NASW Social Work Talks - EP 111: Ending our nation's gun violence epidemic - a Brady campaign update

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Gun violence remains a serious public health issue in the United States. About 46,000 Americans died due to gun violence in 2023, with half using guns to die by suicide. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is a partner with Brady, a campaign to end our nation's gun violence epidemic. In this episode of NASW's Social Work Talks podcast, NASW Policy Advisor Mel Wilson talks to Kelly Sampson, senior counsel and director of Racial Justice at Brady, and Colleen Creighton, senior director of End Family Fire at Brady, to get the latest news on the organization's campaign.

Hi, my name is Mel Wilson, and I am the Senior Policy Advisor for NASW, and I want to welcome everyone to this podcast. The podcast is on gun violence in America. A quick statistic on gun violence in 2023, approximately 46,000 people were killed through gun violence, and actually half of those, over half of those individuals were killed by suicide. So this is a major issue, obviously, and a big public health issue. With that in mind, I want to introduce Colleen Crichton. She's a senior director for the End Family Fire, and Kelly Sampson, who's a senior counsel and director for racial justice

with the Brady campaign to prevent gun violence. Both of them are going to talk about where Brady is with these issues and some of the actions that Brady's involved with. A little more information, NASW is a partner with Brady and has been so for the last at least five years. So we're committed to this issue too. Having said that, ladies, it's your game. Hi, everyone. As Mel said, my name is Kelly Sampson and I'm an attorney at Brady and I also work on policy issues at the intersection of race and gun violence. And I'm sure that this audience, many of you have probably seen directly the consequences of our gun violence epidemic that we're experiencing in this country. And you probably know all too well that a lot of the gun violence that

impacts people that you're working with results from a lot of structural factors. And that's something that we've been doing a lot of work to both build a consensus around and then also bill policies that treat gun violence as a preventable public health issue that has identifiable causes and identifiable solutions. Because gun violence, especially gun homicide, does disproportionately impact Black and brown people in the country. And for too long, for many decades, that's been treated as something that has to do with the people suffering rather than the conditions and the structures and the factors that lead to gun violence prevention. But what we know, sorry, at least to gun violence, but what we know is that gun violence is predictable. We can

see where it comes from. We know what happens and how guns get into communities. And so a lot of what we're doing is really pushing against the narrative of inevitability and really treating gun violence as a public health solution. So that's a lot of what I'll be talking about today. And I'm going to pass it to Colleen. There we go. Hi, everybody. My name is Colleen Creighton. I'm Senior Director of N Family Fire for Brady. I love the NASW. I've spent a lot of time in my previous role with the American Association of Suicidology. We worked a lot on the issue of suicide. I've now moved over to gun violence. So it's exciting that I get to keep working with NASW again. What I primarily do here at Brady is talk about the role of safe storage of firearms that

that plays we lose like you said mel earlier most of the gun violence deaths across the country are suicides but yet nobody ever talks about though um and this is something that uh it affects every state every community every age every region around the country but no one is talking about it so that's why i'm excited to have the conversation is we there's a quick and easy intersection it's a quick and easy call to action you know we don't demonize gun owners we don't get political we don't get partisan on my side uh we just say if you have a gun just help reduce the number of lives lost to gun violence by just locking your gun up so keeping it safe from theft keeping it safe from kids getting a hold of it or keeping it safe from someone in

crisis who accesses it when they shouldn't i i guess and i think that we we can uh sort of get into some a little bit of dialogue and one of my should say my it should it's the organization's concerned and the nations is around the the issue of um urban violence which has been constant for decades and um recently as everybody knows there's been a increase although that i think that's dropped off some uh and i guess kelly i guess my question is what are some of the remedies besides the issue of the underlying issues but on that day-to-day basis uh it used to be and i'll say used to be because i used to be a direct service worker as far as mental health uh in in the community so i pretty much know uh what's going on but so it used to be talked about in

