U.S. Sen. Mark Warner met with local elected officials, first responders and activists at a community center Friday to discuss solutions to the deadly problem, which he called “a cancer.” He noted 76 homicides in the region so far in 2024. The region reported 205 killings last year — 189 of them by gun.

Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell said a few years ago, the city’s crime rate was “pretty high” and that the city developed a strategic plan to reduce gun violence by addressing root causes.

“We first discovered that the crime that was taking place, for the most part, were committed by a limited number of actors,” Bell said. “And the crime took place in pockets within our city. And as a result of that, we addressed the root issues that created criminality, such as poverty, such as things that go on in the home, the type of issues that are not spoken of.”

He said if these root causes are “not addressed in the home,” violence will erupt “in the streets.”

Bell said Hampton has seen a 71% decrease in homicides over the past year and that shootings have gone down 56% over the last five years.

Latiesha Handie, the executive director for Hampton’s Office of Youth and Young Adult Opportunities, shared the success of the city’s Hopeful Hampton initiative — which aims to reduce gun violence among teens and young adults by pairing them with mentors. She spoke of one young man, a former gang member who managed to turn his life around after he received help in unaddressed trauma, conflict resolution and mental health support.

Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones said the city has invested about $5 million in 36 violence-interrupting organizations over the past three years. Jones said his goal is to reduce gun violence by 15% annually. To accomplish that, the city will continue to invest in programs and individuals “doing the work” to prevent gun violence and soon launch a new office whose main purpose is to prevent gun violence.

Various speakers highlighted the need for sustained financial commitment toward gun violence prevention groups and nonprofits, stricter gun control laws, mental health resources, and investments in youth and local nonprofits.

Warner used the roundtable as an opportunity to highlight his Virginia Plan to Reduce Gun Violence, which would enact several of Virginia’s gun safety laws at the federal level. He also condemned political violence following last week’s assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

“This is the worst failure from Secret Service, probably since the attempted assassination of President Reagan,” Warner said after the roundtable.

Warner said the situation “may again be a case of someone having access to a weapon of war that had mental health issues.”

Warner, who has supported the banning of assault weapons, also said that if the shooter “had a knife instead of an AR-15,” the near-assassination “wouldn’t have happened.”

“How much more of this kind of violence do we have to see before we say ‘This doesn’t happen in other nations, and it shouldn’t in America,’” Warner said.

Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.com

As the two groups approached, members of a violence intervention team run by the nonprofit Teens with a Purpose were watching.

At least one of the boys was carrying a handgun with a laser sight. Marvin Muhammad, who leads the after school Safe Passage team for Teens with a Purpose, said the mentors greeted the groups and defused the tension. When the teens saw the Safe Passage leaders, wearing recognizable reflective vests, they stutter-stepped.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” one boy told another.

The groups dispersed, and no violence was reported in the area that day. The intervention was described by Muhammad and documented in a report by the group, which concluded the leaders’ presence and greeting were key to the nonviolent outcome. The intervention is one of 15 the team has documented since October as part of routine walks through the neighborhood.

Teens with a Purpose is one of dozens of grassroots groups in Hampton Roads that work to prevent gun violence in the community, particularly among young people. Rather than focusing on locking people up as a deterrent, they work on addressing the root causes of gun violence —  including poverty, access to guns, low education, poor mental health, and past exposure to violence — and steering young people on a more positive direction before it is too late.

The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press spoke with mentors and participants from two community initiatives — Teens with a Purpose and the Hopeful Hampton Divergent Program — about their work to reduce gun violence and how they seek to provide teenagers and young adults with opportunities and resources.

Nearly half of the homicide victims in Hampton Roads last year were younger than 30, according to information provided by local police departments and compiled by The Pilot and Daily Press. About 10% were juveniles, another 10% were 18 or 19, while about 25% were in their 20s.

___

Community connections

The best way to address these trends is at the community level, according to experts and legislators.

“It has to be community based, which means it has to be unique to every community,” said Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, who secured funding in the state budget this year for a gun violence reduction program in Hopewell. “That’s the key … it has to be small scale because the people you’re going out and talking to have to know that you’re from their community and there’s a level of trust that needs to be built.”

Mentors in such groups say their ability to help teenagers turn their lives around comes from understanding what they are going through. Many mentors have served time in jail. In coaching young people, they freely share stories about their own mistakes.

Hopeful Hampton mentor George Keenan, 46, grew up in Phoebus and said he was rebellious, “out in the streets on drugs, selling drugs, doing the whole nine.”

When he was 23, he killed a man and served time in prison. He could have faced up to 60 years in prison, or even the death penalty, under a first-degree murder charge. But the family of the victim pushed for the charges to be reduced to second-degree murder and encouraged him to make better choices. Their sense of mercy, he said, led to “a seed being planted.”

“I just wanted to transform my life to make my life something because I missed so much,” Keenan said. “And now I learn from my mistakes. Now, it’s my turn to give back to try to help some people.”

Mentoring, Keenan said, is about “giving a bit of yourself to a person who may need something to fill a void in their life, to let them know that you’ve been there, that they can rely on you.”

___

Tapping into creative pursuits

Teens with a Purpose, founded in 1996 in Norfolk, focuses on providing at-risk youth with a safe place for creative pursuits. It tries to connect them with mentors and trained professionals and give them constructive, prosocial ways of earning money. It also incorporates mindfulness, meditation, healing circles and yoga as a way to teach a healthy lifestyle.

The nonprofit serves the Norfolk communities of St. Paul’s, Tidewater Gardens, Young Terrace, Calvert Square and Olde Huntersville, which have some of the highest crime and poverty rates in the city. It also has school-based programs in Suffolk and Virginia Beach. Its programming includes Safe Passage, a community garden, music production studio, poetry program, and a group for teenagers already involved in the criminal justice system.

Many of the organization’s paid staff are students who grew up in the program, said Executive Director Deirdre Love.

Malik Jordan, 24, is one such mentor. A self-described “angry” kid when he joined Teens with a Purpose at 11, Jordan now works as a program specialist. At 15, Jordan sparked the creation of the community garden, called Purpose Park, where residents can pick free fruits, vegetables and herbs.

The garden, once a barren gravel lot, is now an oasis providing a place to relax and a sustainable food source after a fire shut down the area’s primary grocery store. Teenagers are paid to tend the garden, providing them a positive job experience and an alternative source of income to those on the street.

“The thing I’m most proud of is that it provides for my community and the teens that live here, so it’s just something sustainable that we can have,” Jordan said. “We can be self-reliant, everything doesn’t have to come from (somewhere else).”

Many young people find their way into the program through the creative outlets offered. The focus on poetry and music is what sparked the interest of 17-year-old Trinity Parker.

“I just showed up one day, and they welcomed me with open arms, and I never left since,” said Parker, who joined two years ago.

When Parker came to Teens with a Purpose, she struggled with her anger, but has learned to manage her emotions better through meditation. The group’s collaborative, open environment allows conversations about societal issues which inspired Parker to deepen her self-expression and to come out of her shell.

