Gunshots rang out as St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones was discussing gun violence prevention. She didn’t flinch
“My son and I go to sleep to the lullaby of gunshots within the distance each evening,” Jones stated, responding to a query on whether or not she felt protected. “It is part of my life now and that should not be.”
Earlier than the information convention, Jones and Kansas Metropolis Mayor Quinton Lucas have been collaborating in a roundtable on how gun violence is affecting their cities.
“We discovered a powerful affiliation between the Covid-19 pandemic timeframe and a rise in gun violence within the U.S. in comparison with the pre-pandemic interval,” wrote the authors from Penn State School of Drugs.
The researchers checked out each day police studies which corresponded to gun-related accidents and deaths from February 1, 2019, to March 31, 2021. These studies got here from all 50 states and from Washington, DC, and have been obtained by way of the Gun Violence Archive, an unbiased, not-for-profit group.
And Missouri was one of many 28 states the examine recognized as having a considerably increased danger of gun violence throughout the pandemic.
The mayors on Friday joined survivors of gun violence within the St. Louis neighborhood of Dutchtown, which implements neighborhood violence interruption applications, and toured the neighborhood to look at these efforts, the information launch stated.
“Advocates and survivors emphasised the necessity to deal with root causes of crime and deal with gun violence like the general public well being disaster it’s,” the assertion stated. “Their level was emphasised additional within the press convention afterwards, when neither mayor flinched as gunshots rang out within the distance.”
CNN’s Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.
