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Congress has failed miserably to deal with the horrific epidemic of gun violence taking a deadly toll across the United States.

But the failure of government to act shouldn't be an excuse for businesses to ignore their responsibility to lower the deadly toll that gun violence takes in America today. Fortunately, many businesses are stepping forward to do their part.

Every year, more than 36,000 Americans are killed by gun violence, and approximately 100,000 more are shot and wounded, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These casualties would make headlines if so many Americans were being killed and injured in a far-off war.
GUN CONTROL RETURNS TO PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN TRAIL AS 2020 DEMS PUSH SWEEPING PLANS
But you don't hear about most of these shootings. Gun deaths and injuries across the U.S. are so common now that only mass murders make the national news, unless someone famous is killed.

Yet needless shooting deaths and injuries occur around the clock in every state. We should not accept them as a normal part of everyday life in our country.

Sadly, over half of American adults (58 percent) or someone they care for have experienced gun violence, according to a SurveyUSA Market Research study. These survivors are our friends, neighbors, colleagues, employees and customers.

New data released this week by Everytown for Gun Safety reveal the enormous and extensive impact of gun violence. This epidemic has become so rampant that it now costs national and local economies billions of dollars every year, hurts the economic progress of affected communities, and impacts job creators and businesses in unprecedented ways.

All these figures are certainly shocking, and should be a call to action for businesses - both big and small - given the adverse impact of this epidemic on our economy at large.

Reducing the number of gun deaths and injuries in the United States is not an impossible task and it should not be a partisan issue.

Moreover, new data reveal that customers believe that businesses and corporations have a responsibility to speak out about gun safety.

In fact, according to a recent study by the Global Strategy Group, 68 percent of Americans believe it is appropriate for corporations to take a position on gun safety, and this feeling is even stronger among millennials, who make up a key consumer demographic.

In the 2018 midterm elections, gun violence was the No. 1 voting issue for young people, according to a 2018 study by Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and the group Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence.

Ultimately, it is clear that Americans want action to be taken against gun violence in both the public and private sectors.

Furthermore, gun violence can and does happen in the workplace. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2017 there were 351 gun homicides in U.S. workplaces - an average of nearly one person killed every day.

In 2018, we experienced a pivotal year in the movement to end gun violence as businesses and corporate leaders began stepping up and taking action.

Walmart, the nation's largest gun seller, announced that it would not sell any firearms to people under 21, and would end all sales of anything resembling an assault-style rifle.

Likewise, Dick's Sporting Goods ended sales of all assault-style rifles in its stores one year ago, and committed to no longer sell high-capacity magazines. Similarly to Walmart, Dick's now requires gun buyers to be at least 21, regardless of what the local laws are.

To be sure, it is not just retailers and sellers that are taking action. The financial services sector is also promoting a culture of gun safety.

Citibank announced a new U.S. commercial firearms policy that requires retail sector clients or partners to abide by several practices that include prohibiting the sale of firearms without a completed background check, prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines, and prohibiting the sale of firearms to anyone under 21.

Similarly, Bank of America announced it will stop lending money to gun manufacturers that make military-style firearms for civilian use.

Indeed, any business across all sectors can do something to act against gun violence.

For example, Levi Strauss & Co. pledged its support for gun violence prevention through establishing The Safer Tomorrow Fund. The fund directs philanthropic grants to nonprofits and youth activists who are working to end gun violence in America, while partnering with executives from the business community and driving efforts to engage employees.

Ultimately, in areas where government fails to create change through policymaking, the private sector can and should step in. Every business and corporation can take meaningful action in the interest of keeping customers, employees and communities safe.

Last month was the 20th anniversary of the fatal Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. People across the country took a moment to remember the 12 students and one teacher who were killed that day in one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.

But shortly after this anniversary had passed, two gunmen entered a school not far from Columbine and fatally shot one student and severely injured eight others.

And, of course, the daily toll of shootings you never hear about goes on and on and on.

To be sure, support for the Second Amendment goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns away from criminals and other dangerous people. But it's simply too easy for the wrong people to get guns, leading to all kinds of violence - from violence in places of worship to suicides and school shootings, to domestic violence.
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Reducing the number of gun deaths and injuries in the United States is not an impossible task and it should not be a partisan issue. It does not require repeal of the Second Amendment, confiscation of guns, or drastic measures to infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Government and the private sector should respond to the overwhelming support among the American people to take commonsense gun safety measure that will save lives.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY DOUG SCHOEN

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Doug Schoen: We have a gun violence epidemic that government has not fixed. I applaud businesses stepping up

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Congress has failed miserably to deal with the horrific epidemic of gun violence taking a deadly toll across the United States. But the failure of government to act shouldn't be an excuse for businesses to ignore their responsibility to lower the deadly toll that gun violence takes in America today.

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Using maps and networks to reduce gun violence

Sociology professor Andrew Papachristos deploys big data to help cities save lives

"T he average age of a gunshot victim in Chicago is about 27 years old. Everybody thinks it's younger , and that means that gun violence prevention efforts are not nearly as targeted and effective as they could be."

Andrew Papachristos

Sociology professor Andrew Papachristos has been interested in criminal justice ever since childhood, when his Greek immigrant parents were the victims of gang violence on Chicago's North Side. Now, his research applies public health concepts and network science to map gun violence in U.S. citie s, in an effort to save lives and craft more effective long-term prevention policies .

"We should address youth violence, but the older population - the population most at risk - is often overlooked in prevention programs," Papachristos says. "I f an organization is working on gun violence, and they only focus on 12 year olds , they need to think about directing some resources to older groups, too."

Smarter solutions

Papachristos has show n that violence cascades through communities, much like an infectious disease spreads through a school or city. He has also found that seemingly isolated events - shootings that are not retaliatory, for example - predict subsequent violence within a network . With these findings in mind, Papachristos believes gun violence - much like opioid abuse or another public health problem - demand s multilayered solutions.

"We need to save lives today, and at the same time we need to implement long-term strategies," he says. "I f I come in with a heart attack, and y ou save my life, I should also have access to primary care that will help me with other parts of my physical and mental health . At the same time , I should have access to nutritious food and other community resources ."

Intervention and prevention

Networking gun violence, Papachristos says, strongly suggests that very focused interventions can produce immediate reductions in gang violence . Importantly, network data allow for interventions customized to individual circumstances .

"I can look at the data and say, ' Andy got shot . W hat do we know about Andy ?' " Papachristos says. "If Andy is in the system, we know where he lives, if he has mental health issues, if he's in school, if he has kids. And then we can send support services to make sure Andy's kids are ok , or make sure Andy has access to counseling. We can send resources we already have that work for this specific case."

A network showing a Chicago Public School gunshot victim and his network of co-arrestees

Papachristos acknowledges that this sort of intervention is an ideal: It faces many challenges and require s various groups - police, community groups, outreach workers - to work together and share data.

"E verybody wants their group to be the one doing the work and getting the resources ," Papachristos says. " A more effective system would require everyone to be both flexible and nimble. It would likely require long-term realignment of funding . I f , for instance, you need fewer cops and more outreach workers, you would need to fund that ."

Papachristos is now working with several U.S. cities, including Chicago and New Orleans, to develop violence prevention programs that look beyond criminal justice to include social workers, community organizers, schools and other support services.

By mapping gun violence networks and sharing them with teachers, trauma responders and others, Papachristos hopes to make a data-driven case for breaking down these barriers on a large scale.

"The science is getting clearer and clearer ," he says. "I t's what I've been doing for almost 10 years, and we know enough now to do something . I'm not in the business of designing programs or policies , b ut I work with people to think about how we can design interventions that are informed b y data and research. That's how I see my role. "

Mapping misconduct in the Chicago police force

Now, Papachristos is also using network science to understand police misconduct. With help from the Invisible Institute, Papachristos and his co lleagues have created a network of all the Chicago police officers who have been accused of misconduct, linking the officers who were accused of misconduct when they were together on the job.

