Trauma and Gun Violence

The Facts

• The majority of gun deaths are suicides. In 2021, Pew Research Center reported that suicides comprised more than half of all gun violence in the United States. 
• In the last year, the CDC reports that 22% of American students have seriously considered suicide. 
• Over the past 10 years, suicides among youth have increased by more than 50%. 

What We Often Say

• People often say someone “committed suicide.” The active verb implies a level of culpability and direct action, when a person may not have been of rational mind to make that decision. It also implies a level of culpability, similar to the way we would associate guilt with “committing a crime.” 
• It is common to say a suicide was either “successful” or “unsuccessful” to distinguish between a suicide attempt in which a person died or survived. However, using the word “success” implies a feeling of accomplishment or celebration, which is not an appropriate connotation when the outcome is death. 
• We often call someone who may be contemplating suicide as “suicidal” when they may be experiencing suicidality or suicidal ideation. To say they are suicidal equates their personality with a mental illness. 
• Gun rights advocates may say that “people who have a gun would be able to complete the suicide in another way,” so taking away the gun doesn’t change anything. However, studies show that a suicide attempt is 90% more likely to be fatal with a firearm, compared to 4% of all other suicide attempts. 
• Those who are concerned with suicide rates may want to refer to the problem as an “epidemic.” However, this word may over-dramatize the scale of the problem. This is important because sensationalizing suicide can lead to suicide contagion, a phenomenon  defined by the DART Center for Journalism & Trauma as when “exposure to suicide through a social group or the media can, in some circumstances, result in an increase in suicides and suicidal behaviors, especially amongst young people.” 

What We Should Say

• Rather than saying someone “committed suicide,” say someone “died by suicide.” This phrasing is more passive and puts the blame on the act (suicide) rather than on the person. 
• Refer to the suicide as a “fatal” or “non-fatal” suicide attempt versus a “successful” or “unsuccessful” suicide attempt. This is more factually accurate and removes an inappropriate emotional association. 
• Understand the distinction between suicide and suicidality. Instead of saying someone is “suicidal” you can refer to them as “someone experiencing suicidality.” This clarifies suicidality as a condition versus a personality trait. The same can be true of referring to anyone living with mental illness or a specific illness rather than “someone who is mentally ill.” Specific to gun ownership, you can also say “people who are prohibited from having guns due to mental illness.” 
• Rather than referring to high rates of suicide as an “epidemic,” use terms like “increasing rates” and be sure to use short, factual coverage to reduce contagion. 
• Be mindful of how much death coverage already exists on the front page of the newspaper and be sure to include resources for those struggling with mental illness in the story. 
• Be sure to frame the story as a public health issue to raise awareness. The DART Center asks the question: “is the tone of your coverage factual or is it sensational and grieving?”
• Check out more resources on on how to report on suicide here. 

The Facts

• According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “on average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.”
• Nearly 20% of domestic violence involves a weapon, and the risk of homicide increases by 500% when a gun is present. 
• Between 2010 and 2017, the number of intimate partner homicides committed with firearms increased by more than 25% even though homicides committed with other weapons decreased.

What We Often Say

• Because intimate partner violence happens at home, we often refer to it as an isolated event. However, these statistics above demonstrate the widespread pattern of this behavior. Without drawing these connections, we may further isolate survivors. 
• It can be easy to stereotype who falls into the categories of “victim” and “abuser” in intimate partner violence. While there are overwhelming statistics that demonstrate that women are the primary victims of intimate partner violence, it is important not to use words like this unless a person harmed by the violence identifies as a victim. Applying this label instead of words like “survivor” may conjure an unwanted sense of pity. Further, labeling someone as an abuser becomes a personality trait and ignores the fact that the person could have been harmed themselves. 
• It can be tempting to tell the stories you hear from others. However, without their explicit permission to tell the story in the way they want it to be told, our work to utilize human stories may inadvertently cause retraumatization. Letting survivors tell their stories in their own words is critical. 
• The DART Center summarizes well how journalists and community members alike “blame the victim in the aftermath of a crime. ‘Why didn’t she leave him?’ people wonder, questioning the victims’ choices.” It isn’t up to us as policy communicators or community members to question the intimate relationship of two individuals. Rather, our focus should be on the support we can provide to individuals experiencing abuse.

