The last time I went to visit family in 2015, grandmother pointed out every shooting to her memory in the past year, “the house next to this one had a couple fighting and the woman got shot,” “The arcade became a bar and has had two shootings this year,” “Right there, we saw a carjacking by gunpoint.” She seemed unphased by the amount of violence near their home. She and my grandfather, Nonno, had become jaded from the long-lasting violence near them. All I could think while being in Kankakee was, “get away.” Ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks rushed past the house every few minutes, meaning something terrible must have happened too often.
We must empower them as agents of their community to reduce violence by offering care in a manner that values participants’ dignity, eliminates shame, humiliation, and stigma. Our mantra is “Work on the Heart, Change the Mind & Skill the Hands” Heart- how they see life by building trust and strong relationships, , “Head” – Empower with knowledge, and Hand – self- sufficiency empowerment to give back while supporting and building upon their skills. ”. By empowering the highest risk individuals in reducing the number of shootings that occur in Roseland and the acceptability of violence among the highest risk community members, we can change the violent
Douglasville, a small town in Georgia, held a town hall meeting on how to survive in dangerous situations. This meeting attracted many worried people who felt that they were vulnerable and clueless on how to protect themselves due to the most recent attacks in Paris, a Planned Parenthood clinic, and a massacre of employees in California. An Army Veteran led the meeting with a self defense lecture, a pep talk, and videos that played out scenarios and tips. He believes that with all the negativity this period has endured, citizens should always have a game plan and an idea on what to do in any given situation. At the meeting, they handed out packets with guidelines promoted by the F.B.I and Department of Homeland Security stating that “such incidents
Anyone who values the lives of other humans so little that he or she is willing and make the decision to kill, is the true scum of the Earth. They deserve no fame and no recognition for what they did. Now putting their faces on the news does have it benefits too, letting everyone know that there will be punishment, and his or her face can be a target at the gun range. So both sides have some good points, but I believe Sheriff John Hanlin is right when he didn’t put the name and face up of the Oregon shooter, he believes that keeping the identity hidden will help cut down on his or her glorification. Instead we should promote heroes and put them in the newspapers. The Oregon shooting saw one such example when army veteran, Chris Mintz, charged the shooter and was shoot seven times
Whenever they occur, active shooter situations grip media headlines and create new discussions into the ways in which we as a nation can prevent them in the future. The U.S. Department of Justice (n.d.) defines an active shooter as, “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” (para.1). The reason we see more active threat incidents in the news is not due to the media, but because there has been an increasing trend of such events. A study of 160 active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013 has shown an upward trend in the instances of active shooters; from a mean of 6.4 incidents in the first seven years of the study to a mean of 16.4 in the last
In this article, “At least 26 dead in shooting at Texas church,” Dakin Andone, Kaylee Hartung, and Darran Simon discuss the tragic shooting that took place in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The shooter was a 26-year-old named Devin Patrick Kelley. He was a member of the US Air Force, but received a bad conduct discharge in 2014 and served a year in prison for assault on his wife and son. After the shooting, Kelley was found dead in his vehicle. It is still unclear whether or not he was shot by a neighbor or inflicted the injury on himself. 26 people died in this shooting and another 20 were injured. The ages of the victims range from 5 to 72 years old. This town is described as a place where “everybody knows everybody,” (Andone
Over the last decade or so, the United States of America has been shaken by an epidemic of terrifying mass shootings, devastating slayings of unexpecting victims, and unnerving annihilations of the innocent. There is no specific target, no explicitly sought-out group, nor definite individual. From a classroom of first-graders, to a crowded movie theatre, to a U.S. Naval yard, the location seems at most, random, other than that it is almost always a public place. The perpetrators responsible for these horrific murders also vary, and often surprise those who thought they knew them. However, while the occurrences of mass shootings are unpredictable and always shocking, most have one thing in
Active shootings are occuring more frequently affecting many communities and families in the United States. These acts of random violence has set many people on edge afraid of where and when another attack will happen next. Attacks are not just happening at schools, they have occured at airports, theaters, and even churches. This is why trainings such as the one in Dublin have came about to allow residents the ability to protect themselves wherever they are at, in case of an attack.
According to the Toronto Police Service, in 2016 alone there has been an astonishing 190 incidents involving gun violence, with 39 of them resulting in death. This has been a 50% increase from the previous year. So how must we combat this incessant and utterly unnecessary bloodshed on the streets of Toronto? Well, first we must make a distinction that guns do not kill people, but rather, people kill people. This highlights that gun violence is not primarily due to the weapon itself, but the social conditions that instigate such altercations. Therefore, we must make an effort to increase the communal services available to those situated in areas with a history of gun violence. Particularly, these
I can remember the day that my cousin Andrew got shot. Andrew wasn’t really my cousin. Andrew was my babysitter. When Andrew would babysit me he would always tell his friends to bring their siblings over for me to have someone to play with and company for him. Andrew was well known; everyone knew not to mess with him or get on his bad side because his family had a bad reputation, but Andrew was really a good guy. He had all A’s, wasn’t really a fighter, just an overall guy who lived the street life. He always told me that he never wanted to be in the streets and do the things he did for money, just to be successful and go to college. Andrew had a brother name Andre around my age and sister a little younger, so we were all close.
This shooting changed my view on how life can change in an instant, as I watched a small town community join together in mourning. For me, it was not just the loss of five lives, it was the loss of my sense of safety. The blanket of “small-town living” being ripped away, feeling completely exposed to the wrath of the world. Yet the problem I see is not the tragedy itself, it is what people are doing about it. Whether it be posting hashtags, protesting, or spiraling into depression, it just wasn’t right. But what did I do? At first I was lost, and I kept asking myself: “What can I do?”
In this article domestic violence and gun rights are the main topics, especially in Louisiana. This article tells the story of a domestic violence situation, when a man named Dennis barged into a home killing a woman named Donna and then his son. Then moving on to find his daughter-in-law who would jump out of the second story window in order to escape the killer; however, Dennis would make his way down stairs firing off rounds that would strike the two year old four times killing him as the two fled. As the article continues it explains that Louisiana has one of the higher rates of domestic violence crimes committed in the United States, along with how Louisiana is planning to help the victims and decrease the crime rate involving domestic
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Imagine someone enters the place you love most, a place you feel safe in comes in and disrupts the place by going ballistic and shooting, not just towards anonymous people but to those you consider family. This violence affects my life by making my the turn every time I hear a door open or considering that anyone surrounding me can be someone armed ready to harm. At any moment, time, or place anyone
James drummed his fingertips on the worn dining table impatiently. His nails, left jagged from years of bad biting habits exacerbated by acute anxiety, made a dull tap as they met the wood. The beat reached a crescendo as his father added herbs to the bolognaise sauce and the scent of basil grabbed at the air.
I stepped into the shoes of a person living in a city clearly in despair. The neighborhoods of Detroit were lined with abandoned stores and boarded-up houses as far as I could see. Many of the homes were charred or burned to the ground. One of our destinations – a church with a school attached – featured bars on the windows and razor-wire fencing. The eerie absence of normal human activity was made even more frightening by the occasional sight of someone carrying a gun. Just when I thought I'd seen the worst devastation a community could endure, I was struck by the fact that the safety glass I was asked to remove