"W e're trying to figure out what predicts this network , and if police shootings are contagious ," Papachristos says. "We also want to know more about the career trajectories of officers with high misconduct rates."

Papachristos ' network of police misconduct spans 10 years and 7,000 officers . Papachristos notes that some officers are falsely accused of misconduct, and most complaints against officers are procedural : failure to fill out a certain form or respond to a call, for instance.

" But then there are some cops who have 20 or more complaints, or 100 or more complaints," he says.

While the research is ongoing, preliminary data from this work indicate police shootings - and use of force - may follow patterns of contagion similar to neighborhood violence. Additionally, complaints of police misconduct are lowest when an officer new to the force is paired with an officer with a long tenure.

Both gun violence and policing are focus areas for the recently launched Northwestern Neighborhood and Network Initiative (N3). Led by Papachristos and housed within the Institute for Policy Research, N3 is committed to leveraging social connections among people, places and institutions to bring about positive change in communities.

Andrew Papachristos

Andrew Papachristos is a professor of sociology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is also the director of the Northwestern Network and Neighborhood (N3) Initiative and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research (IPR).
Journalists: View press materials for Andrew Papachristos here.

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Using maps and networks to reduce gun violence

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Sociology professor Andrew Papachristos deploys big data to help cities save lives "T he average age of a gunshot victim in Chicago is about 27 years old. Everybody thinks it's younger , and that means that gun violence prevention efforts are not nearly as targeted and effective as they could be."

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Gun Violence Campaign & Media Assets | Ad Council

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Gun violence PSA & campaign media focuses on gun safety relating to the storage & handling of guns. Visit EndFamilyFire.org & download our assets here.

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LibGuides: Gun Violence and Libraries: Statistics and Research on Gun Violence

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Resources for libraries on addressing policies, education, and training on gun violence. Selected resources for gathering data on extent of gun violence, number of deaths, and impact on the community

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We can't solve a problem that we don't fully comprehend.

That's why a key component of stopping the gun violence epidemic in America is understanding the complete picture of what this public health crisis looks like.

Most people have seen at least glimpses of the picture: Gun violence is a leading cause of premature death in the United States, killing more than 38,000 people and causing nearly 85,000 injuries each year. 1, 2 The good news, in the face of these staggering statistics, is that gun violence is completely preventable, and communities and leaders around the country are making powerful strides toward ending the epidemic - wherever and however it happens.

The bad news is that not enough people recognize that violence is preventable, in large part because of the public discourse around gun violence, which portrays it as extreme and inevitable.

Daily news is a key piece of that discourse: Many people learn about gun violence primarily through the filter of what appears in the media. That means that the public's understanding is significantly influenced by print, broadcast, and social media. Journalists set the agenda for the public debate about any issue by deciding which incidents they report (or don't report) and how they choose to frame these. ³⁻⁶ "Framing" refers to how an issue is portrayed and understood and involves emphasizing certain aspects of a story to the exclusion of others. ⁷ Frames shape the parameters of public debates by promoting particular definitions of a problem, its causes, its moral aspects, and its possible solutions. ⁷ Many factors influence what frames get evoked in news stories: the language that's used, whose perspectives are included or left out, what types of information are highlighted, and the potential solutions that are discussed.

We know from decades of research that, in general, news coverage of different kinds of violence can stoke fear by focusing narrowly on the details of the most extreme cases, obscuring solutions, 8, 9 and reinforcing the sense that crime and violence are inescapable and unchangeable problems. When it comes to gun violence in particular, news narratives are dominated by stories about mass shootings. These tragedies, while horrific, aren't the major cause of gun deaths in this country. In fact, most incidents of gun violence are much less visible: More than 60 percent of people in the U.S. who die from guns die by suicide. ¹ Many of the remaining deaths occur in the context of a domestic violence incident ¹⁰ (that is, violent or aggressive behavior within the home, typically involving the abuse of a spouse or intimate partner). When gun violence does happen in public, it's more often in the context of community-level or street violence. Urban gun homicide rates often reach 10 times the national average for homicides. ¹¹

The public, and the policymakers whose actions and decisions shape our communities, need to understand what everyday, all-too-common gun violence looks like, where it happens, and how it harms people. More than that, they need to know what could be done to end it - and what is being done, in hospitals and homes, in communities and courtrooms, in schools and on streets around the country.

In addition to mass shootings, the news media tend to highlight federal gun law policy efforts. The gun lobby is a high-profile figure in many of these debates. ¹² National gun law reform is important, as are ongoing efforts to hold the gun industry and its representatives accountable for the gun violence epidemic. However, community-level solutions are also a key part of addressing that epidemic, and to lift up these strategies, we need to elevate the solutions that are working and the voices of the people who are involved. When the full, complex landscape of gun violence is in view, then the changes that must happen at every level (indi-vidual, family, community, institutional, and societal) to end the epidemic will make sense to people.

Because news provides such an important window into the discourse and has a strong influence on what people and policymakers understand, we wanted to know: How do the three most common types of gun violence - suicide, domestic violence, and community violence - appear in news coverage? How, if at all, do solutions appear? Whose voices are part of the stories, and whose are absent? How does coverage of these distinct aspects of gun violence differ, and how is it similar?

For the purposes of this analysis, we focus on news from California, the country's most populous state. California, while unique in many regards, is also in some ways a political microcosm of the United States. For example, despite its reputation as a "progressive bastion" with some of the country's strongest gun laws, the state has a large conservative presence, particularly in rural and inland areas. ¹³ Since the articles we analyzed come from outlets around the state, the frames and themes that appeared in the news reflect a diverse mix of political and social perspectives. Therefore, patterns we observe could hold true for gun violence coverage from other regions of the country. Additionally, although we analyzed news published in California outlets, the scope of what the news outlets covered crossed state lines, including stories about gun violence and gun policy in other parts of the country.

What we did

We searched the Lexis-Nexis database for news and opinion articles published between October 15, 2016, and October 14, 2017, in 41 English- and Spanish-language California newspapers. We selected these dates, in part, to capture the impact on the news cycle of the October 1, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our searches were designed to capture articles about guns and domestic violence, guns and community- or street-level violence, and guns and suicide.

We selected a random sample of stories about each type of gun violence from the year of coverage. We used an iterative process to develop and refine a coding instrument that allowed for comparison across the different types of violence, based on our review of the existing peer-reviewed literature; our previous analyses of gun violence, domestic violence, and community violence in the news; and conversations with experts from around the state and the country. Among other variables, we explored how each article characterized the connections between guns and the specific type of violence under study; who spoke in the articles; and how, if at all, solutions to gun violence appeared. To better understand how the news frames issues of race and gender in the context of gun violence, we also coded the people who appeared in images associated with each article. We identified who was pictured in the photos, as well as the race and gender of the photo subjects.

Before coding the full sample, we used an iterative process and statistical test (Krippendorff's alpha ¹⁴) to ensure that coders' agreement was not occurring by chance. We achieved an acceptable reliability measure of >.8 for each variable, including the race and gender of the photo subjects.

What we found

We found 3,815 articles about gun violence relating to community violence, domestic violence, or suicide in California newspapers between October 15, 2016, and October 14, 2017. The amount of news about community violence and guns dwarfed that about domestic violence or suicide and guns (Figure 1): There were 2,228 articles about community violence and guns, 744 articles about domestic violence and guns, and 843 articles about suicide and guns. To account for this disparity, we drew proportionately larger samples of articles about the latter two topics to ensure that we had a robust set of substantive articles to examine. Our final sample included a randomly selected 5% of stories about community violence and guns, and a randomly selected 40% of stories about domestic violence and guns and suicide and guns. We did not see notable changes in the volume of articles about the three issue areas over the course of a year.

After sampling each category of articles (see above) and removing irrelevant pieces (e.g., stories that mentioned community violence, domestic violence, or suicide in passing but were primarily focused on other topics), our final samples of gun violence articles included 111 about guns and community violence, 64 about guns and domestic violence, and 53 about guns and suicide.

