mass shootings

Once, the Fearful Response to a School Shooting was Novel

by Sarah Churchwell

The United States has reached the point where multiple generations of families are traumatized by school shootings. 

Texas Mall Shooting Raises Question: What Makes a Person of Color Embrace Far-Right Extremism?

NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Daniel Martinez HoSang, a professor at Yale University, about what attracts people of color to far-right violent movements rife with bigotry.

It's Time to Be Honest About the Partisan Nature of Gun Culture

by Heather Cox Richardson

"The national free-for-all in which we have 120 guns for every 100 people... is deeply tied to the political ideology of today’s Republican Party. It comes from the rise of Movement Conservatism under Ronald Reagan."

The Highland Park Horrors Won't Break the Gun Cult's Mythic Hold on America

by Thomas Lecaque and J.L. Tomlin

The myth of the armed citizen has little to do with the American revolution or the vision of the founders. It's all about the right's desire for a revolution to come. 

Our Gruesome Politics are Destroying the Cultural Ideal of Childhood

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

The romantic ideal of children as innocents deserving of the protection of adults has long been a rallying cry for politicians. After two pandemic years and more school shootings, are they even pretending to care anymore? 

The Unity that Follows Tragedy Shouldn't Obscure Buffalo's History of Racism

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The invented image of a "City of Good Neighbors" has been a rhetorical one-way street in Buffalo, with calls for unity gaining more traction than calls for justice or equality. 

Matthew McConaughey Goes Home

by John Fea

As a movie fan, the author has never been moved by the Uvalde, Texas native. But as a Christian, he found the actor's public solidarity with the victims and their families compelling and honest. 

Monica Muñoz Martinez on the Border, Violence, and Uvalde

Michelle Garcia, journalist, essayist, Soros Equality Fellow and Dobie Paisano writer-in-residence, and Monica Muñoz Martinez, associate professor of history at the University of Texas-Austin, talk about the border security apparatus at Uvalde, and the history of violence and discrimination at the South Texas and Mexican border.

The Debate Renews: Show Images Victims of Mass Killings in the Press?

by Jelani Cobb

Mamie Till's decision to place her son's open casket in the national media shone a light on Jim Crow atrocities, but it's unclear that showing the victims of gun massacres – even children – is making any difference. Photos of hundreds of lynching victims only encouraged their killers.

Publicizing Pictures of Dead Children Will Backfire on Gun Control Advocates

by John Temple

"Maybe one day some editors will have a picture of a dead child even more powerful than the one we published that will finally make a difference."

Other Countries Figured Out How to Reduce Gun Massacres

Australia, Britain and Canada took decisive and successful steps to reduce mass shootings since the 1990s. 

Buffalo Shooting Centuries in Making, Say Historians of Slavery and Reconstruction

Manisha Sinha and Bernard Powers link the mass killing to longstanding repression of Black political power, and the justification of violence for that purpose. 

Politics as Usual Won't Stop Mass Shootings – A Discussion with Gun Culture Scholar Pat Blanchfield

Our society has developed and institutionalized a set of public rituals of disbelief and incredulity around mass shootings that direct anger and pain away from organizing and let politicians off the hook. 

Letters From an American: March 23, 2021

by Heather Cox Richardson

Beginning in the 1970s, the National Rifle Assocaition evolved into a political lobbying organization increasingly enmeshed with the conservative movement. Two recent mass shootings are a tribute to the organization's success. Congratulations. 

96 Minutes

An oral history by witnesses and survivors of Charles Whitman's mass shooting at the University of Texas on August 1, 1966. 

How Congress Passed an Assault Weapons Ban in 1994

With Congress prepared to again clash over gun safety, in the aftermath of a murderous August, the circuitous route to passage taken by the assault weapons ban 25 years ago illustrates just how perfectly the legislative stars must align for contentious gun measures to become law. 

We Must Stop Valuing Guns More Than People

by Greg Bailey

Fom garlic festivals to shopping malls, from schools and churches and synagogues, there is a darkness in the soul of America. 

Political Corruption Underwrites America’s Gun-Control Nightmare

by Thom Hartmann

The story of the rich politician whose extreme corruption inspired the 17th Amendment--and how the Citizens United ruling allows money to rule politics once again. 

We need to stop focusing on the mental health of mass shooters

by Deborah Doroshow

Mentally ill Americans are already stigmatized — and wrongly so.

America’s Forgotten Pogroms

by David Greenberg

In the 1940s, a right-wing group terrorized Jewish communities in Boston and New York while authorities looked the other way. Could it happen again?