In the News: Guns in America (The News Conference: Real & Powerful 2023)

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

This is Jaci Clement, CEO and Executive Director of the Fair Media Council. The following discussion took place as part of the Fair Media Council's annual event, The News Conference: Real and Powerful. Here's your chance to go inside the news, to learn how the news media covers gun violence in America and how communities are responding to the news. This discussion features Abonné Clayton, lead reporter for The Guardian's Guns and Lies in America series, who also specializes in covering community-based gun violence; Mary Claire Malloy, a student journalist at Indiana University, who has covered gun violence since high school and has experienced a lockdown situation, and Dr. Jose Prince, executive sponsor of the Northwell Center for Gun Violence Prevention. Moderating this session is noted health and human services advocate Dr. Jeffrey Reynolds, who is president and CEO of the Family and Children's Association based on Long Island. Take a listen as Dr. Reynolds begins the session.

And thank you to all the panelists for being here. I know this was somewhat short notice, at least for me, maybe not for you, but I'm really glad that you jumped on for what I think is a very, very important discussion. I'm going to give you each the opportunity to introduce yourselves and kind of set the stage a little bit. But I know at least Dr. Prince from the work in the space. My name is Jeff Reynolds. I'm the president and CEO of Family and Children's Association.

Hi.

We're an organization that's been around for 140 years. As you could tell from my youthful appearance, I haven't been here all of those years. But we run 45 different programs that cross the lifespan. We serve about 35,000 Long Islanders per year. Most germane to this conversation, we run a credible messenger program in the village of Hempstead that has successfully reduced gun violence in that village. It's a village that's plagued with multiple challenges. I'm really proud of that program and it continues tradition of hiring folks with lived experience to try new approaches to old, seemingly intractable problems. And so that's the hat that I wear as I, as I come to you today. You guys are the experts, so I'm really excited that you're here and can talk about your different perspectives. Abinay, would you please say hello and introduce yourself and talk a little bit about the work you've done in the space?

Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. My name's Abinna Clayton, and I'm the lead reporter on The Guardian's Guns and Lies in America series, based in Los Angeles. Started covering gun violence in the Bay Area where I'm from. And yeah, I've been covering it ever since, focusing primarily on families in underserved communities, usually, you know, Black and brown poor folks who unfortunately bear the brunt of this issue and have been for, you know, many decades. So that's me.

Welcome. Thank you. Mary Claire.

Hi, I'm Mary Claire Malloy, and I'm a senior at Indiana University Bloomington. And when I was 18, I was a part of the Since Parkland Project by The Trace, writing nearly 50 obituaries for child and teen gun violence victims. And throughout my beginning of my career, I've covered mass shootings for The Washington Post. I've covered the scene of a shooting for USA Today. And gun violence has been a very pertinent issue as I've been starting out. with my career.

Excellent. Well, thank you for your work and thank you for being here. Uh, Dr. Jose Prince?

Yeah, thank you, Jeffrey, and thanks. It's great partnering with you and the work that you do and your organization does here locally in New York. I'm a pediatric trauma surgeon in terms of my clinical background, and I am the trauma medical director and surgeon-in-chief at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New York, which is on the edge of Queens in the middle of Long Island. It's the largest level 1 pediatric trauma center in New York State. And I also have the privilege of being the executive sponsor for the Northwell Gun Violence Prevention Center, led by Dr. Chethan Satya, and really supported strongly by our CEO, Michael Dowling, to really try to change the narrative, the conversation, and get in front of the issue. As a trauma surgeon, I have for over 20 years cared for, unfortunately, many children who have been shot. And so, at some point, we— the opportunity here to engage with all of you through the media in this conversation and try to get— by then it's too late. The problem has happened for that child. So, what more can we do? And we really are trying to prevent firearm injuries and think about this from a public health perspective. So, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. And full disclosure, my brother is at the Wall Street Journal, Marcello Prince. I have a tremendous respect for journalists.

Great. Thanks for sharing that. And thanks for all the great work that Northwell does on this issue. I'm going to start, if it's okay, in a little bit of an atypical place. Normally, when you ask panelists about personal experiences, you wait until they're warmed up a little bit and we have more of a camaraderie. But Mary Claire, when you spoke, one of the things that immediately came to mind is, what's the personal impact of all of this. And I thought the same, Dr. Prince, as you talked about, not in these terms, but in putting kids back together. And, you know, this is one of those things that I think touches us all personally as well as professionally. And there are certain things that you carry around with you. I recall, and I still like shudder to think about it this day, to this day, years ago, I heard a Sandy Hook parent speak. Um, and look, I've been in the space for a long time, 30 years in Health and Human Services. I've seen it all, done it all. And this father spoke about kissing his daughter goodbye for the day. Um, and to this day, I can still remember that speech in the midst of thousands of speeches I've listened to. And for me, that's a reminder that, that really what's professional is also personal. Can you talk a little bit about the personal impact of gun violence? either in your own experiences or in covering these stories or in doing the work that you do day in and day out? And Mary Claire, can we start with you?

Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, if it doesn't affect you, that's a problem. I think you should definitely have an open mind and open heart to the stories of the people you're covering and let it impact you and maybe take some time to process that after the fact, 'cause these are real people, they're not numbers. And that's what a lot of my reporting is about is like, We get so desensitized because there's so many shootings. And there's not like enough time to pay attention to every single victim. But if you really just take the time to get to know the story, and then all the people affected, like the family and the friends, and even people that witnessed a shooting, you get to see like the full toll. And it's very hard. I think taking care of yourself is really important, but also understanding that you're not the story and the people most affected if they want to tell their story, you're kind of a vehicle to do that and take that seriously. I feel like it's kind of sacred.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. Abinay?