terms of gangs and other things i think there's a cultural thing going on when i say culture just the idea of having guns as part of that young culture. So, is Brady has a specific program or some ideas of where we need to go with this? Yeah. There's kind of two ways that we think about it, not only at Brady, but in the gun violence prevention movement writ large. So, when it comes to gun violence, especially as you're talking about sort of this entrenched cycle of gun violence that we see in a lot of cities. There's two aspects to it. We think of sort of the demand side of the firearm. So people, as you said, who have, in many cases, valid fears about their safety because they see that they're at risk. They know people who have been killed by

gun violence, and so they feel like they need a gun to be safe. And so that's sort of the demand side. And there's a lot of work there really at the community level with credible messengers and people who know often exactly what people are going through because they've been in that lifestyle themselves. And so you see a lot of community violence intervention programs, hospital-based intervention programs. And really what those are doing is bringing a public health approach to effectively the disease of gun violence and really working at people at the level of trauma, at the level of fear, at the level of behavioral change, and really helping people to interrupt cycles of violence. And Brady partners with organizations that do that. We

support funding for that. But a lot of the work that we do is really on the other side, which is the supply side. So guns don't grow on trees. They don't fall from the sky most of the time with ghost guns and 3D printed guns, which is a whole other thing. Aside, guns start out in a lawful manufacturer's factory, and then they go to the distributor and they go to a dealer. And all along that chain, those guns are identifiable and they're supposed to be sold in accordance with federal and state law. But what happens is we know that a lot of times guns are diverted from that legal market to an illegal market, and it doesn't happen by accident. Most of the time it happens through recklessness or negligence, or even in some cases, sort of a willful disregard.

And so a lot of the work that we do focuses, number one, on stemming the flow of what's known as crime guns into communities. And the way that we can do that is we know that there are a lot of gun dealers in this country, like a lot more than I ever realized before I started working in this field. The vast majority of those gun dealers, however you feel about guns, don't sell a single gun used in crime in a year. So what that means is a small majority of gun dealers that do sell not only one crime gun, but in many cases, many crime guns in a given year should raise some alarm bells with federal and state authorities who are responsible to say there's something going on at this shop that is leading guns to get into the illegal market and it's hurting people. And so our crime guns program really works at that level to identify and help identify who exactly the crime gun dealers are and then support or work with or in some cases compel state and federal authorities to focus their very limited resources and their limited by intention on investigating and holding those crime gun dealers accountable. So that's one way that we do that. And the theory there is that if people know that they're going to be accountable for selling guns in a way that is negligent and irresponsible, that they will either reform or they will no longer be in the business. Along those lines, we also bring a legal approach to that, and it basically models the same theories that you see in the opioid cases or tobacco cases, where those industries that act negligently and irresponsibly are held to account, and it sends a signal to the rest of the industry that we're watching you and you need to follow the law. So we do that. And then obviously, there's also a legislative aspect to this. And what we do there is really work with state, local, and in many cases, federal legislators to create evidence-based laws that will work on the supply side to reduce guns that don't have any other purpose but death and injury.

And so we advocate for laws that do everything from working with a type of weapon, so things like assault weapons or accessories to weapons, such as auto seers that can turn weapons into fully automatic, to working with laws that really regulate who can get a weapon or how people can get a weapon. Because we know that in many cases, simply having things like requirements around licensing can really help to prevent gun crime. So I said a lot, but in short, a lot of the solutions that we're working on on the supply side have to do with the flow of guns into communities, and then also the types of guns that are available, and then creating more regulations around how people obtain guns. And they all are supposed to work together. There's not one magic solution that we work on. We really need all these things working together. I did, as you were talking, have a thought on that, if I may sort of shift it just a little bit to that street level and the issues around family and environment. Do you guys get into that at all with Brady, or do you basically say that the broader community and government needs to sort of step more firmly in that?

