Time and again, we are heartbroken by the news of another mass shooting. Part of our healing must be the conviction that we will do everything in our power to keep these tragedies from happening in a nation that continues to face a pandemic of gun violence. It's not only the high-profile mass shootings that we must work to prevent, but also the daily death-by-guns that claims more than 30,000 lives every year. We know that these deaths are a predictable outcome of our country’s lack of political will to make a change and an underinvestment in prevention approaches that work. Through a public health approach that focuses on drawing from evidence and addressing the factors that increase or decrease the risk of gun violence, particularly in communities that are disproportionately impacted WE CAN SAVE LIVES!!!!!!!
Gun safety: Reduce the imminent risk of lethality through sensible gun laws and a culture of safety.
1. Sensible gun laws: Reduce easy access to dangerous weapons.
2. Establish a culture of gun safety.
- Reduce firearm access to youth and individuals who are at risk of harming themselves or others.
- Hold the gun industry accountable and ensure there is adequate oversight over the marketing and sales of guns and ammunition.
- Engage responsible gun dealers and owners in solutions.
- Insist on mandatory training and licensing for owners.
- Require safe and secure gun storage.
Mass shootings are happening almost weekly, instilling fear, hopelessness, and hypervigilance in individuals and communities. Learn how the trauma impacts individual survivors, professionals who care for the victims, and areas left to suffer the impact. Some are taking action to unite and heal in their grief.
When describing a social problem, people often focus on numbers: How many people in a city are experiencing homelessness? What is the crime rate in a neighborhood? What percentage of a population experiences poverty?
But numbers only tell part of the story. Social problems are complex, and an understanding of them cannot be gained through quantitative data alone. Such is the case with gun violence. Every time there is a shooting—particularly a mass shooting—the first piece of information often shared is the number of people killed or wounded. But the trauma caused by gun violence ripples out far beyond the victims and the more social workers know about these effects, the better they can respond to this trauma, particularly in communities where gun violence is an everyday occurrence.
“Gun violence is way more than a body count,” says Sara Moore Kerai, MA, LPC, a counselor in private practice in Washington, DC. “It creates a sense of hopelessness. People believe that no one cares about what’s happening.”
Wide-Ranging Effects
Trauma caused by gun violence is so destructive because it affects not only the victims but also their friends, family members, neighborhoods, and communities. “Gun violence is a systemic trauma in that it permeates and impacts the social and interpersonal systems of those shot,” says Charles Figley, PhD, a professor of social work and director of the Traumatology Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans.
The mental health effects of gun violence can include anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Consider the following:
• Gun violence survivors interviewed by Francis (2018) reported increased fear and vigilance; some were so fearful that they did not want to leave their homes.
• Within a group of urban adolescent girls assessed at an adolescent medicine clinic, two-thirds of those exposed to violence—including gun violence—met PTSD symptom criteria (Horowitz, Weine, & Jekel, 1995).
• Sullivan and Weiss (2017) found that women who were survivors of intimate partner violence were more likely to have more severe symptoms of PTSD if they had been threatened with a firearm by their intimate partners or feared that their intimate partners would use a firearm against them.
• Nearly one-third of parents in the Washington, DC, area surveyed after the 2002 “Beltway Sniper” attacks said that their children experienced at least one psychological distress symptom related to the shootings (Self-Brown, Massetti, Chen, & Schulden, 2011).
Fear leads many survivors of gun violence to avoid situations where they might be reminded of the violence, says Julieta Macias, LCSW-C, PhD, who has worked with such clients at her private practice in Rockville, MD. These clients can experience agitation and sleep disturbances, react in fear toward anyone who resembles perpetrators, and worry that perpetrators are going to seek revenge. To cope, these clients might avoid spending time in the area where the violence occurred or even move from the area and limit social activities. “It’s about constricting their experience of the world in order to manage their fears and anxieties,” Macias says.
While secondary trauma is often associated with those closest to gun violence surviors, it affects others—from first responders assisting the scene of gun violence to health care workers who see the horrific damage gun violence causes, says Chad Dion Lassiter, MSW, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. “There are a lot of people walking around with undiagnosed and unacknowledged PTSD,” Lassiter says.