What We Should Say

• While we should be mindful not to stereotype any perpetrator of abuse in our reporting, we also can’t overshadow the gendered nature of this particular type of gun violence. In the United States, 85% of domestic violence victims identify as female. 
• Shift from using words passed down from the criminal justice system like victim and abuser to transformative justice phrases like “survivor” or “person experiencing harm” and “person perpetrating harm or abuse” rather than “abuser.” These phrases indicate that the state of abuse can change for both the person experiencing and the person perpetrating harm.
• Women, and everyone experiencing domestic violence, don’t need your pity. They need you to ask what they need. Don’t write about them as if they need your saving. Don’t blame them for their action or inaction in an abusive situation. Let them lead their story. 

The Facts

• Homicides are when a person kills another. 43% of gun deaths in the United States are homicides, according to Pew Research Center in 2021.
• Importantly, there is an intersection between homicides and the previous topics of domestic violence and suicide. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, nearly 75% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner, and more than 90% of those victims are female.  
• Importantly, one in twenty homicides are a police shooting. Every year, police kill more than 1,000 Americans and 96% of police killings are done with a firearm.
• On average, each homicide victim is survived by seven to ten family members. 

What We Often Say

• Media stories also refer to “urban, everyday, or gang violence” in a way that places blame on particular groups of people. This Trace article shows the impact of such a narrative on cities’ most disinvested individuals. 
• According to the Initiative for Better Gun Violence Reporting, words like “urban” can “often be perceived as racist code words.” 
• This coded language often associates a degree of guilt for particular groups of people, especially men of color. This ignores the fact that Black men are disproportionately impacted by homicide violence, at a rate of 12 times higher than Native Americans and Latinos, 15 times greater than white Americans and 16 times higher than Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. 

What We Should Say

• Instead of using phrases like “urban violence,” “everyday violence,” or “gang violence,” speak about “community gun violence” or “daily gun violence” or “group violence.” 

• When speaking specifically of an officer-involved shooting, it is best practice to acknowledge the disproportionate impact these shootings have on Black and Brown communities in the United States by calling them “shootings by police” or “shootings that disproportionately impact Black Americans.” 
• Similarly, when we speak about communities that may experience higher levels of community violence, we speak about the disinvestment in that community that has led to root causes of violence by saying “under-resourced” rather than “at-risk” or “vulnerable.” This places the judgment on the system failing to provide resources rather than making a personality claim on the person experiencing that underinvestment. 
• The DART Center defines this as an issue of bias; “bias often shapes the language used to describe gun violence, especially in the context of low-income communities and communities of color. Avoid anonymous, clinical language that dehumanizes victims, subtly shifts blame onto them or implies a sense of inevitability – for example, ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ This type of language is especially problematic if journalists use a more sympathetic framing in the context of whiter or wealthier neighborhoods where gun violence is less likely to be a problem.”
• Instead of saying someone has been “lost to gun violence” we say they have been “shot or killed by guns” or that their “lives have been cut short by gun violence.” This clarifies that gun violence isn’t a passive act; it is an active decision. 

The Facts

• A mass shooting is usually defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as “any incident at which at least four people are murdered with a gun.” 
• Since 1999, when the world marked the decades of mass shootings after a horrific mass shooting at Columbine High School, there have been more than 380 school shootings and thousands more mass shootings. 
• While these mass shootings have been terrible, they are not the majority of gun deaths. Rather, mass shootings only comprise about 1% of the annual gun violence in the United States

What We Often Say

• It’s tempting to understand the “why” for a horrific event like a mass shooting. Yet, mass shootings, much like all gun violence, are complex, and there is no single reason for each event. Reducing a mass shooting to simple explanations, such as “the out-of-control male with a gun, the crazy person who one day just comes unglued,” may misinterpret the real causes or simply complex issues in search of simple policy solutions. Dave Cullen articulates that in the aftermath of mass shootings, everyone asks “why” or “what can we do” and the media naively and simplistically reduces the solutions to “guns” or “mental health.” We should be more specific, he argues, and diminish the coverage of shooters, sensationalizing the tragedies of mass shootings.
• Don’t refer to a year from a horrific event like a mass shooting as an “anniversary” that implies a spirit of celebration. Rather, refer to it as a “year-mark.” 

What We Should Say

• There is no common practical or ethical journalistic practice on how to address mass shooters in reporting, but common practice is only to use the shooter’s name when needed to provide factual evidence or information. This reduces the risk of imitation, or the possibility that people could imitate the actions of a mass shooter. Read more on why this is important to survivors here. 
• Follow these tips on communicating specifically with younger readers. 
• Be mindful not to over-explain a shooter’s rationale. The National Institutes of Health advises that doing so could enable other potential perpetrators to feel connected to the perpetrator’s reasons for committing violence. 
• Provide facts of what occurred, rather than sensationalization.