Violence Policy Center

VPC

IndexOnline NewsPress ReleasesFact SheetsPublicationsLinksHomeAbout VPC
Looking for something?

Kids in the Line of Fire

Children, Handguns, and Homicide

Nevada

  • Ranked 5th in rate of children murdered with a handgun, 1.85 per 100,000
  • Ranked 7th in rate of children who murder with a handgun, 1.24 per 100,000
  • Ranked 10th in percentage of child murders involving a handgun, 54.9 percent


Children and Handgun Homicides

For the five-year period of 1995 through 1999, 39 children aged 1 to 17 years were the victims of handgun homicide in Nevada. Of these children, 34.8 percent were murdered by another child with a handgun, where the ages were known (8 out of 23 incidents).


Race of Child Handgun Homicide Victims

Child handgun homicide victims whose race was identified (39 victims) included 26 white victims and 13 black victims. Unfortunately, Hispanic ethnicity could not be determined because of the inadequacy of data collection and reporting.


Victim to Offender Relationship

Where the relationship was known, 1.4 percent of child victims were killed by a family member with a handgun (3 out of 22). Of these victims, 66.7 percent of the children were murdered by a parent. None of the children were murdered by a stepparent. Overall, another 40.9 percent were killed by strangers (9 victims), 9.1 percent were killed by a friend or romantic partner (boyfriend, girlfriend, or homosexual partner) (2 victims), and 36.4 percent were killed by an acquaintance (8 victims). Homicide Victims and Weapons For homicides in which the weapon could be identified, 73.5 percent of child victims (50 out of 68) were shot and killed with a gun. Of those, 78.0 percent (39 victims) were killed with a handgun. For homicides where both the victim and the shooter were children, 100 percent of incidents involved a firearm (10 out of 10), with 80.0 percent of those involving a handgun (8 victims).


Homicide Victims and Circumstance

From 1995 to 1999, there were 27 incidents in which the circumstance of the handgun homicide of the child victim could be identified. Of these, 77.8 percent were not related to the commission of any other felony.

Where the number of victims and offenders was known, 83.3 percent of incidents involved one victim and one offender (20 incidents), 12.5 percent of the homicides involved one victim and multiple offenders (3 incidents), and 4.2 percent involved multiple victims and multiple offenders (1 incident). There were no incidents involving multiple victims and one offender.


Back to Table of Contents

 

 

  All contents � 2001 Violence Policy Center

 



The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury.