JACKSONVILLE, Florida — A new analysis of hospital data reveals that more than 4,000 children in Florida were hospitalized for gunshot wounds between 2018 and 2024, an average of about 1.5 children every day. The investigation, conducted by KFF Health News and The Trace, found that the burden of firearm injuries falls disproportionately on a small number of ZIP codes, many of which are racially segregated neighborhoods with high poverty rates.
The data, obtained from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, includes records from emergency department visits and inpatient hospitalizations. It shows that 2,340 children were treated in emergency rooms and 1,684 were admitted to hospitals for gunshot wounds during the seven-year period. The analysis defines children as age 17 and under.
Jacksonville: A City Grappling with Child Gun Violence
Jacksonville, a city of about 1 million, stands out as one of the most dangerous places for children in Florida. Three ZIP codes in the city rank among the ten worst in the state for firearm injuries involving children. The victims include a 7-year-old boy shot while playing in front of a house, a 13-year-old boy killed on his way home from a football tryout, and a 5-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet while sitting in a parked car.
The toll is so great that the nonprofit Families of Slain Children has built a memorial called the “Wall of Compassion” listing hundreds of people killed by gunfire in the city. A second wall is already filling with names.
Dr. Firas Madbak, chief of acute care surgery at UF Health Jacksonville, the only Level I trauma center in northeastern Florida, sees the consequences daily. “You see it day in and day out,” he said. “I’m working tonight, and I suspect I’ll see a couple victims.” In 2024, the hospital treated 255 patients for gunshot wounds, including 32 who were 17 or younger. In 2025, the hospital treated 269 patients for firearm injuries, including 22 under 18. As of August 19, the hospital has treated 137 patients for gunshot wounds this year, including 18 who were 17 or younger.
Racial Segregation and Permissive Gun Laws
Researchers, public officials, and community activists say the high rates of child gun injuries are linked to Florida’s history of racial discrimination and its permissive gun laws. Jacksonville children are most often shot in racially segregated neighborhoods, a legacy of early 20th-century state-sanctioned discrimination in housing, banking, and investment. These areas today face pollution from defunct city-run trash incinerators, garbage-strewn lots, dilapidated housing, and poverty.
Nearly all of the Florida ZIP codes with the highest rates of firearm injuries for children have large Black or Latino populations. Research shows kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods are up to 20 times more likely to suffer firearm injuries than their peers in the most advantaged areas.
Dr. Jeffrey Goldhagen, a UF Health pediatrician and former health director for Duval County, said state and local leaders have failed to address the “root causes” of preventable firearm injuries and deaths, including poverty, lack of opportunity, and neglect. “The bottom line is nobody gives a flying f— about these young men,” Goldhagen said.
The Florida Department of Health does not focus on gun violence as a public health threat, Goldhagen said, despite its being the nation’s leading cause of death for children and teens. The State Health Improvement Plan, developed by the Health Department and an advisory committee, does not mention guns or efforts to reduce firearm deaths and injuries to young people. Instead, its goals include preventing sudden unexpected infant deaths, youth drownings, and motor vehicle crash injuries.
No one with the authority to address this public health crisis would agree to talk to KFF Health News about gun violence and its toll on Jacksonville’s children — not the Florida Health Department, Governor Ron DeSantis, Mayor Donna Deegan, or 18 of 19 members of the Jacksonville City Council. Only Council Member Jimmy Peluso responded. Peluso said the city has long ignored the needs of neighborhoods with high rates of firearm injuries among children. “A lot of these neighborhoods have just felt like the wealth has left them,” he said, “and the city didn’t come in to put in the amount of work they needed to.”
Governor DeSantis, a Republican, has called for few limits on how people purchase or carry firearms. He signed a bill allowing Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a permit. When then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared firearm violence a public health crisis in 2024, DeSantis called the advisory an “unconstitutional power-grab” and said Florida would not follow it. The advisory recommended policies including universal background checks and secure storage requirements. DeSantis spokesperson Molly Best declined an interview request and to answer questions about the governor’s gun policies.
“There isn’t an agenda to end gun violence in the state of Florida,” said Jean Francis, a former pediatric nurse who leads the Jacksonville chapter of Moms Demand Action, a nonprofit advocating for stronger firearm laws.
Orlando and the Pain of Families
In Orlando, one ZIP code — 32805 — had the state’s highest rate of children under 18 hospitalized for a gunshot wound from 2018 through 2024, with a total of 25 children, or 125.8 per 100,000.
On New Year’s Day 2018, Bryce Williams, 17, was shot in a neighborhood park in Casselberry, an Orlando suburb. He was found dead after crashing his blue Kia into a home near the park. His grandmother Kim Crow told WFTV in Orlando, “First off, you can’t believe that someone is taken from you so violently. It’s heartbreaking.”
In April, Daesean Moctezuma Orland, 18, was fatally shot while attending a house party outside Orlando. Two others wounded in the shooting were taken to the hospital. Police arrested a 16-year-old boy about a month later and charged him with Moctezuma Orland’s death. His grandmother Iveliz Moctezuma told WFTV that a friend of her grandson’s called to tell them he had been shot. The women drove to four hospitals, including one in Tampa, searching for him. “My every day is crumbled,” Iveliz Moctezuma said. “It’s hard to work. You sit there, and you watch the news. You’re like, ‘Oh my God, there goes another kid getting killed by gun violence.’” Her daughter Noemi Moctezuma added, “It’s a hole in my chest, a hole in my mind. It’s like the biggest void that you could ever possibly imagine, that not even the happiest moments can fill a void like that.”
