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Watkins watched wide-eyed as the man who had stood in line behind his mother pulled out a gun and robbed the fast-food restaurant.

It was the mid-1990s, the height of the crack epidemic, and Virginia’s capital had an infamous title: murder capital of the United States. Richmond recorded 140 homicides in 1997 – nearly 10 times the national murder rate per capita.

Professor Andrew Block directs the School of Law’s State and Local Government Law Clinic. “I’ve sort of made my life’s work working with vulnerable kids in some form or another. The challenges that kids experience and the tragedies that they face all too often are not of their own making,” he said. (Photo by Julia Davis, UVA School of Law)

Today, about 1,200 people in Virginia die from gun-related injuries each year – roughly one every eight hours, .

New research from the University of Virginia seeks to address the problem. It identifies a strong connection among fear, social media and youth gun violence, trends the experts say intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report, was led by UVA School of Law professor Andrew Block, who served as Virginia’s director of juvenile justice from 2014 to 2019, a period during which he drove reforms that sharply reduced youth incarceration and closed youth prisons. This comes two years after the University created the , a university-wide effort to develop, implement, and assess solutions to reduce gun violence.

The work draws heavily on one-on-one interviews with young people conducted by Watkins, whose childhood experiences uniquely positioned him for the role. Watkins is the , a community-based youth mentoring and gang-prevention program in Lynchburg.

“We hear that a lot, about what adults think is going on in the minds of young people,” he said. “But we wanted to hear directly from the youth themselves … In my experience, I knew that in order to get young people to speak honestly about how they felt, we had to create a safe environment for them.”

What researchers learned was striking. Many young people carry guns because they are afraid. Social media, Block said, often intensifies that fear by normalizing gun culture, and conflicts that begin online can quickly escalate into real-world violence.

“There are some kids who are so scared that they feel like the only way they can be safe is to carry a gun,” he said. “Young Black men ages 15 to 34 were more than 18 times more likely to be murdered than white Virginians.”

“In Their Own Voices” features anonymous quotes from young people in gun-violence hotspots, including Lynchburg, Hampton, Richmond and Newport News.

That’s all they want to hear: ‘I got you.’ That’s it. That’s all they need. For somebody to tell them, ‘I got you, and I love you and you can do it.’ If you can tell them those three things, they’ll do anything in the world for you.

- Age 17, Hampton

The report recommends steps like expanding mentoring and after-school programs; improving neighborhood conditions, like lighting and vacant lots; and increasing funding for community violence-prevention efforts.

James “Trae” Watkins III, far left, and students from Good Gangs, a Lynchburg youth mentoring and gang-prevention program, pose on the field at Scott Stadium after a November football game against Wake Forest. Watkins is the program’s project director for Good Gangs and conducted the one-on-one interviews for the gun violence report. (Contributed photo)

“No one’s asking young people how they feel about gun violence. When we finally did, many told us no one had ever asked them that before,” Watkins said. “There are so many smart, thoughtful young people out there. If people could hear what they’re saying, it would make a huge difference.”