Firearms used in homicides often purchased illegally

Kelsey Jukam
Updated

This project was produced by News21, a national investigative reporting project involving top college journalism students across the country and headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University

R.I.P.s are scrawled on the shell of a burned-out brick building, pockmarked by bullet holes. Overgrown with vines, its dilapidated outer walls recall the ruins of a fortress, a monument to a long-finished battle. But a war still courses through the streets of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the past decade, it’s claimed the lives of hundreds of people — most of whom were black and barely into adulthood.

In Flint, Michigan, swing-sets in Mott Park are empty as drug dealers and gang members claim the turf as their own, guns tucked in their waistbands. During summer months, parents keep their children indoors, rarely letting them play outside in the daytime. Kickball at night isn’t even a thought. The recreation centers created to give the city’s youth a refuge are now hotbeds of violence, referees replaced with police.

Amid the crumbling row houses in once-industrial Camden, New Jersey, murals are dedicated to the fallen, hundreds more lost in one of America’s deadliest cities. One is dedicated to a veteran who survived his deployment in Iraq unscathed only to be shot and killed in his hometown.

“This is not a war you can win in one day,” one Camden police officer said. “This is not a war where you can go and get rid of the bad guys and say, 'OK guys, here’s your city back.'

Related: Camden, New Jersey

“We have to occupy this city forever.”

Homicides are down across most of the country, but little has changed in these three cities. Parents are still losing their children at an alarming rate. Over 40 percent of all victims of firearm-related homicides are 25 or younger. In Camden, Flint and Baton Rouge, the typical victim is just 22.

A News21 analysis of the FBI’s national database of supplementary homicide reports found that across the country, 17,422 black men between ages 13 and 30 have been killed by firearms since 2008.

Baton Rouge

Patrick Holmes has a large pink scar running from his right wrist to the top of his little finger, a remnant of a gunfight he got into when he was 16. Next to the scar is a tattoo — a black, cursive “R.I.P.” On his left hand is one word: “Lawrince,” his best friend, now dead.

Related: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.