But is that some area that you guys cover? um if i'm understanding your question correctly if as to whether brady sort of works at the level of some of the more like underlying factors i would say we don't directly work on those sorts of issues we support organizations that do and we definitely advocate for funding um that's a lot of what we're doing as well i think where we address it and what we see our role as is we really want to come alongside organizations that do that community-based work and really try as much as we can to amplify and push back against stereotypes and really continue to beat the drum around the fact that this is a public health issue that is not inevitable, that

it is not something that can't change. and so our organization given that we have a national platform and a pretty high profile and ability to sort of set an agenda what we really try to do is elevate that as much as we can so that the organizations that do that work get the funding that they need and the support that they need because gun violence is kind of in a lot of ways a really weird issue because if someone has cancer yes there may be a few fringe people that say it's their fault because they ate cheetos or something like that. But by and large, people give them empathy and concern. And with gun violence, especially as it impacts Black and Brown communities, a lot of times people don't

give them any sort of empathy because they almost think that it's like their fault. It's true. And so when we go into these spaces, a lot of times that's what we're up against is people who sort of think like, well, it's inevitable. It's going to happen anyway. It's those people's fault so we're trying to support organizations that do that work by making sure that the policy solutions and everything that we advocate for really brings a public health lens to what's happening because we know um that this is not inevitable it's definitely something that um is sort of a result of a lot of different structural factors and maybe that's something But it's also personal.

I think the other thing to note is that a large majority of the staff for Brady have been impacted by gun violence in some fashion. Some are lost survivors. Some have been injured by gun violence. Some have lost family and friends to gun violence. And the way we're structured at Brady as well is that we have chapters throughout the country. So it's not just an organization based in D.C. where, you know, you see our logo and our brand. We're actually comprised of those in communities throughout the country as well. So when we bring the issues forward, we're not just talking from straight policy lens.

It's more of a this is the Brady family throughout the country. And these are our concerns for us as well. As you spoke, Colleen, I know in your introduction, you talked a lot about that suicide piece and your involvement in the past. and that certainly intersects with a lot of things that were NESW is and the behavior health, mental health pieces. Could you just elaborate as much as you can? Because it's such a big part of gun violence

and it doesn't get discussed enough in my life. No. And so 80%, I'm just going to read a stat right here. 80% of the firearms suicides by kids 18 and younger involved a gun belonging to a family member. And then the firearm suicide rate among children and teens has increased by 66% over the past decade. So what we're seeing is unprecedented. You're seeing the numbers going up. Nobody's talking about it. And then in a lot of different communities too, there's a stigma attached to it, to suicide. And now you're combining, we're afraid to talk

about guns. We're afraid to talk about suicide. Now you're asking us to combine these two issues to one it's a lot of folks that they don't know how to tackle the issue um so one of the things that brady is you know especially what we're doing right here is having that conversation don't be afraid to ask is there a gun in the home if someone's in christ because a lot of times we think of it just as an injury prevention for someone themselves studies show you're more likely to be injured by the gun in your home than you are to be able to stop an intruder from entering your home because there's this misperception out there that i need a gun for safety. Someone's going to come barging through my door. And this is the security system that I

have. When in reality, you're more likely someone's going to wake up in the middle of the night. A child is going to find it. You may have someone in your family that's suffering through crisis. You may have, unfortunately, we work with a lot of parents who their kids are going to play at other folks' homes, especially during the summer, a play date, things like that. And they're finding a gun that was stored in, I saw, like a shoebox or in a shelf or in the sofa or in a car. We're seeing a lot more upticks for kids finding guns in cars. So all we're saying is, you know, one way to prevent, put time and space. If someone's in crisis, that's okay. There's a lot of systems out there. There's a lot of ways to get them help,

but putting time and space between someone and a gun is going to save their life. Yeah, there's a statistic out there, and I could refer to issues of ethnicity and race, but there's one that's out there on suicide, dealing with older white men being a very unique population that has a very high rate of suicides. And I may have read it somewhere through Brady or through some other source. Could you address that as a vulnerable population? It is. Yes. And well, there's a caveat here, too, because this is something when I was with the American Association of Suicidology, we worked a lot on, thanks to Jonathan Singer, Dr. Jonathan Singer, who I know NASW knows pretty well.