Trauma’s impact can be magnified if a person is repeatedly exposed to gun violence. “Most often, gun violence survivors are similar to war veterans who must adapt to being exposed to danger and skilled at staying safe,” Figley says. Examples of such adaptive behaviors include learning how to interpret noises, faces, and body language for possible threats. In these ways, gun violence survivors learn to accommodate the violence in their lives, but that comes at the cost of their psychosocial, medical, and mental health, Figley says.
In communities where gun violence is common, residents can experience hopelessness and a sense that the violence is just part of everyday life. Francis (2018) describes how one gun violence survivor recalled an incident where she had seen a boy get shot in the face and reported that the boy later died: “There was no outward emotion exhibited and she simply stated it as a fact of daily life. It seemed to be expected. She believed the violence is always present and people learn to adapt.” Exacerbating the problem is that people living in such communities often also face barriers such as poverty, lack of education, and minimal job prospects that limit their options for the future, Francis says.
In addition, mental health problems can affect a gun violence survivor’s physical healing. A study of adults hospitalized for firearm-related injury found that those with preexisting depression had an increased risk of discharge to a care facility or in-hospital mortality (Kalesan & Galea, 2015).
Although trauma related to gun violence is usually associated with the victims and their social networks, there also is trauma related to perpetrators, says Natalie Kroovand Hipple, PhD, an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University. With incarceration comes trauma for perpetrators’ family members—for example, women who are left to care for children on their own and children who can only see a parent by visiting a prison. And when perpetrators are released back into the community, they return having experienced the trauma of incarceration.
Perhaps the most disturbing traumatic effect of gun violence is that it can lead to more violence. Feeling unsafe, expecting to be victimized, and doubting that police will protect them, people in high-violence communities may choose to carry firearms for protection, says Jesenia Pizarro, PhD, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. “Firearms are a prime facilitator of violence, and [a firearm] is a tool that increases the odds of violence,” Pizarro says. “It becomes a never-ending cycle. Violence begets more violence.”
There are myriad factors that can affect an individual’s risk of being exposed to gun violence and how the individual reacts to that violence, Figley says. Risk factors include exposure to violence and living in high-crime areas, while protective factors including having the ability to self-regulate, having a social support system, and taking care of physical health (e.g., getting enough sleep, eating nutritious foods). “People are more resilient when they are running on all cylinders,” Figley says.
Mass Shootings and Trauma
There is an elephant in the room when talking about trauma and gun violence: The trauma experienced by survivors of mass shootings often attracts far more attention than that experienced by residents of urban communities, even though mass shootings are much rarer. According to the Pew Research Center, victims of mass shootings account for a small fraction of gun-related murders in the United States (Gramlich, 2019). “We give a lot of attention to [mass shootings], but with the everyday shootings that happen in urban areas, there doesn’t seem to be the same outcry and urgency,” Lassiter says.
A combination of factors leads to this discrepancy, Lassiter says. For example, mass shootings are sensationalized in the media. And race plays a role as well; people tend to be moved emotionally by the suffering of mass shooting victims and survivors, but are not as sympathetic to people in communities of color affected by gun violence.
The focus on mass shootings can exacerbate feelings of fear in the general public about events that are still unlikely to affect them. A survey of adults conducted in August 2019 on behalf of the American Psychological Association found that nearly 80% of adults said they experience stress as a result of the possibility of a mass shooting. One-third of adults said fear of a mass shooting prevents them from going to certain places or events, and one-fourth said they had changed how they live their lives because of fear of a mass shooting (American Psychological Association, 2019).
Healing the Wounds
Addressing the trauma caused by gun violence requires a two-pronged approach of helping people who have experienced trauma while also working to reduce gun violence. Lassiter believes social workers are especially well suited to these dual tasks because they understand how different issues related to gun violence intersect at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. “It makes all the sense in the world for social workers to be involved in this work,”.
There are a variety of tools clinicians can use when working with gun violence survivors, including cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and cognitive processing therapy. It is also important to teach clients to use mindfulness, meditation, and other techniques to calm the physiological responses—such as rapid heart rate and shallow breathing—that might arise when recalling the trauma or being in a place that reminds them of the trauma.
The term “trauma-informed care” has become popular among mental health professionals and health care workers to describe the approach they use in working with people who have experienced trauma. However, social workers need to reflect on whether their practice really reflects tenets of trauma-responsive care such as collaboration and focusing on strengths, says Elizabeth Power, MEd, founder of the Trauma-Informed Academy and an adjunct instructor in psychiatry at Georgetown University. “You can believe all those things, but you might not always be doing all those things,” Power says.
