News

The news reports appear every day. More shootings. More heartache. More silence and inaction from those legislators who block consideration and discussion of statutory initiatives that might reduce risk and harm. It is easy to feel numb and bereft of hope when following developments affecting the issue of gun violence. […]

Learning, Worrying, and Wondering ‘What If?’ While Reading the News

August 8, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention by dillo1sa

photo by — Note: Gun violence prevention requires attention to a variety of underlying issues and problems. Suicide, in particular, represents a major component of harm from firearms. In typical years, two-thirds of gun deaths are from suicide. We are pleased that an early-career scholar at Michigan State University has shared with our […]

Suicide and Firearms among American Youth: Two Problems Intrinsically Linked

July 13, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention / Suicide by dillo1sa

Pick a day, any day. News reports—at the local, state, and national level—tell us about troubling and tragic incidents of gun violence. We know that our pandemic era has led to a surge in gun purchases and a rise in assaults and homicides with firearms. Some of the stories and […]

Let’s not permit the issue of Gun Violence to be ...

June 22, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention by dillo1sa

Our fifteen-month pandemic experience gave us intensified problems with gun violence. We do not know the precise cause of the rise in gun violence that plagues our country. We can see very clearly, however, that we have made a significant—but hopefully temporary—step backward. At the same time, we also see […]

Day After Day, The Not-So-Happy News

June 7, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention / mass shootings by dillo1sa

I sit down at the computer on a quiet Sunday afternoon intending to briefly check the day’s news. After typing the name of the news service, up pops the webpage with many story titles from which to choose. The list of stories going down the left side of the webpage […]

We Sit Still. But the Problems Do Not.

May 24, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention / mass shootings by dillo1sa

A news report recently presented this disturbing headline: “There Were At Least 11 Mass Shootings Across the US This Weekend” (Silverman, 2021). Critics often express concern that the news media’s attention to such events distorts our understanding of gun violence in the United States. Indeed, if one were to view […]

Looking for Lessons Within Reports of Multiple Mass Shootings

May 14, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention / mass shootings by dillo1sa

In recent weeks, I have received messages from different people comparing gun policy in the United States with laws, policies, and the relative lack of gun violence problems in other industrialized countries. These comparisons are interesting and instructive. Yet, we cannot avoid recognizing that the nature of problems and the […]

Imagining What Is Possible

April 26, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention by dillo1sa

Boulder. Indianapolis. Austin. The list of cities with publicized mass shootings grows with disturbing frequency. We notice—momentarily. We mourn—momentarily. And then the next event happens. Much like new email messages pushing prior messages out of view in our inboxes, each publicized shooting risks obscuring our focus and memory with respect […]

Looking for Insight Amid Repetitive Reports of Gloomy News

April 22, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention by dillo1sa

Tragedies produce numbers. This is true of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and other events that take lives and, at least momentarily, grab the news media’s attention. These numbers include dollar amounts for financial losses and subsequent expenditures for prevention and repair. More importantly, they include numbers for deaths and injuries. On […]

Numbness and Numbers

April 5, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention by dillo1sa

Scholars who study public policy focus on the stages of the processes for developing laws and policies to address society’s problems. Such policy-process stages include “problem definition” and “formulation” of the wording for new laws. These two stages can pose challenges. Ideally, we would like to achieve a consensus concerning […]

Every “Oh No, Not Again!” Is a Call for Legislative ...

March 24, 2021 in Learn / Reports tagged Gun Violence / gun violence facts / gun violence prevention by dillo1sa