How Gunfire Is Killing More American Children
The New York Times
Toddlers are discovering guns under piles of clothes and between couch cushions. Teenagers are obtaining untraceable ghost guns made from kits. Middle school students are carrying handguns for protection.
Kendall Munson was so worried about the gun violence in her neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side that she sent her sons to live with their grandparents outside Atlanta. But death found them anyway.
On Dec. 9, her goofy, football-loving 11-year-old son, Elyjah, and some friends were walking to a gas station for after-school snacks when one of Elyjah’s best friends, a 12-year-old, pulled a gun from a backpack and shot Elyjah in the head.
It was the second time last year that the family had been jolted by gun violence. Two weeks before Elyjah was killed, his 5-year-old cousin, Khalis Eberhart, was fatally shot after a 3-year-old cousin found a gun under a sofa cushion.