Yeah, I mean, I came to gun violence reporting not even knowing it was a beat I could select. It just kind of came by virtue of the local reporting I was doing when I was still in college, whether it was like a community garden or a ballot measure, like it always came came back to maybe this will lead to more money for these programs that will ultimately end gun violence. You know, it didn't have to be top of mind, but by virtue of what was going on, it, it was necessary, you know? So capturing that in my reporting was not necessarily me being like, oh, this is how I kind of make my mark in gun violence reporting. It was just the truth of, of my community. And I mean, you know, growing up, I don't know if everyone knows Richmond, California. It seems like we've got some East Coasters in the building, but being from there, like, I'm just used to— like gun violence was just so kind of regular, you know. I started losing, you know, people that I know, friends, et cetera, in high school. And it just felt like this is what happens to everyone who looks like me across the country, who's from this type of community. And it wasn't until I understood what underinvestment looked like, was able to report on it, talk about the decisions that lead to certain people having less, that I was able to kind of realize and then tell others like, no, this isn't normal. This isn't just a byproduct of where you choose to live. You know, it's, it's a pathology. You know, it acts like a virus. It's a public health issue. And it's not always framed that way. So I have, you know, I could go on and on about like personal kind of feelings and attachments to this beat. But yeah, I think I'll kind of end on it just being necessary for the community that I was covering and ended up having a lot of national resonance.

Great, thank you. And Dr. Prince?

Yeah, I agree with Abhinav. There's so many ways to think about this from a personal point of view. Um, um, I have many children that I have cared for that have died from gun violence. I have children that I have cared for who have found a loaded weapon and shot themselves. or been shot by a sibling unintentionally because there was an unsafe firearm in the home. And now you have a 3-year-old who shot themself or shot a sibling. I have personally had friends who committed suicide with firearms. Now that I'm in the age range as a, as a white man, which is the demographic that suffers a large amount of that kind of firearm violence, And each child that comes in— I'm the father of 3 children. And so, you know, like so much of life, my own growth and maturity and hopefully trying to be a better person, a better doctor, a better father mirrors that. So I— now I have teenagers. So I see the teenagers who come in who are Black and brown and disproportionately in terms of that. profile for a firearm injury. And I see my, my child in, in what I see before me and the tremendous tragedy that unfolds. And, um, there is a part that, uh, you as a surgeon, you compartmentalize, you cannot take it to heart at that moment. Uh, we do a lot of work to help, um, as best we can deal with the, the second victim aspect of this for the nurses, the, the caretakers involved, And I guess someday I will have a more full, you know, recounting of this aspect of my life. Certainly earlier in my life when I was a younger surgeon, there's an adrenaline rush and you see the positive. You're coming in to try to help save someone's life. I think the older I've become, I see the less that and much more just the tremendous tragedy of what a bullet can do in a second. And I feel more of the sorrow, I think, now for that part of it. And I think the other part I would just say is that often there's the element of at the scene, which is maybe what reporters often see. There's the element that the TV sensationalizes where they are in the ER with us as we're doing all this stuff. What I don't know that we talk about as much is the paralyzed 15-year-old who will never walk again, who I will then walk around and see, or my team will see every day for weeks, will get shipped off to a rehab facility, and whose life is forever changed that way. And I, you know, there are— death is a tremendous loss for any of us, but there are these other deaths where you live on, and that dream and a life that someone imagined when they held a baby which I think all of us as parents begin with, is forever gone. And I think those are the stories that— and how we latch on to those stories to make us realize there is nobody listening and there is nobody in this country that in some way has not personally been affected by gun violence. You may not appreciate it if you're able to somehow block it off, but someone you know or someone within range that you know has absolutely been directly impacted by gun violence.

So then the question really becomes, how come we're not making more progress, right? So we all see the data, we see the numbers. You know, last week we had a 6-year-old who shot a teacher fatally, not a district that was immune to gun violence in the past. We all can relate to it to a certain extent, and maybe our feelings of personal vulnerability, particularly if we have children, are raised in the wake of an incident. So we've got the data. We've got the sentiment, we get it, yet progress— and I'm talking about political progress— seems to lag. Can you all each maybe talk a little bit about why you think that is? And, and quite frankly, journalists such as the ones with us today do a great job of telling some of these stories, but we don't seem to gain any traction. We haven't hit the critical mass. How come? Let's start with you. I'll put you on the spot.

Um, I would say a big part of it becomes the desensitization to some of these incidents. It's really hard to consume tragedy 24/7, and hard to make people care. I feel like that's my job is to make people care about each individual life I write about. I also think that often when I was doing Since Parkland, people would ask me about the answers. I'm not a policymaker, I'm a reporter. But I do think it comes down to fundamentally people have different ideas about guns and, and what the problem is and how to solve the problem. And maybe the emphasis this should be, can we come together and find a solution? Doing nothing doesn't work is essentially what I've kind of settled on is like everybody bring their ideas to the table and like let's actually move forward. We're kind of in a stalemate. And I think moving past that is like where policymakers and constituents need to go.

