Latest news with #TheTrace
The Hill
03-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump is making it easier than ever for criminals to get guns
Campaigning in 2024, Donald Trump made clear where he stood on gun policy when he pledged to 'terminate every single one of the Harris-Biden's attacks on law-abiding gun owners his first week in office and stand up for our constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms.' What he didn't say was that he would enact the most criminal-friendly gun policy of any presidential administration in U.S. history. As expected, Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have moved to roll back Biden-era gun policies that took a tougher line on gun dealers who falsified records, on gun purchases that avoided required background checks, and that regulated 'ghost guns' to require serial numbers on formerly untraceable guns or gun parts. Central to Trump's deregulation of gun access is his evisceration of the federal agency charged with administering the nation's gun laws, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. For decades, gun rights proponents have pilloried the ATF, calling it 'scandal-ridden,' an out of control 'rogue agency' that has persistently abused its power, and that had amassed 'a tyrannical record of misconduct and abuse.' To be sure, the ATF has blundered, as when it tragically mishandled the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, and when it botched a covert gun-running operation into Mexico, named 'Fast and Furious,' in 2009. But these incidents, along with the relentless attacks directed against the agency, conceal a very different reality. When compared to other federal law enforcement agencies, the ATF consistently ranks as the smallest and most poorly funded. Its annual appropriations have grown more slowly than any other federal law enforcement agency. Charged with monitoring the more than 80,000 licensed U.S. gun dealers, the ATF barely has the personnel to conduct routine dealer inspections once every 10 years, not to mention the ATF's obligation to inspect the nation's 9,000 explosives license holders. The agency is even barred by law from computerizing its records. Background checks are still conducted by hand at a national tracing center in Martinsburg, W.V., where the sheer weight of its paper records nearly caused the building in which they are housed to collapse in 2019. Routine gun traces can take two weeks. And far from being a rogue or out-of-control agency, a 2021 investigation by The Trace found that the ATF's dealer monitoring 'has been largely toothless and conciliatory, bending over backward to go easy on wayward dealers.' In fact, it found that gun dealers were 'largely immune from serious punishment and enjoy layers of protection unavailable to most other industries.' Now the Trump administration is moving ahead to fire two-thirds of the 800 ATF personnel charged with monitoring gun dealers' compliance with federal law, to cut the agency's $1.6 billion budget by a third, to weaken or eliminate more than 50 existing rules and regulations and to refocus its resources on immigration. While most gun dealers ply their trade honestly, some have been found to flout the law consistently. In 2023, the ATF reported 93 gun dealers that willfully violated federal law. The ongoing evisceration of the ATF's monitoring abilities will have a predictable result of more dealers selling guns to those who shouldn't have them. After all, why should someone bent on obtaining guns for illicit purposes bother with an unpredictable and dangerous black market, the risks of gun theft or other unreliable secondary sources when anyone can more or less put down money at a gun shop and walk off with firearms, no questions asked? As for ghost guns, law enforcement agencies across the country have reported that they are increasingly being used in crimes. From 2017 to 2023, the number of ghost guns found at crime scenes skyrocketed from 1,629 to 27,490. With the end of efforts to serialize guns and parts, expect that number to keep rising, frustrating efforts to solve gun-related crimes. The abandonment of this initiative raises a question without an obvious answer: Why would any law-abiding citizen want a gun that cannot be traced? The protection of gun rights has nothing to do with feeding gun-fueled criminality. From America's very earliest days, governmental leaders enacted a wide array of laws to keep guns away from those considered a threat to public safety, including extensive use of gun licensing dating back centuries. The Trump administration now seems bent on rejecting one of our country's longest, oldest and most important legal and political traditions: protecting its citizens from criminality, violence and threats to public safety. Robert J. Spitzer is Distinguished Service Professor emeritus of political science at SUNY Cortland, and an adjunct professor at the College of William and Mary School of Law. He is the author of six books on gun policy, including 'The Gun Dilemma' and the ninth edition of 'The Politics of Gun Control.'
