Guns are now the leading cause of death among American children and teens.
That's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ranking guns ahead of car crashes, other injuries, and diseases. That fact was punctuated last week when a shooter opened fire at a school in Nashville killing six people, three of whom were children.
As of mid-February, The Gun Violence Archive had counted 81 mass shootings in the country since the beginning of 2023. The math averages out to more than one per day, with the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 defining a mass killing as three or more killings in a single incident.
While mass shootings make up a small percentage of the gun violence in the U.S., the number is on the rise. Other types of gun violence, including homicides and suicides involving guns, had reached their highest rates in three decades, in 2021.
Christina Carron is a reporter for the Well section of The New York Times, and she led a reporting project to find out how gun violence has affected the daily lives of Americans. More than 600 readers answered questions such as whether they had been directly affected by gun violence and how it shaped their everyday rituals.
We'll discuss that reporting Tuesday on the "Sound of Ideas."
Also during this hour, we'll learn about this year's winners of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, with manager Karen Long, and meet one of the award winners.
We'll also feature a discussion that was part of the "Brains on Tap" event at Bell Tower Brewing about how bicycles are being used to treat Parkinson's disease.
Guests:
-Christina Caron, Reporter, The New York Times
-Karen Long, Manager, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
-Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Journalist, Author & Winner, Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award
-Jeff St. Clair, Host, Ideasteam Public Media
-Angela Ridgel, PhD, Associate Director, Brain Health Research Institute, Kent State University
-Aaesf Shaikh, MD, PhD, Neurologist, University Hospitals