Thank you.

Abinay?

Yeah, I will definitely agree with Mary Claire when it comes to that. stalemate, you know, in— during the summer of 2020, when all of these massive protests were happening, there were so many conversations in communities across the nation about, you know, the disparate impact that gun violence, community gun violence is having on specifically, like, usually Black and Latino boys are at the center of this conversation just because that burden is just so, you know, disproportionate with other demographics. And a lot of people started to talk seriously about community-based violence prevention. of these credible messenger programs, things that you might know from documentaries like the— that I cannot remember the name. It's like the Peacekeepers or something like that. The Interrupters, Disruptors, something. And they talked seriously about them. And I think that's been reflected in the fact that President Biden has also talked about these groups that are usually staffed by formerly incarcerated people, the super predators of the '90s who now come out and try to do good in their community. And the conversations were positive and were at a national scale that I had not seen before. But then when city Council started coming into sessions, when we started to talk about where American Rescue Plan dollars were going to go, when people were asking, well, is this money for these programs going to come from police? You really started to see people's resolves, you know, and whether they were going to have the courage it took to say, yeah, it may come from something else, or to say, yes, we're going to give an amount of money that is almost similar to a police budget to this program. that people say, oh, we haven't had enough studies done on it. Like, a lot of it, to me, it comes off as excuses. I don't know what's in necessarily politicians and their hearts and stuff, but it comes off as a delay to do something to address an issue that people still see largely as criminal, if that makes any sense. You know, they don't necessarily wanna, people don't always wanna hear like it might take cognitive behavioral therapy. You know, it might take gift cards to this person's family for groceries and not a police presence to address this, a lot of people still can't quite stomach that because gun violence, when somebody's shot, it's just such a horrific thing. It's really hard to think about giving services to the people who are most likely to participate in it, whether as a victim or a perpetrator. And that's really the core of what community-based violence prevention is. And it was supported. It sounds great. It's all about equity. But then in practice, It is just really hard for a lot of people to really get behind in terms of their, you know, state coffers and pocketbooks. And I see a lot of that hampering the expansion of these programs, them developing, and to, you know, you need money to actually get the research that will make people trust you. But if you don't have a track record that's based in research, you can't get the money, and it just, it's It's just this really convoluted cycle that I've seen play out at a national scale since the summer of 2020. And I think that's a major impediment to addressing the everyday incidents of gun violence that I usually cover.

Yeah, I think that's spot on. You know, with our program in the village of Hempstead, one of the things we quickly figured out that the violence interrupters had a really critical role. But as we began working with families and individuals, we came to understand the larger constellation of needs that had been unmet for multiple generations. You need to scale those programs up with robust wraparound services. If you begin going into communities and say, hey, we just want you to put down the guns versus we want to help you and support you in terms of getting a job and getting self-sufficient and, and being able to access childcare and all of those other services, then it's just another approach in communities that have been neglected for far too long. And so it's not only the money associated with those violence interrupters, It's also the wraparound services that have to go along with this that, again, are addressing needs that have been forgotten about or ignored for multiple generations. Jose, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit, because I think— and I have spoken to Mike Dowling about this— I think Northwell's approach for this as a public health problem begins to depoliticize and probably is an approach to try to break down that stalemate that exists between folks on either side of gun safety legislation. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you guys came up with the approach, how it's working pushing it out, and whether I'm right in saying that's an attempt to break some of the logjam that seems to be happening.