So this was when I led the organization, Jonathan was my my board president. So we worked closely on this issue because while statistically, yes, older white males are the ones that are taking their lives more often. By saying that, by putting that that information out there, what you're neglecting is spikes in various populations throughout the country. I just read an article today in Native Health is what they're scared about is they're seeing significant spikes in Native Americans taking their own life. We have black youth. We have Hispanic young girls. There's a lot of spikes that just by concentrating on that number that, you know, here's the mass critical mass numbers individuals taking their own life. We're neglecting a lot of other populations out there. So that's why, so yes, it is a key population, but I want us to be a lot more diligent in ensuring that, you know, we're saving lives in all areas of the country.

Right. And for Kelly and Colleen, given what you said, and it being a public health context, then we're talking about various groups. What are some of the plans in order to, as far as communicating, because obviously when you want to get out and do prevention, you have to talk to that group and understand from where they're coming from. are the communication strategies that Grady may vary in even around policies that they use varying approaches to those communities who are not immediately seen as being vulnerable. So I think it's a multi-pronged approach, right? So right now what we're dealing with, so the White House today put out something on safe storage, and that's where we're seeing a lot of, you know suicide prevention is through safe storage of firearms because guns are the leading cause of the weapon or the the method used secondary is faith-based leadership around the country there's a lot of effort there through um SAMHSA and a lot of the efforts there through

Brandon Johnson what they've done is a tremendous job in bringing all different faith leaders together and saying there's a national day of prayer and on that day I believe it's November where everyone comes together throughout their house of worship, and they have the discussion about suicide and kind of de-stigmatizing it. Then, like Kelly mentioned earlier, there's a lot of groups, national levels, associations. So working with your group, NASW, right, to get throughout the country, but also on the community level, there's a lot of groups doing phenomenal work, getting into youth centers, talking to, you know, new parents, doctors are another avenue, like ranchers, doctors, all these different groups, really working with those

in those communities to destigmatize it and to have the conversation. And this is my last question. You guys can use some time, maybe talk a little bit more if you want. But it does, again, go to messaging. and the question in urban communities that I guess is a general question of the receptivity to messages. I would imagine that the Centers for Disease Control, that you guys may be working with them or there may be a lot of good literature out there, but in urban communities, do you feel that there is a receptivity to prevention messages? And going back to safe

storage in the same question. The ideas that say storage vary by community. So I'll ask Kelly and then Colleen, you can pick up, but just that focus. Yeah. I mean, I think when it comes to like gun violence prevention, especially around the homicide, there's a lot of support and obviously communities aren't a monolith, but when we look at polling, for example, among Americans who express support for gun violence prevention policies, or even the notion of gun violence is a problem, you definitely will see higher rates of support around both of those from communities that are most impacted, which makes sense because people are seeing and they're experiencing on a day-to-day basis in many cases, gun violence or fears about gun violence. And a lot of communities

especially will say like, we have been saying for decades that this is a problem. You know, we've been marching, we've been working with our churches and our faith communities and asking for people to take gun violence prevention seriously. And as more and more people in the United States are impacted, it's now become really salient for communities that perhaps didn't see themselves impacted. But among the Black and brown communities, there's a lot of people who will say like, yes, this is a huge issue. It's my main issue. It's something I think about a lot with the acknowledgement that it's not a monolith, of course, and that there are people with diverging views. But I would say, generally speaking, absolutely.