The majority of stories about gun violence in our sample were straight news articles. Opinion coverage (i.e., columns, editorials, opinions, and letters to the editor) appeared more often in stories related to suicide than in stories about community or domestic violence (25%of suicide stories, compared to just 4% of community violence and 14% of domestic violence articles).

What about mass shootings?

During the period of our analysis, one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern American history happened in Las Vegas, Nevada. On October 1, 2017, a man opened fire on a crowd of more than 22,000 concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, killing 58 people and injuring 851 before killing himself.

As is typically the case with news coverage of gun violence in the days or weeks following these horrifying events, there was an immediate spike in articles about mass shootings after the Las Vegas incident, with coverage peaking on October 4, 2017 (see Figure 2). However, we did not see an increase in coverage about guns and domestic violence, suicide, or community violence in the days after the shooting.

Put another way, mass shootings drive coverage of mass shootings but don't seem to increase media attention to other kinds of gun violence.

After just one week, the volume of coverage dropped back down to pre-shooting levels. This finding is in keeping with other research showing that immediately after a mass shooting there is a jump in coverage of the incident, but the news coverage that follows does not lead to a longer-term shift in the number of stories about gun violence. ¹⁵ This pattern may be changing, however, as a result of the advocacy efforts of teenagers in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on February 14, 2018. ¹⁶

Why are stories about gun violence in the news?

We wanted to know: When gun violence appears in the news, why? Why that story, and why that day? Reporters commonly refer to the catalyst for a story as a "news hook." Many factors can influence why reporters and editors select some stories and not others, from the details of a specific incident to what else competes for attention during the news cycle. We identified the news hook for each article by answering the question, "Why was this article published today?"

Gun violence most often appeared in the news because of an event in the criminal justice system, such as an arrest, a trial, or the discovery of a body by police. This pattern was especially pronounced in news about guns and community violence: 80% of those articles were driven by a criminal justice event. The majority of articles about guns and domestic violence and guns and suicide were also in the news because of events in the criminal justice process, though the proportion was lower (69% and 51%, respectively). An example of a different reason that a story might be in the news was the release of a report, which was the case in 8% of articles about suicide and gun violence.

How are articles about gun violence framed?

To understand how journalists frame, or portray, stories, it can be helpful to imagine the difference between a portrait and a landscape. ¹⁷ Many articles are framed episodically, like portraits - they emphasize a person or specific incident. Stories that are framed this way leave little room to talk about the context of the problem and how to solve it. 18, 19

Less often, news outlets frame stories thematically, like landscapes, pulling back the lens to take a broader view. Thematically framed stories may include details about individuals or specific incidents, but they also draw connections to institutions, environments, or larger social issues. ¹⁹⁻²¹ Thematic stories are important because they help audiences think about solutions that involve changing institutions, communities, or social norms. ¹⁹

Perhaps not surprisingly, given that most stories were in the news because of a specific criminal justice event, we found that the overwhelming majority of all stories about gun violence used an episodic frame (70% of all articles, see Figure 3). However, between categories, the news about suicide and guns was more likely to use a thematic frame (43% of these articles were framed thematically).

We also examined the key topics of each article (see Figure 4). The overwhelming majority of community violence and gun stories (85%) focused on a specific incident of violence, and the majority of these (60%) were described as gang or prison violence.

Domestic violence and gun news also focused on specific incidents (84%), including a high-profile mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, where a local man shot his wife at the school where she worked, killing her and one of her students, and injuring another. Several stories about this case widened the frame and made the connection between domestic violence and gun violence, as when an editorial published in The Sacramento Bee about the shooting noted, "Domestic violence happens in every community, and studies show that the presence of a gun dramatically increases the risk that the relationship will end in death." ²²

Articles about suicide and guns were more likely than other gun violence stories to discuss mental health (28%), research (25%), and policies to prevent suicide (15%). For example, in an article about California state legislation that would require suicide prevention efforts in public schools, the California State Superintendent voiced his support for the policy, saying, "One of my top priorities is serving the needs of the whole child, including their mental health needs." ²³
Spanish language news about gun violence is sparse and incident-focused.
There is a dearth of California news outlets that publish in Spanish, which limited our analysis of Spanish-language print news to 43 articles from three sources: La Opinión, Chico Enterprise-Record, and The Californian (the latter two publish in English and Spanish).

Based on such a small sample, it is difficult to generalize, but what we found in Spanish-language coverage mirrored what we saw in the English-language news. Spanish-language news stories were almost entirely focused on specific incidents and lacked discussion of causal factors or solutions: 88% of Spanish-language articles were episodic, and the articles were overwhelmingly in the news because of criminal justice actions (81%).
The news rarely included the context around acts of gun violence.
Since most gun violence stories were episodic, we were not surprised that the news rarely included reporting on the root causes of gun violence (Figure 5). What discussion of causal factors there was emphasized individual choices, particularly in the news about suicide and guns (13% of articles) and domestic violence and guns (11%of articles). In stories about suicide, many articles failed to consider the contextual factors surrounding suicide, such as access to lethal means or barriers to accessing health care - especially mental health and substance abuse treatment - and instead focused on the individual's choice in the moments leading up to the act. For example, one Los Angeles Times article noted, "No one will ever know what drove Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck to shoot herself in the head on live television in July 1974." ²⁴

We know that racism, poverty, education, and other structural inequities are inex-tricably linked with gun violence. Although certain communities are more affected than others by its shattering impact, mentions of social inequities and other systemic issues were rarely present in the news about gun violence. We saw references to social inequities more often in stories about community violence and guns (12% of articles) than in news about suicide and guns or domestic violence and guns (2% and 5% of articles, respectively). A particularly incisive example came from an after-school program manager in Oakland, who observed, "This gun violence is a result of systemic oppression and poverty and the violence that our community experiences. It exists because of that." ²⁵

Mental health issues emerged as a root cause of suicide in 13% of articles, as seen in a story about schools working to spot warning signs of suicide. The interim director of the San Diego County Office of Education commented on the need for schools to have teams in place to address students' "psychological issues before they spin out of control and result in students harming themselves." ²⁶ By contrast, mental health was mentioned as a cause of gun violence in only 2% of articles about domestic violence and guns and was not discussed at all in stories about community violence and guns. We also looked for references to trauma and the cycle of violence, and we seldom saw these mentioned as root causes of gun violence (1% of community violence and gun stories, 2% of domestic violence and gun stories, and 4% of suicide and gun stories).
Figure 5: Causes of gun violence in news coverage of community violence and guns, domestic violence and guns, and suicide and guns in California newspapers, October 15, 2016 - October 14, 2017 (n=228)
The news frames the repercussions of gun violence as they relate to individual victims, not communities. Click on image to enlarge

The news about each type of gun violence regularly referenced the emotional and physical impact of shootings - such as bereavement or injury - on individual victims and their families. A typical heart-rending example came from the grandfather of a victim of community violence who mourned, "It's hard to adjust to life without her. My heart aches every day." ²⁷
Criminal justice speakers dominate the news about gun violence.
We saw fewer articles that mentioned the broader consequences of gun violence for communities or society as a whole (14% of community violence and gun articles, 14% of domestic violence and gun articles, and 9% of suicide and gun articles). A rare example came from an advocate for victims of domestic violence, who wrote about the San Bernardino school shooting: "Everyone was impacted. The children who witnessed the horrific event, the school personnel who knew the teacher and the students closely, the first responders who came upon the tragic scene, the family members of the victims whose lives have been forever changed, the parents of the children in the school, who are now incredibly worried about the long-lasting impacts of what their children have experienced." ²⁸ While this quote notes the impact on different groups of individuals within the school community, it does not describe the shooting's immediate or lasting consequences for society at large. We rarely observed reporting on the long-term impact of gun violence for whole communities in our sample.

Who's in the frame?

