What Gun Violence and a Dryer Have in Common
A pastor, a lawyer and a gun maker walk into the Battery...
This is what happened next when Battery Powered members packed the Parlor to hear from Pastor Michael McBride, Robyn Thomas and Kai Kloepfer on how we can elevate gun safety to a public health issue and save lives. Here are the highlights.
The cold, hard facts
Our experts wasted no time expanding our view of gun violence in the U.S. 300 million guns. 33,000 gun deaths each year, two-thirds of them suicide. Young men of color are 21x more likely to die from gunfire than their white male counterparts.
But they also radiated hope. There are proven solutions. Organizations have overcome political and social obstacles to stop the violence.
Violence is like a spin cycle
Gun homicides are concentrated in relatively few urban cities. “And it’s not like the whole city is on fire,” said Pastor Michael McBride. Less than half of 1% of an urban community’s population is causing the vast majority of the gun violence.”
Pastor Mike urged us to look at the human side of this tragedy – young men living an epidemic of historical and systemic trauma from a lifetime of poverty, abuse, and insecurity. “Trauma adds up, hurt people hurt other people” and we “cannot arrest or police our way out of this struggle.”
Instead Pastor Mike preached “investing in life” through community peacemakers and social support networks for individuals caught up in the cycle of urban violence. Likening it to a dryer’s spin cycle, he said, “if you open the dryer during the spin cycle, the clothes are going to fly out. If you interrupt the cycle of violence, these people will opt out of violence.”
A laboratory of results
Robyn Thomas spoke about the “laboratory of results we’re creating here in California” as a model for expanding effective laws and policies in other states.
For example, waiting periods on gun purchases (California has a 10-day waiting period) have been shown to tremendously reduce gun suicides, which make up only 5% of suicide attempts, but 50% of all suicide deaths. “When 70% of suicide attempts take place within one hour of the person contemplating it, a waiting period of even one or three days could save thousands of lives.”
Technology’s role
Battery Powered member Ron Conway “had an epiphany during a moment of silence the day of the Sandy Hook shooting: we have to get the tech industry involved in solving this issue.” He’s been working on that ever since, launching the Smart Tech Challenge to support innovators working on user authenticated firearms. He introduced our panelist Kai Kloepfer as the “Mark Zuckerberg of guns”.
Kai began his work on a smart gun at the age of 15 as a science fair project and now, at the ripe old age of 20, has a patent on the technology and a start up company developing prototypes for a fingerprint-authenticated firearm. “Technology has a place in the solution,” Kai told us, particularly in preventing youth suicide and accidental shootings.
A solvable problem
“Gun violence is not an intractable issue,” Pastor Mike told us. “We know what works, we just need the resources and political will to do it.”
The pioneering Ceasefire model – a violence interruption and community investment model – has shown up to 70% reduction in shootings in places like Boston and Richmond. “But you have to invest the dollars closer to those caught in the cycle of violence … in public health departments, not just hiring more police.”
Robyn spoke to the importance of changing the discourse on gun violence from an entrenched, polarizing issue to a solvable problem. Kai put it simply: “There are lots of smart people working on solutions, and there’s not just one.”
Want to hear more from smart people working on real solutions? Our fall theme on Gun Safety continues on October 17th with Organization Night. Come hear from our 12 finalist organizations about their work to prevent gun violence and make communities safer. RSVP here!
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