Gun Violence outranks car accidents and drug overdoses as the primary source of youth death in America in 2025. For Black youth gun deaths is 18-times higher than White children and teens according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
For Natrina Roper, the Student Organizing Associate for Everytown, the significance of the 2025 Summit is to continue to keep pressure on lawmakers, regardless of the political climate in the country on this issue. This is only the second Changemaker Summit ever held, and the path from idea to reality was neither linear nor guaranteed.
“Seven years ago this was just an idea. Doing it in 2025 feels even more necessary because the current administration has reversed some of the progress we’ve made in the Gun Violence Prevention Movement,” Roper said.
Currently Gun Violence Legislation at a federal level has stalled under President Donald Trump, and Roper emphasizes that the true strength of the movement continues to come from the ground up.
“Every grassroots effort this country has ever seen has been powered by youth,” Roper said. “When you get impassioned and energetic young people working toward a common goal, especially young Black youth, there’s nothing that can’t be done.”
Roper pointed out that programs to address Gun Violence must also root out the inequalities that create the conditions for crimes.
“You have to know how things like SNAP benefits and employment rates affect Gun Violence. You take that knowledge to lawmakers and force them to make change; and if they refuse, you vote them out,” Roper said.
Student leadership is important on this issue as schools both K-12 and colleges also are experiencing a continued uptick in Gun Violence. In 2025, school and college campus shootings were up from the previous year, with each year prior setting new records. A total of some 70 school shooting incidents occurred in 2025 through November, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
“The main goal was creating a safe space where people could share their stories,” said Andrea Celia Asalia who has worked to coordinate the summit since its conception. “We built it in a space where folks felt comfortable, using the language and culture of young people to talk about Gun Violence.”
One of the summit’s major insights is the dual nature of Gun Violence: what’s highly visible – mass shootings, versus what is systemic and often invisible in communities of color.
“We talk about the Gun Violence people see on the news, and the Systemic Violence we don’t always see that disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities,” Asalia said.
Alyssa Robinson, a student at Valencia College, in Orlando, FL. said she attended the summit to deepen her understanding of Gun Violence within her own community.
“I wanted to understand more about how guns get distributed and strengthen my knowledge on Gun Violence in Orlando,” she said. “We need to educate African Americans on lock boxes, so accidental gun deaths aren’t a trend anymore.”
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