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Gun Violence is a Racial Justice Issue [1]
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Date: 2024-08
Concentrated firearm homicide is tied closely to urban poverty, which is tied to inequality, segregation, and racism.
Gun violence disparities often result from structural and economic issues. For example, white men commit the majority of mass shootings and when faced with “poverty, unemployment, and single-parent households, they are more likely to commit homicide and other violent crimes than black men confronting a similar set of structural impediments,” according to various studies.
The same cities that experience disproportionate gun homicide – Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Newark, St. Louis, Chicago – all have large, segregated Black communities with a history of disinvestment. This segregation and disinvestment didn’t happen by accident. “Deindustrialization, discriminatory housing practices, and white flight from neighborhoods as Black families moved in pushed large numbers of Black people into poverty, perpetuating economic inequalities between white and Black people.”
Today, approximately 70% of Black people living in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods are the descendants of the same families who lived there in the 1960s.
Even within cities, gun homicide is concentrated in specific areas. Yolanda Mitchell, Ph.D and Tiffany Bromfield found that Philadelphia’s safest police district, which is about 85% White had no gun homicide in 2014, while Philadelphia’s most violent district, which is about 90% Black, had 40 gun deaths that same year. Research shows that violence may concentrate in certain neighborhoods because violence begets more violence. People who are victims of violence and do not sufficiently recover are more likely to commit violence themselves. In addition to the obvious physical damage, gun violence also hurts mental health, academic attainment, economic prospects, social networks, and reputation.
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[1] Url:
https://www.bradyunited.org/resources/issues/gun-violence-is-a-racial-justice-issue
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