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Every 30 minutes, someone arrives at an ER with a gunshot wound, according to the CDC
The COVID-19 pandemic and its corresponding increase in shootings sparked a national conversation around firearm injury, emergency room visits, and the treatment of gun violence victims in hospitals. Five years later, the conversation has faded, but new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that gun violence remains a stubborn presence across the country, with 93,022 shooting injuries treated in hospitals from 2018 to 2023. According to the research, an American emergency room treats at least one firearm injury every 30 minutes. 'Most cities use police data to inform prevention planning, but data from hospital and public health sources is an essential, and often missing, piece to guide action, as many incidents of violence and crime are not reported to police,' said Dr. Adam Rowh, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC and lead author of the study, via e-mail to The Trace. The study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in April, analyzed the CDC's data on emergency department firearm injuries, which is limited to the District of Columbia and nine states: Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. The study showed that the monthly rates for shooting injuries were highest in July and lowest in February; daily rates were disproportionately high on holidays, and nighttime peaks were the highest on Friday and Saturday, consistent with prior research. The researchers also found that rates were highest between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m., and were the lowest between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. The authors of the study concluded that knowing the periods when gunshot injuries are highest could be essential both in deploying care and in effectively allocating resources, such as trauma preparedness, ambulance services, hospital staffing, and strategies for intervention. One of those strategies is hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs), an effort aimed at mitigating reinjury by providing holistic and rehabilitative care to shooting victims. The model, first developed 30 years ago, has spread nationwide, and various programs fund their services through myriad resources, most notably through grants now facing the threat of cuts and closures. 'It's happening on every front,' January Serda, the grant coordinator of one such program in Newport News, Virginia, said of federal cuts to community violence intervention funding, education, and healthcare. Dr. Randi Smith, a trauma surgeon who launched an HVIP at Grady Memorial Hospital, in Atlanta, said she has attended to a gunshot victim on every one of her on-call days in the trauma center. Financial and social investment in such programs is as paramount to treatment as life-saving medical care, she emphasized. 'I was very motivated to start a violence intervention program, taking best practices from some of the programs that I have been a part of and shortcomings that I had learned from the past,' Smith said. The program she started in 2023, Interrupting Violence Among Youth and Young Adults, is one of the few based in the Southeast. The program has served more than a thousand people, including survivors and their family members. According to Smith, its reinjury rates are less than 3 percent, compared with national benchmarks that are up to 30 percent and institutional benchmarks that are between 12 percent and 15 percent. Her work has a long legacy. Nearly four decades ago, physicians and nurses—especially those with public health experience—were among the first cohort of medical practitioners to recognize gun violence as a public health issue. That recognition was largely based on what they witnessed in hospitals and emergency rooms, as the rate of shootings reached historic highs in the 1980s and 1990s. Those firsthand accounts were pivotal in the development of the nation's first hospital-based violence intervention programs. Serda, the grant coordinator for an HVIP in Virginia, said in today's multilayered crisis, it's more paramount than ever to prioritize care for the people on the frontlines. She came to violence intervention from nonprofit management and fundraising for survivors of sexual assault in 2022, after her 17-year-old son, Justice Dunham, was fatally shot in a high school parking lot after a basketball game. 'I was blown away by the lack of training around trauma-informed care, or safe spaces and outlets, for nurses and practitioners, and people who are seeing this firsthand and helping the community,' said Serda, who began to advocate for trauma-informed initiatives designed to help patients, her HVIP team and others address the emotional impact of caring for victims of violence and firearm injuries. 'There was no discussion about compassion fatigue, burnout, or vicarious trauma.' As hospital personnel adjust to the ever-evolving firearm violence crisis, Smith said listening to their experiences, and supporting their well-being, has never been more crucial. 'I think a lot of people are looking at the recent news, post-pandemic, that shootings have decreased, and have not realized that we as hospital staff are still treating patients day after day,' said Smith, 'dealing with a medical environment that shifted significantly since the pandemic, and navigating extreme burnout.' This story was produced by The Trace and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Shootings dropped in Lansing, but untangling why is complicated