No, Jeff, I think you're spot on. That's actually where I was going to go with the comment, which is to say, I think one of the logjams— so first, I do think we've made it on the political level some progress, right? Obviously, with the legislation this past summer that was signed into effect by President Biden. But It's not as much, it's not complete, it's not all the way, it doesn't— but if we get bogged down on the Second Amendment, I think that that will create an intransigence that will not really result in us accomplishing much. And so we have very much framed it from a public health point of view. And thinking about then using that approach to use the different tools, thoughts about how you try to tackle any other public health problem. And, and when we think about it in that context, you think about things like car safety. You know, after the Eisenhower highway system was built in the 1950s to defend us against the Soviet Union landing Red Dawn in the middle of Iowa, we created a new health problem for this country of high-speed motor vehicle collisions. And the number of deaths and fatalities in the 1950s and '60s skyrocketed from cars. We responded to that from a policy, public policy point of view. People had to give up a different view of what it meant to get a car, but you can't buy a car without a seatbelt in it now. It's just not possible. So when you think about public problems, public health problems, framing it that way, thinking about it over a long-term solution. Smoking, another thing that we've come a long way that looks very different than when, you know, when I grew up in terms of what it means. Problems that you think, what are the odds that you'll ever eliminate this from our society? There's too many guns out there. We can't do anything. There's more guns than humans in, in our country. So I think there's a few aspects to our program. One is trying to very much engage community organizations like your own and others that understand that the needs and the problem look different in each community, that there's not necessarily a one solution for this. And that we need to engage them in that aspect of it. I think talking about things like firearm safety, making it a parent-to-parent conversation. So, so Northwell put out an ad which we made available to all health systems out there, and others are taking and using it, where we likened dropping off a child to a home with a tiger in the background and trying to encourage families to have that direct conversation consumer-to-consumer. around safety from a different perspective and trying to frame it that way. You'd ask about peanuts, right, if you were worried that your kid had a peanut allergy. How do you change the conversation? It's not about the Second Amendment. It's about firearm safety. It's about people who are at risk of hurting themselves or hurting somebody else, identifying them, helping them. So Northwell is also engaged with significant efforts in multiple school districts on Long Island my own as an example, in Rockville Center, with the work of Gina Marie Bounds and others to try to get mental health services closer to the point of care of need for, for kids in school who are stressed. So again, a very different phenomenon. School shootings, very different than suicide at home, very different than gang violence, interpersonal violence, domestic violence. Each of them trying to engage the different access avenues. faith-based organizations where they have a place in the different communities and in our different lives. I think I'm touching on a few different aspects, but trying to leverage media, trying to use organizations that already have been doing this work for a long time and joining into them. And as stewards of the community ourselves, because healthcare in and of itself is a different voice that has not necessarily been a part of this in the past. And so one of the things Michael Dowling has been very effective at doing is getting other CEOs from across the country to join in because we're often the largest employer in a neighborhood. So trying to address other aspects, um, you know, in New York State, we're the largest, uh, employer in the state. Leveraging that, it matters from an employee safety point of view. We've had our own employees shot in our, in our environments. How do you protect people in our spaces? There's many different parts of this that need to be engaged as an organization. And then leveraging other aspects. So I just want to add, I think other groups are thinking about other ways. So when you think about credit card transactions and the conversation that was going on with how firearms are purchased or bullets are bought, I think there are a lot of things that don't have to purely depend on the government to accomplish them. So I think to the extent that healthcare thinks about our piece, how do we function, when you get corporate infrastructure to think about their roles and what they can do and good governance there, And then you have, yes, the government and policy parts that are important to enter into the conversation. The last piece I would say is, just like any public health problem, is research. We don't know the extent of our problem until we dive in and really understand it. And because there's been such a shortage of funding to understand gun injuries, firearm injury, gun violence, really just— it's relied on a lot of disparate organizations to do the best they can. and the media to track what happens out there, really the opportunity to have an organized research framework and then use that research to inform what we do. So we have engaged in our ERs where we now ask in a pilot research project that's funded by the NIH, led by Dr. Satya and my team, to ask about the right way of asking about firearm safety. So clearly, just the way you ask the question can frame the response potentially and block you from getting to what you want to accomplish, which is firearm safety. And maybe it looks different when I ask a young person, an older person about firearm safety and what they do in their home. What's the right way to engage? So all of those different aspects, I think, are part of what we're trying to bring to bear from a public health point of view.

Great. I appreciate it. Abhinay, I want to go back to something that you said earlier in both you and Mary Claire used the word desensitization. And I want to just delve into a little bit kind of the, the aspects of this in Black and brown communities where there's a perception that gun violence— well, in some cases it's true— where gun violence is actually pretty rampant, has become an acceptable reality. I'm wondering if you think, you know, and I'm kind of setting you up here, right? I wonder if you think we respond differently to more white middle-class shootings that involve kids versus the violent gun violence in Black and brown communities?

We absolutely do. That is, I think, why I got the job at The Guardian, because I saw it playing out as I was training as a journalist. You know, what I was seeing in the community in terms of people working to create youth development programs, usually a lot of moms who had lost loved ones to gun violence coming out of their own pockets to support other families who have now been impacted by gun violence so that their kids feel loved and they don't end up retaliating. I saw all of these things going on and they just weren't a part of like local crime coverage. You know what I mean? Like you'll seeing, you know, a quick 30-minute story with some B-roll about a shooting is commonplace across the nation. And I wasn't then seeing the follow-up, you know. And I like to say, like, without local reporters who do that and keep track of these things, my job would be very much so more difficult. So I never want to disparage that like that. There's a necessary part for that type of coverage. But it also needs to come with a level of follow-up to then go back to those communities and ask, like, what do y'all do about this? How do you all usually respond? There's usually always a— there's a woman named DeWanda Joseph in Richmond, and she is the go-to if your loved one has been shot. And there are these people in every community, you know what I'm saying? And I know that to be a fact. And they never are put up as experts, you know, because they come from a place where— I like to say people assume that the folks who live in communities where gun violence happens a lot are either seen as, like, apathetic to what's going on are, like, actively, um, complicit. You know what I mean? Like, actively, like, you're training your kids to be like this. You're telling them to go carjack and do these crimes that ultimately can lead to shootings, you know? And that's— and that's just not true. You know what I mean? Like, that— or not in every single case. I don't like to speak in absolutes, but I've never seen that to be the case, you know? It's devastating every time it happens. No, I've not met somebody, an adult at least, I think— for when I talk to young people and kids, they kind of say that, you know, it's what happens. And I used to say that, and it was to protect myself, to protect my mind. Because like Mary Claire, you know, said, you can't take this on every day, especially while you're trying to develop, you know, you're trying to do your SATs. You don't— you just can't take it all in, especially if you don't have programs and these robust wraparound services that can be a counterweight. Like, you just can't take it. So when I talk to kids, there's that desensitization, and you can work through that. They're malleable. But when it comes to adults, Each and every time, it's frustrating, it's sad, it makes people angry, and that's rarely ever captured, right? The anger and the shock is always very evident when it comes to, like you mentioned, Jeff, you know, the shootings at schools and the shootings in malls. And I like to— another term I like to use is like a hierarchy of place. You know, people can see themselves at the mall with their family on a Saturday. People can see themselves you know, at Tops grocery store in Buffalo, but they can't see themselves in East Oakland at 7:00 PM cooking dinner for their kids, you know, when a bullet flies through your window, which is something that has actually happened to people that I talk to. You know, they just can't see themselves there. I think people know it's sad, but I also think that for wider swaths of the nation that don't interact with people from like the hoods across America, as another term I just like to use with affection, I'm from one of them. It's just like they don't know how to, I think, react in a way that is helpful because there's no blueprint for it. You know, we have accepted ways of dealing with things. These things happen in the hood. We've seen it in the movies. Like, what am I supposed to do about it? But when something happens in a place where you can envision yourself and your family, it be— it just spurs people into action in a different way. And it is unfortunate to see because the people in the hood don't expect it to happen to them either. You know what I'm saying? They know there's a higher likelihood and that breeds all sorts of kind of trauma and self-esteem issues, but no one accepts it as a reality that their 19-year-old, you know, is gonna be shot while bringing breakfast to his girlfriend, which is another thing that has actually happened. And that story was wrapped up in California is a rampant crime-infested place versus there's a level of devastation happening every day in communities that have faced this for a long time. And that framing difference is so key and doesn't happen enough. I see it happening more. But it is by no means the standard of how we cover gun violence in the US yet. I have hope. It's already gotten better from like the last 3 years. We finally have an agreed-upon kind of number for mass shootings. Before, if it happened in the hood and it was 3 or 4 people, it was a gang shooting. I always had issue with that. Like, a mass shooting is a mass shooting. So the fact that we've made progress there, like, I'm not gonna discount, but we have a really, really long way to go.

