Fighting Street Gun Violence as if It Were a Contagion

Hawaii is one of the states with strongest gun laws and lowest gun death rates. A study found that states with stricter gun control laws, ammo regulation, background checks, and reporting of lost firearms had the lowest injury rates.

The U.S. continues to experience mass shootings, and many Americans deny that tightening gun laws will help. However, countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway have reduced gun violence through stricter regulations.

Little attention is given to black men who are victims of gun violence but survive and need help. An organization in California is mobilizing all gun-violence victims to voice their opinion on criminal justice reform and support for victims.

Colombia has attempted to decrease murder and homicide rates by setting up curfews for teenagers, forcing bars to close earlier in the evening, and creating gun laws to prevent the carrying of weapons. As a result of this epidemiological, data-driven approach, along with other governmental factors, the homicide rate has decreased significantly in most of the cities in which it was implemented.

The city of Trenton is trying to reduce gun violence. In Philadelphia, the Healing Hurt People is a hospital-based violence intervention program that employs trauma counselors to help patients suffering from gun violence.

Many guns recovered from crimes in Chicago, were purchased in its suburbs. A Chicago coalition of anti-violence activists used this to file a lawsuit against Lyons, leading to stricter gun laws in the town.

Richmond, California ranked among the highest homicide rates in the country. The city created the Office of Neighborhood Safety to engage the community in the effort to curb gun violence and prevent homicides. ONS works directly with the young people who are at risk and have succeeded in reducing the homicide rate.

A program in Philadelphia is pioneering new ways to treat the urban wounded. By seeing it as PTSD, and not pointing fingers, the city is using mental health tools to decrease violence and heal communities.

In Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, an organization called Save Our Streets Crown Heights (S.O.S.) is taking steps to disrupt violence. The organization is modeled after Chicago's violence interrupters, which employ people from the neighborhood to connect with those most at-risk and disrupt conflicts and retalitory violence.

Researchers set out to measure the efficacy of a program called Becoming a Man, which seems to be proving that, for all the billions of dollars spent on complicated anti-crime programs, something as simple and cheap as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy seems more effective in reducing crime (and, not unrelated, keeping teenagers in school).