This is part one of a two-part series of the impact of gun violence on Minnesotans. You can read part two here.
When Rachel Zuraff, a senior at Hopkins high school, was asked if she knew others who had seen or experienced gun violence, she responded: “I don’t know if I don’t know somebody that’s (hasn’t) really been impacted by it first hand.”
Zuraff was in preschool when the Sandy Hook school shooting happened in Connecticut, killing 26 people. She recalled that she was pulled out of school for some time following that, but she never knew why until a more recent conversation with her parents about gun violence. She then learned they pulled her out of fear something like that could happen at her school.
“My family, we’ve had discussions surrounding gun violence, as it’s become a bigger and bigger issue and it is very prevalent in my life,” Zuraff said.
Earlier this year, she heard a full automatic gun go off multiple times just down the street from her house in the South St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul. She said someone on the block was shot in the leg during a carjacking — and she heard it from inside her home.
The effects of seeing, hearing and being close to that, is not good for anyone’s mental health, she said. She also worries that the fear of others having guns just leads to more gun violence.
“I personally struggle with anxiety but I think for anybody, it’d be extremely stressing. It’s freakish. It is really scary regardless of who you are or what experiences you have even if you do have experiences with guns. It’s terrifying,” Zuraff said. “It’s apocalyptic in a sense.”
Minnesota’s youth are experiencing gun violence at rates disproportionate to their makeup of the state’s population. According to data from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), people ages 15-29 were victims to significantly more incidents involving firearms than other age groups. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 combined, around 308 15-year olds experienced gun violence of some sort. The same was true for 397 16-year olds, 458 17- year olds, and 566 18-year olds.
Gun violence here is defined as instances of homicides, sexual assaults, robbery, aggravated assault and carjackings that involve a handgun, rifle, shotgun or other firearm.
In the three years from 2021-2023, people ages 18-24 made up 21.8% percent of gun violence victims — but only 8.8% of the state’s population. Youth ages 15-17 made up 6.5% of the victims, but 4% of the state’s population.
And it’s affecting the state’s younger Black population at higher rates. While only around 5.2% of Minnesotans ages 15-17 and 12.2% 18-24 in the state are Black, according to population estimates from 2017-2021 from Minnesota Compass, roughly 50% of gun violence victims in that age range during 2021, 2022 and 2023 were Black, according to an analysis of BCA data.
Local police departments are also seeing an increase in youth victims. In Minneapolis, 2023 saw an increase in the number of juvenile victims of gun violence compared to 2022, according to the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).
“We've definitely seen an increase in our encounters with juveniles in carjackings, specifically, and somewhat in shootings,” said Minneapolis Police Department Deputy Chief Jason Case.
In 2022, around 10.6% of Minneapolis shooting victims were under 18, according to MPD. In 2023, there were 62 juvenile victims, which accounted for around a higher percentage —15% — of the total number of shooting victims in the city.
But it's not just shootings. Types of violence that involved a gun, including incidents like carjackings, robberies, assaults and homicides that involved guns, were also prevalent in Minneapolis.
According to data from the BCA, in the three years of 2021, 2022 and 2023, there were just under 820 instances of gun violence where victims were under 18 in Minneapolis – or about 4.6% of instances. And for those in the 18-24 range, there were around 2,000 incidents of the same nature, making up around 11% of total instances, despite people in that age group being 8.8% of the state’s population.
It’s not just an issue in Minneapolis. Areas classified as “micropolitan,” like Kandiyohi County, had high per capita rates of instances where guns were used in crimes from 2021-2023. The same was true for Mahnomen County, which is considered a rural area.
Zuraff is part of the Minnesota Youth Council — an organization with student representatives from each district of the state who work on projects and initiatives that are then presented to the Legislature and the governor. She hears from her peers on the council that they’re facing these same problems with guns — and in so many different places.
“It's not just high schools. It's not just elementary schools or middle schools, it's colleges, it's movie theaters. It's grocery stores. It's so much more beyond just the schools,” she said.
Alexandra Hanks, 15, is another member of the Minnesota Youth Council. She’s a student at Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton in Waseca County, around 2o minutes east of Mankato.
In January of last year, her school went into lockdown after someone had airdropped “threatening messages” referencing guns and school shootings.
“That definitely kind of changed a lot for us because it always seems like this foreign thing. Like that would never happen at our school. And then we get this shooting threat and suddenly it's like this massive wake-up call,” Hanks said.
She remembers texting her dad when it happened.
“Immediately I pull out my phone and I text my dad, ‘Hey dad, I don’t want to worry you, but we're in a soft lockdown. In case anything happens, I love you.’ My dad, I talked to him about this afterwards, was terrified,” she said.
Hanks won’t forget the scene of when the kids were evacuated into a nearby location for safety.
“What I saw inside that church was genuinely something that I don't know if I will ever forget. Because it was a bunch of little kids crying and it was siblings looking for siblings. And it was parents trying to make sure their kids got out. It was awful and it was heartbreaking,” she said. “It was terrifying. I was so scared and I don't know if I'll ever fully forget that day.”
From then on, she said the conversations in everyday life that she had with her classmates were different.
“I had a conversation with my friends after that. It was like, ‘What classroom do you think would be best for if a shooter breaks in? It would probably be like the shop classroom? No, it would be the chemistry room.’ I look back on those conversations and it's just insane that kids are having to think about this kind of thing,” Hanks said.
Parents also share the same concern. Susie Kaufman is a mom whose child also went through that trauma. Kaufman is also the Minnesota chapter lead for the Moms Demand Action, a national organization that advocates for stronger gun laws.
She recalled that during this school year, her child went through a lockdown drill, and it affected her deeply.
“My children came home terrified. My 10-year-old was crying and she was very traumatized by it. I think it's important to know that gun violence affects all of us in a community,” she said. “We all know that when we go into movie theaters, when we go into houses of worship, when we go into restaurants, when we go anywhere — we can all become victims of gun violence.”
This is part one of a two part series of the impact of gun violence on Minnesotans.
Ava Kian
Ava Kian is MinnPost's Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.