Yeah, agreed. Mary Claire, do you think— I see you have a point, but let me give you a question after you make your point. And the question is, do we sometimes— do you, the media— I'm going to say we, but I mean you, the media— do you sometimes think that the media sometimes glorifies shooters?

So should I make my point first?

Yeah, make your point first.

Okay, um, I was gonna say, since Parkland, that was an interesting case study in which a lot of media attention goes to mass shootings, especially if the victims are white. And we were using the Gun Violence Archive to write about everyday communities who were affected. And I could tell, like, I could see each time it was a white victim, they had a picture and they had some paragraphs about who they were. And if it was a Black victim, more often than not, there was less information, sometimes not even a name. And there was also this, like, in comment sections and anything about the shooting, there's like this criminalization going on, like talking about what they were doing at the time they got shot and like how they, you know, if they had a criminal record, and it's sort of like, okay, but this is a victim. So victims aren't always treated the same in media coverage. And you can see that if you read enough local news. That's what I was gonna say. So yeah. Glorification of shooters. So there is the nonoriety movement, I think is what it's called, when we aren't naming The perpetrator. It's, it's more about putting emphasis, I think, on the victims. And I think that's important to do. Obviously, people are going to be curious about who this person was. How did they get to this place to open fire in a mall or a school or any other public place? And I think the important thing that we can discuss about them is like, how did this happen? Like, what was their access to weapons? What was like any intervention, like preventative measures we can learn from this. But I think otherwise, talking about their manifesto or anything of the sense, like, I don't think that's as important as the victims and the people who were harmed.

Thank you, Ebony. I'm not sure if you know, but someone just removed shoes from your home behind you. Presumably, you know that person.

I do.

I do. He is my my wonderful boyfriend who hid in the room until I was done making my very long point. He had to go to work.

It was a, it was a great point. I just wanted to give you a heads up in case.

Thank you.

Jeff, can I just add just a quick thought about that? You know, fear and shame are just so powerful, right, in terms of what people are willing to say, in terms of when they connect with the media, and therefore what you're able— how you're able to tell a story. And, you know, different levels of it function in different parts. But clearly, when you, when you think about other classes of gun violence, and I think about suicide as a huge volume, that shame piece is so huge. And, and Avanay's right. I, I think there's also shameful— it's not just fear that someone's going to do something if I speak up in a community, you know, closer to where I grew up in Queens, but—

Mm-hmm.

But also there's an element of shame, right? It's not, it's not like anyone's really proud of what's going on. And And I think when you get the degrees of that might vary on the person or the event, but, but they're very powerful when you think about covering, talking about suicide or someone who's at risk or who's not doing well and might be at risk to hurt themselves or someone else, that how do we get through that? And you think about other problems we've had and tried to address, again, public health. You think about HIV/AIDS and the fear and shame and like what it took for us as a society to work through that. and the way we have those conversations now. And can we— do we need to think about how we can tell those stories, apply that to this category of public health problem?

Abinay, I want to come back to you. You know, and I think it's a question for everyone. You know, very often you hear from Second Amendment proponents that guns don't kill people, people kill people. And then we began to hear the discussions around mental health. And so for someone like me that kind of works in that space, it's— I feel somewhat split about it in that, yes, there's a lot of folks with untreated mental illness out there, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. But we also know that folks with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of crimes versus perpetrators. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys cover that and what the thinking— what you are thinking looks like related to that issue and the role of mental health in terms of gun violence?

Yeah, certainly. I think that when it comes to mental health, I mean, it's just like a really— the scape is large, so I'm trying to like narrow it down into a cohesive point. But I think we focus on access a lot of the times, you know. I think when it is those kind of conversations from Second Amendment folks to me in my coverage, when they're like, we need to focus on mental health, it rings the same as like, we need to arm teachers. Like, y'all ain't really, y'all, you know what I'm saying? Like, y'all don't really care.