Police ballistic markers stand besides a child's chair and bicycle at a crime scene in Brooklyn where a one year old child was shot and killed on July 13, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by) This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence. As gun violence surged in cities across the country after the start of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, shootings rose even more steeply in Lansing, Michigan. The worst period came in 2021, when the rate of fatal shootings reached 20 per 100,000 residents, two points higher than the national rate. 'That wave was so devastating,' said Marlon Beard, a community activist in Lansing whose 17-year-old son, Marshawn, was shot and killed in 2021. 'We all kind of asked ourselves what we can do about it.' In response, city officials and community groups raised enough money from federal grants and the city to establish a local Advance Peace program, a national violence intervention method that identifies known shooters, with support from the police, and enrolls them in an 18-month fellowship. By late 2022, violence interrupters hit the ground in southwest Lansing, mentoring, conducting skills training, and providing job opportunities to 15 participants. Within months, police data showed a decline in shootings. To better understand the program's efficacy, Advance Peace leaders commissioned a study by the Michigan Public Health Institute and Michigan State University. The study, published in March, found a 19 percent decrease in all shooting incidents from October 2022 to September 2024. More specifically, it found a 52 percent decline in fatal shootings and a 10 percent decline in nonfatal shootings. A program that works directly with shooters in Lansing is finding success — and police support But the overall drop also coincided with a national decrease in gun violence as the pandemic receded. Determining how much of the decline was due to intervention and how much it reflected national trends remains a key part of the puzzle in understanding gun violence trends in Lansing and similar cities. The end of the pandemic also heralded the federal Build Back Better Act, which included $5 billion for community violence intervention work, along with less direct funding that strengthened the social safety net that is crucial in many communities with disproportionate rates of gun deaths. That widespread funding anchored programs like this one. The first 18-month Advance Peace fellowship started in late 2022 with 15 fellows on the southwest side, where shootings were most prevalent. Fatal shootings and nonfatal shootings fell by 38 percent and 32 percent, respectively, in that area. But the drop in fatal shootings was greater in the three sections of the city where Advance Peace didn't have an initial presence, raising questions about the program's influence. The southwest did, however, have the largest reduction in nonfatal shootings compared to the other areas. According to the Lansing study, Advance Peace effectively engaged with the people most likely to pick up a gun, who were identified through family members, friends, other activists, law enforcement, and people recently released from jails and prisons. More than 90 percent of participants no longer use guns to go on the offensive, said Paul Elam, the chief strategy officer at the Michigan Public Health Institute and a key member of the team that implemented the program in Lansing. Elam later took a step back from street-level engagement to join the research team. 'We have evidence that this works,' he said. 'We have the evidence to prove that a public health approach works.' Joseph Richardson, a gun violence researcher and professor at the University of Maryland, said the Advance Peace model can be successful, but more data is needed to show that the program was driving the drop in shootings. 'There were significant reductions in fatal shootings where they weren't doing their work,' Richardson said, but added that continued research of community violence intervention programs is crucial to better understanding 'the role a CVI group plays locally. That's how we learn what steps need to be taken to implement the work properly.' The second fellowship, which covers the entire city, started in July 2024 and will continue working with 55 fellows until December, when the Trump administration's termination of $169 million in grants for violence intervention and community safety programs leaves cities like Lansing to scramble for alternatives. Half of Advance Peace Lansing's funding comes from federal grants, and its leaders are now strategizing about how to raise enough money to sustain the organization's 22-person staff and $3.5 million annual budget. 'If you remove that intervention piece, gun violence will go up again,' said Michael McKissic, who runs Mikey23, a nonprofit gun violence prevention program that trains young people in trades like construction, plumbing, and electrical work. 'We need that intervention. Our organization can't do that, other organizations can't do it. You need those individuals who are going to go in and show them the error of their ways.' The study showed that fatal shootings decreased by 19 percent more in Lansing from 2022 to 2024 than they did nationally — when gun violence was already dropping across the country post-pandemic. But the city's rate of nonfatal shootings fluctuated, ending with a 15 percent decline in 2024. Richardson said this is the kind of discrepancy that requires more analysis, but that continued research will be more difficult after the cuts from the federal government. Elam and the other authors of the study said gun violence prevention has always been an uphill battle, and hope the promising declines don't cause leaders to disengage with gun violence prevention. They also emphasized the positive feedback they've gotten from residents who say their boots-on-the-ground work has built trust, as well as city leaders, police, and the fellows themselves, most of whom are under 18 years old. 'We can talk to them,' one of the 16-year-old fellows told The Trace, referring to Advance Peace's credible messengers. 'They care about us, they're there for us.'