“I see what goes on (in terms of violence and other struggles in the community), but to be able to hear it from actual people and basically hearing a common thing between everyone it’s like, ‘OK, this isn’t just me,'” Parker said. “It’s a group effort, a lot of people are going through a similar thing. I love how we’re able to use our art and our voice for that.”

___

Intensive intervention

The Hopeful Hampton Divergent program is a 12-week intensive plan focused on teenagers and young adults who are likely to be involved in gun violence. The city-run program pairs youth with mentors who have had similar experiences.

The program is small, working with six to nine people at a time, and costs about $51,000 per 12-week session to run. Young people involved in the program are either using guns or have used them. Some are referred by the courts, law enforcement, schools or other community partners. Several have been ordered by the court to participate.

Jalen Tyriq Tisdale, 24, is a former gang member who spent time in jail. Since joining Hopeful Hampton, he said, he’s made significant accomplishments, like getting off of probation. Tisdale said he grew up in the projects and his father has been incarcerated since he was 13. He and his friends fought with kids from other neighborhoods, and the violence escalated to the point guns were introduced. He said many teens and young men carry firearms because they think it’s cool and “they want to be something they are not.”

“A lot of people aren’t mentally prepared for what comes with the gun when you pick the gun up,” he said. “And I had to learn that the hard way.”

Tisdale has lost several friends and family members to gun violence. His Hopeful Hampton mentor, Troy Ketchmore (who also has his own youth-focused nonprofit, Ketchmore Kids), connected with him over similar life experiences — including time in prison.

“He didn’t lie to me about anything,” Tisdale said. “He was vulnerable when first meeting me. Our bond has been strong. Mr. Troy taught me a lot. He taught me to humble myself. He’s taught me to always be calm and aware in every situation. You know, I had a bad anger problem, and Mr. Troy taught me a little trick to bring myself back down before I even get myself to that breaking point.”

During the 12-week program, the students meet twice a week at a community center. The sessions start with “mindfulness” or therapeutic exercises that set the tone for the rest of the evening. Tisdale said these types of exercises were among the most challenging parts of the program, as they required vulnerability.

“I had a lot of personal things going on that I wasn’t willing to share,” Tisdale said. “Just falling into the habit of talking to someone and letting it all out and just doing things the healthy way, instead of keeping things in and harboring it — yeah, that might have been the hardest thing for me to do, but now it’s easy.”

___

Obstacles to intervention

One of the biggest obstacles violence intervention groups say they face is getting teenagers and their families to buy in. Tisdale admits he was timid and anxious going into the Hopeful Hampton program.

“I didn’t trust people, and I was just traumatized from all the things that were going on,” Tisdale said.

But he said his mentors persuaded him to trust the process and gradually, he let his guard down.

Young people often come from backgrounds where they don’t have adult male role models. Hopeful Hampton Mentor Adrian Cook said the lack of fathers in the home is a “big issue” and that single mothers often are frustrated and overwhelmed. The mentors can only instill positive values into participants for a few hours a week.

“When it’s not reinforced at home, it makes it complicated for it to stick,” said Latiesha Handie, the executive director for Hampton’s Office of Youth and Young Adult Opportunities. “So we have to put on additional layers of support to be more parental figures, in addition to service providers.”

To gain the young men’s trust, mentors explain how they’ve handled similar situations rather than trying to tell them what to do.

“That’s why he picks his phone up and he calls me when he’s going to do something or thinks about doing something stupid. He gets my advice, because I’m not sitting here going, ‘Oh, you can’t do this, you can’t do that,’” Keenan said of his 16-year-old mentee. “You can’t do that, or he’s gonna run away from you, he’s going to shut down.”

Jeffrey Butts, a research professor with John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a member of the Rockefeller Institute of Government Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, said the two programs have based their approach to addressing gun violence on a “scientifically informed theory” about why young people sometimes act aggressively against others.

“And that theory is that when people grow up in an environment that exposes them to trauma, and family pain, and lack of opportunity, they start to feel like society’s rules don’t make sense for them,” Butts said. “And ‘Why should I bother to behave the way other people are telling me when the whole system is set up against me and I have to protect myself first?’”

However, Butts noted it’s complicated to determine the effectiveness of individual programs because they aren’t implemented on a large scale.

___

Tracking success

To track interventions and success rates, Teens with a Purpose holds a debriefing after each Safe Passage walk through the community to discuss what they saw and heard. Mediators have hundreds of interactions during each walk, and since fall of 2023, they have documented 15 interventions when a gun was present and the situation was resolved without violence, according to Love.

The Safe Passage program was funded by the state for three years, at $130,000 annually, and the group also is surveying community members about their perceptions of safety since it began.

The Hampton program tracks recidivism rates for two years after young people leave the program, Handie said. So far, 73% of participants have completed the program. She said 40% of those who completed the program last year have so far successfully avoided negative encounters with law enforcement.

After finishing the Hampton program, Tisdale is focused on completing his education and working to become a counselor. He said the plan is “to become exactly what Mr. Troy was to me.”

Hopeful Hampton held a gala at the Virginia Air and Space Science Center in late April to celebrate those who completed the program, with hundreds of local elected officials, gun violence prevention advocates, law enforcement and family members present. At the ceremony, Tisdale was looking ahead.

“I want success for everybody that comes from where I came from, but you can’t have success if you don’t put the work in, day in and day out,” Tisdale said. “We want change, but we have to take the initial steps for the change to even start. We have to not only want change physically, but mentally as well. I am not the person I was seven years ago, but I stand here today — a proud young Black man who plans on changing the world one day.”

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com

Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.com

Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Local crisis services can be reached at 757-656-7755.

In the amount of time it takes you to read this story, someone will decide to attempt suicide.

While homicides and mass shootings take up a plenty of space in conversations and politics surrounding gun deaths, more than half of all gun deaths nationwide are suicides. Preliminary counts from the Virginia Department of Health showed that 141 gun deaths in Hampton Roads last year were determined to be suicide, more than half of the region’s suicides overall.

The time it takes many people to decide to take their lives is short. In more than half the cases evaluated in a 2016 study, people went from contemplating suicide to attempting it in less than 30 minutes — sometimes in as few as five. Experts say gun access is a major driver of the mortality rate of these attempts. They say slowing access to guns and making effective mental health care easier to access can lead to meaningful change.

___

Aftershocks

For more than 35 years, people who have lost a loved one to suicide have gathered in Portsmouth for Hampton Roads Survivors of Suicide’s support group. Since its creation, more than 1,000 have attended at some point, said founder Chris Gilchrist.

She has seen it all: anger, guilt, extreme sadness. A father in law enforcement who taught his child to shoot, only to have them die by suicide using a firearm. Older brothers who felt they could not protect their younger siblings. Parents blaming each other for being too strict, or too lenient. Spouses wracking their brains for signs they may have missed.

“I think (suicide is) a tragedy because I believe in looking back at the hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of suicides that have come through the group, and every one was preventable,” Gilchrist said.

Suicide, Gilchrist said, creates a ripple effect. Family members of people who take their own lives are five times more likely to die the same way, so Gilchrist meets with them once a month to support them. She said the meetings often match national trends in suicide. More men typically die by suicide, but she has noticed more women who have died by suicide using a firearm being represented.