You don't really mean that, right?

I don't think so. I don't think so because I'm like, you gotta talk with your pockets. And I think that, I wanna say it was the doctor who made a really great point that like, you know, the services that violence interventionists recommend you to need to be robust as well, you know? So you don't have to give your money to, or give state money necessarily to a group that you feel iffy about. Give it to a school program, right? Give it to some of these programs that are being contracted by schools and by places that it doesn't look any— there's no political risk to giving to, right? They're not staffed by Black and brown former gang members, you know what I'm saying? It's this nice teacher who is teaching like breathing exercises. I see a lot of— back to the coverage, like we try to focus on the unique and like community-bred ways that people are healing. Like a lot of— I met a woman who like decided to go and learn about hypnotherapy you know, to bring it back to people in her community in like South Central who are dealing with incredible amounts of trauma that's been built on trauma. You know, I don't think people always recognize that after a shooting is the first traumatic incident, so many things happen after that can compound that and that need to be addressed each step of the way. And I think that my role as a journalist is to expose those sorts of things. I talk to a lot of moms, particularly, who develop serious heart issues after their child is shot and killed, ones who have to take anti-seizure medication, you know, so they can drive now, you know, ones who were incredibly suicidal who are like— and then there's the shame around taking antidepressants, you know, just all of these things compound. And I don't think people know what happens, you know, like, I just don't think people understand the years and years of extra things you deal with. Like, I just did a story about holidays, you know, people who lose loved ones around the holidays. And every year it's something new. You know, every year you might think you're okay. And then here comes, you know, November 3rd, you hear Christmas music, you see things starting to go up and it's like, hey, I need to reach out to a therapist. And people don't necessarily understand that that happens. So I feel like the conversation around mental health ends up being very narrowly focused on stopping or kind of intervening with would-be the kind of lone wolf stereotype. mass shooters, and when it comes to mental health for the people who are subject to the most community gun violence, it still is kind of narrowly focused on, like, aftercare at a school, you know, like something happens in the community, you deploy some extra time for folks to go to counselors, and then it's kind of like, what else do we do? We have to kind of get back with the program. And I think that by covering the human stories of what people deal with in the months and years after a traumatic shooting incident, we can then help set an agenda on what needs to be funded, what needs to be offered by like a victim services provider in a city. You know, what sort of things should they be tapping? You know, what sort of kind of mechanisms or levers should they be pulling? What sort of questions should they be asking, knowing that years and months down the line, these issues will continue to harm people and can continue the cycle of violence if left you know, unaddressed.

Jose, did you want to build on that?

I just wanted to add, I think it bears to reflect for the mental health piece, and that mental health, as far as mental disease of any kind, as far as we know, is universally the same across the world. And yet you don't see the gun violence impact from mental health in other countries that don't have firearms to the degree that we have available. And so I don't think— yes, we need to work on all the different aspects of, as Abinay pointed out, about mental health for the person who's at risk to hurt themselves, for the people who are surviving these episodes in different ways. But I think it, you know, in the news and the media context, it requires a context, right? That we have to, when we have these conversations, to bring out individual points out of the blue without really taking a full, thoughtful approach to, yeah, yeah, mental health is important, but you know what, the rest of the world has that too, and they don't have these levels of gun violence. The number one killer of children in Great Britain is not a gun. It's in the United States. And yet Great Britain has the same language as us mostly. We can't always understand them always, but, but has the same level of mental health illness or disease. So what is that? And how do we engage in that and not, not lose track of the two things that are going on in that? when someone raises that point.

Yeah, important point. Mary Claire, you have thoughts on the mental health component of this?

Yeah, so I was thinking about how the media covers suicide. We often don't cover it unless somebody who dies by suicide also committed a crime, like killed someone else before taking their life. And so I understand why, because that's about cop— like preventing copycat acts and, I mean, protecting privacy. I do think, however, that because we're not talking about it, people aren't as aware that so many people are dying by suicide with guns. And guns as a method is just so much more fatal. I'm not a doctor, but I just, I've read some studies saying that you don't really get a chance after you pull that trigger. You don't have a moment in which somebody can save you or pump your stomach at the hospital. So I think journalists, that is an area where everyone's nervous to cause more harm. And somehow we're going to have to think about how we can cover these issues without perpetuating harm, but also acknowledging the fatality and like the problem with access to weapons for people who are suicidal.

Thank you. That's important insight. So one of the frustrations I have, I do a lot around opioids, and I struggle a little bit with some of our local journalists about they always need to include a law enforcement source in the story. And I always say to them, you don't necessarily include law enforcement sources in your breast cancer stories. And this is a public health problem. And law enforcement, yes, is an important component in terms of drug-related behaviors, but does it need to be front and center every time? I'm wondering if— how you guys feel about balanced journalism. Do you always need to include the Second Amendment proponent in the stories?