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A program that works directly with shooters in Lansing is finding success — and police support
Lansing Police| Susan J. Demas This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence. The first fatal shooting of the year in Lansing, Michigan, was solved quickly. All four alleged shooters in the drive-by killing of 21-year-old Jaivion Husband on January 27 were arrested the same night. The circumstances around the men involved in the shooting were complicated; three of the four were fellows with Advance Peace, a violence intervention program that was launched in Lansing in 2022, after initial hesitation from law enforcement. The fellowship is designed to keep people who have been engaged in shootings away from situations like these through concentrated mentoring, daily communication, job opportunities, skills development, and monthly stipends. After the suspects had been arrested, Paul Elam, a criminologist at the Michigan Public Health Institute who helped bring Advance Peace to town, visited the fellows. One of them, a 19-year-old who had been with the program since the beginning, broke down in tears, telling Elam that he knew getting into the car that night was a mistake. 'He told me, 'I let you down, I should have called,'' Elam recalled. 'They let somebody influence them to hop in the car and go do something. He was able to articulate that he was changing his behavior, but he had this moment where he didn't do what he knew was right.' The tragedy reminded the leaders that a moment is all it takes. The fellows 'have so much coming at them daily,' Elam said. 'You don't know what they're being pressured to do.' In the two-plus years since Advance Peace came to Lansing, gun violence in the city has dropped by 52 percent, according to police data, and community activists, along with law enforcement, are pointing to the program's success. The program isn't perfect, some city leaders acknowledge, but it is making long-term strides to accomplish mutual violence prevention goals. Residents in Lansing said the actions taken by the police, including a focus on repeat offenders and illegal firearms, have also played an important role. To sustain the city's progress, police officers and community workers are navigating the streets carefully — cooperatively, but independently. Since its inception in 2010, Advance Peace has been effective in other cities including Richmond, CA and Rochester, NY. Unlike other national anti-violence organizations, this one doesn't focus on geographical areas, victims of shootings, or people who could potentially get involved with gun violence. Instead, their violence interrupters identify people through information from family members or others plugged in on the streets who are shooters — people often unknown to the police. Once they identify the shooters, they enroll them in an 18-month fellowship program, during which they work directly with community violence interrupters, or credible messengers, who check in on them multiple times a day. In Lansing, one interventionist works with as many as five fellows at once. 'If a shooting occurred this week, nobody's going to talk to the police, but they're going to talk to our people,' said Elam. 'The target population for us is folks who are engaged in gun violence, who are evading law enforcement and the justice system.' Throughout the mid-to-late 2010s, shootings in Lansing weren't concentrated in specific areas; gun violence was more sporadic and random, especially across the south side of the city, where 60 percent of the population lives. No particular demographic or age group was overrepresented among perpetrators or victims, a reflection of the city's relative progress in addressing the historic segregation that still dogs nearby cities like Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo. That all changed after COVID-19 hit and retaliatory conflicts worsened between different groups on the southwest and west sides — neighborhood beefs, escalated on social media during lockdowns, turned into shootings. Shootings in Lansing increased by 80 percent between 2019 and 2020. In 2021, the city notched the highest number of homicides ever, with 25. 'It was lawless. A lot of young men were engaging in this back-and-forth, cyclical gunfire, and you had kids dying,' said Michael Lynn, a local activist who runs The Lansing Empowerment Network and The Village Lansing, two organizations focused on addressing and providing wrap-around services to those most affected by gun violence. 'When the pandemic happened, it was like a bomb went off in the city.' Shootings in Lansing have been in decline since the peaks of 2021, similar to national trends and the result of strategic work by community groups and law enforcement after the surge in youth violence. Though the program now receives widespread praise, when Advance Peace was first introduced in 2021 as a potential option for tackling the worsening crisis, Police Chief Robert Backus said the model didn't 'sit well' with his colleagues. 