“When you are depressed — and being suicidal is being severely depressed — you’re at risk, and your promise (to not die by suicide) means nothing. You’re not thinking straight. It’s just so difficult.”

At the beginning of the meetings, each person holds up a photograph of their loved one, telling the group who they were and how they died. It’s powerful, she said, to watch about a dozen people — of all sorts of backgrounds and beliefs — connecting through tragedy.

Hope, she said, is what can save us. Outside her office door, paper cranes line the walls, each one a different color and tied to the next. If you walk quickly down the hall, they rustle like quiet whispers. Each of the small paper birds symbolizes hope, Gilchrist said. It’s something she believes is a key to saving lives.

“We need to replace the stigma with the hope that comes in knowing the number one cause is depression, and depression is treatable,” she said. “That is what people don’t get. They more realize the stigma.”

___

Firearms are pushing the needle in suicide statistics

In the United States, 49,476 people died by suicide in 2022, and more than half used a firearm, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control. That’s an increase over the previous year, and for decades, Americans have been dying by suicide at an increasing rate, reaching a peak of about 15 per 100,000 people.

To experts, it’s a public health crisis. During the pandemic, more households were buying guns, said Dr. Paul Nestadt, a psychiatrist and researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Nestadt studies the role of firearms and opioids on suicide risk at the university’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

Millions of people became new gun owners from January 2019 to April 2021, according to a study published in 2021, and most had lived in homes without guns, meaning more inexperienced gun users. Researchers said this exposed more than 11 million people to household firearms, including more than 5 million children.

Because of political and social unrest in 2020, Nestadt said, more women and people of color began keeping guns in their homes, increasing the rate of suicide by firearms in their respective demographics.

Across the country, suicides using firearms largely outnumber homicides using firearms, and the same can be said for Virginia as a whole. In Hampton Roads, the numbers tell a different story. Since 2007, homicides and suicides have gone back and forth as the most common type of death using a firearm, but since 2020, homicides have outnumbered suicides. In 2022, Hampton Roads hit a peak for suicides using firearms, at 169.

___

Navigating a broken system

Max Willey, vice president of the coastal Virginia chapter of National Alliance of Mental Illness, said since the pandemic, the group’s phone has been ringing virtually nonstop from people trying to get help. One of the most common requests is help navigating the mental health care system. The group offers peer-to-peer courses for family members of those with mental illness, which he said has been a big help.

“Mental health is health, and we ought to treat it just like high blood pressure and diabetes,” Willey said. “And if you’re trying to get treatment for something, and it takes six to nine months and you have a heart condition, it’s absurd.

“We’d never treat someone with that health condition like that. Mental health has to be treated the same way, and this is some things we advocate for.”

Despite the obstacles, Willey said a simple conversation can save a life. According to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, someone who might be suicidal may suddenly become less interested in their appearance or hygiene, become withdrawn, change their eating habits, sleep less or sleep too much. They sometimes express feelings of hopelessness or being worthless.

“If someone is in crisis, or they’ve had suicide attempts or suicidal ideations, just remember, do everything you can to let them know that they are valued,” Willey said. “I’m not a certified therapist or anything, I just have lived experience with a family member.

“Listen actively, without prejudice and shaming the other person. When they start to break their silence with you about all the trauma that they’ve been experiencing, that means they’re asking for help.”

___

Finding care for the ‘in-between’

Dr. Charles Dunham, a psychiatrist with Sentara’s Behavioral Health Care Clinic, said the pandemic opened a lot of conversation about mental health and resources, and his department has seen more need for their services in Hampton Roads.

“We’re seeing year over year increases and people looking for help going to our emergency departments,” he said. “And I think what we’re struggling to deal with as a society is how to get the resources to the right person at the right time, so what we’re working on with Sentara is to figure out that puzzle and how to try to figure out how to serve our communities.”

Specifically, Dunham said the mental health-care system can struggle with “in-between” patients, or patients who are not yet in a crisis but can’t wait weeks or months to see a provider or get medication. That’s partially why the hospital system opened its Behavioral Health Care Center in Virginia Beach. If a physician is noticing more dramatic changes with a patient, the care center can get them faster access to a mental health professional.

Dunham said most suicides fall within two categories: impulsive suicides and planned suicides.

“(Impulsive attempts) are ones that sometimes we can make the most impact on by talking to the patients and trying to figure out if they have something deadly at home, such as a firearm, and would they be willing to have family members look after that firearm for a while until they get to a place where they’re not at such a risk for suicide,” Dunham said.

If firearms are removed from a home at risk for suicide, Dunham said the suicide rate is reduced by half.

Preventing suicide before someone reaches crisis mode means a better survival rate for people with mental illness. According to suicide prevention project Means Matter, firearms were used in less than 1% of nonfatal suicide attempts. Researchers have found that only about 4% to 6% of people who survive a suicide attempt die by suicide later.

“(The other 95%) just keep surviving,” Nestadt said. “The method used in that first attempt is really important. If that method is lethal, they’re dead. If they use a nonlethal method, they’re not only likely to survive that attempt, but they’re likely to just keep on surviving.

___

Small changes could mean saved lives, experts say

Experts say gun access is a major driver of deaths by suicide. In 2015, mental health professionals in the northern and western part of Virginia created Lock and Talk, a campaign that distributes trigger locks and cable locks for firearms and devices to secure medications.

Jordan Brooks, program manager, said the campaign is now implemented in community service boards across Virginia, and someone interested in receiving a free lock can just reach out to their local board or Lock and Talk directly.

“One thing that we are very firm on is that we don’t want to restrict anyone’s access or anyone’s rights,” Brooks said. “It’s overall safety for the home.”

In Virginia, you can also ban yourself from buying a gun.

Virginians can add themselves to the Virginia Voluntary Do Not Sell list by filling out and mailing in a form with Virginia State Police. Being on the list prohibits someone from being able to buy a firearm, and citizens can fill out a form to get their name off the list after a 21-day waiting period. The bill that created the list was passed in 2020, and the list went live in 2021.

But these policies aren’t widely used. Corinne Geller, public relations director for state police, said as of May, there were about two dozen people on the list across Virginia. Geller said state police do not keep regional data for the list, so it is unclear how many — if any — people in Hampton Roads have utilized the Voluntary Do Not Sell list.

Nestadt said one of the obstacles for this kind of legislation is that someone must anticipate they’ll have a crisis in the future, and for many who deal with mental illness, that is not the most realistic or effective way to prevent suicide.

Even something as simple as a waiting period could save lives, Nestadt said. Virginia lawmakers had initially passed a bill that would have created a five-day waiting period on gun purchases, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed it. The bill, proposed by Del. Cliff Hayes, a Chesapeake Democrat, intended to prevent impulsive violence or suicide. In his veto statement, Youngkin said the bill was unnecessary because Virginia has background checks.