To understand whose perspectives are elevated in the news (and whose are obscured), we looked at which speakers were quoted in the news about gun violence. We also wanted to know how the news portrayed the race and gender of people involved in different forms of gun violence. Because reporters avoid making direct references to race, we analyzed the images accompanying articles to see the characterizations of people that go unwritten.

The speakers quoted most often in all news about gun violence were criminal justice representatives, including police officers, detectives, and others associated with law enforcement. These speakers were quoted much more frequently in community violence and gun stories (59% of speakers) than they were in domestic violence and gun stories (36% of speakers) or suicide and gun stories (21% of speakers). The Spanish-language news followed a similar pattern to the English-language news in terms of who spoke: Criminal justice representatives were the most frequently quoted speakers (63%) in that sample.

In articles about community violence and guns, victims of violence (19%) and community residents (14%) were the second and third most commonly quoted speakers. News about domestic violence and guns followed a similar pattern, although advocacy group members, ranging from representatives of local domestic violence shelters to speakers for national organizations like Futures Without Violence, were more frequently quoted (14%) than they were in stories about other types of gun violence. Their quotes often provided broader context about the realities of domestic violence, as when one advocate highlighted the connection between domestic violence deaths and firearms, noting that "one-third of American women experience domestic violence, and the presence of a gun increases the risk of homicide by 500 percent." ²⁹

Here again, the news about suicide followed a slightly different pattern. For example, speakers representing mental health (15%) and the research community (13%) appeared in the news about suicide and guns more often than they did in stories about community or domestic violence and guns.

The news about police-involved shootings

In the aftermath of several well-publicized shootings of people of color by the police, it is impossible to talk about community violence in the United States without talking about officer-involved shootings. We rarely saw mentions of these shootings in the news about guns and community violence (9% of articles), domestic violence (6% of articles), or suicide (4% of articles).
Police violence is an important part of the story about gun violence that needs to be further researched so that it may be fully addressed and effectively prevented.
To learn more about where these shootings are appearing in the news, we did an additional search for informa-tion on fatal California officer-involved shootings kept by The Washington Post i and Killed by Police. ii These sites collect data from "news reports, public records, social media and other sources," so they may not represent the total number of killings. We found no other databases that track officer-involved shootings nationally.

We found 159 officer-involved fatal shootings in California between October 15, 2016, and October 14, 2017. When we searched the Lexis-Nexis database for articles about the victims of these shootings by name, we found 329 articles about the incidents published in California papers during the period of our sample. Very few of these articles showed up in the sample that formed the basis of our community violence and gun news analysis.

We wanted to better understand how many of these incidents receive media attention (and consequently public attention). To this end, we conducted a separate, more in-depth evaluation of officer-involved shootings and found no news coverage for almost one-third of all police-involved shootings in California in 2017. iii More than half of the victims of the shootings without news coverage were African American and Latino men. iii When stories about officer-involved shootings did appear, they were usually brief and provided little background information. The coverage included only a few articles about each killing: Nearly half of the fatal police-involved shootings in 2017 produced only one or two brief stories (48% of incidents). iii The few cases (10%) that generated five or more articles drew attention because the victim's family continued to call for justice. iii

People of color, especially men of color, dominated photos in the news about community and domestic violence.

Though the news coverage about guns and violence seldom included overt references to race (13% of community violence and gun articles and 8% of both domestic violence and gun and suicide and gun articles), the photos associated with articles about gun violence (N=119) could reinforce problematic ideas about race, gender, and gun violence. Indeed, the majority (65%) of the images in our sample were of people of color.
Suicide: A story not pictured
In community violence and gun articles, images of people accused of gun violence were overwhelmingly people of color (90%), specifically men of color (85%). When victims of gun violence appeared, they were usually also people of color (93%).

In stark contrast, white people - the majority of them male - appeared in photos associated with articles about community violence and guns, primarily as representatives of the criminal justice system (73%) rather than as victims or perpe-trators of violence.

In news about domestic violence and guns, all photos of alleged perpetrators were men, and the majority (67%) were men of color. Most victims of domestic abuse whose photos appeared in the news were female (71%), and half of the victims pictured were women of color (50%).
Community violence:
Stories about suicide and guns were much less likely to have an accom-panying photo than were stories about domestic or community violence and guns. For example, though older white men have the highest rates of suicide by firearm, ¹ they were seldom pictured in the coverage. In the few articles about suicide that did have accompanying images, these were of criminal justice representatives or famous people who had died of suicide, such as an actor ³⁶ or the father of a professional golfer. ³⁷

Problematic frames and themes in the news about gun violence
Domestic violence:
Evaluations of news narratives about gun violence - or any social problem - must assess not only where the coverage succeeds, but also where it reinforces harmful stereotypes, perpetuates myths, or violates reporting guidelines. Potentially problematic frames and themes appeared in news about community violence and guns, domestic violence and guns, and suicide and guns, though these frames looked different for each type of gun violence.

In articles about community violence, we saw coverage that framed people who commit violence as terrifying monsters, or "criminals and crazies" ³⁹ (14% of articles). A typical article from the Los Angeles Times quoted the sentencing memo for a gang member that characterized the defendant as "the prototype of why and how gangs destroy communities (most often their own) through violence, intimidation, fueling crack cocaine addiction and by contriving a self-serving and morally corrupt 'code.'" ⁴⁰
Suicide:
This type of language could reinforce the idea that people who are involved in community violence are all depraved, distant, or somehow "other"; such depictions, in part a consequence of episodic reporting that minimizes context, may ignore the fact that many are victims of violence themselves. If we can't talk about gun violence as a problem that goes beyond a few "bad apples," it will be harder to see and talk about solutions that go beyond punishment and incarceration.

Many previous analyses have explored problematic reporting on domestic violence that overemphasizes extreme cases,38 and these studies have found that harmful news frames can perpetuate stereotypes about domestic violence and blame the victim. ⁴¹⁻⁴³ We found that almost 1 in 10 stories about domestic violence and guns (9% of articles) contained language or framing could reinforce harmful stereotypes about the people involved, cast doubt on the stories of victims, or obscure the true frequency of such violence.

For example, an article about the domestic violence shooting at a school in San Bernardino, California, quoted a faith community leader who said of the perpetrator, "He was a deeply religious man. There was never any signs of this kind of violence ... on his Facebook he even criticized a man for attacking a woman.'" ⁴⁴ Such quotes could lead readers to empathize with the perpetrator or see their actions as shocking or "out of character" rather than the deadly conclusion to a pattern of behavior. ⁴² That, in turn, could make it harder to show that domestic violence homicides are usually the fatal final action in a long series of violent, coercive, or controlling actions ⁴⁵ - and that there are multiple places along the way where it may be possible to intervene and remove guns from the situation. ⁴⁶

In news about suicide, a primary concern is how well the coverage conforms with best practices for reporting on suicide.47 For example, journalists are cautioned to avoid describing the mechanism of the suicide or where it occurs because the risk of copycat suicides increases when stories includes these details. ⁴⁷

We expected a certain amount of information about the method of suicide, since we specifically searched for articles about the intersection of guns and suicide. Even taking that into account, though, fully one-fifth of articles about suicide included extremely graphic or explicit details about the incident. For example, an article about a public suicide in a San Diego mall noted, "The woman reached The Gap, sat down, aimed a gun toward her own head, and pulled the trigger. ...'All that blood ... it was really intense,' said the clerk. ... [A shopper] heard a loud 'pop' and a woman fell to the pavement." ⁴⁸

How did the news characterize stopping the gun violence epidemic?