'There was skepticism about how it focused on people you knew were your priority offenders,' Backus said. Marlon Beard, a credible messenger with Advance Peace, said at first 'everybody was looking at it like, 'so you guys gonna pay shooters and sponsor them to buy them guns.' I think that was just ignorance of not really sitting down to do your research.' Once law enforcement and city leadership were educated about the mechanics of the program, they became more receptive to it, Beard said. During a recent event on the Michigan State campus, a handful of fellows, along with the credible messengers, learned about financial responsibility and entrepreneurship through an exercise led by Archie Hudson, a local business owner in Lansing. On the streets, these kids are often treated as — or posture as — adults, but in this setting, as they asked inquisitive questions and answered with 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir,' their age was apparent. Some were just 13 or 14. More importantly, they were comfortable around the credible messengers and other leaders of Advance Peace, the result of a hard-won trust. 'We never involve the police. Every conflict we've had resolved doesn't involve the police,' said DeAndre McFadden, one of the credible messengers, as they're called, who is working for the program. 'They know they can't infiltrate the situation the way we can. So far, the police have respected our space and our work.' Though Advance Peace doesn't share any information with the police, a key reason the organization retains its credibility, the authorities provide Advance Peace with regular shooting data and a list of names of people they believe to be involved in gun violence. 'It's almost like we're running parallel to each other, like we both have the same goal, which is no more violent incidents,' Chief Backus said, noting that the priority of police is enforcement and accountability. 'We have an obligation to represent victims, and if someone is our suspect, we have an obligation to put that person in front of a judge.' Despite the success of recent efforts, distrust between residents and the Police Department persists. That distrust stems from a decade of police shootings in and around Lansing, and a lack of transparency from the department on how the investigations progress, community leaders said. Since 2020, there have been four officer-involved shootings in Lansing, which has a population of roughly 112,000, and all of the cases were deemed 'justifiable.' By comparison, in the 10 years before 2020, there were four. In the most recent case, in December 2023, officers shot and killed Stephen Romero, a Hispanic man, after they were called for a domestic dispute. 'How can we create real positive relations when all of this is consistently going on,' asked Lynn, the local activist. Backus acknowledged that police shootings erode progress, and since they've happened more frequently since 2020, it's been difficult to rebuild trust. 'When they're happening so often in a short time, it doesn't give us time to repair those relationships,' he said, adding that unsolved homicides and people's unwillingness to speak to the police also hurt officers' credibility in the community. 'Ain't nothing changed,' said Beard, the Advance Peace worker, referring to the tense relationship between the community and law enforcement. 'The same way we get looked at as Black men — because one Black man did something, we all did it — that's kind of how we view the police.' One of the fellows with the program said if the police ever tried to talk to him, he'd 'just walk away and not say anything.' Over the last few years, the department has tried to put more emphasis on developing trust in the community by hosting more events, getting in front of active local groups, and being more visible in struggling areas. It has also focused more on firearms access. But the road to strategic cooperation is long. That's why activists, residents, and police agree that Advance Peace is crucial. A recent study of the program revealed some promising data, showing that over 90 percent of the fellows no longer use guns to resolve their conflicts. Yet just as the program is beginning to show its worth, the city is in jeopardy of losing it, as it's funded in large part by community violence interruption grants from the federal government that were terminated in April by the Department of Justice, leaving cities like Lansing scrambling for alternative funding sources. Some groups have joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration to restore the funding. DeVone Boggan, who is originally from Lansing and founded Advance Peace in Oakland, California, in 2010, said the recent funding issues are another example of why local cities and counties need to include funding for community violence intervention work in their fiscal budgets. 'That local infrastructure must budget for CVI practices,' Boggan said. 'That's the only way to sustain the work.'