Hayes said he carried the measure on behalf of victims’ families from the 2022 mass shooting at a Chesapeake Walmart, but Nestadt said the waiting period is especially helpful for suicidal individuals. Other successful legislation includes red flag laws, which permit a state court to order the temporary seizure of firearms from a person who they believe may present a danger.

Nestadt said that research has found that for every 11 guns seized, one suicide death is prevented.

“So in medical terms, that’s what we call a ‘number needed to treat,’ like how much medication or an intervention needed to save one life,” he said. “So whether that’s worth it, depends on your philosophy (and) your politics, because you are taking away someone’s right to have (a firearm), and you’re removing it temporarily. How many lives you need to save to make that worthwhile is an open question.”

While more strict access to firearms can limit risks of suicide, access to mental health care is the first step to help someone at risk.

“The biggest take-home message there is if somebody is suicidal and they do have access to firearms, (someone else needs) to access them until they’re feeling better. We’re not trying to take away people’s rights to firearms or anything like that,” Dunham said. “We do know from a science standpoint, that if you’re able to limit access, you do save lives that way.”

Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com

The 27-year-old from Hampton likes to carry one of his favorites, a 9 MM Canik handgun with a Holosun red-dot sight. He wears it on his hip when shopping, concealed when eating out. Most days, he keeps an AR-15 in his Ford SUV. Most nights, he keeps a gun next to his bed.

Beckner, a leader of the Hampton Roads-based Virginia Kekoas militia, understands many people disagree with his take on the Second Amendment. He joined Kekoas in 2021 looking for a community that shared his gun rights and survivalist mindset — “Always be prepared,” he says — and found it with the group’s roughly 15 other members. Beckner is proud of his place in America’s gun culture.

The U.S. is the only country in the world with more civilian firearms than people. Some buy guns for sport, such as target shooting and competition; to feed their families by hunting; or they carry guns for a sense of control — to control others through fear or to combat their own. A growing number of owners carry to show they can: Their firearm is a political signpost.

The America of the past 400 years has never existed without a culture of gun ownership.

___

‘Frontier ethos’

The men who colonized and founded Jamestown did so carrying guns.

The General Assembly of Virginia, the first elected governing body in a British North American colony, put its first laws on the books in 1619, including America’s first gun law:

“That no man do sell or give any Indians any piece, shot, or powder, or any other arms offensive or defensive, upon pain of being held a traitor to the colony and of being hanged as soon as the fact is proved, without all redemption.”

In the 1620s, farmers were legally bound to stay armed while working. After 1632, it became illegal for men to go to church without their weapons. Colonial and state governments eventually enacted over 600 militia laws, many mandating men to civilian-military service. That they were required to get and keep their military-grade weaponry is tied to what retired professor Robert Spitzer calls a “frontier ethos” and the romanticizing of American history and self-reliance.

“When you think about the settling of the Western lands, especially in the 19th century, you think about gun ownership; although it turns out there were lots of laws restricting where you could carry guns and all sorts of other things, that’s kind of the tradition,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer is a distinguished professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland and the author of six books on gun policy. He now lives in Williamsburg where he’s an affiliated scholar at William & Mary. He said while traditionally “gun culture” has referred to gun owners who hunt or use arms for sport, politically motivated gun sales are relatively new; but, no matter what, American gun culture has always thrived. In his book “The Politics of Gun Control,” he writes: “Regardless of one’s personal or political feelings about guns, however, the gun culture is an undeniable component of American history and the gun debate.”

___

‘Some people go to car shows’

On a recent Sunday afternoon, people of different ages and ethnicities queued for a gun show at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. Some men slung rifle bags over their shoulders. Couples stopped at a ticket kiosk before shooing the kids inside. Navy veteran Lawrence Sullivan was pushed through the lobby in his wheelchair.

Sullivan, 56, of Norfolk, equates gun culture with the hunt. He first shot a BB gun when he was 7. About a year later, his dad took him hunting for squirrel, rabbit and partridge. Later, they stalked deer together.

“But, mainly, it was just to get out in the woods,” he said. He bought a 9 MM that day. He now settles for aiming at targets. As he spoke, Tyler Hilborne and Batuhan Vural walked by.

Hilborne, 32, and Vural, 26, of Virginia Beach, said they own guns for target shooting. Hilborne said he thinks of gun culture as the social media images of guys posing with modified AR-15s and body armor, geeked on the power of weaponry.

“That’s the extreme end of it,” Vural said. Hilborne said he figured most gun owners, like himself, are casual hobbyists.

“It’s just the same with cars,” Vural said. “Some people go to car shows, things like that.”

They agreed that shooting guns can be a bonding activity between friends.

“Better than just sitting at home,” Hilborne said, “watching Netflix and drinking beer.”

Not too far away, Ozell Weather stood in the convention center with one foot propped on an ammo canister chatting with his adult son, who holstered a pistol on his hip.

___

‘Adapt and adjust’

Weather, 57, of Virginia Beach, grew up hunting in upstate New York. He still hunts. But he also carries for self-defense. He looked at the pistol on his son’s hip.

“When I was coming up,” he said, “there was no need to carry.”

In 2020, researchers from Boston, Columbia and Harvard universities released “What is gun culture? Cultural Variations and Trends Across the United States.”

The research looked at behavior patterns and analyzed gun-related subcultures from 1998 to 2016. It defined gun culture with three categories: recreation, self-defense and symbolism around the Second Amendment. Virginia followed the national averages with a decline in recreational gun use, an increase in guns for self-defense and being viewed as politically emblematic.

Weather started hunting at 8, and, following family tradition, taught his children to shoot at the same age. A few years ago, his son inspired him to adopt another philosophy: It’s better to have and not need than need and not have. Father and son believe crime has worsened.

“It’s one of those adapt and adjust situations in today’s culture,” Weather said. His son nodded.

A Gallup poll found the number of adults who think having a gun makes their homes safer rose from 42% to 64% between 1993 and 2023.

The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by two Civil War veterans who were appalled by the poor shooting skills of a typical military recruit. In 1873, they began matches to improve marksmanship skills. In the 1930s, its leadership lobbied for gun control legislation. It was not until the 1970s that the NRA morphed into the staunchly pro-Second Amendment agenda, according to the 2020 study.

Once a year, the Virginia Kekoas join other gun-rights advocates on Lobby Day at the state Capitol to demonstrate the right to open-carry guns. The militia derives its name from a Hawaiian word meaning  “warrior;” the group was once known as the Virginian Knights but changed it not wanting to be associated with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Beckner doesn’t mind the term “militia,” even though militias no longer exist as government-supported units. He believes the word fits because the Kekoas are ready to help the government if needed in an emergency.

In the past 10 to 15 years, researchers such as Spitzer have observed an uptick in “what the gun industry calls the political sale of guns” with manufacturers marketing firearms as political products. Sales spiked after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and ’12, out of fear that the Democrats would create new gun-buying restrictions. Donald Trump extolled himself as a gun person, and sales went relatively flat after he took office in 2017. According to Spitzer, the gun industry termed a phrase after the election: “The Trump Slump.”

But, the professor added, the proliferation of guns increases the chances of them being used in crime.