A challenge when trying to address the trauma experienced by people exposed to gun violence is that such violence has often become such a regular part of their lives that they don’t see the need for mental health services or they feel stigmatized by reaching out for support.
Furthermore, giving people the chance to share their stories does not have to be limited to counseling settings, says Mary Francis, RN, MSN, PhD, an assistant professor of nursing at Widener University in Chester, PA. Francis also is a trauma nurse practitioner at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, NJ, where she interviewed 16 gun violence survivors about their experiences and found them eager to talk. “They really wanted their story to be told,” Francis says. “We should not assume that they do not want to tell us. Their input is invaluable.”
In addition to treating trauma, social workers can take steps to help prevent gun violence. They should advocate for more resources to be used toward helping people—particularly children—learn conflict resolution and emotional regulation skills so they have better tools to deal with violence
Working to improve relationships between communities and police is vital so people in high-violence communities feel that they can trust the police to protect them rather than resorting to carrying firearms.
Finally, social workers can get involved in political action to advocate for gun control and other policies to address poverty, racism, economic injustice, and other factors that contribute to gun violence. Kerai, for example, is a volunteer for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grassroots organization focused on promoting gun safety and violence prevention.
She suggests social workers advocate for policies proven to reduce gun deaths, such as background checks on all gun sales, red flag laws to temporarily remove guns from people who pose a danger to themselves or others, and safe-storage laws to prevent children from unintentionally shooting themselves or others.
Even though gun violence seems like an unsolvable problem, there is something each person can do to help those traumatized by it, Power says. “It’s not all lost,” Power says. “There are definitely things you can do. You might not save everyone, but you can help some. It’s not an inevitable thing.”
Background
Bridget grew up in Washington, D.C. and was raised by her grandparents. Her father was not in her life and she rarely saw her mother. She grew up studying ballet and playing soccer.
She was teased when she was younger and she had low self-esteem. Her first year of high school was a success but then Bridget's life went downhill. Briget's grandmother explains that Bridget began hanging out with the wrong people in D.C. so she was happy when she decided to move to Atlanta with her mother. Bridget became a model when she got to Atlanta. She featured in Ghanaian hip-life artiste, Criss Waddle’s Biegya Song. Shortly before her murder she told a friend she was pregnant, but her autopsy showed that she was not.
Bridget was in an abusive relationship. On February 13 she had called the police for being hit in the mouth by her then ex-partner. „I don't want you guys to go to the house because he said if I call the police he'll kill me,“ Bridget says on the 911 recording. He was older, spent some time in and out of jail. And there were claims from friends and the community, from others, that he was perhaps part of an underground organization, a gang. Her grandmother sent her money a day before her murder, because she needed a place to stay. She wanted to not stay with her ex.
Bridget advertised as an escort on Backpage. Friends recall she was in desperate need of money. On the night of her murder she was seen by a witness at a Shell gas station sitting inside her car. Along with her were two unidentified men, and although the vehicle was later confirmed to be hers, she wasn’t the one behind the wheel. It’s suspected that she was being held against her will at that time. According to that same witness, Bridget didn’t look overly distraught as she sat in the passenger seat, but she did seem “extremely nervous.”
Bridget was shot seven times. She had multiple gunshot wounds to her back, buttocks and legs. The person that killed Bridget used ammo called Radically Invasive Projectile aka R.I.P. bullets. The bullets enter soft targets, closed, and then explode into sharp fingers. She was found naked with dogs circling her dead body in an Atlanta Park. Investigators described her wounds as „overkill“. The person that shot her stood over her body and kept firing.
In June 2018 Christopher Spencer, age 28, who was already in prison serving out a life sentence for one of five killings that he’s been linked to, could be linked to Bridget`s murder, through a Sprite bottle found near her car and matching DNA. On October 24, 2016, Spencer and another man, Vernon Beamon, had abducted, robbed, bound and then shot to death a Stone Mountain couple, police said. The two were arrested and convicted and Spencer’s DNA was now entered into a state-maintained database. In March 2018 Spencer was one of 11 people police charged in connection with the gang-related killings of Tatiyana Coates, age 11, and her brother Daveon, age 15, during a home invasion.
