When I was a teenager, my cousin Anthony was killed by gun violence. He wasn’t the first family member that I lost to gun violence, or the last. These shootings devastated me in ways I did not understand at the time. I never received counseling or treatment. Instead, grief turned into fear — about death, survival and vulnerability. Like many young men growing up around gun violence, I convinced myself that carrying a firearm would somehow keep me safe. But it did the opposite; it made me and everyone around me less safe.

Today, I am incarcerated at San Quentin for a gun-related crime. I serve as the chairman of Arms Down, the first gun offender rehabilitation program of its kind, developed inside prison to address gun violence through accountability, education and healing. I also serve as a program co-lead for Back to the Start, a nonprofit organization that helps incarcerated participants to process their childhood experiences and advocate for upstream solutions to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and incarceration.

Over years of facilitating these programs, I have found one truth impossible to ignore: Nearly every person I have worked with who committed a gun offense had first experienced firearm-related trauma. Many witnessed shootings as children. Some lost parents, siblings or friends to homicide. Others grew up in neighborhoods where hearing gunfire was normalized, without being old enough to comprehend the danger. Trauma created wounds that, left untreated, began to fester and developed into destructive behaviors and unhealthy coping strategies to survive — strategies that were amplified through pain and tragedy.

I am fully accountable for my actions. These decisions forever changed my life and harmed others. Looking back, I recognize that the untreated trauma I carried contributed to my impulsive decisions. I often wonder how different my path would have been if someone had offered me counseling and support as a youth.

This is why Assembly Bill 2247, the Trauma, Healing and Resilience Investment for Victimized and Exposed Youth Act, known as the Thrive Act, matters.

As part of my amends to victims, I have an obligation to break cycles of gun violence, and that is what AB 2247 would do. This legislation would expand access to trauma recovery and support services for young survivors of gun violence. Specifically, it would provide funding for youth survivors and witnesses of gun violence; they would receive free, timely mental health and counseling services.

Annually, around 44,000 people die because of firearm-related injuries across the United States, up from 35,000 since the 1990s. In Alameda County, gun violence is the leading cause of death for young Black males. Suicide rates by firearm have doubled for Latino youth between 2014 and 2023. On average, every day, seven people between the ages of 1 and 17 die because of firearms.

These are not just numbers. These are people whose deaths leave behind children, siblings and communities shattered by their loss. It’s about time we did more through policy to address this epidemic affecting our state and nation. AB 2247 reaches children before they become statistics, before they become defendants, before another family loses a loved one and before another community experiences another shooting.

Public safety requires prevention, not only punishment. Too often, California responds only after someone has become a victim or an offender. AB 2247 recognizes that there is another path. When children who survive gun violence receive timely trauma care, they can begin to heal rather than to carry unaddressed trauma into adulthood. That is not just victim services — it’s crime prevention.

I have seen the power of that healing firsthand through Arms Down and Back to the Start. I have watched men cry for the first time in decades as they wrote about childhood trauma they had buried. I have participated in healing conversations between people who once believed violence was their only way to communicate. There are ways to interrupt the cycle, and we do not have to wait until more lives are damaged before we act.

Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, author of the Thrive Act, is championing legislation that gets at the root of the problem. This is the kind of support I wish had been available to me as a young person — and to so many of the men I have worked alongside. We cannot change our past, but we can work together to change what happens to the next generation through prevention and healing. If we wait until after more shots are fired, it is too late.

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Jessie Milo, incarcerated at San Quentin, is a co-lead and facilitator for Back to the Start, a program to encourage investments in children and families.

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