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The Trace Is Hiring a Director of Development
The Trace is looking for a director of development to help sustain and expand our high-impact, award-winning reporting on gun violence. At our nonprofit media organization, we’re building the only team of journalists dedicated to reporting on one of the most critical issues facing our country. Our stories are making a difference and our financial support has remained steady during these uncertain times. As we plan for the future, we are seeking a talented development leader to accelerate our fundraising.
After the Subway Shooting, NYC Transit Workers Say They’re Still Not Trained to Deal With Gunfire
This story was published in partnership with THE CITY, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, digital news platform dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York. When a gunman opened fire in a subway car in Brooklyn, New York, in April 2022, wounding 10 people, Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers were the first to respond. Train conductors and operators rendered aid to the injured and evacuated passengers before the arrival of police and paramedics, then checked each car for additional victims or gunmen. In the following days at a ceremony at City Hall, a transit union official recognized them for “taking charge” and “doing what was necessary to get riders out of danger.”
Public Libraries Can Play a Role in Gun Violence Prevention
In June 2018, the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, endured a horrific tragedy. A gunman opened fire at the paper’s offices, leaving five people dead and two others wounded. The shooting shook Anne Arundel County, propelling an initiative to treat gun violence as a public health issue and spurring the formation of a task force dedicated to gun violence prevention.
New Mexico’s Gun Carry Ban Isn’t a Longterm Solution. Here’s Why.
On September 7, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared gun violence a public health emergency, a step that several governors have taken in recent years. But Lujan Grisham and her cabinet took the declaration a step further the next day, when they ordered a 30-day ban on carrying firearms on public and state property in the state’s most populous city, Albuquerque, and surrounding Bernalillo County.
A False Account of a Controversial Killing Takes Philly Police ‘a Hundred Steps Back’ From the Community
Five seconds. Six shots. A hundred steps back. On August 14, Officer Mark Dial and his partner were on patrol in Kensington when they spotted Eddie Irizarry, 27, and followed him onto Willard Street, where he was driving the wrong way. The officers parked, got out of their marked police car, and five seconds later, Dial fired six bullets at Irizarry, video evidence shows.
How Do We Remember People Lost to Gun Violence?
The way we choose to remember the dead has long fascinated Rochele Royster. An art therapist and former Chicago Public Schools teacher, Royster grew up during the AIDS crisis. She remembers having a visceral reaction to Cleve Jones’ The Quilt, an enormous tapestry memorializing people who died from AIDS. The Quilt, whose panels each memorialized a single victim, was initially larger than a football field, but grew to be more than 1 million square feet. Royster was struck by its vastness and how effectively it illustrated, for her, the human toll of the crisis.
A Stray Bullet Struck Her Sister. Now, Her Violence Prevention Work Includes the Man Who Fired the Gun.
Shneaqua Purvis grew up to the sound of gunfire. As kids in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in the 1980s and ’90s, she and her sisters would all duck their heads and crawl under the kitchen table when the shooting started. Their first-floor apartment was next to an alley so crime-ridden it was dubbed “Death Lane” by residents of Tompkins Houses, the public housing complex where they lived.
Chicago Youth Programs Often End With the Summer. Young People Want More.
On a cloudy August afternoon at La Villita Park in Chicago’s Little Village, a father chased after his toddler, young teens ate free hot dogs after a grueling game of softball, and a couple took over the dance floor as the banda played tamborazo. They’d gathered for New Life...
How Often Are AR-Style Rifles Used for Self-Defense?
On August 26, an avowed white supremacist opened fire in a Dollar General in a Black neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida, killing three people. As in many high-profile racist shootings in recent years, including Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh, the assailant used an assault-style rifle. Hours after the Jacksonville story broke,...
Community Input Is Driving This North Carolina County’s Approach to Violence Prevention
There wasn’t a blueprint in North Carolina when Tracie Campbell and her colleagues at the Mecklenburg County Department of Public Health set out to start an Office of Violence Prevention. No other city or county in the state had taken on such a task, nor was there a state-level office at the time to serve as a model. In November 2020, Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte and several of its suburbs, became the first in the state to do it.
How Much Are Americans Paying for Gun Violence?
Last year, as survivors of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, struggled to manage both their grief and newfound financial strain, their stories echoed those of other shooting survivors, for whom the combined burden of grief, trauma, and medical bills can be overwhelming. Following a shooting, mounting medical debt, loss...
The Trace Is Hiring a Managing Editor
The Trace seeks an ambitious and collaborative managing editor to guide editorial work in our newsroom that engages our passionate readers, leads to impact, and expands our reach. This is a chance to help The Trace shine a light on America’s gun violence crisis through independent journalism. Take the...
Can School Nurses Prevent Shootings? These Nurses Think So.
Picture a school nurse’s office: walls adorned with cheery posters about handwashing, a first-aid bed for the occasional stomach ache, a neat row of bandages for a scraped knee. Maybe a Kleenex box on a desk next to a stack of coveted hall passes. It’s a scene full of soft, comfortable textures — but for Robin Cogan, a school nurse in Camden, New Jersey, the typical nurse’s office is missing a necessity.
Inside a State Legislator’s Fight Against the Gun Industry’s Legal Immunity
New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie was on bedrest with a throat illness in the summer of 2020 when he flipped open his laptop to do some internet digging. The tumult of the pandemic was fueling historic rises in gun crime in his Brooklyn district and others like it across the country. He couldn’t speak, and couldn’t get out onto the streets to render aid to his constituents, or to attend funerals. Perhaps, he thought from his bedroom, history would have some clues as to what the Legislature could do to stymie the surge.
Do Armed Guards Prevent School Shootings?
This story was originally published in April 2019, and updated in August 2023. Roughly a third of parents with school-age kids are very or extremely worried about gun violence at their child’s school, according to a 2022 survey by The Pew Research Center. And in much of America, the response to school shootings has been to put more guns in schools. The same Pew survey found that roughly half of U.S. parents think armed security in schools is an effective response.
Research Indicates That Red Flag Laws Work — But Only If People Know About Them
A sweeping study released this week found that public knowledge of Extreme Risk Protection Order laws, and public attitudes toward their implementation, is crucial to how effective and expansive they are. Sometimes referred to as “red flag” laws, ERPOs work to prevent gun tragedies by allowing law enforcement, family members, or friends to petition courts for a civil order to temporarily separate people in crisis from access to firearms.
As Gun Deaths Slowly Decline, Chicagoans Continue Searching for Stability
Over the course of her young life, Lakya Knight, an 18-year-old resident of West Pullman, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, has lost several family members to gun violence. In 2008, when she was just 3, her father, Reginald Knight, was among those lost when a Chicago police officer shot and killed him. The city settled an excessive force lawsuit after his death for $100,000, but Lakya was still left with an empty space for the father she never got to know.
As Cop City Moves Forward, Anti-Violence Activists See ‘Broken Promises’
This story was published in partnership with Capital B News. In December 2021, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sent a news release announcing the formation of the city’s first-ever Office of Violence Reduction. The office was to be charged with coordinating efforts between community-led violence intervention programs and dispersing some $5 million in grants to organizations approaching gun violence as a public health problem.
Is There a Path to Gun Reform Without Strengthening Democracy?
You’ve seen the polls. One from Fox News that showed 87 percent of Americans support universal background checks. Another from CNN that found 80 percent support raising the age to buy any firearm to 21. A Johns Hopkins national survey that found 76 percent of Americans support red flag laws. A poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist that found 60 percent of Americans say controlling gun violence is more important than protecting gun rights.
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