In line with our previous research that shows that the news about violence tends to focus on problems rather than how to solve them, 8, 49 we found that solutions rarely appeared in gun violence coverage (29% of all articles). When solutions did appear, the focus was often on changes to the policies and practices of specific institutions, such as a police department's plan to implement a new technology to detect shots in an area50 or a school system's efforts to spot warning signs of suicide (Figure 7). ²⁶

Overall, stories about suicide and guns were more likely to discuss solutions than were articles about community or domestic violence and guns. In suicide and gun news, mental health was highlighted as an underlying issue: 11% of articles mentioned access to mental health services as a solution.
Figure 7: Few solutions appeared in news coverage of gun violence in California newspapers, October 15, 2016 - October 14, 2017 (n=228)
Click on image to enlarge Our analysis of the California news about the three most common types of gun violence showed that:
Most articles frame gun violence through a criminal justice lens that obscures context, consequences, and communities.
Specific policy approaches for reducing gun violence were seldom named in the news about gun violence. A rare example came from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose op-ed on domestic violence was reprinted in The Fresno Bee: "If we really want to make Americans safer, then we should require universal background checks before gun purchases ... . We should work hard to get guns out of the hands of people subject to domestic violence restraining orders." ⁵¹

Community-based solutions were also infrequently mentioned in the news about gun violence: These appeared in only 5% of articles about community violence and guns, 3% of articles about domestic violence and guns, and 2% of articles about suicide and guns.
The pictures accompanying stories about community and domestic gun violence tell a story that visualizes communities of color.
More often, the news - especially the news about domestic and community violence and guns - included only vague calls for unspecified solutions. For example, commenting on the need for action following a fatal shooting in the city of Oakland, an after-school program manager said that one of the first steps to prevent future incidents from occurring would be to get "guns off the streets." ²⁵

Since so few stories report on solutions, the news conversation about gun violence is problem-focused - and, ultimately, pessimistic. In fact, only 8% of all gun violence articles included any kind of language that evoked optimism about the possibility of ending, or even reducing, gun violence in California (Figure 8). A rare, but powerful, example of a more optimistic perspective came from California State Assemblymember Mike Gipson, who was quoted in the Los Angeles Sentinel, saying, "I believe we have what it takes to rise above political division and enact laws that will strengthen public safety and reduce the plague of gun violence. I will never stop fighting for the right for residents to live in a safe and prosperous community." ⁵²

Conclusion

Stories about suicide and domestic violence involving guns rarely appear in the news.

California news outlets regularly cover community violence and guns, but they rarely report on suicide or domestic violence involving guns. With so few articles about suicide and domestic violence and guns, it may be more difficult for audiences to understand how common these types of gun violence are and why preventing them is so important.

When articles about suicide and guns do appear, they are unusual in that they are often thematic. Thematic frames place specific incidents of suicide within a broader context, one that includes perspectives from researchers, medical professionals, and others. On the other hand, news about community and domestic violence and guns tends to focus narrowly on isolated incidents of crime and violence and to rely almost exclusively on quotes from police and other representatives of the criminal justice system.
Create news about prevention.
Criminal justice is crucial when it comes to gun violence, but when news coverage relies almost entirely on a criminal justice lens, it means the coverage focuses on incidents that have already happened and are being dealt with by the police and the courts. In addition, the episodic frame that emphasizes incidents makes it more difficult to show what schools, faith communities, businesses, advocates, and community residents could do or are doing to prevent gun violence. The criminal justice lens could also reinforce the belief that gun violence is an inevitable problem, one that must be simply endured, never ended.

Black and brown men, in particular, appear mostly as perpetrators or victims of violence. While data on the demographics of gun violence offenders is difficult to find, the overwhelming visual representation of people of color in the news about gun violence could parallel the overrepresentation of people of color in the American criminal justice system. ⁵³
Contribute opinion pieces.
If the only way audiences learn about gun violence is from the news, these images could reinforce harmful stereotypes that maintain support for unjust policing and incarceration policies. That's a particular concern amid ongoing and highly charged national discussions about violence, racism, and criminal justice. A narrative that depicts violence as only a problem for certain communities could make it harder for policymakers and other audiences to understand that gun violence has broad repercussions throughout our society - and that systemic solutions are needed to make everyone safer and to support the health and well-being of all residents.

With so much of the coverage of gun violence focused either on mass shootings or on isolated acts of community violence making their way through the criminal justice system, California news coverage is not making it easier to see, understand, or talk about day-to-day acts of gun violence or what to do about them. A more complete news narrative would help policymakers and the public understand the value of ending all three types of gun violence. Although our study focused on the news in California, since in certain ways California is a microcosm of the United States, a number of the trends that we observed could mirror patterns in news from other parts of the country.

Still, advocates and journalists can - and should - tell a more complete story about gun violence, in California and beyond. Here are some recommendations to help expand and deepen coverage:
Prepare for the long term by building relationships with journalists.
Recommendations for advocates

Broadening the narrative about gun violence means helping reporters - and, by extension, news audiences - put every incident of gun violence into context. That will make it easier to show why violence happens and how it can be prevented. But illustrating context is easier said than done: Many advocates working on gun violence find that they are most often part of the news when a journalist asks them to respond to a terrible or tragic incident. In that situation, the advocate is already in the after-the-fact "criminal justice response" frame. From there, it's a lot harder to move toward talking about how to correct misconceptions or solve the problem. What's the solution? Advocates can:

To ensure that gun violence isn't only in the news after a tragedy, advocates should create news that makes room to talk about ending the different types of gun violence and the role we all play in making our communities safe. In practice, that means pitching stories to reporters that focus on actions, initiatives, and policies that are designed to prevent gun violence or are already doing so successfully. For example, Advance Peace, a violence interruption program started in Richmond, California, reaches out to young men involved in firearm offenses and places them in personalized fellowships - and, in doing so, breaks the cycle of violence. The program was featured on an episode of HBO's newsmagazine series "Vice" about youth incarceration, which presented Advance Peace as an effective strategy to decrease violence and keep young men of color out of the criminal justice system. ⁵⁴ Advocates can also release studies, celebrate community milestones, give awards, or find other newsworthy ways to bring attention to each type of gun violence and what needs to happen to prevent it.
Talk concretely about context and solutions.
Even when the news is focused on the criminal justice aspects of a high-profile case or the specifics of a mass shooting, there may be opportunities to sensitively but strategically ensure that the impact of other types of gun violence isn't ignored. We call that "piggybacking." Piggybacking can be proactive or reactive. For example, in response to a story about an incident of domestic violence involving celebrities, an advocate could help a reporter understand the prevalence of this type of violence in their locale and underscore the increased risk of death for women when guns are present.10 An example of proactive piggybacking might be the release of a report about local suicide gun death rates, using local or regional data, in advance of a town hall or local government meeting. Successfully pitching that story to reporters would help get the issue on policymakers' agendas and enable the community to start making the connection between suicides and gun violence.

We found very little opinion coverage in our sample, which means advocates could be missing opportunities to shape the public discussion around all types of gun violence. Advocates can regularly contribute opinion pieces to newspapers, blogs, or online news outlets. Opinion pieces can be proactive or reactive. One proactive strategy is to meet with editorial boards and request editorials supporting prevention; a well-timed editorial can be very persuasive during policy or funding debates. A reactive strategy is to write a letter to the editor to tactfully address problematic or inaccurate news coverage on gun violence - or to compliment a reporter for compelling reporting. Both proactive and reactive strategies can bring solutions to the fore.
Prepare and share compelling story elements that illustrate the context.
One rare example of an opinion piece from our sample demonstrated a reactive approach, when an op-ed writer took the opportunity in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting to highlight the gun deaths that do not make headlines: "As horrific as it was - the crackling gunfire and the mayhem - many Americans will soon forget about the Las Vegas massacre. But the families of the 59 people who died in the concert chaos last Sunday night will remember. The loved ones of the estimated 95 others who died in gunfire the same day - unmentioned victims in the quotidian toll of 'ordinary' U.S. firearm deaths - will remember, too." ⁵⁵

An example of a proactive strategy comes from an opinion article from our sample about teenage suicide prevention, in which a pediatric psychologist noted, "Studies show that 90% of suicidal persons suffer from depression, anxiety or other mental illness. None of these is a weakness." ⁵⁶
Talk about race and equity issues as they relate to gun violence.
Reporters and photographers are always looking for "real people" who can "put a face on" the story. Journalists can tell complete stories about gun violence only if they are familiar with advocates, their resources, and their networks. If advocates become trusted sources, reporters have somewhere to go for data and information when they have a story to tell. Otherwise, many journalists may rely on their traditional contacts in criminal justice.

