VIDEOGRAPHER: RAH HOWARD
Between January 1, 2022, and April 25, 2022, Little Rock, Ark. — the 24th most violent of 65 cities, according to the FBI’s most recent data — counted 24 homicides. That compared to 21 homicides during the same period in 2021, according to the Little Rock Police Department’s most recent count. A disproportionate number of those murders involved guns, continuing a trend.
Blacks — mainly males — accounted for all homicide victims under 30 years old in Little Rock.
Back in 2005, when he was 13 years old, Little Rock native Christian Kimborough barely missed becoming one of what has been a perennial run-on of Black males murdered by guns in his hometown. Kimborough was shot in the head, at point-blank range with a .38 caliber pistol, during a sleep-over at a friend’s house — by a teen who was showing it off and randomly pointing at Kimborough.
“He whispered,” Kimborough said, reflecting back, “‘It’s got two blanks in the gun, it’s two real bullets in the gun’ … I said, ‘What does that mean?’ … “I’d never seen an actual gun until that point. I’d always seen them in the movies. I heard about them … When he shot me, it was crazy … “
His recovery required two major surgeries that included placing a metal plate in his skull, repairing damage done as the bullet entered and exited his brain. He had to relearn how to walk and talk. He’s made what his physicians consider a full physical recovery, but he still lives that trauma, said Kimborough, CEO of Revived Minds, which doubles as his mission-focused clothing brand and international, youth-focused campaign against gun violence.
“It’s really taken its toll on me, after all these years,” he said, of being shot. “I get really paranoid, really fast … I don’t know why we do this. It’s got to stop.”
Gun violence, said attorney Carmen Hardin, criminal justice department chair at Little Rock’s Philander Smith College, “is a leading cause of death for adolescents aged fifteen to nineteen … Black boys and Black men, around the ages of fifteen to thirty-four — even though they are small percentage of the population — are thirty-seven to forty percent of gun homicides.”
Aiming to combat the gun scourge in his city, Mayor Frank Scott placed Little Rock under a state-of-emergency on Feb. 1, 2022. The City of Little Rock recently rolled out a youth summer and partnerships with several community organizations, hoping to provide opportunities that help stem the violence.
As he speaks in cities across the country, Kimborough urges the same: “What I see for my future is getting everybody in line with the message.”
