What is community violence?
Community violence is a complex term that has been used to refer to a wide range of events including riots, sniper attacks, gang wars, drive-by shootings, workplace assaults, terrorist attacks, torture, bombings, war, ethnic cleansing, and widespread sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Mental-health professionals often make a distinction between studies on crime-related events in which adults are often the focus (such as rape, assault, and homicide) and studies on exposure to violence in which children and adolescents are often the focus (such as school shootings, witnessing murder, and living in a war zone). Another distinction that is often made is between domestic violence, referring to abuse between two adults involved in a romantic relationship, and child sexual or physical abuse, referring to violence between a child and an adult. A third distinction that is made is between predatory violence, in which an individual (usually a stranger) tries to take something of value using p