___

‘Dripping with fear’

Portsmouth Police Chief Stephen Jenkins has no problem with citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights. But firearms carry another appeal.

“We have a culture that glorifies the ownership and or use of guns,” he said, “and that is more so along the criminal aspect.”

The most commonly prosecuted charge in Norfolk in 2020 was possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to a study by the Virginia Bar Association. Jenkins said Portsmouth has one of the highest rates of firearm theft per capita in the state.

“My problem surrounding guns is I have a hard time believing that our forefathers believed weapons of war should be on our everyday streets.”

City police, Jenkins said, monitor social media and examine videos showing young people showing off, almost worshipping, their firearms. To exemplify just how common guns are in Portsmouth, he pointed to a recent incident.

On May 28, Jenkins — while in uniform — was talking to a citizen in front of a Food Lion parking lot when a man in the lot began firing a gun into the air. Jenkins drew his sidearm and quelled the situation, he said. The person was arrested on numerous charges, many related to firearms, according to the Portsmouth clerk of courts.

Troy Ketchmore knows the dangers of guns within a culture of fear.

In 1995, he and two of his friends were carrying when he got into an argument with another man. Gunfire was exchanged, and the man was killed. Ketchmore was sentenced to prison for first-degree murder.

“If you see a kid packing,” he said, “they are dripping with fear.”

“The gun is my security to come back home tonight,” he said, thinking back on his youth. “It was a thing of, you’d rather get caught with it than without it.”

After serving 26 years, Ketchmore was paroled in 2021. Now 52, he helps run his family’s nonprofit, Ketchmore Kids, which runs classes to help children in trouble — sometimes related to guns. He visits the Newport News Juvenile Detention center every other week and tries to steer the kids away from the mentality he and his friends had.

Ketchmore’s staff hears from kids who carry guns because they’re afraid of being bullied or robbed after school. They can get guns cheaply on the streets and, like people who carry for Second Amendment reasons, the kids like the sense of power, safety and control guns give them. But he tells them to remove themselves from a situation in which they feel they need a gun — distance themselves from “beefs.”

“You feel like you need a gun? Why? Because you’re right there. Don’t let your ego make you feel like you have to walk down the street and take care of a beef with a gun. Just leave. I tell them to put themselves in a position to win.”

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health investigated the link between gun possession and gun assault. It found that people with a gun were 4½ times more times likely to be shot in an assault compared with those who don’t.

“They don’t understand that those singular situations that they make in the heat of anger,” Jenkins said, “have lasting ramifications for them and their families.”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com

Ebony Selby sighed as she sat under a gazebo in the Manteo, North Carolina, neighborhood where she and her large, extended family have lived for decades. On the table in front of her were pictures of four beloved family members. Each had been fatally shot over the past couple of years.

The youngest was a niece. She was just 3 when she was shot in the back seat of her mother’s car.

The others were Selby’s brother and sister, and another niece who’d just turned 18. Selby saw two of them as they lay dead and bloodied on the ground, leaving her with memories that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

And while it may be difficult to fathom having even one loved one gunned down, Selby is far from alone in having more than one relative who’s been shot. Numerous families in the Hampton Roads and northeastern North Carolina region have suffered that same fate.

Why some families are touched by violence more than others “is not really explainable,” said Alan Wolfelt, director of the Colorado-based Center for Loss and Life Transition and the author of dozens of books about grief and death.

“It’s a mystery we don’t fully understand,” Wolfelt said. “It’s kind of like how some families go for years without any deaths, and then there are some families that seem to have one death right after another.”

Living in areas where homicides are more frequent likely is a factor for some, he said.

“It could be where you live, it could be putting yourself in vulnerable situations that put you at greater risk,” Wolfelt said. “We don’t really know.”

The grief that results from a loved one’s murder can be much more difficult to deal with than other types of losses, according to counselor Deuene Hickman, founder of the Quality of Life Counseling Center in Hampton. He’s assisted many people who’ve lost family members to gunfire.

In addition to the sudden shock, there’s the knowledge that the victim suffered a violent and senseless death, Hickman said. If the crime isn’t solved, their grief is only compounded. And even if it is solved, navigating the criminal justice system — and all the delays, uncertainty and disappointments that often come with it — can be trying, Hickman said.

For Selby, a 43-year-old single mother of three, the grief is unbearable at times. So is the anxiety.

“I never knew anxiety before all of this,” she said. “Any moment now I could have a panic attack. I had never had a panic attack before in my life.”

Norfolk’s Bilal Muhammad and Chesapeake’s Monica Atkins understand. Muhammad has lost two close relatives to shootings; Atkins three. Both later turned that grief into activism and now lead local anti-gun violence groups in Hampton Roads.

For Muhammad, the first loss came in 1982, when his brother Ruben was killed in Portsmouth. Muhammad, 67, was in his 20s at the time. His brother — a heroin addict who began dealing to support his habit — was 32.

“They dropped his body at a construction site, and a construction worker found him the next day,” Muhammad said. “I was devastated. My mother — she about had a nervous breakdown.”

A man was eventually arrested and charged, but he was acquitted, leaving no one to be held accountable, Muhammad said.

Last summer, Muhammad’s youngest child, Ali Muhammad, was fatally shot in Norfolk’s Ocean View area.

Muhammad said Ali, 33, was on his way to work, and the two were talking on the phone when he heard Ali tell someone to “get that gun out of my face.” Next, he heard a gunshot.

Muhammad called 911, and he and his wife, Cynthia, rushed over. The couple had just celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary the day before.

Ali, a father of three young girls, was dead when they got there.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Muhammad said. “He was such a good man. He was a family man. He loved his daughters so much.”

About a month later, 28-year-old Jalen Garces was charged with murdering Ali. Video footage obtained by investigators placed him in the area, according to police. Muhammad believes Garces was acting on behalf of someone who was in a dispute with his son, but no one else has been charged.

Moving on without Ali has been difficult, Muhammad said.

“I still break down every once in a while, but they hold me up,” he said, referring to Ali’s daughters, now 3, 7 and 9. Muhammad and his wife have been helping Ali’s girlfriend care for the girls.

“They are what keeps us going,” he said.

Muhammad said he was already active in community events and causes when his brother died, but began to focus on gun violence afterwards. His resolve only grew stronger after Ali’s slaying.

“If he were alive today, he’d be right here beside me,” Muhammad said while leading an anti-gun violence march and social event in Chesapeake’s Peaceful Village in March.

Atkins’ activism began after her cousin Aron Turner was killed in 2013. Atkins said Turner was sleeping on a couch in a home in Portsmouth when someone attempting a burglary began firing into the house. The case remains unsolved.

“In 2013, (the gun violence problem) was nothing like it is now,” said Atkins, 51. “I never thought it would happen to me again.”

But it did the following year. Her son, Antonio Atkins, 25, was shot and killed while driving in Portsmouth. His girlfriend was wounded but Atkins’ other son, who was in the back seat, wasn’t harmed.

“From that moment on, my life changed,” she said.

Atkins said police didn’t have sufficient evidence to charge anyone but she believes she knows who was responsible, and that person is in prison now for another violent offense.

