Gun violence has increased in Montreal during the pandemic. Teenagers are among the victims of shooters who are also teenagers. Fabrice Vil, founder of the social intervention organization Pour 3 Points, wanted to understand why young people take up arms and how they obtain them. His documentary Teens and Armed is chilling and enlightening.

In a single year, charges brought against minors related to the illegal possession of firearms in Montreal increased by 70%. From 164 in 2020, their number increased to 276 in 2021. Events involving armed young people took place everywhere in Greater Montreal, from Laval to Longueuil via Villeray, the Plateau and Mont-Royal.

Which teens own a gun? Who sells it to them? What encourages these young people, most of whom have no criminal record until now, specifies a specialist, to make such a radical gesture as obtaining a pistol and sometimes even to shoot another person their age? How can we stop the phenomenon? These are the kinds of questions that Fabrice Vil asks different speakers in Teens and Armed.

What he discovers throughout the documentary is chilling. We’re talking about teenagers delivering crack at 12 years old. Children able to recognize the difference between the sound of a firecracker and that of a gunshot. Young people who are forbidden to go out after dark. From teenagers who talk about getting their hands on their first gun at 13, an age when a boy barely has any hair on his chin. From the feeling of power they feel…

A fear that encourages some young people to arm themselves. To protect themselves and their families, threatened, they say, because of their illicit activities or other reasons. No, these young people are not all angels. However, the documentary explains, they do not fall into crime without reason.

Teens and Armed takes a direct but comprehensive approach. Far from falling into sensationalism, the film directed by Gabriel Lajournade takes the trouble to dig into the roots of evil, if we can put it that way. It shows teenagers who are starving, here in Montreal, and who choose to sell drugs to help themselves, or even to help their families. For a young person who has nothing, who is not good at school, who feels inadequate, the criminal world can be attractive and rewarding, also explains a speaker.

The advent of social networks also fuels this vicious spiral. Not only is it a public space where death threats are made without any embarrassment – ​​even if it is a criminal offense – but also a place of provocation. Which fuels violence which sometimes materializes in the streets. Without those mainly concerned really understanding how and why, at times.

Fabrice Vil, calm and precise on screen, reports a number of disturbing facts. Like the ease with which teenagers can obtain a weapon on the internet. Like the fact that the sellers (rarely bothered by the police) are predominantly white, while those who buy the weapons and use them are not. It also questions the means put in place to counter this armed violence, the potentially disproportionate emphasis placed on repression at the expense of prevention approaches.

Adolescents and Armed Men does not give quarters, but with intelligence, and above all without wanting to further stigmatize the environments it depicts. Without excusing anyone, but without condemning outright either. Its artisans have also accomplished the feat of collecting testimonies from young people (some of whom are played on screen by actors), who tell the “I” about lives that the majority of citizens of Greater Montreal do not even suspect.