Back in May 2023, The Trace launched The Trajectory, a newsletter focused on potential gun violence solutions. (Subscribe here if you haven’t already.) The inaugural edition focused on an issue that’s plagued gun violence researchers and prevention workers for years: a lack of quickly accessible data on fatal shootings, and of basic data on nonfatal shootings. Trajectory writer Chip Brownlee explained the problem, and posed a question: What would gun violence prevention look like if the CDC could track shootings like a virus?
Last week, the Biden administration took steps toward answering that question. On Thursday, when President Joe Biden signed a new executive order on gun violence, the CDC announced improvements to its data on gun deaths and injuries. The agency will provide the data faster and at a more local level. The CDC’s move was among a slew of announcements from federal agencies and departments — what Biden has called a “whole-of-government” approach to gun violence. Plans for safe storage, community violence intervention, background checks, and veteran suicide prevention were all included.
“The purpose is to drive and coordinate the government in a nationwide effort to reduce gun violence in America,” Biden said as he prepared to sign the order. “Over the past year, we’ve made tremendous progress.”
From The Trace
Biden Is Deploying a ‘Whole-of-Government’ Approach to Gun Violence Prevention: A slew of federal agencies and departments announced moves to counter gun violence last week, in addition to a new executive order.
Chicago’s Gun Violence Has Gotten Deadlier. Here’s What That Means for Residents: Survivors living with the ripple effects of the city’s gun deaths have ideas about how to help.
What to Know Today
During the vice presidential debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that his teenage son had witnessed a shooting during a volleyball game at a community center. In March, Walz told MPR News about the shooting, which took place in St. Paul. [NPR]
Provisional data from the CDC indicates that the suicide rate in the U.S. remained the same from 2022 to 2023 — meaning that the numbers are still at about the highest level in the nation’s history. That’s not necessarily bad news: Suicides have been rising for nearly two decades, so “a leveling off of any increase in suicide is cautiously promising news,” said a Columbia University public health professor. Experts say that one of the contributing factors to suicide is the availability of guns. [Associated Press]
The National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund is spending seven figures on ads slamming U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, as “soft on crime.” The TV and streaming spots quote Brown’s opponent, GOP nominee and businessman Bernie Moreno, as saying “there will be no stronger defender of our Second Amendment rights than me.” [Politico]
In the 2020 election cycle, Democrats focused their public safety messaging on reducing police violence and reforming the criminal legal system, rather than on addressing violent crime. That’s not the case this time around — but instead of taking a “tough on crime” tack, Democrats are highlighting their work on funding community violence intervention and reducing mass incarceration. [Vox]
The Office of the Washington State Auditor is investigating the loss of 23 guns reported missing by Seattle Police in August. The firearms haven’t been accounted for since 2017, and the discovery of the missing weapons highlights ongoing vulnerabilities with the department’s gun storage. [KUOW]
The man accused of attempting to kill former President Donald Trump in Florida last month pleaded not guilty to his assassination charges. Ryan Routh allegedly aimed a rifle through a chain-link fence bordering Trump’s West Palm Beach club while the former president golfed. [USA TODAY]
Police agencies in Kansas and Missouri paid thousands of dollars to Street Cop Training, a private company that’s been found to teach “unjustifiably harassing and unconstitutional” tactics, and whose instructors have troubling law enforcement backgrounds, including accusations of excessive force and recklessly firing a weapon. The departments stopped paying the company after a scathing investigation of it by New Jersey’s comptroller was released in December 2023. [KCUR]
Celsa Snead joined The Mentoring Center — an Oakland, California, organization that provides life coaching to people in the criminal legal system — after losing two family members to gun violence “at the hands of a young person.” Now the center’s executive director, Snead has seen firsthand how mentorship helps to prevent violence. “A lot of crime has to do with emotional responses,” Snead said. “We help folks transform themselves.” [The Oaklandside]
Tuesday marked seven years since 58 people were killed at a country music festival in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. City officials this week vowed to complete a permanent memorial to the victims of the attack by October 1, 2027. [Associated Press]
Data Point
More than 49,300 — the number of suicides reported in the U.S. in 2023. The number could grow as death investigations wrap up. In 2022, just under 49,500 suicides were reported; guns were involved in about 55 percent of all suicides that year. [Associated Press]
Non Sequitur
Allrecipes, America’s Most Unruly Cooking Web Site: “I have more cookbooks than my bookshelves can support, including at least a dozen that could’ve proffered something reliable and extensively fussed over. I ignored them and Googled ‘apple pie recipe.’” [The New Yorker]