Chapter 12 Descriptions of Gun Violence

Homicide—the vast majority of it from gunfire—is the leading cause of death for black males aged 15–34. Very often, both the victim and perpetrator are young black men. During the late 1960s, political assassinations, civil unrest, and race riots swept the country. African Americans, long-tired of discrimination, inequality, and police brutality, rioted in cities across the nation. Out of this discontent, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense arose in California and spread nationwide. The Panthers, who opposed gun control, policed their communities openly carrying weapons as permitted by California state law. After a lengthy period of gun rights restrictions, pro-gun rights efforts have been ascendant and in response Congress has gradually weakened gun control laws. In 1986, Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which weakened regulation, oversight, and accountability of federally licensed gun owners (Winkler, 2011). In addition to hobbling a federal agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, gun sale law violation penalties were reduced. The National Rifle Association, now a powerful lobby against gun control, is financed in large part by gun manufactures. Its most generous gun industry backer is MidwayUSA, a distributor of high-capacity magazine clips. We identified several themes in the HPTN 064 participants’ descriptions of gun violence. For one, women talked about the frequency of gun violence in their communities. They also described it as occurring very near where they were, e.g., just outside one of their windows at home. War analogies were used to describe these women’s neighborhoods. Reasons for shootings were often included in the stories, as were methods used to avoid harm.