Tragedy next struck last September, when Atkin’s 31-year-old niece, Erica Atkins, was fatally shot on a street corner in Portsmouth. Two other women were injured.

A 17-year-old boy was later charged. Atkins believes it was an accident and that the teen started shooting because he heard shots and thought he was under fire. She believes her niece, a mother of two, was caught in the crossfire.

Working to prevent further violence and educate others about it has been therapeutic, she said.

“My son wouldn’t want me to just sit around and mope all day long,” she said. “Stress can kill you. So can a broken heart.”

Antonio’s father died just six months after his son was killed. He already was in poor health, Atkins said, but Antonio’s death made it worse.

Atkins said counseling has helped tremendously in battling her grief. It’s essential for people who’ve lost loved ones to violence, Hickman said, yet many never seek it.

“Some people live in fear, some are able to move on and do okay, and some are unable to function afterwards,” he said. “But they all lose a portion of themselves. Without counseling, I’m not sure they can get that back.”

Often when a person loses a loved one to violence, they blame themselves, Hickman said, especially in cases where they’re the parent of the deceased. They may ask themselves things such as, “What if we lived in a better neighborhood? What if I hadn’t let my son go out that night?”

Anger is another major issue for many, Hickman said — anger at the killer, and anger at police and prosecutors if they feel their case isn’t being handled properly. Therapists can guide them in dealing with heightened emotions, he said, and also connect them with support groups, and victim assistance agencies that can aid with expenses such as funeral and counseling costs.

___

Ebony Selby’s nightmare

The first loss for Selby came in December 2021, when her sister, Takeyia Berry, 39, and Berry’s 3-year-old daughter, Allura Pledger, were fatally shot.

Roderick White — a man Berry had known for years — had asked her to drive him to Elizabeth City, Selby said. Berry agreed and took her young daughter along. On the way, they picked up Jaquan White, an 18-year-old relative of White’s.

After they arrived in Elizabeth City, someone fired on the car. White was the only occupant who survived — but not for long. He was killed in another shooting nearly a year later.

Selby said she’d last talked to her sister the night before she was killed. Both single moms, the two were very close, she said, and helped raise each other’s children. Berry had another daughter who was 16 at the time. Selby took her in.

“We’re a family full of laughs, and she was really funny,” Selby said of her sister. “She loved her daughters so much. She was very serious about schooling with her oldest daughter, who made As and Bs all the time.”

The day of the shooting, Selby’s phone started lighting up with calls and texts. She was told Berry was already gone, but Allura had a chance. Soon after, she got a call saying Allura had died.

The days and weeks that followed were a blur, Selby said. Just getting out of bed was a struggle some days.

Selby believes White was the target and that he used Berry and Allura as shields, thinking he wouldn’t get fired at if he had a woman and child with him. Two men were later charged with the murders and are awaiting trial. One, Ricky Etheridge Jr., faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

The next loss came a little more than a year later, when Selby’s niece, Aonesty Selby, was killed. Aonesty was the daughter of Selby’s brother Demetrius Selby, who would become the family’s next shooting victim later that same year.

Selby was with Aonesty’s parents when they found her body on a remote logging trail in Isle of Wight County on Jan. 13, 2023. It was three days after Aonesty’s 18th birthday, and two days after detectives believe the Williamsburg high school senior was killed.

Aonesty’s family called police after they were unable to reach her, and also sought help through social media. A friend told them Aonesty had shared a cellphone ping to her location. The family told police, then headed there themselves, Selby said.

The area is home to a hunting club and was gated, forcing them to go on foot, she said. It was pitch black so they turned on their cellphone flashlights. After about two miles of walking along the cold, muddy trail, Aonesty’s mother let out a scream Selby said she’ll never forget.

“She (Aonesty) was laying there like she had been perfectly placed,” Selby said. “Her hair, her makeup, her nails, they were all perfectly done, just like they always were.”

A friend of Aonesty’s, Andarius Tyshone McClelland, 21, was charged with her murder days later. Reports indicated the two had been in a relationship, but Selby said that wasn’t true.

Selby was haunted by the ordeal. She avoided going out, especially at night. Her children, now 17, 18, and 20, missed the mom she used to be, she said, a carefree person who always went to their football games and band concerts.

“They also lost them (the murdered relatives), but they lost me, too,” she said. “My anxiety wouldn’t let me go out and be in public. I didn’t want to have to talk about it. I didn’t want to see that look of pity.”

Last summer, Selby lost her job handling medical records at a nursing facility. She felt too anxious to look for another job, and hasn’t worked since.

Then last October, her brother was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy outside a friend’s trailer home in Manteo. The deputy — who said Demetrius Selby was coming at him with a knife — was later cleared of wrongdoing.

Selby lives a short distance from where it happened. She hurried over after seeing sheriff’s vehicles racing past. Deputies wouldn’t let her near the scene at first, but she eventually was allowed in and stayed with Demetrius’ bloodied body until it was taken away several hours later.

Demetrius’ surviving daughters filed a lawsuit against the deputy, claiming the shooting was unjustified. Selby has seen bodycam video of the incident and believes it wasn’t justified.

“It’s like I’m afraid to have hope. I’m just constantly scared for all my kids and my nieces,” she said. “I’d rather them be at home with me, but then I feel bad because I’m like they don’t need to be stuck in the house with me all the time.”

As for the future, Selby said she’s considering a move to Maryland to be near a cousin. She’s lived in North Carolina all her life, but believes a new environment will be good for her. She also plans to look for a job, and may finally get the counseling she knows she needs.

Selby said she tries to focus only on the good memories she has of her lost relatives — and fights to keep the images of them lying dead on the ground, or in their caskets, out of her mind. And while she’s fearful for herself and the rest of her family, she doesn’t own a firearm.

“I don’t like guns,” she said. “I’ve never had one, and I never will.”

Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com

Sometimes, if enough days go by, it can be a powerful motivator, a warrior who rides beside you, whispering, “Do something.”

When our colleague, education reporter Sierra Jenkins, was killed in a shooting on Granby Street in March 2022, our newsroom was shocked and stung. Just 25, Sierra was a talented, joyous and popular member of the staff and a mentor to others.

We tried to make sense of it all. We followed the case closely and hoped for resolution when Antoine M. Legrande Jr. was arrested and charged in the shooting.

But just a few months later, charges against Legrande were dismissed after two witnesses failed to show for a preliminary hearing. No other suspects have been named since.

Once more, grief stretched out before us.

Meanwhile, many more shootings occurred, locally and nationally, after Sierra’s death. Nearly 3,000 Hampton Roads residents lost their lives to gunfire over the past 10 years, according to numbers from the Virginia Department of Health.

At the end of 2022, we honored Sierra by setting up The Sierra Jenkins Scholarship Fund to help support college students studying journalism in Virginia. It was one way to deal with our loss and to focus on the next generation of promising journalists.

Still, the shootings continued. A team manager at a Walmart in Chesapeake shot and killed six people in the store, then himself. A first grader shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News. Ten-year-old Keontre Thornhill was killed by a stray bullet in his home in Portsmouth.