And from my perspective, so we do a lot with public education and messaging, thanks to our partnership with the Ad Council, who are kind of the nation's leaders in getting messaging out through, we've all heard of their campaigns. One of the things that we do, though, is in any program or campaign that we launch, it goes to at least like 12 months at least of research. So we're getting right now, we've done a lot with just the issue as a whole. And now what we're digging in over the next two years is really pulling out segment populations and saying, how can we better address your needs specifically? And one of the ways we're doing that is with the Hispanic campaign that we're going to run on safe storage, because we realized there

was nothing out there in Spanish, which is an oversight completely across the country. And so we didn't just say, hey, we're going to translate everything. What we did is we did quantitative, qualitative focus groups. We spent months just really researching Hispanic gun ownership. What message resonates? What do you need? Where are there gaps? Where can we help fill? And taking all that information, we'll launch a campaign later this year, specifically targeting that. Alongside that, we realized if you look at gun ownership and gun purchasing over the past year or past three years, we're seeing rises in specific, we're seeing Asian American, we're seeing, we're also seeing black gun owners at a higher rate as well. We obviously,

our messaging is not going to resonate. It's not just a universal, here's a message for everybody. So we're spending a couple of years really digging into, again, you know, what is, what does the landscape look like? What are the needs? What needs aren't being met? Where are there gaps? What can we fill and utilizing all that to roll out campaigns over the next few years as well so like so the question is it's not one message fits all obviously we can't do that um and so that's the great part about kind of the the width and breadth and everything that brady has under its umbrella that we're able to do this before we end this this really great uh discussion that what opportunity for both of you to maybe just close out with some of your own messages and some of the things you

may want groups like NASW or other groups to work with you around the partnerships or however you want to take it. So I'll start with Colleen and then, Nicole, you can chime in. Well, I'm going to be obvious and blatant with this one, but we have an End Family Fire campaign. So it's pretty easy. We don't charge. There's no cost to any of this. We have all the assets. We have all the metrics to show that this is impactful and the message resonates. So visit nfamilyfire.org, look at our campaigns. We'd love to get them out to more communities. We can help you with like how to get it placed, how to get the radio PSA placed. And other than that, it's not political. So don't let kind of any, sometimes they're afraid to talk about guns. They're thinking, I don't want to step into an argument with somebody that's furthest from the case. This is something we need everybody to talk about, feel comfortable talking about and bringing forward in their community. Yeah, I was just going to kind of piggyback on what Colleen said in terms of the politics of this. Yes, I work on legislation. But I do think something that unfortunately has been true

increasingly in recent years is that more and more Americans are finding themselves directly impacted. And there's a lot of rhetoric on that you may see in the media around this being a blue issue, or it's not a red issue, or whatever the case may be. But when you actually talk to people, because gun violence has unfortunately become so pervasive, a lot of those tropes don't apply. And a lot of people really care. And that crosses whether people own guns or don't own guns, whether they live in the country or the city, if they're old or young. People may have different approaches, but people do genuinely care and they want their families to be safe. And so there are opportunities to have conversations that cross, like Colleen was saying, a lot of

the EFF work, that is directly working with founders. And so this idea that it's kind of a binary, I think when you actually talk to real people, it doesn't really apply for the majority of people. People really do care, and they want their family to be safe. And so there's opportunities there to kind of build a coalition around a lot of common sense ideas that people can all agree on. Great. Mark, one comment as we close is just, I guess, a concern I've always had is we deal with mass killings, and they're tragic, and we can't diminish the tragedy, them, especially the school-based killings. But sadly, it overshadows what we spent this time talking about, that the numbers, it's a relatively small part of the deaths and many, many injuries.

People don't talk about what guns do to the body in terms of injuries. You may not die, but man, it really destroys lives. And that so somehow collectively, we need to be able to balance that communication and let folks know that the tragedy of mass killings is something that everyone needs to care about, but it should not overshadow the gravity of the whole picture of gun violence. Seems like maybe there's some reduction if you look at the data of the number or the rate of gun deaths, but you have to hold your breath on that and see whether that trend holds. But I'm just going to take a really collective effort. NESW certainly is here to continue the partnership with you all, and we'll get the word out to our chapters. But it

is a community collective effort, and there has to be that buy-in to understand how serious this is. So, Colleen, Kelly, thanks a lot for joining us, and that's pretty much it. Thank you again. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.