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ATF Director Urges Action on Auto Sears ‘Flooding Our Communities’
Steven Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is calling for immediate action to address a surge in crimes involving auto sears, small devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns. “This is a problem that needs to be focused on immediately,” Dettelbach...
The Shooting of a Temple University Police Officer Revives a Campus Safety Debate
Ringed by some of North Philadelphia’s most violent neighborhoods, Temple University is no stranger to armed robberies, muggings, home invasions, and even shootings affecting members of its campus community. It was just 15 months ago, the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2021, that the city’s largest university was horrified when Samuel...
These Philadelphia Researchers Want Journalists to Tell Better Stories About Gun Violence
A few decades ago, a group of researchers set out to determine whether news reporting on suicide was causing harm. What they learned: Certain types of coverage led more people to end their lives. The findings were so conclusive that they eventually persuaded many journalists to be more careful when interviewing bereaved family or friends, and to refrain from explicitly describing the way their subjects ended their lives, in order to reduce the risk of a copycat effect. In other words, the research caused long-lasting change. Parallel research into the effects of reporting on mass shootings has had a similar outcome in the last decade.
DOJ Funding Sparks Newfound Optimism for Community Violence Intervention Groups
In the 15 years since Aim4Peace first launched in Kansas City, the violence prevention program has grown in fits and starts, operating hospital-based and street outreach programs aimed at preventing retaliation and defusing ongoing violence in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in Missouri’s largest city. But it hasn’t been...
The Trace’s Local Reporting Initiative Pairs Watchdog Reporting with Community Engagement
The Trace, America’s only newsroom that exclusively covers gun violence, has launched a Local Reporting Initiative and unveiled a dedicated home for coverage of gun violence in Chicago and Philadelphia. We began planning this expansion of our coverage because we recognized that the experience of gun violence varies from...
For Two Decades, He Studied the Root Causes of Violence. Then He Was Caught in a Shootout.
Standing in front of his classroom at Georgia State University, Volkan Topalli deployed a new device to illustrate how a simple incident can lead to an act of violence: the scar across his forearm. “When I teach the students about third-party victims, now I point to myself,” he said.
The NRA Loses One Million Members
At the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in 2013, held five months after the Sandy Hook massacre, a defiant Wayne LaPierre boasted that the group had reached a record membership of over 5 million and predicted that “the NRA must and will be 10 million strong.”. Never has...
Bruen Takes Gun Law Back to a Time Before ‘Domestic Violence’
On February 2, a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas overturned a federal ban on gun possession by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. The ruling, which voided part of a nearly three-decades-old landmark policy, is the latest example of how the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen last June is reshaping American gun laws.
Are Mass Shootings Contagious?
On January 21, a man opened fire at a dance hall in Monterey Park, California, killing 11 people and injuring nine others. Two days later, on January 23, another man attacked two farms in Half Moon Bay, California, shooting and killing seven and injuring one. Both shooters were seniors —...
I’ve Covered Gun Violence for 10 Years. Here’s What’s Changed — And What Hasn’t.
Ten years ago, Joe Nocera, an Opinion columnist I worked for at The New York Times, published a column where he laid out the circumstances of shootings that had occurred during the previous seven days in America. The nation was still reeling from the Sandy Hook massacre, and he wanted to capture the shootings between the mass shootings, the ones that didn’t get national attention.
Agya K. Aning Is The Trace’s Inaugural Editing Fellow
Agya K. Aning has joined The Trace as the first participant in the nonprofit news organization’s two-year fellowship program for early- to mid-career journalists looking to establish themselves as editors. During his fellowship, Aning will work alongside The Trace’s editors to train and develop his skills, guiding and editing...
Hope and Disenchantment as Police Flood Philly’s Most Violent Areas
On a frigid Saturday afternoon in mid-January, two men came to blows. They were seemingly oblivious to both blaring car horns and the police officer parked within sight in a marked patrol vehicle. “I’m going to kill you!” one man shouted under the permanent shade of the elevated subway tracks...
NRA PAC Donations Plummeted Last Year
The National Rifle Association saw support for its political action committee collapse in advance of the recent midterms, with far fewer NRA members donating than in any Congressional election year over the last decade, according to a Trace analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Only 5,300 NRA members gave to...
The Monterey Park Shooter Had an ‘Assault Pistol.’ What Does That Mean?
Update: At a press conference late on January 23, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said authorities recovered a “9mm caliber semiautomatic MAC-10 assault weapon,” which civilians wrestled away from him at a second dance studio in Alhambra after the shooting in Monterey Park. An original MAC-10 —...
Shot on the Job: Philly’s Public Workers Are Under Fire
No matter the job Tiffany Fletcher took to support her three sons, she threw herself into the work. Whether the position was in fast food service or cosmetology, the 41-year-old “was a hard worker, and she loved what she did,” recalled her mother, Geraldine Fletcher. That passion extended to her caretaking, too: Outside of her working hours, Tiffany, took care of Geraldine, 77, as her home health care aide.
Chicagoans Are Worried About Gun Violence. How Are Mayoral Candidates Responding?
By the time she turned 35, Camiella Williams, an organizer with GoodKids MadCity, a youth-led violence prevention organization based in Englewood, had lost almost 50 loved ones to gun violence. Last month, she spent the holidays worried about her 17-year-old cousin, who had been shot seven times on the corner of 59th and Halsted on Christmas Day and as of early January was still recovering.
‘Stand Your Ground’ and Shall Issue Laws Increase Gun Violence, Study Finds
A sweeping synthesis of gun policy research has found supportive evidence that “stand your ground” and shall-issue concealed carry laws increase levels of violence, and that child access prevention policies reduce firearm injuries and deaths among children. The conclusions come from the latest edition of the RAND Corporation’s...
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