Few topics are as hard to discuss as youth violence and crime. For this week’s Blueprint, The Courier Journal looked into youth gun violence, its current state and what Louisville is doing to address it.
Publicly available data indicate progress is being made. Fewer children have been shot this year, with 53 as of Oct. 14 compared to 61 during the same period last year. However, teens now make up a larger share of the city’s shooting victims. Of the 299 people shot in 2025 through Oct. 14, about 17% were under 18, an increase of five percentage points from 2023 and the highest proportion in a decade.
A separate analysis of LMPD arrest data also shows that too many children are still getting access to guns, which Metro officials say highlights the need for safe-storage laws…