NYC Girl Killed By Friend Playing With Gun Reportedly ‘Gun Violence Advocate’

If someone is a “gun violence advocate,” that means certain things, at least in our minds. Among other things, you’d think they’re someone who would want nothing to do with a firearm, particularly if they’re too young to lawfully own one.

Sure, some might be gun owners, but if you want more gun control laws, as most “gun violence advocates” do, you should probably want to adhere to the ones on the books.

Which makes the case of a 17-year-old girl from Queens strike me as somewhat bizarre.

A 17-year-old girl fatally shot by a friend while they played with a gun in a Queens home was a passionate advocate against gun violence — and once spoke out on the issue at her school hoping to raise awareness, her mother told the Daily News.

“She was just the sunlight to every cloud. My nickname for her was sugar, and she was just as sweet as it,” said Krystle Barkley, whose daughter Deaza Barkley was killed Feb. 15. “She wanted to always find the good in people, believing that everybody could be saved.”

Deaza and her 16-year-old friend were handling the gun inside the boy’s grandfather’s home on Clover Place near Foothill Ave. in Holliswood around 5:15 p.m. when the firearm went off, striking Deaza in the head, officials said.

Medics rushed her to Jamaica Hospital, but she could not be saved. The boy, whose name has not been released due to his age, is now facing charges of manslaughter and weapons possession.

Before her death, Deaza, who grew up in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant before recently moving to East New York, was committed to raising awareness about gun violence and advocating for change in her community.

Now, understand that I’m not blaming Barkley for what happened. It’s awful, tragic, and should never have happened.

However, I do wonder what was going on in that home.

The report suggests that Barkley was a party to playing with the firearm. If that’s true, then that’s strange behavior from a teenage gun violence advocate.

Of course, there are a thousand possible reasons she might have had for being there, including the report’s implications being just plain wrong.

What seems pretty obvious, though, is that this is why we need firearm safety training in all of our schools.

Barkley and her friend were in a situation that they may well have known to avoid with proper training, including an understanding of what a firearm can do. People need to learn that firearms need to be respected. They’re not what you see on television, after all, and so proper training is absolutely essential.

Unfortunately, every attempt to introduce any such training is met with anti-gun resistance. I can’t help but think that they want stories like Deaza Barkley’s to help them advance an anti-gun narrative and firearm education for young people might actually reduce the numbers they count on to justify gun control in the first place.

I wish I could feel like I need a tinfoil hat while saying that, but I just can’t. It’s about the only thing that seems to make any sense.

What happened to this young woman is tragic and it should never happen. There are still a lot of question about how it happened, though.