Retired police officer’s thoughts on CDC survey about Florida kids carrying weapons

Kids with weapons aren’t as uncommon as you think. The Centers for Disease Control says roughly 13% of Florida kids 11 or younger have carried a weapon. That number goes up to 20% for kids 14 or older.

The findings come from an annual youth risk behavior survey of 4,700 kids, and if you ask FGCU Professor David Thomas, that is a small sample size, especially when you narrow it down to middle school students.

Thomas took a deep dive and said there are several reasons why kids as young as 10 or 11 decide to arm themselves.

“There’s a whole litany of things that go along with this,” said Thomas.

The CDC says guns and gun violence is a public health issue. The CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows almost 13% of kids 11 or younger have carried a weapon.

That means a kid could have carried a gun, knife, club, or anything else classified as a weapon.

A higher percentage of them who admitted to doing this are boys.

Thomas, a retired police officer, and professor of forensic studies at FGCU, compared the 2021 survey with the one done in 2019.

“In 2019, for 19, better, you can actually look at those numbers, and they’re almost identical,” said Thomas.

Thomas said we should not focus so much on the numbers but the why behind them.

Why do kids as young as 11 feel the need to carry a weapon? “There was a certain percentage of the kids who have been victims of dating abuse, and a certain number of kids who had been victims of some form of sexual abuse. So when you start looking at numbers, you almost start to understand why kids start to carry weapons to schools to prepare themselves for in order to defend themselves,” Thomas said.

While 2021 numbers didn’t show much increase, Thomas said the numbers to look out for would be in the 2022 survey.

He predicts those will be higher because kids are more afraid.