If journalists are to add new sources to their mix, those sources have to be ready and willing to talk and share resources - and to do it on a tight deadline when journalists are covering breaking news. Advocates can work with their organizations and networks to develop their media skills, including their readiness to talk about what causes gun violence, how it affects communities, and what is being done to end it. Advocates need to be ready to drop everything to help a reporter on a tight deadline.

It can be especially helpful to train people who have experienced or committed violence so they are comfortable talking with reporters. Media training can help people with lived experience be powerful "authentic voices" who can talk not only about their own stories, but about what should be done to ensure that no one else has to suffer. By putting authentic voices forward for media opportunities, advocates are helping to keep storytelling power within the community. For community violence and guns, this could be a youth-serving organization leader; for domestic violence and guns, it might be a survivor of domestic violence; and for suicide and guns, this could be a veteran whose community has been affected by gun suicide.
Cultivate and interview sources beyond the criminal justice system.
Whether advocates are creating news or reacting to a reporter's questions after a tragedy, they can help reporters see the landscape beyond the gruesome details of an incident of gun violence. What advocates highlight in that bigger picture will depend on their overarching goals: Perhaps they want to illustrate that mass shootings aren't the only threat to take into account when talking about gun violence prevention, show that something happening locally contributes to the problem or solution, or make the case for a new approach that could make a big difference in their community.
Ask questions about the context for gun violence.
Whatever advocates' goals and however they want to help reporters see the broader context, they should be clear and precise: Using abstract or general terms can leave readers with more questions than answers. If they are illustrating the root causes of violence, phrases like "gun culture" may be too vague. Are there statistics or examples from the local community that reporters can cite to make the case tangible? When advocates are talking about solutions, they should use concrete and context-specific examples of community initiatives, programs, policies, and other preventive measures that need to be established, supported, and maintained to stop the gun violence epidemic for good.

Though time constraints and editing may limit any given story, advocates can make it easier for reporters to include context if they have statistics, media bites, visuals and other story elements at the ready. Visuals are particularly important: We know that images associated with victims and perpetrators in stories about gun violence tend to focus primarily on people of color and that images of white people are mostly criminal justice representatives. Together, these images paint a stereotypical and inaccurate picture of gun violence.

Advocates should consider: What visuals can be provided to reporters that would help them tell a complete, fair story about prevention, the community, and the violence that advocates are trying to address? For example, an advocate might share an image of members of a violence prevention group at an event in the community that they are part of and serve. Are there photo opportunities to set up or images to provide that could help reporters paint an accurate picture or challenge harmful stereotypes? What in the landscape of the local community needs to be visible in photos if the public is to "see" prevention?

Gun violence is the confluence of many complex environmental factors like poverty, racism, and other structural inequities. However, the connections between gun violence and these structural inequities were rarely highlighted in the news. A rare example from our analysis came from an after-school program manager in Oakland, who made the connection between gun violence and systemic oppression and poverty. ²⁵ By talking about race and equity issues that contribute to gun violence, advocates can help elevate the connections between violence prevention and other social and political movements to advance progress on multiple fronts. These conver-sations can also help shift the focus from specific incidents to the broader social change needed to prevent future gun violence in all forms.
Expand coverage of gun violence to include other sectors.
Recommendations for journalists

Improving coverage of gun violence can be challenging, particularly in an era of shrinking newsrooms. A number of organizations have outlined general recommendations that focus on interviewing techniques, confidentiality concerns, language considerations, and other technical specifics of reporting on violence. 47, 57-60 Our focus is on how journalists can bring attention to gun violence issues that are often ignored. Journalists can:
Explore issues of structural racism and other systemic factors.
The news about gun violence is dominated by sources representing the criminal justice system. These sources and their perspectives are undoubtedly valuable. But gun violence isn't just a criminal justice issue. To illustrate the broader context, journalists can seek out other voices (like community members, faith leaders, and medical professionals) who could provide important and often overlooked perspectives on gun violence. These sources can help to shed light on the untold stories about gun violence. For example, we found that the cycle of violence and trauma were rarely mentioned as causes for gun violence, but community violence prevention advo-cates or medical professionals could help illustrate the connection between gun violence and the lasting trauma it causes in individuals and communities. Sources from different fields may also be able to suggest ideas for stories that focus on underexamined questions, such as the connections between domestic violence and more visible mass shootings; suicide and gun availability; and the impact on local gun violence rates when communities invest in youth violence prevention programs. They can also help reporters give more depth and meaning to specific incidents of gun violence.

Since news coverage of gun violence is usually spurred by a specific incident, it may seem difficult to include context. Yet, for each type of gun violence, with breaking news or in follow-up stories, there are ways for reporters to include more context - but they have to ask about it.

For stories about community violence and guns, reporters could ask about access to guns and how guns come into neighborhoods. Journalists could also ask about the connections between systemic inequalities and gun violence. One way to do this would be to ask sources about how factors that drive violence in a community, e.g. poverty, have evolved over time. Another way would be to ask sources to describe what has been done in other communities to prevent gun violence and whether those programs or policies could work in the community in question.

When interviewing advocates for articles about domestic violence, reporters could ask their sources questions about the relationship between domestic violence and guns; researchers and advocates are keenly aware that guns heighten risk that can lead to domestic violence-related fatalities, coercion, and intimidation. 10, 61 Reporters can ask how the story about guns and domestic violence connects to other sectors or disciplines, including what the implications are for policy, education, health care, and business. In a state like California that has implemented a gun violence restraining order (GVRO) policy ("red flag" laws) - a tool for temporarily removing guns and ammunition from individuals who are at risk of harming themselves or others ⁶² - journalists might ask about how local law enforcement use GVROs in the community and to what effect. In a constituency without a GVRO law in place, journal-ists could ask their sources about the impact that implementing this policy would have on community safety.

Articles about suicide and guns made the connection to mental health and health care in many cases, but the challenge for journalists here is to broaden these stories beyond individual cases. Reporters might ask their sources questions about the impact that suicide with guns has had on the wider community. Stories that go beyond specific cases will help audiences view suicide with guns as a broader issue that communities can act on. Reporters might also make the connection between guns and suicide by asking questions about what steps individuals can take to prevent suicides, as when family or friends intervene with loved ones who might be at risk for suicide by exploring strategies to restrict access to the lethal means.

Comprehensive violence prevention is a multisector effort that involves health care, schools, businesses, public health, youth-serving organizations, concerned citizens, and many others. ⁶³ To help people understand community violence as a preventable problem, the larger social and economic context in which gun violence occurs needs to be visible in news stories. Connections to the context in which violence occurs can be made in stories about any sector that could play a role in preventing violence. Journalists can expand coverage of gun violence to include other sections of their news outlet, e.g. the business, health care, or education beats, to demonstrate how sectors can partner in preventing gun violence and building safer, stronger communities.

In a previous analysis that Berkeley Media Studies Group conducted on the news about community violence, we found multiple themes in stories from the business, education, and health care sectors that could easily connect to how that sector might prevent future violence and build or sustain safe communities. ⁶⁴ For example, we found that health care stories often focused on costs and access, which have important implications for how well people are able to obtain mental health and other services that could help prevent gun violence before it occurs. There are many opportunities for reporters to connect stories from a range of sectors with gun violence prevention, and they can do so by drawing members of other sectors into the conversation and asking them about how their work can contribute to a shared goal of stopping the gun violence epidemic.