I can start. Nothing in my— or very few things in my coverage honestly necessitate that. It feels like a completely— like the community violence prevention side seldom kind of interact— for me at least, seldom interacts with the Second Amendment stuff unless, you know, someone is claiming that it's a, you know, one of these kind of law and order issues versus like a public health, you know, systemic racism issue, then sometimes I'll have to cover that. Some rarely do, but it just really doesn't come up. We know these guns a lot of the times that are used in these situations, especially in California where it's really difficult to get one legally, we usually know it's an illegal gun. So the conversation becomes more important to talk about how are they getting here, what does gun trafficking look like in these sort of places. Like, it doesn't necessarily need a Second Amendment person to say, like, well, violent criminals are getting these guns, so clearly gun laws don't work. Like, I can get that from, like, a press release or something. Like, there just hasn't been, for me, a lot of value added because so many of these folks still see this as an issue that you throw police at, you know what I'm saying? Not necessarily something that can't be addressed another way through like healthcare systems, through schools, through faith communities. Like, that is just not really a part of that conversation for a lot of the folks that I meet. But I do think you mentioned, Jeffrey, just talking about including like police sources and stuff in your gun violence coverage and in these like local crime stories. And I always like when people ask that question or start talking about it, I always say like, Like, if you have a police officer that, you know, you can get in touch with after a shooting happens at 11:00 PM, you should have, like, a well-known community organizer, you know, someone in the faith community, a chaplain, one of these well-known— there's always a well-known mom who supports people who have been impacted by gun violence. There will always be one in just about every community. And having those people on deck to not necessarily be a replacement for law enforcement, but to add that context, you know, to make it clear that, like, the people in that community find this unacceptable as well, Is something that I think every like local reporter or any reporter who covers guns should have in their toolbox. So you're not just left with like, well, police say this is bad and we're gonna catch criminals. You know what usually the police are gonna say. There are some chiefs who give really interesting insights and understand it's more of a holistic thing. But at the end of the day, police need to seem necessary to address this issue. And I don't know any officer that's gonna say this is out of our depth, like y'all keep giving us money to do this. with this and we can't, like, they're not going to say that, you know. So I feel like sometimes we put, as reporters, we put so much weight on what police say being the, like, official line and being the kind of objective truth of community gun violence. And there's just always more to be added. And it usually is going to come from somebody who doesn't work in law enforcement, isn't a city council member, that sort of thing. But kind of back to your question, when it comes to Second Amendment folks, only when I cover like ghost guns, sometimes I'll have to talk to somebody. There'll be like— but a lot of that stuff I can really just get from like lawsuits. You know, it just hasn't— there's just so many more interesting things to talk about from people who have been impacted. There's so many experts who are like on the ground dealing with this every day that if I have kind of like valuable word count, I have to be a little more judicious in the voices I include. And lately I haven't come across a Second Amendment advocate who has added, you know, kind of a level of truthful value that would help me keep this beat up to the standard that I've created for it. If I'm being honest, I hope there's no 2-way folks in the house, or if there are, let me know, and I'm happy to hear from you. But so far it's been a little bit not the best or most helpful to my coverage. Got it.

Mary Claire?

So I live in Indiana, which is a very red state, a very pro-gun state. And so I'm kind of aware of that when I go into covering these shootings. But the only time that it's ever really come up was when I— my mom literally drove me to the scene of a mass shooting and sent me there. Well, I just was too nervous to drive, but The Washington Post sent me out to be the person on the ground in Indianapolis at the FedEx warehouse where 8 people were shot. And there was a lot of discussions about the red flags. law in Indiana because it didn't work with the particular shooter. So that's the only time it's really ever come up, but I am very aware, being in the state I'm in, that people have that perspective and that's going to come up. Most of the time I'm focusing on— like, I was interviewing family members of the victims, people who were waiting to find out if their loved ones had been killed or not. I was interviewing people who were at the scene and now have trauma that they have to deal with. And so just like I being immersed in the scene is a little bit different. I don't really pull back as much in my coverage and talk about what this means politically. Um, but I know that there are other reporters and other people on the team covering that shooting that day who did and added that context to our story.

Mary Claire, just to stay with you for a second, because just something crossed my mind as you were speaking. Obviously, there's geographic differences in the way we view firearms. I'm wondering if there are generational differences in the way we view firearms. And you're a little bit younger than some of the rest of us. Can you talk a little bit about— do you think there's a generational difference in the way we view firearms?

Yeah, so I'm 22. 10 years ago was Sandy Hook, and that was kind of when I was— I was 12, and that's kind of when it like hit my consciousness that this was happening. I know that there were shootings before that, but when you're a kid, you don't really it doesn't click until one, usually one shooting. I mean, I grew up having to do the run, fight, hide, having to do the drills where you hide in your school and turn the lights off and act like somebody is going to come in and kill you. And that is really traumatizing. I think my generation has grown up with this at the forefront. And I do think that there are people who, in my generation, activists especially, who are just tired of this amount of gun violence happening in their communities and schools and tired of having to wonder if their backpacks are like bulletproof. And yeah, I think people in my generation are angry. I think they see the issue as something that is like stoppable, something that we can prevent. And they're angry most of all at the fact that 20 first graders can be slaughtered and we didn't do anything.

Jose, you know, and Mary Claire, just talking about this notion of kids growing up in an environment where You get used to these drills. It should send chills down all of our spines that that's the place that we're in, I think. Does for me anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've had my kids in lockdowns from a shooter in the Hempstead area where they— in their area for— so, you know, live lockdowns. But I've seen it through the lens of my children. I've seen it as a parent who gets the notification that your child is in lockdown and you cannot access them. And, you know, for me, there's a tremendous irony. I'm the trauma center. So like, who's come— who— what is— there's in the back of your brain somewhere is there is a small chance my own child will be the one who comes in if this doesn't go out the way, the way you hope, which is that nobody gets shot. Yeah, it's— is that really the society that we want to continue to move forward in? Are there better ways to think about how we make sure that firearms are safely secured and not accessible to create these problems.

