In the weeks since the Washington Navy Yard shooting, the city of New Orleans reached a tragic milestone.

All told, 108 people have been murdered in the Crescent City so far this year. In September two black girls, one 11 years old and the other age 2, were shot and killed. And earlier this year a national organisation advocating for stricter gun control told the story of a black 10-year-old New Orleans boy who has been shot and injured twice in his life.

Mourners farewell a young victim, shot dead in Chicago. Credit:Reuters

Although the spotlight has remained fixed on mass shootings in Washington; Newtown, Connecticut; and Aurora, Colorado, as well as the gun violence in Chicago, street crime and ''ordinary'' shootings that take one or two lives at a time are still disfiguring communities and putting black children and teens in peril. For black America the national gun debate is not about the shocking, but relatively rare, mass shootings or the political gamesmanship that draws attention to the violence consuming President Barack Obama's adopted home town. Cities riddled with gun violence, such as New Orleans, are located in states with some of the nation's weakest gun laws. Those laws are costing children, particularly black children, their lives, gun control advocates say.

In 2012, gun violence was the second-leading cause of death for US children ages seven to 19, according to a July report released by the Children's Defence Fund (CDF). But it constituted the No.1 cause of death for black children and teens.