Hampton Roads has a homicide rate that is about twice the national and well above the state average, according to Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press reporting and calculations. Portsmouth alone has counted 22 homicides so far this year, up from the 19 it had at this point in 2023 and on its way to its second-highest all-time homicide count.

Our newsroom reported on the shootings, and tried to make the victims more than just another number.

But we wanted to do something more.

Last year, we began work on “Shots Fired: Combating a culture of gun violence in Hampton Roads,” a yearlong series that will explore why gun violence is so prevalent here and what can be done about it.

We are launching this in June to coincide with National Gun Violence Awareness Month and plan to cover this issue throughout the year. Our intention is to explore the issue deeply and from as many angles as possible. To that end, we’ve enlisted the help of community leaders in the form of an advisory panel, with a focus on solutions.

We know this is a complex problem that no organization will resolve alone. We hope Shots Fired will spark conversation in our communities so no parent, no city block, no workplace ever has to feel the weight of avoidable grief again.

Do you have a question or comment about our series? Send an email to shotsfired@pilotonline.com.

Editorial: Understand the scope of region’s gun violence to pursue effective action

On a Friday evening in late April, 10-year-old Keontre Thornhill was in his bedroom in Portsmouth, relaxing with his favorite video game, Fortnite.

Teenage girls were arguing outside. Drawn to the commotion, Keontre looked out his window of the home on Farragut Street in Cradock.

And then the shooting began. A bullet sailed through Keontre’s open window, striking him in the torso.

He died in the ambulance.

The exuberant boy — the second of five siblings and a student at Cradock Elementary School — loved action movies such as “Fast and Furious” and was about to begin a lawn mowing business with his stepfather.

“Bubbly, outgoing, happy, adventurous,” Arvis Scott, 31, said when asked about the boy he helped raise since he was 2 months old. “He was a pretty sweet boy, man. He was a pretty cool kid. His friends loved him. People loved him.”

Keontre is one of nearly 3,000 Hampton Roads residents who lost their lives to gunfire over the past 10 years, according to numbers from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner at the Virginia Department of Health. Their deaths have altered countless lives.

“I just want my son back,” said Keontre’s mother, Kevina Thornhill. “I just want him back.”

___

Shots Fired

The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press are launching “Shots Fired: Combating a culture of gun violence in Hampton Roads,” a yearlong series that will explore why this issue is so prevalent here and what can be done about it. The project will include stories on victims, conversations with leaders — from government officials to community activists — and detailed looks at the data.

“We didn’t get here overnight,” said Portsmouth Police Chief Stephen Jenkins, who serves on the community advisory panel for the project. “This has been a slow, slow process, a slow deterioration. And it’s going to take a lot of effort from a lot of people to change the course.”

Total gun deaths in Hampton Roads — including homicides, suicides and a small number of accidental and undetermined deaths — jumped 49% over the past 10 years, the State Medical Examiner’s Office numbers show. They hit an all-time high of 383 two years ago before falling 12% last year to 336.

___

Killings here twice the national average

With 205 killings last year — 189 of them by gun — Hampton Roads had a total 2023 homicide rate of about 11.7 per 100,000 residents, preliminary numbers from the State Medical Examiner’s Office show.

That’s more than twice the national homicide rate, projected at about 5.5 slayings per 100,000 people for the year. It’s also well above Virginia’s 2023 homicide rate of about 6.8, according to calculations using the state data.

There also were 141 suicides by firearm in the region last year, accounting for 61% of all suicides in Hampton Roads. Many more were left wounded by nearly 600 nonfatal shootings in the region last year, according to police department numbers.

Any examination of gun violence will delve into political lightning rods — including gun laws and gun prosecutions — and will touch on difficult issues pertaining to race, poverty and where people live. Even schools are affected, with many students walking through metal detectors every day.

Different communities are affected in starkly different ways. Black men, for example, were the victims in 76% of the region’s gun homicides, while 65% of those who died by gun-related suicide were white men, state numbers show.

Some local cities have it worse: Portsmouth, for example, finished 2023 at 36 killings per 100,000 people, or more than five times the state average, according to Daily Press and Virginian-Pilot calculations using state data.

___

Kids with guns

Experts cite myriad reasons for gun violence — from poverty to childhood trauma to an increasing prevalence of guns in the hands of young people — while others cite lax enforcement of existing gun laws or various ways police are hamstrung in enforcement.

Among the biggest problems: Children with guns.

In one Newport News case, several teens shared a “community gun” that they stuck in a tree: Whoever wanted it could get it, then return it to the tree. In several other cases, the same gun was used multiple times in multiple cities.

“If you have access to a gun, and there’s a conflict, the inclination is to reach for the gun,” said Newport News’ top prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn. “And we’ve got a lot of people who just don’t know how to resolve conflict short of violence. And that’s a problem.”

The Portsmouth shooting that killed Keontre began when a group of teens arrived at a home on Farragut Street — the one next door to where the 10-year-old’s family lived — to fight a 14-year-old girl. The altercation began at school that day.

When that girl’s mother was on the phone with 911, dispatchers could hear gunshots, with a stray bullet going through Keontre’s bedroom window and striking him. A Ring video shows several teens running away.

“The whole city should be outraged,” Jenkins said. “Just a totally senseless loss of life. We never will know what that young man could potentially have become. Because somebody decided that a fight between girls should turn into a death sentence for somebody.

“Just let that sink in.”

Nearly half of the homicide victims in Hampton Roads last year were younger than 30.

About 10% were juveniles, according to a spreadsheet tabulated by The Pilot and Daily Press. Another 10% were 18 or 19, while about 25% were in their 20s. The rest ranged in age from 30 to 84.

___

People quick to fire

Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew contends that young people are quicker on the trigger these days, asserting that social media pressures help drive shootings.

“When I was growing up, you got into a fistfight or maybe walk away,” he said. “I think social media also plays a role in it. Things get ratcheted up and ratcheted up.”

Editor’s note: Why we began a long-term series on gun violence

While a fight might previously have ended in one day, social media disputes now go on longer, and people are quicker to display their guns.

“You could have people say, ‘I can’t believe you let him say that to you,'” Drew said. “And they say that over and over and over again, until the point where you say ‘I finally got to stand up for myself.’ And how do I do that? Oh, well, here’s a firearm.”

“We need to go back to being able to walk away. Because if someone calls you a name, it’s not a reason to pick up a firearm and point it at someone.”

___

More guns in circulation

There are now nearly 400 million guns in the United States. And one rough indicator of gun sales — the number of federal gun background checks conducted at purchase — shows a dramatic jump in Virginia over the past 20 years.

There were 823,000 gun background checks in Virginia in 2020 — the highest year on record — compared with fewer than 200,000 such checks annually in the early 2000s, according to FBI numbers. They fell back to about 540,000 by 2023.

Most of the guns used in homicides and shootings have been stolen, according to recent report by Everytown Research & Policy, a gun policy reform group. And half of those are stolen out of cars, the report said, citing FBI statistics.

The report said Richmond ranked fourth in the nation in the car theft rate per capita in 2022, while Portsmouth ranked sixth and Norfolk was eighth, with Hampton and Newport News also on the list.