Gun violence, particularly at the community-level, takes place when complex environmental factors like poverty and structural racism coincide with the presence of firearms. As a society, we need to have a better understanding of the relationship between inequality, racism, and which communities are most affected by gun violence. Journalists can help illuminate the connections. In one case from our previous analysis of the news discourse about community violence, an article about community-led efforts to deter crime provides an example of how to address race and racism with more complexity. The story quoted a resident who specifically addressed the multiple intersections of racism and community safety, noting, "There's another kind of safety, particularly if you're a person of color. People need to feel safe from racial profiling." 64, 65 To get to this type of nuanced answer, reporters might ask their sources about the historical context that has led to certain communities being more plagued by the epidemic of gun violence than others, as well as what steps can be taken to remedy this burden.

As a result of our country's complicated history with guns and the gun industry, 66, 67 there is a dearth of research on gun violence, including data on the rates at which the different forms of gun violence affect racial and ethnic groups. For this reason, we recommend that journalists work with the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), a program of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE), or similar groups to help them acquire and assess the local crime data to make sure that their reporting reflects local crime trends.

Acknowledgments

Issue 25 was written by Daphne Marvel, BA; Pamela Mejia, MS, MPH; Laura Nixon, MPH; and Lori Dorfman, DrPH.

This research was supported by funding from the Hope and Heal Fund. We thank Brian Malte of the Hope and Heal Fund, Erin Hart of Spitfire Strategies, and Jill Fitzsimmons of Spitfire Strategies for their invaluable contributions and feedback.

We thank Dr. Marian Betz of the Program for Injury Prevention, Education and Research(PIPER) at the Colorado School of Public Health; Dr. Garen Wintemute and his team at the Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) at the University of California, Davis; Krista Niemczyk of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence (the Partnership); and Dr. Susan Sorenson of the University of Pennsylvania for their support in the development of this Issue.

We would also like to thank DeVone Boggan of Advance Peace, Laurie Kappe of i.e.communications, Christine Maulhardt of Blue Shield of California, and Anara Guard for their guidance and insight. Thanks also to Heather Gehlert and Fernando Quintero for their feedback and edits, and to Laura Carter and Sarah Han for their research support.

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53 Hartney C., & Vuong L. (2009). Created equal: Racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Retrieved from National Council on Crime and Delinquency website: http://www.nccdglobal.org/sites/default/files/publication_pdf/created-equal.pdf.

54 'Vice' on HBO tackles criminal justice reform and youth incarceration. (2018). Vice Impact. Retrieved from: https://impact.vice.com/en_us/article/59jwb5/vice-on-hbo-tackles-criminal-justice-reform-and-youth-incarceration.

55 Swanson J. (2017, October 8). Combined strategy essential for preventing gun violence. San Francisco Chronicle.

56 Danovsky M.B. (2017, January 9). Addressing teen depression and suicide prevention. Visalia Times Delta.

57 Stevens J. (1997). Reporting on violence: A handbook for journalists. Retrieved from: http://www.bmsg.org/pcvp/INDEX.SHTML.

58 Stevens J. (2001). Reporting on violence: New ideas for television, print and web. Retrieved from Berkeley Media Studies Group website: http://www.bmsg.org/sites/default/files/bmsg_handbook_reporting_on_violence_new_ideas.pdf.

59 Thorson E., Dorfman L., & Stevens J. (2003). Reporting crime and violence from a public health perspective. Journal of the Institute of Justice and International Studies; 2: 53-66.

60 Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. (2008). Covering domestic violence: A guide for journalists and other media professionals. Seattle, WA: Starr K.

61 Sorenson S.B. (2017). Guns in intimate partner violence: comparing incidents by type of weapon. Journal of Women's Health; 26(3): 249-258.

62 Speak for Safety: What is a Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO)? Retrieved from: https://speakforsafety.org/faq/. Accessed April 18, 2018.

63 Prevention Institute. (2014). Multi-sector partnerships for preventing violence: A guide for using collaboration multi-plier to improve safety outcomes for young people, communities and cities. Oakland, CA: Davis R., & Tsao B.

64 Mejia P., Seklir L., Nixon L., & Dorfman L. (2016). Changing the discourse about community violence: To prevent it, we have to talk about it. Retrieved from Berkeley Media Studies Group website: http://www.bmsg.org/sites/default/files/bmsg_kp_pi_community_violence_discourse_final2.pdf.

65 O'Brien M. (2014, August 4). Oakland: Block parties to deter crime also raise debate. Contra Costa Times.

66 Dunbar-Ortiz R. (2018). Loaded: A disarming history of the Second Amendment. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

67 Sugarmann J. (1992). National Rifle Association: Money, firepower & fear. Washington, DC: National Press Books.

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Issue 25: More than mass shootings: Gun violence narratives in California news

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Gun violence is preventable, but not enough people know that because news coverage tends to characterize it as inevitable and extreme. Stories about mass shootings dominate coverage, even though these tragedies aren't the major cause of gun deaths in this country.

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School Shootings and Violence (Published 2009)

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News about school shootings, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

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Last year was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States. While public mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas make up a small percentage of firearm deaths, they have changed the national conversation. Credit... Zackary Canepari for The New York Times

More people died from firearm injuries in the United States last year than in any other year since at least 1968, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before. Nearly two-thirds were suicides. It was the largest yearly total on record in the C.D.C.'s electronic database, which goes back 50 years, and reflects the sheer number of lives lost.

When adjusted for population size, the rate of gun deaths in 2017 also increased slightly to 12 deaths for every 100,000 people, up from 11.8 per 100,000 in 2016. By this measure, last year had the highest rate of firearm deaths since the mid-1990s, the data showed.

It was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States, after remaining relatively steady throughout the 2000s and the first part of this decade.

"It is significant that after a period of relative stability, now the rates are rising again," Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the C.D.C.'s National Center for Health Statistics, said in a phone interview.

Guns and ammunition for sale at Big 5 Sporting Goods in Sacramento in May. Credit... Andrew Burton for The New York Times

While there are signs that the movement to prevent gun violence gained momentum this year - state legislatures passed a surge of new gun control laws, gun control groups outspent the National Rifle Association in the midterm election cycle and the medical community recently took on the N.R.A. over an assertion that doctors should "stay in their lane" on gun policy - the findings underscore that even after such efforts ramped up after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, gun violence continued its dizzying assault on America.

Suicides have historically made up most deaths by firearm in the United States, research shows.

In 2017, about 60 percent of gun deaths were suicides, while about 37 percent were homicides, according to an analysis of the C.D.C. data by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a public health think tank. (The group is a sister organization of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an advocacy group that works to oppose the N.R.A.)

Suicide over all has been on the rise for more than a decade and is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, according to the health statistics center. But researchers say firearm homicide has ticked upward recently and also helps explain the rise in gun deaths since 2015.

Among other public health problems, drug overdose deaths have also been surging, a trend that continued in 2017. About 70,000 people died from drug overdoses last year - almost double the number that died from guns, the health statistics center reported.

Mr. Anderson said there could be a correlation between drugs and gun deaths. While the gun death rate is higher than it has been in some time, he noted that it was even higher in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which corresponded with heroin and crack cocaine epidemics.

"Now with the fentanyl issue and at the height of the drug overdose epidemic, now we are seeing rises in gun deaths," Mr. Anderson said.

Supporters held a gun flag as President Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Houston in October. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dakota Jablon, who analyzed the C.D.C. data for the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, noticed another trend underlying the data: state-by-state variations, which she believes could reflect differences in gun laws.

For example, Kansas, which received an F from the national advocacy group Giffords Law Center's gun law scorecard, had increases in both its firearm suicide and homicide rates over the past decade. New York, which was given an A-minus, had both rates decrease, according to her analysis of C.D.C. data.

"Some states are doing incredible work," Ms. Jablon said. "They are passing these lifesaving policies that are clearly working."

Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine physician who is the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, said that the rise in firearm deaths was a result of "a national unwillingness to take this problem seriously."

In 1996, under pressure from the N.R.A., Congress stripped the C.D.C. of its budget to study the health effects of shootings and prohibited the agency from advocating or promoting gun control.

