youth, this gun became an intoxicant mixed with alcohol that gave him a sense of absolute power and control over his situation. When asked why he did not allow the officer to frisk him, and he responded, "I had the gun." That is, he had the power. And for him, that power was to be used.

As the Judge and I discussed this case, we sadly realized that this youth clearly demonstrated that if a kid has a gun, he will use it--he may be too dumb not to use it; he may be too scared not to use it; he may be mean enough to use it; or he may be so intoxicated with his own Condign power that he must use it. This particular young person was dumb enough, mean enough, and he was intoxicated enough with his new found power that he was almost compelled to use the gun. Furthermore, the judge determined that he would use it again, were he given the opportunity. Here was a black youth, although raised in a relatively good home, who had gotten with other low esteem youths who were similarly situated, i.e., without a sense of power and respectability, and, to them and him, the gun represented power and respectability.

Once the gun was possessed, an entirely new set of dynamics were set in motion--the need to use it and to actually experience the sensation of its use took hold.

Of all three categories of power delineated in Galbraith's Anatomy of Power, Condign power is the most effective and awesome, and it is the most ruthless. It presents life and death, physical pain or no physical pain as options to doing one's will. And since most chose life and the absence of pain, behavior is predictable: we do what the power broker with the gun wants us to do. Compensatory power and Conditioned power allow more flexibility of choices, and one maintains his principles, values, self esteem and still be free of pain, and still live. Condign power, however, does not afford such luxuries. It is a potent drug for one who has not had any meaningful power before.

To the young, guns represent Condign power in its rawest sense, and any power that they now exercise in society is a change in the social paradigm as they have experienced it.

Richard Wright's short story of the Man Who Almost Became A Man, represents the intoxication of guns on the young, dis-empowered black male. For that youth petitioning his mother to buy him a gun, having a gun was his method of finding worth and importance. His mother frequently berated him, he felt the degradation of a social cast system that demeaned him, and the stench of nihilism was ever present in this story. This young man needed something to help him move beyond his nothingness. He needed a gun. He needed to have the power to take another person's life or cause another to do his will. For him, that was the essence of manhood--the power to get others to do your will--that was the intoxication and lure of the gun: POWER. Whenever there is an absence of real or perceived power in a person's life, pathology lurks nearby.

Once the young man had the gun, it was imperative to use it. And that use resulted in harm, even though it was accidental. Youths with guns are not satisfied to simply have them, they are compelled by the power of guns and their own lack of power to use them. They have to know that the gun actually works; they have to see that they can make people to do their will; they have to feel the sensation of a changed paradigm; and they must experience what that change feels like, how long it lasts, etc. They are intoxicated by the power of the gun.

A former Chief of Police said that many of our youths commit fantasy killings--they kill as they see on television and have no cognition of the characters' return to the set. A return of the characters is simply not something to worry about; it's all a fantasy. Of course, this fantasy voids out the concept of morality of such actions because with a fantasy, there are no morality issues.

Some youths assume that guns allow them to do anything they want to do because no one is going to challenge them--after all, they have the gun. This form of intoxication is common among the youths in our courts. Not only is this true of the young black males, it is true for the young Hispanic males, Asian males, and the surge of white males coming through our courts. They now have, as one young man said, "The balls to do whatever I want; and if anyone gets in my way, I will blow them away, just like that." This is their fantasy. This is a TV mentality that has taken root in many youths.

The exact way a youth will behave once he has a gun is certainly not predictable. Some youth have become sexual, some have become brutal, some have engaged in robberies, and some have engaged in daring or defying behavior. It is a drug that has many effects on the addict.

One night, I was driving home from work, using streets in a poorer section of town. I was on a two lane city street, and a slightly built young man was walking across the street. He moved across the first lane into the second lane that I occupied and looked at me in a very daring manner. Realizing the part of town I was in and understanding some of the cultural conventions, I did not blow my horn or engage any action that would indicate that I was accepting the challenge seemingly placed before me. I turned from that lane into the next and drove on, looking at this young man in my rearview mirror. As I passed and stopped at the stop sign, I saw him pull a small hand gun and fired it into the air. He was daring and threatening, and had I given him the horn, a look, a finger, or had I driven directly, forcing him out of the street, that would have provoked him into invoking his "disrespect" rationale that one as powerful as he certainly has.

I was being challenged; the normal dance of cars and people, and thinking nothing personally of it, was not at play. There was a new cultural protocol that was in place, and I had to behave appropriately or face the consequences of my inappropriate behavior. No doubt, my response to his challenge would have been his shooting into my car, possibly killing me or wounding me. Fortunately, I had learned the mindset of the gun packing, young, inner city youth and was willing to act on that which I had learned, and I am here to write about it.

Guns are a strong kind of drug that our young people are experimenting with. They are intoxicated by the instant power it endows them with, especially if they have had no power in the past. What a youth will do with this power is unpredictable, but it is safe to assume that if a youth has a gun, he will use it.[]

Frank A. Jones
8.22.05

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