By Antonio Planas —
NBC News
The Marion County (Florida) sheriff, Billy Woods, launched this Friday into a criticism of the firearms control measures while announcing at a press conference the arrest of two minors for the shooting deaths of three teenagers .
The two arrested were charged with first-degree murder in the death of 16-year-old Layla Silvernail and two other youths who have not been identified.
Police are still looking for a third minor allegedly involved who is on the run.
NBC News and Noticias Telemundo typically do not name minors charged with a crime, not even those charged as adults.
"There are individuals out there," the sheriff said, "who want to blame the one thing that doesn't have the skill or the ability to commit the crime on its own, the gun." "These individuals [were the ones] who committed the crime ”, Woods told reporters, without however assessing that if a criminal does not have easy access to a weapon, he may not be able to shoot his victim.
"All the gun laws we have in place didn't stop it, did they? Neither will the new ones," the sheriff opined, adding that "the bad guy is going to get a gun regardless of the law."
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Woods' remarks came a week after Layla Silvernail was found bleeding to death from a gunshot wound on March 30 along a county road about 60 miles northwest of Orlando.
She died days later at the hospital.
On March 31, police reported that a 17-year-old boy had been found on the side of a road with a fatal gunshot wound a few miles away.
The third victim, another 16-year-old girl, was found Saturday in the trunk of Silvernail's car, which was partially submerged on the edge of a nearby lake, according to authorities.
She also had a fatal gunshot wound.
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The victims and suspects, Woods said, knew each other, were allegedly involved in committing robberies, and were allegedly related to gangs, although it is unknown if there was a rivalry for this reason or what happened between them.
“In basically simple terms, there is no honor among thieves.
And at some point, these three individuals turned on our three victims and murdered them.
Two of them right there.
They fled the scene, but they left a lot of evidence in their wake,” he said.
Woods lamented that
society does not adequately punish young offenders in his opinion,
and pointed to the country's educational system.
“Our school districts, not just here but across the state and country, need to stop minimizing the actions of their students.
Hold them accountable.
Therein lies the failure, ”he opined.
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Debates over gun control have flared across the country following the March 27 mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people, including three 9-year-olds.
Hundreds of protesters packed the Tennessee Capitol calling on the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to pass gun control measures.
Three Democratic lawmakers joined the protest, and Republicans voted Thursday to expel two of them for that reason.
According to research published in 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine,
guns were the leading cause of death among children and teens in 2020,
killing more people ages 1 to 19 than car crashes, drug overdoses, drugs or cancer.
More than 4,300 died from firearm-related injuries, an increase of 29% over 2019, according to the study.
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"In the last 40 years, and almost certainly sooner, this is the first time that firearm injuries have outnumbered motor vehicle crashes among children," said co-author Jason Goldstick, a research associate professor at the University of Michigan.
Goldstick noted that
homicides, not suicides, made up the majority of gun deaths
among children and teens in 2020. Murders, which disproportionately affected youth, increased 33% in 2020.