Risk factors

Poverty concentration and racialized housing markets channel many Black families into neighbourhoods lacking adequate community infrastructure, including safe public spaces, youth programming, culturally grounded services, and stable employment (Sharpe & Aqil, 2025). School systems reinforce these inequities through discriminatory discipline, academic streaming, and the under-provision of supportive services across multiple Canadian jurisdictions (Codjoe, 2001; Dei et al., 1997; James et al., 2017). Young Black men and boys are disproportionately represented in both victimization and perpetration statistics, a pattern linked not to inherent risk but to the intersection of structural inequalities and historical trauma (Clark, 2025; Department of Justice Canada, 2022). Young Black women and girls, while less represented in victimization statistics, face distinct risks rooted in the intersection of race and gender, including exposure to intimate partner violence occurring alongside community gun violence and a near-absence of services designed to hold both forms of harm simultaneously (Maynard, 2025). Black youth with disabilities face compounded vulnerabilities, as ableism and anti-Black racism together shape both their exposure to harm and their exclusion from recovery supports (Niles et al., 2025). Research documents a pattern in which young Black men who acquire physical disabilities following non-fatal shootings find that rehabilitation services do not account for ongoing trauma, that victim compensation frameworks do not cover long-term care needs, and that their treatment by providers is filtered through assumptions of culpability rather than recognition of harm (Richardson et al., 2016; Niles et al., 2025). Where these structural pressures converge with the availability of firearms through illicit markets shaped by cross-border trafficking, the likelihood of firearm injury increases. A public health approach to gun violence, grounded in trauma-informed and culturally relevant care, has been identified as essential for reducing harm and supporting recovery (Braga, 2022; Sharpe & Frans-Joseph, 2026; Singh et al., 2020), emphasizing social determinants of violence and the need for sustained investment in prevention and healing rather than reactive, punitive responses.