Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Gun Shops Work With Doctors To Prevent Suicide By Firearm

    In Colorado, where 80 percent of gun deaths are suicides, a coalition of gun shop owners, public health researchers and doctors works to raise awareness of suicide and the role of firearms in those deaths. Staff in gun shops are trained to look for signs of mental distress in customers and participating shops have pamphlets on suicide prevention. The coalition also helps train medical professionals about guns so they can speak to patients with authority.

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  • Firearms And Dementia: How Do You Convince A Loved One To Give Up Their Guns?

    With the rate of dementia expected to double in the next 20 years and estimates that nearly half the people over age 65 own guns, advocates are working to get dementia patients and their families to focus on gun safety. Like driving, guns can represent independence so creating a non-threatening way to talk about removing guns is key. One suggestion by advocates is to create a version of an advanced directive specifically for guns that can include transferring them to a trusted caretaker.

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  • I looked for a state that's taking gun violence seriously. I found Massachusetts.

    Massachusetts' strict gun-licensing laws make gun buyers jump through many hoops before they can buy and possess a firearm, part of a broader set of policies and factors that give the state the lowest gun death rate in the U.S. A permit-to-purchase law treats guns much like cars, with license and registration required. Police can deny gun permits even when applicants pass all background checks and meet other requirements. All guns, even those sold in private transactions, must be registered with the state and are subject to confiscation under the state's red-flag law for disarming dangerous people.

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  • In Sacramento, trying to stop a killing before it happens

    Sacramento is implementing a program developed in 2011 in Richmond, Calif., that showed success curtailing gun violence among young men caught up in gangs or potential shootings. They get numerous social services and mentoring from men previously incarcerated. Stipends are a controversial part of the program, but a review of the Richmond program in 2015 found most participants were still alive and had not suffered a gun related injury, or been arrested for gun-related activity.

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  • Melt Thy Rifles Into Garden Tools

    Raw Tools, is a nonprofit that converts guns into garden tools. The organization was created by Michael Martin, a pastor who wanted to do something after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that resulted in the death 20 children and six educators. “You’re taking a weapon of death and turning it into the complete opposite, which is life.”

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  • What is the public health approach to violence — and does it work?

    Public health approaches to violence, in which different sectors and agencies treat it as a contagious disease, has gained support across the world and has taken many forms. This approach relies on data collection to inform policy and devise services, as well as routine checks on the effectiveness of interventions and scaling the ones that work. While the public health approach to violence has saved costs and reduced police-recorded violence, there are ethical concerns about the widespread data gathering.

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  • Operation Ceasefire: Inside a Community's Radical Approach to Gang Violence

    Operation Ceasefire, known as the “Boston miracle,” abandoned traditional policing’s responses to street violence, which caused severe racial tensions, and created a community coalition that used a carrot-and-stick model of targeting people at risk of suffering or committing violence, threatening them with punishment but offering instead social services if they put their guns down. After dramatically reducing violence in Boston in the early 1990s, it spread nationwide. But this highly targeted enforcement method can fail when it isn’t done by the book or sustained over a long period.

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  • The city curing violence like a disease

    The Cure Violence program in Chicago uses former gang members as "violence interrupters" to intervene in imminent gun violence incidents, a public-health approach that treats violence like a communicable disease that can be contained before it spreads. Neighborhoods using the approach have experienced drops in violence. London officials, seeing that the program had similar positive effects when used by Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit, are starting a program to respond to high rates of knife crimes. But the amount they are investing is too small, one criminologist warns.

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  • Gun sellers emerge as unlikely ally in fight against suicides

    A Utah shooting range is part of a growing voluntary movement among gun shop owners and firearm sellers focuses on educating staff about warning signs of suicide in an effort to reduce the number of people using guns to kill themselves. One effort, the Gun Shop Project, has spread to 10 states and there are similar partnerships in about 10 more. Experts say suicide attempts with firearms usually end in death and restricting access to guns in those situations can be very effective.

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  • Jolted

    When it’s discovered that someone is planning a mass shooting, what are the possible responses? Can those individuals be prosecuted? How do states balance personal liberty and public safety? These are all questions that residents of Fair Haven, Vermont had to grapple with when plans of a school shooting were found. From better threat assessments, to gun control legislation, to considering teen’s experiences in today’s world, the issues and corresponding responses prove challenging reconcile.

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