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New research links gun violence exposure to higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation
For decades, politicians and gun lobbying organizations have perpetuated the notion that mental health issues drive mass violence. A new study is challenging that narrative, though, showing that, rather than causing acts of violence, exposure to gun violence increased rates of depression among respondents and led to higher use of mental health services, The Trace reports. The study, led by researchers at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, surveyed 8,009 respondents across the country, assessing both their exposure to gun violence and their mental health over time. It found that a greater frequency of gun violence exposure was associated with higher depression scores, greater odds of mental health service use, and, perhaps most significantly, greater odds of suicidal ideation compared to having no exposure. It's the first time, using a national representative survey, that researchers have found a correlation between people exposed to gun violence and higher rates of suicidal ideation. The research is an integral step in what experts call a public health approach to gun violence, helping to lay out the empirical foundation for future prevention efforts. "Until we understand the true scope of what gun violence means for our health and our well-being … we are not going to tackle it in a way that fully addresses the issue with all the resources required," said Daniel Semenza, director of research at the center and the lead author of the study. The study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine in February, found that 40 percent of the respondents had heard gunshots multiple times in their lives. Another 12 percent had cumulative exposure, meaning they were exposed to five or more forms of gun violence, including witnessing a shooting or being threatened with a gun, in their lifetimes. Exposure to firearm suicide more than once and being shot multiple times were found to be associated with increased depression and suicide risks. This recent analysis expands on Semenza's study from last year that found that preparation for a suicide attempt was nearly four times higher among Black Americans who had been shot. "This study is vital to be able to talk about what gun violence does to the mental health of America as a whole, and what it means for our collective well-being," Semenza said. "But the conversation doesn't have to stop there. Exposure to gun violence is fundamentally unequal, and it impacts those who are most marginalized throughout the country." The recent findings hit close to home for Aswad Thomas, a gun violence survivor and the vice president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a national organization that provides resources to trauma recovery centers, specialized facilities that support victims of crime. "When I got shot, I remember during the discharge process that my doctors and nurses told me about the physical challenges, but they never mentioned anything about the psychological effects," Thomas said. "I've lost about 40 friends to gun violence throughout my life, and the topic as it relates to 'how do we heal and cope' has just been nonexistent." Research has consistently found that people suffering from severe mental health issues are more likely to be victims of gun violence rather than perpetrators. A 10-year study in San Francisco showed the primary need for gun violence victims was mental health services, and hospital violence intervention program screening in Philadelphia found 75 percent of participants suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Experts working in those care settings have long reported on the effects of interpersonal violence on marginalized communities, but continue to face financial challenges in sustaining their research. "We are seeing the highest rates of suicide among Black adolescents that we've ever seen," said Fatimah Loren Dreier, the executive director of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, a national organization of hospital-based violence intervention programs. "This study may unlock some of the mechanisms that are making that so, given the increased concentration of violence in communities of color and the distress that comes from that exposure." Semenza said the study expands on the groundwork that programs like the trauma recovery centers have sustained by highlighting the connection between mental health services and gun violence victims. This support, through mechanisms like grief counseling, transportation, and financial assistance, is the core of the work trauma recovery centers do to help those affected by gun violence, Thomas noted. "It's not that most people, especially survivors, don't want to get mental health services, but it's really an issue about access," Thomas said. "There needs to be more public understanding of these issues, and there needs to be more investments into those type of program services, like the trauma recovery model." This story was produced by The Trace and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
