Sheppard, David, Heath Grant, Wendy Rowe and Nancy Jacobs (2000). Fighting Juvenile Gun Violence. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.
Although gun violence and homicides have been declining in recent years, gun-related crime remains at unacceptably high levels. A recent study by the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and Justice of firearm-related homicides found that the age at which people most frequently commit homicide was 18 and that 18- to 20-year-olds constituted 22 percent of all those arrested for homicide (U.S. Department of the Treasury and U.S. Department of Justice, 1999). This age group also ranked first in the number of homicides committed with guns (24 percent). These data are consistent with the trend in youth gun homicides over the past 15 years (Snyder, 1999).