This Video of a 6-Year-Old Speaking About Gun Violence Is Going Viral
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A mom recorded her son talking about gun violence and now the emotional video is going viral.
Facebook/Leelee Cheatham - facebook.com
Jeffrey Laney, a 6-year-old, gave a speech about about the violence in his city of St. Louis. His mother recorded him and put it on Facebook, and now the video has been viewed more than 140,000 times.
"I'm scared to die, and I don't want nothing to happen to all my family, and I'm really serious," Laney says in the video. "I'm really scared to die and I'm really scared for my family to die."
The boy's mother spoke to ATTN:. "I'm shocked, of course, but I believe—especially in my city, but really everywhere—people can relate to what he's saying," Leanndra Cheatham said. "And all these people I've talked to on the phone said they've seen his video and it touched them."
Facebook/Leelee Cheatham - facebook.com
In the video, Jeffrey says that kids in St. Louis know about "bad stuff" they shouldn't be forced to know at such a young age.
"I'm a kid and I'm not supposed to be knowing all this stuff. I'm not supposed to be knowing about all these guns," he says. "I know about all bad stuff I shouldn't know about. I'm supposed to be learning about school."
He makes a plea to end the violence.
"People need to stop killing each other," he says. "This is really bad for people."
Facebook/Leelee Cheatham - facebook.com
ATTN: talked to Cheatham about her son and the effect gun violence has on Laney and other children in St. Louis.
"I mean, a lot of kids will hear it on the news, and there's been times we've driven down the street and there'll be a car taped up with someone dead inside the vehicle," she said. Cheatham added that she's had to explain the difference between between someone dying from sickness and "when someone takes your life away." She hopes her son's video will make people pay attention to the violence.
"Stay positive, no matter how hard life gets, and value life more," she said. "When you take a life, it hurts more than just that person."
St. Louis was the murder capital of the U.S. last year.
Although violent crime in the U.S. has fallen overall since the 1990s, some cities and neighborhoods still suffer from high murder rates.
In 2016, the murder rate in St. Louis was more than three times that of Chicago, a city that's gotten a lot of attention from the media and President Donald Trump over its gun violence. In the Greater Ville neighborhood of St. Louis, the homicide rate last year was even three times greater than it was in Honduras, the murder capital of the world, according to The Trace. In 2014, 64 percent of murders in St. Louis happened in just 28 of the city's wards, a phenomenon The Trace called "murder inequality."
The Gun Violence Archive says that 5,875 people have been killed by gun violence in the U.S. in 2017, including 258 children under the age of 11.
U.S. citizens are more likely to die from gun violence than acts of terror.
Flickr/Rod Waddington - flic.kr
A CNN analysis of 2014 data found that for every U.S. citizen killed by an act of terror in the U.S. or abroad, 1,049 were killed by gun violence. Still, Congress has been unable (or unwilling) to pass substantial gun control legislation. Instead, Congress in February passed a measure ending an Obama-era rule requiring mentally ill and disabled people receiving Social Security benefits to be automatically registered in a background check system.