"We have decided as a country not to do research on this problem, so we don't understand it," said Dr. Wintemute, a leading researcher on gun violence who identified himself as a member of the N.R.A.

A gunman killed 26 people at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., in 2017. Mass shootings have occurred recently at schools, music venues and houses of worship. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

But recently, mass shootings - at schools and music venues and houses of worship - have rocked the American consciousness. Though public mass shootings make up no more than 1 percent of all firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said, they have changed the dynamic of the conversation.

"I've been working on this problem full time since the early '80s and there has never been a time like the present in which everybody feels some personal sense of risk," he said.

This spring, student activists led March for Our Lives protests across the country, after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., left 17 dead. More recently, doctors weighed in after the N.R.A. took aim at their profession in a tweet: "Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane." Physicians, in turn, shared painful stories about treating gunshot victims.

In an interview at the Tedmed event in November, the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, defended the right of doctors to talk about gun violence.

"It is absolutely within physicians' lanes to talk to their patients about ways that they can be safer," said Dr. Adams, an anesthesiologist by training who has worked on gunshot victims and is a gun owner himself. "And that includes seatbelts, that includes bicycle helmets and that includes having a discussion about whether or not you have firearms in your home and whether or not you're keeping them safe."

Despite the recent increase in firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said he had reason to be optimistic for the future.

"For the first time in our history, everybody has a sense of personal involvement," he said, adding, "That universal sense of personal risk might just lead to an increase in willingness to do something about the problem."

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Nearly 40,000 People Died From Guns in U.S. Last Year, Highest in 50 Years (Published 2018)

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Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Give this article Give this article Give this article More people died from firearm injuries in the United States last year than in any other year since at least 1968, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Objectives:

Focused deterrence seeks to change the violent behavior of gangs not directly targeted by the intervention by leveraging network ties between groups. This study appraises group-based and place-based methodologies in detecting direct and spillover crime reduction impacts of a focused deterrence strategy implemented in Oakland, California.

Quasi-experimental designs and panel regression models were used to compare shooting trends for directly treated gangs and census block groups to shooting trends for comparison gangs and block groups that did not directly receive the treatment. The design further analyzed whether vicariously treated gangs and untreated block groups immediately surrounding treated block groups experienced spillover shooting reductions.

The focused deterrence program generated statistically significant direct reductions in shootings in treated block group areas and by treated gangs relative to shootings in untreated block group areas and by untreated gangs, respectively. Spillover deterrent effects of varying magnitudes were found when shooting trends by vicariously treated gangs and in surrounding block groups were compared to shootings trends in comparison units.

Conclusions:

Group-based evaluation methodologies were better positioned to detect changes in violent gang behaviors after treatment and to shed light on deterrence mechanisms supporting program efficacy. Future focused deterrence studies should be theory driven rather than black box evaluations.

References

Leuven, E., Sianesi, B.. 2003. "PSMATCH2: Stata Module to Perform Full Mahalanobis and Propensity Score Matching, Common Support Graphing, and Covariate Imbalance Testing." Retrieved June 3, 2018, ( http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s432001.html).
Google Scholar

Zimring, F., Hawkins, G.. 1973. Deterrence: The Legal Threat in Crime Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar

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Street Gangs, Gun Violence, and Focused Deterrence: Comparing Place-based and Group-based Evaluation Methods to Estimate Direct and Spillover Deterrent Effects - Anthony A. Braga, Greg Zimmerman, Lisa Barao, Chelsea Farrell, Rod K. Brunson, Andrew V. Papachristos, 2019

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Objectives: Focused deterrence seeks to change the violent behavior of gangs not directly targeted by the intervention by leveraging network ties between groups. This study appraises group-based and place-based methodologies in detecting direct and spillover crime reduction impacts of a focused deterrence strategy implemented in Oakland, California.

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Gun owners of america home

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Gun Owners of America | The only no compromise gun lobby in Washington

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gun violence

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Gun Ownership, Gun Violence Don't Go Hand in Hand, Statistics Show

Figures don't lie: America doesn't have a gun problem; America has a gun-grabber problem.

Each time America experiences a tragedy - especially one resulting in multiple deaths - gun critics respond with a call to limit our Second Amendment guarantees.

Although Orlando, San Bernardino, Fort Hood and other massacres were rooted in radical Islam, and Sandy Hook involved a perpetrator with serious mental health issues, gun control groups immediately latched on to them as reasons to restrict gun ownership.
Click here to see more 2A articles like this one.
The reaction became so knee-jerk that Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America launched into a theatrical diatribe after photos were published depicting protesters openly carrying firearms in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Read More at Newsmax

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Gun Ownership, Gun Violence Don't Go Hand in Hand, Statistics Show

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Figures don't lie: America doesn't have a gun problem; America has a gun-grabber problem. Each time America experiences a tragedy - especially one resulting in multiple deaths - gun critics respond with a call to limit our Second Amendment guarantees.

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Update: On March 2, 2016, the Flathead County Attorney's Office agreed to defer prosecution of David Joseph Lenio. This means that the case against Lenio will be dismissed after two years if he remains "a law-abiding citizen at all times." ¹ Three firearms have been returned to Lenio and he will be allowed to own and purchase guns under the agreement. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence issued a statement in response to this disturbing development. ²
____________________________________________________________

In February, David Joseph Lenio was arrested after engaging Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence communications director Jonathan Hutson in a verbal duel on Twitter. Hutson saw that Lenio tweeted that he wanted to "execute grade school kids." "I bet I'd take out at least a whole classroom and score 30-plus if I put my mind to it," he wrote. 1 All told, Lenio had threatened violence against children and Jewish leaders dozens of times.

The day Lenio was arrested, police found two rifles in his home and a handgun in his vehicle, as well as ammunition of various calibers. His roommate told authorities that Lenio had just obtained a rifle and other items from a storage unit and brought them to the residence. ²

Now, disturbing news from Lenio's court proceedings is emerging. Public defender Brent Getty filed a motion on November 5, 2015, stating "the matter may be able to be resolved, without the need for a trial, as early as next week." There is significant concern that a plea deal could involve a misdemeanor (as opposed to a felony) charge or a deferred prosecution. This could allow Lenio to recover his firearms and legally purchase guns once again.

The Second Amendment was not ratified to vindicate the rights of men who threaten children. David Joseph Lenio is an obvious threat to his community and should not have his gun rights restored at any point.
Tell Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan: Do not settle for any outcome that might allow Lenio to own guns again.
___________________________________________________________

1. Megan Strickland, "Prosecution Deferred in Online Threat Case," Daily Inter Lake, March 4, 2016

2. Press Release, "Man Who Threatens School Children and Religious Leaders has Gun Rights Reinstated by Montana Court," Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, March 7, 2016

3. Vince Devlin, "Plea Deal Could be in Works for Man Accused of Threatening Kalispell Students," Missoulian, November 6, 2015

4. Matt Hudson, "Suspect Had Been Gathering Weapons," Daily Inter Lake, February 19, 2015

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Tell Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan: Make Sure Would-Be Mass Shooter Remains Prohibited Purchaser

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David Joseph Lenio was stockpiling firearms and threatened to take the lives of children and Jewish leaders. Sign this petition to tell Flathead County Ed Corrigan that he should not settle for any outcome that might allow Lenio to own guns again.

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¹ The number of deaths per 100,000 total population.

Source: https://wonder.cdc.gov

States are categorized from highest rate to lowest rate. Although adjusted for differences in age-distribution and population size, rankings by state do not take into account other state specific population characteristics that may affect the level of mortality. When the number of deaths is small, rankings by state may be unreliable due to instability in death rates.

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Make a selection from the filters to change the visualization information.

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Intrest groups/ non for profit

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ASIS International is deeply committed to advancing and reinvesting in the security profession all year long. Your membership directly supports scholarship programs and the development of education, certification, and standards and guidelines.