___

Poverty

Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi maintains that Hampton Roads’ gun violence problem can be traced to “an easy availability of guns and the concentration of poverty in places where poverty has always been concentrated.”

The region decades ago “experimented with so-called slum clearance, which was really just the reinforcement of residential segregation,” Fatehi said.

“And when you concentrate poverty, you get violence. It’s not because poor people are more prone to violence than rich people — it’s just because they live under conditions that promote violence, economic insecurity, substandard housing.”

Among the biggest violence reduction programs underway in Hampton Roads, he said, is the St. Paul’s Transformation Project. It’s designed to redevelop a notorious downtown federally subsidized housing project into a mixed income community.”

“Even if you don’t reduce the aggregate amount of poverty, when you de-concentrate it, that makes a dramatic difference in violence,” Fatehi said.

___

More single-parent households

About a quarter of U.S. minors now grow up in single-parent households — 80% of them headed by women — compared with a worldwide rate of 7%, according to a 2019 report from the Pew Research Center. While most single-parent households work just fine, economic challenges are more likely with only one income. And there’s only one set of eyes to guide the young.

“I was raised by a single parent, so I know you can be successful being raised by a single parent,” said Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell. “However, there are more obstacles and more challenges. And because of that, then you need a village at that point.”

“But that village has broken down,” he said. “People don’t know their neighbors, they don’t know the people that live next door to them. And so you don’t have that same village mindset. We’re trying to bring it back. But it’s not the way it used to be.”

___

Tough on crime

Throughout it all, Gwynn said, being tough on gun crimes is crucial.

He cites his office’s policy to get involved in any case in which a gun is involved, be it a felony or misdemeanor. State law carries mandatory sentences of three or five years for using guns during felonies, on top of the punishment for the underlying crime. Gwynn’s office also meets regularly with federal prosecutors on gun cases to determine which venue will result in stiffer punishments.

Jenkins asserts that several reforms passed by the General Assembly in recent years have hampered police and emboldened criminals, such as bail reform, blocks on pulling cars over on various vehicle equipment violations, and bars to searching cars for the “odor of marijuana.”

The goal of some of the reforms was to block police from engaging in race-based policing, using pretexts to stop and search cars. But many in law enforcement — including Jenkins — say the past practice helped police find stolen guns and fugitives wanted on warrants.

“Society has to really at some point figure out what it is that law enforcement looks like,” Jenkins said.

___

Early childhood intervention

James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said children in many areas clearly need more to do to keep them engaged and supervised.

Fox said he’s done significant research showing that the prime time for juvenile crime is in the afterschool hours, when many young people are home unsupervised.

“When kids are on their own, that whole thing about idle minds,” he said, referring to the adage, “Idle minds are the devil’s workshop.”

Programs are needed, he said, to keep kids engaged and to teach such things as empathy and self-control. The problem, Fox said, is that it can take years for such an investment in programs to make their mark.

“You will not see the results for several years — when these kids are older, and not involved in gangs and crime,” he said. That’s too long for many politicians “because you may not be in office by then.”

Keontre’s stepdad also wants investment in community programs, saying he “came up as a bad kid” in Portsmouth, and can relate to the youth there.

“They’re running around with no guidance,” Scott said. “Long story short, we just need more stuff for the youth out here.”

___

Will 2024 be better?

There are hopeful signs that gun violence is slowing in Hampton Roads in 2024.

Slayings are down sharply to start the year. The region’s seven largest cities have tallied 60 slayings through June 1, compared with 90 at the same point in 2023. Hampton, for example, has only six homicides this year, down from 20 at the same point a year ago.

Portsmouth, however, is bucking that trend. The city has counted 22 killings so far this year, up from the 19 it had at this point in 2023 on its way to its second-highest all-time homicide count.

No one has so far been charged with killing Keontre, but Jenkins said he has suspects and “plans to prosecute everyone involved.”

Scott wants his stepson’s case solved soon. But he also said he’s trying to use the 10-year-old’s death to make positive change. He doesn’t know exactly what’s entailed in that, but knows plenty of people and wants to be a leader in helping people do good.

“People followed me to do the wrong things, so they’re definitely gonna follow me to do the right things,” Scott said. “I got to get power out of my pain, and purpose out of my pain. I can’t change the world, but I can change what’s going on in my city.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com

Do you have a question or comment about our series? Send an email to shotsfired@pilotonline.com.

These are a few of the lives, along with so many others, taken from Hampton Roads by gun violence in recent months. They are part of an unrelenting torrent of anguish, anger and sorrow that touches countless area families, ravages our communities and demands comprehensive, determined and urgent action.

Today The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press begin a multi-part series on the region’s gun violence crisis, called “Shots Fired.” It is an effort to define and explain the scope of the problem, tell the stories of those affected and, most importantly, advance workable solutions for halting the bloodshed.

Reporters, of course, won’t take sides, but will elevate voices in our community to provide a full view of what’s happening in Hampton Roads, from shooting victims and their families, to law enforcement working to ensure the public safety, to gun enthusiasts and retailers, to those leading programs aimed at reducing violence.

Gun violence is a complicated issue that presents a host of challenges. There is no singular solution that will solve it. The hope is that, through this series, Hampton Roads will better understand the situation unfolding each day in our cities and participate in initiatives that can make our region a more safe and peaceful place to live.

There is no better time for this issue to be in the spotlight.

On Friday, Virginia Beach marked the fifth anniversary of the Municipal Center shooting, a tragedy that claimed the lives of 11 city workers and one contractor. It was carried out by a city employee who had resigned earlier in the day, and who was killed by police responding to the violence.

Mass shootings are rare, and represent a fraction of the nation’s annual gun deaths. More common are tragedies such as last weekend, when a 15-year-old was shot and killed near a carnival at Mount Trashmore in Virginia Beach last weekend in violence that also critically injured an 18-year-old.

Even less publicized are suicides, though they are included in annual tabulations of gun deaths. The Gun Violence Archive, which compiles this data, reported 43,155 gun deaths in 2023, of which 24,090 or nearly 56% were suicides. Another 36,499 people were injured by gunfire last year.

Those are staggering figures and make the United States an extreme outlier among developed nations. This country also has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, by a factor of two, a product of having the right to keep and bear arms enshrined as a foundational principle in the U.S. Constitution.

But beyond the numbers are the names, such as Tre Thornhill, James Carter and Ty’jonte Terry, who are the human cost of our inability to curb gun violence. There are the families and friends who have to endure without them, and a region that is diminished by their absence and, in the case of those taken so young, what they could have been.

We cannot shrug our shoulders and accept this as an unchangeable state of play — America’s affliction which it is helpless to remedy. Not when we lose thousands of people each year, not when there are thousands more injured, not when it rips piece after piece away from the fabric of our communities.

“Shots Fired” aims to tell those stories, to broaden public understanding about gun violence and to advance workable solutions for Hampton Roads. Read, discuss, debate … and then let’s get to work.

Do you have a question or comment about our series? Send an email to shotsfired@pilotonline.com.