I think the answer to that is yes, and, you know, we're all nodding in agreement. Can you just talk for a second, Jose, about your ED screenings, you know, the safety score that you're doing with kids and families around proximity to firearms and gun violence?

Yeah, you know, it's, it's, we are asking basically we're trying to study and understand whether— and this is a debated thing— should we be targeting certain individuals, putting your time, your energy, your resources into people that you think are higher risk, or should you be doing this for everybody? So we have chosen at Northwell, at the Children's Hospital and 2 other sites, to go through a universal screening approach. And what we're doing is asking, you know, just very basic questions. from the nursing team or the physician team about whether there's a firearm in the home and whether it, um, it is what, what the safety or access to it, uh, is in that setting. And, you know, very quickly, um, those conversations, you know, just as examples, uh, not the data at writ large, um, are— were so surprising because if you don't ask, you don't know. And we had You know, one sibling telling the— reporting to us that their other sibling, the older teenager, had a firearm that the parents had no idea was in the home. So you can imagine then, you know, that kind of conversation and really at a very fundamental level trying to get into a place where you can talk about safety. You know, should that person have a weapon at all? If they— if it is someone who's old enough to have a weapon, are they doing the right thing about the way it's secured in that home? And again, I'm not approaching this from a Second Amendment point of view. I'm talking about safety when we have these conversations, the same way I want to know if your kids are safe in other ways when I'm a pediatrician seeing you in the office. You know, are you using the seatbelts? Are you worried that someone's abusing you? Are you worried about all these other things that that we think children should be protected from. Are children protected adequately from a firearm in, in their environment?

Great. Thank you. So we're running low on time. I promised Jacqui that we would stop on time, but here's what I would love, you know, briefly from each of you in the 4 minutes we have left. Just one thing that you want the general public to know about gun violence, or one thing alternatively that you'd want the general public to do about gun violence. I'm going to start with you, Mary Claire.

Okay.

Um, I would like them to know the names, see the faces of the people who die every day. I know that they're not going to be on the scene like some of the reporters are. I mean, I came home once with the blood of a shooting victim on my shoes. So that's a different experience. I know they're not going to have that. Likely, and I pray they don't, but I want people to really understand the value of just one life and understand the loss that we have. I looked at the Gun Violence Archive just before I logged on, and that tracks gun violence deaths. We've already had over 1,000, and it's been 9 days in 2023. So it's— I just, I wish for that empathy, and I wish for people to have an open mind about saving these lives. lives and coming together and talking about different ways to do that, because there's not just one solution. I think it's a multifaceted issue that requires multifaceted answers, and I'm not going to have those answers as a reporter necessarily, but I will keep writing these stories until there are no stories to write, and that may be for the rest of my career.

Thank you. Ebony?

Yeah, I'm gonna piggyback off of Mary Claire and just, you know, say that be That seeing faces that might be Black or Latino might be the same faces you see in scary crime footage of carjackings and people stealing out of CVS, to see the humanity and at minimum think about the pain of the people that are left behind when you're thinking about the gun violence that I kind of COVID not kind of looking away and saying, well, that's how they decide to live over there, looking deeper to understand what things like redlining are, to understand what, like, medical racism is, environmental racism, you know, just thinking about gun violence as a symptom of a larger problem versus individual decisions, you know, like, if you weren't wearing your pants like that, you know, if your dad was in the home, if we, if we don't go down that kind of— if we can stop ourselves from going down that kind of line of what comes off to me as, like, excuse-making. then I think people will be more open to— really, I always come back to money, to having money go towards holistic efforts to prevent violence and to respond to it. And if you don't see the people who are most likely to be killed as like fully human, then it's not going to happen. So I would hope that stories like mine and what Marie Claire puts out can encourage people to see that humanity and feel the desire to do something, even when it's not a high-profile mass shooting. Great.

Thank you, Ebony. And, uh, Dr. Prince, you got the last word.

Thanks, Jeff. I'll go with the public health approach, although I completely appreciate the message. I would say the 5 L's. Uh, if you have a firearm or access, is it locked? Do you know if it's loaded? Um, are you feeling low? Does a little child Do you have access to it? And are you a learned user? Do you know what you're doing with a firearm? And I think that if I think from a very simply, briefly, things that I would want out there in the community for people to think about a firearm that way.

Thank you. You guys have been great. Mary Claire Malloy, Abinay Clayton, Dr. Jose Prince, you guys have all brought something really rich and incredible to this conversation. I also thank you for your work. These are important stories that need to be told. It's vital work. It's one of the most pressing problems that we have in our community and communities across the United States. We know the tragedy that goes along with these things that is sometimes felt for multiple generations. And so you're all part of a really important team and crusade working to make lives a little bit better for folks across the country. So thank you for everything that you do. Thanks for being a part of this. Thank you to Jaci Clement for lining up all of you and for inviting me. If you're not part of the Fair Media Council, by all means, please join as soon as possible. Otherwise, I wish you all a great rest of the day and a great rest of 2023. Maybe we finally begin to see some progress on this issue.

The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news, And working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and upcoming Fast Chat shows, check out fairmediacouncil.org. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.