Monica Atkins is fighting every day to save the next child.
“I grieve by showing up for my community, especially with prevention and showing up for these children,” Atkins said.
In 2013, she was part of a call to action to end gun violence in Portsmouth. A year later, her son Antonio Atkins was shot to death on Effingham Street after leaving a club.
The pain still runs deep. Atkins has good and bad days, but focuses on what she can do now.
As Executive Director of Stop the Violence 757, she said conflict resolution and de-escalation can help prevent youth shootings.
“It teaches youth how to walk away,” Atkins said. “Everything doesn’t require a response. We have to teach them a type of coping mechanism.”
A 2025 report by Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) on the effects of gun violence found that just nine Virginia localities account for more than half of all gun-related homicides in the state. Four of those nine are Hampton Roads cities: Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News and Hampton.
More than a quarter of Virginia's gun-related homicides occurred in those four cities between 2020 and 2024.
The report found that for every gun homicide, several non-fatal shootings also occur.
Virginia funds gun violence prevention programs that focus primarily on “credible messenger” programs, street outreach and hospital-based interventions.
But there have been national studies that suggest firearm safety courses could help with some gun violence.
The American Academy of Nursing, for example, wrote in 2022 that “firearm safety and violence prevention training is a step in the right direction to reduce children’s access to firearms in their own homes, leading to a reduced rate of unintentional deaths, school shootings and suicides.”
Last month, Brian “Doc” Bowen, founder and chief instructor of Firearms Safety First hosted a free Community Safety seminar with the Virginia Department of Health in Norfolk.
It is among the few examples in Hampton Roads of a government health agency co-sponsoring firearm safety instruction for the same population that violence-interruption programs target.
According to Bowen, a gun violence survivor himself, gun safety training is not going to solve youth violence.
“Anyone who says that it will is just oversimplifying a complex issue,” he said. “Children and young adults are often exposed to firearms long before they’re educated about them.”
But he believes early training can reduce unsafe behaviors, accidents, curiosity-based incidents and improve decision-making.
As for gun safety education, Bowen said it increases opportunities for families to have responsible conversations.
“Parents have to be the primary safety instructors,” he said. “My goal isn’t to create gun owners. My goal is to create responsible decision makers.”
In Hampton Roads, private academies such as Coastal Virginia Training Academy and AAA Firearm Training in Virginia Beach offer youth courses, often led by retired law enforcement or military veterans.
Norfolk’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi pointed to education, health care, transportation and job opportunities as the most effective strategies in reducing youth gun violence.
And while he agrees that gun safety training and de-escalation would prevent shootings even more, his biggest concern is the number of firearms ending up on city streets.
“The lack of safe storage of guns and the easy availability of guns on the black market due to theft is a huge problem. The number one source of stolen guns in the United States now is guns stolen from cars, not from gun dealers, not from houses, but from cars.” Fatehi told WHRO. “Especially here in Hampton Roads, where we have a ton of people who are armed.”
That finding connects directly to what JLARC documented in Virginia: in roughly 60% of criminal cases statewide where firearms were recovered, the person using the gun was not the last known legal purchaser.
Not everyone is convinced that educational programs move the needle where it matters most.
A 2018 study by the Rutgers School of Nursing found children who participate often ignore what they learned when encountering a real firearm — even in programs using hands-on, active learning approaches.
The JLARC report also found that each of the Virginia localities with the highest incidences of gun violence has a shortage of mental health professionals.
Steven Keener is the Director of the Center for Crime, Equity, and Justice Research and Policy at Christopher Newport University. He said gun safety education used for young people does little to reduce their behaviors in real-world settings.
He said it can instead normalize firearms’ presence in the home and provide a false sense of protection for parents who rely on this training instead of the physical security of the firearm in the house.
“For younger children, the most effective training involves physical training and scenarios as opposed to a lecture,” Keener said.
“For older children and teens, the most effective training is (situation- dependent), with hunter safety programs having some positive impact on youth that hunt or sport shoot, while firearm safety classes focused on urban environments tend to be less effective.”