The comedian joined Prosecutor Ryan Mears to talk with students about leaving guns alone
By DARIAN BENSON
Music. Social media. The need for support.
Those are some of the topics that four local students talked about with Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears and comedian Mike Epps at a roundtable discussion on gun violence prevention May 13.
The conversation was recorded and will be produced into a podcast episode in early June. It’s part of a series that the prosecutor’s office plans to have with kids around the city.
Epps, an Indianapolis native who lives in California now, shared his own experiences and said gun violence isn’t new.
“I grew up in the ‘90s here and I’ve lost a lot of friends, I lost a lot of family to gun violence,” he said. “I always felt survivor’s remorse when I left here, because I felt like I left so many of my friends and family here in this city.”
Mears said the most common charge filed in juvenile courts is gun possession. The goal of the roundtable is to amplify the voices of students — and their ideas on gun violence prevention — ahead of the summer break from school.
“We know the summer months can sometimes present challenges,” said Mears, a Democrat. “We want to try to get out ahead of this.”
Students share their experiences, ideas for prevention
The four students were from Arsenal Technical High School, Warren Central High School and Vision Academy, a westside charter school.
James Curry, a senior at Arsenal Tech, was accidentally shot by his brother. The room was quiet as he described the moments after being shot, being in a coma for a month and the long recovery that followed.
Curry, a student athlete who played football and track, was in and out of the hospital for months. And he spent even longer in physical therapy and rehab.
“I had to redo my whole junior year,” Curry said.
The room clapped after Curry shared he is graduating from high school next week.
Asked by Mears why they think their peers feel the need to have guns, the students talked about appearances and music.
“They like to have the idea that it makes them look cooler,” said Chanasia Brown, a senior at Warren Central. “Or the idea that it makes them seem bigger or badder and like nobody can bring you down from this. But honestly, it’s a little bit cringey.”
Brown said she worries too many teens settle disputes that started on social media with violence.
“You end up being told, I can’t back down, because if I back down, then it’s going to come back on me, and I’m going to look like I’m weak or like I don’t know how to defend myself,” she said.
Mears also finds that frustrating.
“Now you just create 50 more problems for yourself that are way bigger than whatever was happening online,” he said. “And that’s the part that’s just frustrating to me because I see people who are getting hurt over nothing.”
Xavier Mattox, another senior at Warren Central, said music plays a role in gun violence.
“Nowadays everybody is rapping about I killed someone,” he said.
Epps said that music is the soundtrack of negativity. He said musicians will rap about drugs and violence, but that’s not what their reality looks like.
“I catch these dudes in Whole Foods buying medicine, grapes and stuff,” Epps said. “And their kids go to private school. And their kids are not the same kids that they’re talking about. So you have to be able to decipher that this is just music.”
The students were asked how the community can better support youth in preventing gun violence.
Several of the students expressed the need for more activities in the summer, including camps and summer jobs. Brown said adults need to be more involved, especially when there are clear signs someone is heading down the wrong path.
“When we have adults get involved, and speak to somebody who you can see and tell is slowly declining and see what’s wrong and see what’s causing them to probably feel this way, then you can stop the situation from actually going as far as it may end up going,” Brown said.
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Mirror Indy reporter Darian Benson covers east Indianapolis. Contact her at 317-397-7262 or darian.benson@mirrorindy.org. Follow her on X @HelloImDarian or on Bluesky @darianbenson.bsky.social.
