State Senator Matthew Deneen of Elizabeth Town wants more juvenile offenders to have their day in adult circuit court.

A Senate committee today advanced Senate Bill 20, which says kids 15 and older who are charged with committing a felony with a gun would be prosecuted as an adult.

As we have seen crime on the downturn for the last 25 years.

But recently, we have seen an uptick, a spike, if you will, in juveniles committing gun crimes.

It worries me tremendously because the trauma and the PTSD and the long term effects of those victims that are victimized by gun violence is long lasting.

In many cases, it outlast the perpetrators sentence.

State Senators Karen Berg, a Democrat, and Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, both opposed the bill.

You are guaranteed that these children will spend longer in our incarceration systems and they do not come out better.

They come out worse.

But you have robbed the prosecution and the court of weighing the factors that have been in statute since long before I got here, in fact, long before I was practicing law.

There's been a jump in some juvenile crime, but only following sort of the COVID wave.

And it makes me want to ask whether or not we're responding the right way.

All the things that you've talked about, this bill doesn't fix.

County prosecutors would have their chance to bump a case back down to juvenile court if they choose Kentucky law enforcement group to back the bill.