TAMPA, Fla. — Dozens of people came out to Wednesday night’s gun violence meeting in Tampa.

The East Tampa Business and Civic Association held its first Teen Community Meeting to address gun violence. A second forum on gun violence is taking place Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Center at 2200 N. Oregon Ave.

Among the young people to speak was Paul Nunez, 16. He told the crowd he grew up in Tampa’s Belmont Heights neighborhood and knows how scary it is to have a brush with gun violence.

“People get shot right outside my house, and my mom would have to tell me to get down, turn off the lights and stuff. I shouldn’t have to do that,” Nunez said.

“Recently, we had a lot of teen violence. We’ve tried to do things in the past, like walks and different other things, but we never tried the aspect as far as hearing what the youth have to say,” said Marlon Wright, one organizer of the meeting.

One of the main questions from organizers to young people: Why is this violence happening?

“I feel like the violence is mainly peer pressure, and a lot of us, to sum it up, getting caught up in the mix,” Nunez told the audience.

When it comes to what the city and communities can do to curb the shootings, that was a tougher question to ask.

One boy suggested making more programs available to kids and teens. Nunez said joining Middleton High School’s football team helped keep him out of trouble. His coach, John Courtney, said activities can only do so much.

“As Paul said, when they turn you home during the night hours, there still are activities within the neighborhood that still can, you know, by chance affect them in some type of way,” said Courtney, who’s also a student success coach at Middleton.

Wright said this won’t be the last effort aimed at curbing violence not just among teens, but across the community.