Mothers’ Grief and Unanswered Questions
In Jacksonville, Yvonne Fields lost her son Rashaud Fields, 18, hours after his high school graduation in May 2022. Rashaud was walking into a friend’s celebration when a car pulled up and opened fire. A defensive lineman on his high school football team, he had been offered a full scholarship to play for Keiser University in West Palm Beach. “Everybody loved him,” Yvonne Fields said, calling him “the life of the party.” “Rashaud loved to dance. He was a joke teller. He was funny.” She has kept his room exactly as he left it and smells his shirt every day. “I know he’s not coming back,” she said, “but I can feel the spirit.”
Latasha Hobbs celebrated her son Maurice Hobbs’s 18th birthday in January 2017. Two days later, he was fatally shot as he waited for his mother to pick him up. “I was not even a block away,” she said. Maurice was a singer, rapper, and poet who dreamed of starting his own clothing line and giving homes to everyone in his family. “He was like, ‘Oh my God, Mom, I made it to 18,’” Latasha Hobbs recalled. “So it’s hard to swallow knowing that my baby didn’t make it to 19. It’s not fair. My baby deserves to be here.”
Pamela Howard has struggled for nearly two decades with the killing of her son Derrell Baker, 17, who was shot in September 2008 as he walked to school. Howard said she thought her son was at school and later football practice. The family learned something might be wrong only when a sibling heard that Baker had been shot. By the time she found him at UF Health Jacksonville, it was too late. “I don’t remember anything after they told me he was dead,” Howard said. “My friends say they just heard me scream.”
For these mothers, the lack of closure is painful. Police have not made an arrest in any of the cases. “When I get justice,” Yvonne Fields said, “maybe I’ll be a little at peace.”
Guns as Leading Cause of Child Deaths
Michael Nance, chief of pediatric surgery and trauma at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, co-authored a research letter in JAMA Pediatrics that found the number of states where guns were the leading cause of death for children and teens increased from zero in 2004-2008 to 24 in 2019-2023. Motor vehicle deaths among children, once the leading cause, have declined primarily because of safety interventions such as seat belt laws, speed limits, air bags, and antilock brakes. “That progress has been pretty universal across the U.S.,” Nance said, “but firearm stuff is just all over the map.”
Guns don’t have federal safety standards, Nance noted. They aren’t regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and they can’t be recalled the way unsafe toys or cars can be. “We’ve really done almost nothing to change the trajectory of firearm injuries in kids,” he said.
Research has linked increases in pediatric gun deaths from 2011 to 2023 to state-level gun policies. States with permissive gun policies, like “stand your ground” and open carry laws, reported higher rates of firearm deaths among children than states with strict regulations, according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics. Florida was ranked among a group of 30 states with the most permissive gun policies. Four states with comparatively strict gun laws — California, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island — saw a decrease in pediatric gun deaths over the same period.
Efforts to Address Gun Violence in Jacksonville
Goldhagen said Jacksonville leaders tried to address gun violence through the Jacksonville Journey, an initiative launched in 2008 under former Mayor John Peyton, when Duval County was the murder capital of Florida. The program provided mentorship, summer camps, job training, and non-police strategies like neighborhood beautification and community center programs. Officials credited the effort with a nearly 40 percent reduction in homicides in Duval County in its first four years.
After Peyton left office in 2011, program spending was slashed from about $15 million to $8.6 million in 2012 and about $2.3 million in 2014. The scaled-back program was eventually combined with another children’s initiative to form the Kids Hope Alliance, which uses city, state, and federal grants to fund youth services. Duval County is the only large county in Florida that does not have a child services tax dedicated to programs for children.
“There is absolutely zero political will to do anything that remotely resembles a child services tax,” said Vicki Waytowich, executive director of the Partnership for Child Health, a nonprofit that provides health and juvenile justice services for children and families in Jacksonville. “What we’re doing is slapping a Band-Aid on things.”
In 2024, city leaders halted spending on a gun violence prevention program called Cure Violence, which tried to stop beefs between youths before they escalated to shootings. A city Office of Inspector General report alleged the program lacked oversight and sound financial practices.
In 2025, Mayor Deegan launched a program called Journey Forward to address gun violence, but like its predecessor, it does not have a dedicated, ongoing source of funding.
A Mother’s Unbearable Loss
On March 22, Ladonna Johnson said she broke up with her boyfriend, Steven Dodson Jr., because she saw he was sharing location information with other women. She went into a bedroom where her 2-year-old son A’mahri Robinson and his sister were watching television and put her son on her lap. Dodson followed her into the room, went into a closet, and retrieved a gun. “He just kept asking me, ‘What are we doing?’” Johnson said. Moments later, she heard a loud bang. A’mahri was shot in the head with the gun she kept for protection. He died in her arms.
Dodson, 21, pleaded guilty in June to murder and aggravated child abuse and was sentenced to life in prison. Johnson said her daughter and she will both need therapy. She is dedicated to preserving A’mahri’s memory: “I want people to know how adorable and sweet my son was.” Still, she said, “I feel like I will never be OK.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF. This investigation was co-published by the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times and supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project.
