When I was a teenager, my cousin Anthony was killed by gun violence. He wasn’t the first family member that I lost to gun violence, or the last. These shootings devastated me in ways I did not understand at the time. I never received counseling or treatment. Instead, grief turned into fear — about death, survival and vulnerability. Like many young men growing up around gun violence, I convinced myself that carrying a firearm would somehow keep me safe. But it did the opposite; it made me and everyone around me less safe.Today, I am incarcerated at San Quentin for a gun-related crime. I serve as the chairman of Arms Down, the first gun offender rehabilitation program of its kind, developed inside prison to address gun violence through accountability, education and healing. I also serve as a program co-lead for Back to the Start, a nonprofit organization that helps incarcerated participants to process their childhood experiences and advocate for upstream solutions to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and incarceration.Over years of facilitating these programs, I have found one truth impossible to ignore: Nearly every person I have worked with who committed a gun offense had first experienced firearm-related trauma. Many witnessed shootings as children. Some lost parents, siblings or friends to homicide. Others grew up in neighborhoods where hearing gunfire was normalized, without being old enough to comprehend the danger. Trauma created wounds that, left untreated, began to fester and developed into destructive behaviors and unhealthy coping strategies to survive — strategies that were amplified through pain and tragedy.I am fully accountable for my actions. These decisions forever changed my life and harmed others. Looking back, I recognize that the untreated trauma I carried contributed to my impulsive decisions. I often wonder how different my path would have been if someone had offered me counseling and support as a youth.This is why Assembly Bill 2247, the Trauma, Healing and Resilience Investment for Victimized and Exposed Youth Act, known as the Thrive Act, matters.As part of my amends to victims, I have an obligation to break cycles of gun violence, and that is what AB 2247 would do. This legislation would expand access to trauma recovery and support services for young survivors of gun violence. Specifically, it would provide funding for youth survivors and witnesses of gun violence; they would receive free, timely mental health and counseling services.Annually, around 44,000 people die because of firearm-related injuries across the United States, up from 35,000 since the 1990s. In Alameda County, gun violence is the leading cause of death for young Black males. Suicide rates by firearm have doubled for Latino youth between 2014 and 2023. On average, every day, seven people between the ages of 1 and 17 die because of firearms.These are not just numbers. These are people whose deaths leave behind children, siblings and communities shattered by their loss. It’s about time we did more through policy to address this epidemic affecting our state and nation. AB 2247 reaches children before they become statistics, before they become defendants, before another family loses a loved one and before another community experiences another shooting.Public safety requires prevention, not only punishment. Too often, California responds only after someone has become a victim or an offender. AB 2247 recognizes that there is another path. When children who survive gun violence receive timely trauma care, they can begin to heal rather than to carry unaddressed trauma into adulthood. That is not just victim services — it’s crime prevention.I have seen the power of that healing firsthand through Arms Down and Back to the Start. I have watched men cry for the first time in decades as they wrote about childhood trauma they had buried. I have participated in healing conversations between people who once believed violence was their only way to communicate. There are ways to interrupt the cycle, and we do not have to wait until more lives are damaged before we act.Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, author of the Thrive Act, is championing legislation that gets at the root of the problem. This is the kind of support I wish had been available to me as a young person — and to so many of the men I have worked alongside. We cannot change our past, but we can work together to change what happens to the next generation through prevention and healing. If we wait until after more shots are fired, it is too late.Jessie Milo, incarcerated at San Quentin, is a co-lead and facilitator for Back to the Start, a program to encourage investments in children and families. Insights L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles. Viewpoint This article generally aligns with a Center Left point of view. Learn more about this AI-generated analysis Perspectives The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content. Ideas expressed in the pieceThe article argues that repeated exposure to gun violence in childhood, combined with an absence of counseling or treatment, allowed grief to harden into fear and a belief that carrying a firearm was necessary for survival, ultimately contributing to a gun-related crime and incarceration.Drawing on years of facilitating prison-based rehabilitation programs, the piece contends that nearly everyone encountered who committed a gun offense had previously experienced firearm-related trauma as a child, such as witnessing shootings, losing loved ones to homicide, or living in neighborhoods where gunfire was normalized, and that these unaddressed wounds often evolved into destructive coping strategies.The column maintains that California’s Assembly Bill 2247, the “Thrive Act,” is a critical tool for breaking this cycle because it would fund free, timely trauma recovery and mental health services for young survivors and witnesses of gun violence, reaching children at the moment of injury or exposure rather than waiting until they appear in court as defendants.To underscore the urgency, the article highlights rising firearm-related deaths nationwide and the disproportionate impact