Each year over 30,000 Americans are fatally shot, too many of them children.

Obama must address the every-day gun violence that threatens America's youth. (jurvetson, Creative Commons)

According to the Child Defense Fund Report of 2012 “5,740 children and teens were killed by guns in 2008 and 2009.” This trend of violence against youth in America has shown no sign of slowing down. In 2012, urban centers like Los Angeles and Chicago reported disturbingly high rates of fatalities in the 13-24 age bracket. Cities across the nation face the crucial task of minimizing deaths to gun violence.

In the summer of 2012, I lost three close friends—two to gun violence and one to a violent stabbing. As I struggled to maintain my understanding of life, peace and hope for the future, I realized that it was becoming normal for me to turn on the television and see the photo of someone I loved, to celebrate a holiday and hope nobody had died that night and to wish that burying people in my age bracket hadn’t begun when I was six.

According to national crime statistics, I am not alone; as of December 28, 414 murders had occurred in New York, 294 in Los Angeles, 97 in Cleveland, 331 in Philadelphia, 113 in St. Louis and 193 in New Orleans. Children are among these victims every day. Between 2006 and 2010, 561 children aged 12 and under were killed by firearms. This count does not include gun-related child fatalities that authorities have ruled accidental.

This unfortunate reality was recently brought home to American families by the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty students between the ages of just six and seven years old were shot and killed. These and other mass shootings have brought attention to both the issue of gun crimes as well as the culture of violence itself that exists within American society.

However, as Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research Daniel Webster told the Boston Globe, national tragedies like Sandy Hook are only part of the problem. Not every shooting is televised and many stories go untold by the nation’s most recognized media outlets.

"This happens on way too regular a basis and it affects families and communities—not at once, so we don't see it and we don't understand it as part of our national experience,” he said. It is this reality that legislation must focus on changing."

For example, Chicago's astounding 500 gun-related homicides in 2012 brings the death toll to over 2,000 in just six American cities. Though these murders raise questions about police tactics, city responsibility and parental control, none of these issues should be the focus of the national approach to gun violence.

Notably, the shootings in Chicago occurred predominately in housing projects and low-income neighborhoods, such as Englewood. According to the Huffington Post, meanwhile, America currently ranks 31st in math, 23rd in science and 27th in education worldwide. At the root of this issue, then, is how America will respond to growing poverty and a steadily declining educational system over the coming years.

Authorities and politicians, however, continue to draw incorrect and dangerous conclusions from the data.

"I attribute it to young men with low IQs carrying big guns,” Cleveland Councilman Michael P. Polensek told Reuters. “It is just the reality of it.”

The councilman's statement is not only stereotypical, but it also denies the role of the government in the education of its own youth. The increases in nationwide violence and gun ownership and the decrease in the quality of American education are a reflection on those in power and the systems they create.

Last month, President Obama made a speech on preventing gun violence, in which he discussed the importance of the lives of America’s youth. Obama talked at length about the gun control legislation he hopes to see implemented over the next few months:

“The vast majority of Americans—including a majority of gun owners—support requiring criminal background checks for anyone trying to buy a gun. So right now, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are working on a bill that would ban anyone from selling a gun to somebody legally prohibited from owning one. That’s common sense. There’s no reason we can’t get that done.”

However, there is another question the president needs to address and this is how America will foster creative environments that produce youth who thrive off knowledge and their own personal potential and power. Many of the victims of gun-violence live in impoverished communities that lack resources for education and mental health which ultimately fail to provide for the future of their youth.

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the number of deaths by firearms in 2015 will exceed the number of motor vehicle deaths. In the span of just a few years, the death toll due to gun violence is expected to rise to nearly 33,000 annually which averages out to almost 90 fatal shootings a day. Currently, as Bloomberg points out:

“While mass murders are rare, shootings aren’t. About 85 Americans are shot dead daily—53 of them suicides. Every day, one of those killed by firearms is 14 or younger.”

These numbers aren't acceptable, especially not for a society that prides itself on equality, freedom and the opportunity to dream. The America I know has become filled with violence that takes the lives of children before they can even formulate an understanding of themselves, life or their future purposes.

If there is anything to be done, it must be for us as a nation to become more accountable for the lives of our neighbors and to come together and discuss how to redirect the unfortunate trajectory of the lives of children in America. If we do not, history may repeat itself. The effects of guns, poverty and a failing education system could result in the further increase of government dependency, unemployment and tragic violence.

Reach Contributor Jacqueline Jackson here; follow her here