Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/gun-violence/page/6/)
It’s not uncommon for those traumatized by gun violence to project what outsiders might view as a kind of superwoman or superman persona — one that can melt away at any given moment — whose complexities may not be fully understood. Those who fund scientific research largely have not seen fit to examine the toll on families devastated by gun-violence deaths.
More than two-thirds of 2,558 Californians living in homes with children or teens who owned firearms and more than half who did not own guns but lived in homes with guns said they believed those weapons made their homes safer, according to a study published this month by the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Network journal.
It had been scarcely a year since his son was discharged from the Navy following a suicide attempt, Ramon Day said, and only a few months since he’d voluntarily undergone in-patient care at Mental Health Resource Center in Jacksonville, Fla. So, when then 25-year-old Tyler Day returned from a Department of Veterans Affairs counseling appointment and offhandedly mentioned that he’d bought a gun, his father was stunned.
“You having a gun upsets me a great deal,” Ramon Day said, recalling his fright over his son’s revelation back in the summer of 2011. “If you would do me a personal favor, return the gun.”
They panic if a balloon pops. They hold dying family members. They push their wounded bodies to heal and scroll longingly through photos and videos of their lost loved ones. Behind the statistics and the political blame game over rising gun violence are the victims. The spike plaguing many American cities this year has lawmakers reeling and police scrambling, though homicide rates are not rising as high as the double-digit jumps seen in 2020. Still, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 316 people are shot every day in the U.S. and 106 of them die.
The near-stagnant pace of federal gun law reform and lack of gun possession restrictions in Mississippi make it easy to get a gun in the Magnolia State — and for hundreds of them to end up on Chicago streets every year. Police stated that they don’t even bother arresting gun traffickers in some cases because weak laws reduce such arrests to petty crimes.
“Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!” —John Brown
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” —Abraham Lincoln
March on Washington, August 1963, 250,000 people.
Even when suspects are unarmed and not attacking anyone, officers are more likely to shoot Black, Native and Latinx people than white people — a grim reality receiving increasing attention. However, police also are much more likely to shoot unarmed, nonattacking young people than older people — a fact receiving little attention.
That’s the conclusion that emerges from our analysis of the Washington Post’s tabulation, considered the country’s most complete, of shootings of Americans by law enforcement officers in the six-year period from Jan. 1, 2015, through Jan. 13, 2021.
Our analysis of these tragic numbers confirms well-known findings that police are two to three times more likely to shoot Native and Black suspects. They are also 20% more likely to shoot Latinx suspects than white suspects.
The year 2020 will be remembered as a year of great upheaval in the United States, with so many lives and communities upended by the intersecting crises of COVID-19 and systemic racism. But of course, there is another crisis woven into the fabric of this incredibly challenging year — rising rates of gun violence in urban communities across the country.
This troubling trend is also being felt in Massachusetts, a state known for having one of the strongest packages of gun-related legislation in the country. While we do have more regulations on gun ownership in place than almost any other state, we still experience far too many losses and far too much trauma as a result of firearms. Every shooting results in a ripple effect of emotional pain for all the individuals involved in the shooting, for their families and also for their communities.
If we want to move the needle on gun violence, we must zero in on root causes and support the communities disparately impacted by this violence. We must focus on the trauma that surrounds gun violence, not just the guns themselves. And we must also push back on public officials that exacerbate the pain of gun violence through their words and policy recommendations.
JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Rosie Brooks has experienced both of a mother’s worst nightmares involving gun violence. Her son spent a decade behind bars for an accidental shooting in which a young woman was killed. Then, instead of a joyous reunion when he was released from prison in January 2018, it was a day of mourning. He went from behind bars to standing at his mother’s side at his sister’s funeral. Brooks’ daughter Sahara Barkley had been shot on New Year’s Day at a gas station.
There have been calls to declare gun violence a public health crisis. I would agree with this statement, which largely speaks to the rising prevalence of gun violence. However, calling it a public health crisis doesn’t convey the magnitude of gun violence. It seems like people name a thing a crisis to get things done, so there’s an oversaturation with the term.
Gun violence is different. Think of the brutality and immediacy of death that results from gun violence.