on Black and Latino youth, arguing that these statistics represent families and communities left shattered, and that policy must do more to provide trauma care before those losses translate into further violence; this view is reinforced by research showing youth firearm survivors face sharply higher rates of psychiatric and substance use disorders and much higher healthcare costs in the year after injury[9].The piece asserts that public safety requires prevention alongside punishment, criticizing approaches that respond only after someone is victimized or imprisoned and framing trauma-informed care for children and teens as “another path” that addresses the roots of violence rather than relying solely on incarceration; this emphasis aligns with child welfare experts who call for early, family-level interventions that build resiliency and coping skills for those affected by violence[7].The article describes programs such as Arms Down and Back to the Start as evidence that healing-centered work—writing about buried childhood trauma, engaging in restorative conversations, and learning nonviolent ways to communicate—can transform people who once saw violence as their primary language, suggesting that similar trauma-focused services on the outside could prevent youth from entering the criminal legal system in the first place.In advocating for AB 2247, the column links its proposals to existing models across the country that provide comprehensive support to young people exposed to shootings, such as hospital-based youth violence intervention programs that treat violence as a chronic illness and offer safety planning, mental health referrals, and educational support over several months[2], and community organizations that provide grief counseling, mentoring, and family assistance to children who have lost parents or siblings to gun violence[1][5].Ultimately, the article argues that legislation like the Thrive Act, championed by policymakers committed to addressing root causes, represents the kind of upstream investment in children and families that was missing in the author’s own youth; it suggests that while the past cannot be changed, society can choose to offer trauma care and healing resources to the next generation rather than waiting “until after more shots are fired.”Different views on the topicIn contrast to a focus on post-trauma counseling, some gun-safety advocates emphasize that the most effective way to protect children from gun violence is to reduce their access to firearms altogether, arguing for policies such as closing background check and domestic violence loopholes, strengthening child access prevention laws, raising the minimum age for firearm purchases, and using extreme risk protection orders; this perspective prioritizes direct regulation of guns as the central policy response and may view counseling initiatives like AB 2247 as secondary or insufficient on their own[8].Other child and family advocates stress that prevention should begin even earlier and more broadly than trauma recovery for shooting survivors, calling for robust social services that help parents build protective factors, provide physical and psychological safety, and teach children nonviolent conflict-resolution skills; this view suggests that family-level prevention and skills training to reduce the impact of traumatic stress should be a core focus, rather than primarily expanding formal clinical services after a violent event[7].Experts who work with children regularly exposed to community gunfire often highlight the importance of supportive everyday environments—after-school programs, mentoring, and safe spaces that foster hope, engagement, and cultural identity—and argue that these community-based activities can be as crucial as therapy in helping youth heal and avoid further harm; from this vantage point, the main investment should be in enriching and supervising children’s daily lives, with counseling serving as one component rather than the centerpiece[3].Guidance developed for parents, schools, and communities on helping children cope with gun violence tragedies frequently emphasizes talking openly, reassuring children about their safety, maintaining routines, and limiting distressing media exposure, indicating a perspective that informal support from trusted adults and structured environments can play a central role in recovery; proponents of this approach may worry that a heavy emphasis on formal mental health interventions risks overlooking the power of family and school-based responses[4][6].Health-system–oriented programs, such as hospital-linked youth violence intervention initiatives, view violence as a chronic illness and respond with comprehensive case management that includes safety planning, help with medical follow-up and transportation, connections to community supports, and assistance with education and basic needs; advocates of this model may argue that embedding services in healthcare and social support systems is more effective than creating separate statewide counseling mandates like AB 2247, which they might see as too narrowly focused on therapy[2].Some trauma-response efforts funded by local governments, like the District of Columbia’s community healing circles and trauma-specific services coordinated through neighborhood offices, favor flexible, community-driven networks of support and alternative therapies tailored to local needs; this perspective may question whether a statewide statute can match the responsiveness and cultural specificity of locally controlled programs, and thus prefer decentralized, neighborhood-based frameworks over broad legislative solutions[5].Analyses of the health and economic toll of youth firearm injury, which document large increases in psychiatric diagnoses, substance use disorders, and medical spending after a shooting, can also be used to argue for broad investments in healthcare access, substance use treatment, and social safety nets; from this standpoint, critics may contend that a single trauma-recovery bill focused on counseling does not fully address the wide-ranging mental health and financial consequences of gun violence and should be paired with more expansive reforms[9].
