Here are some alarming findings about gun violence in the United States: About one in seven Americans now live on a block near a recent gun homicide, a figure that has grown drastically since before the pandemic.
The New York Times recently mapped every gun homicide in the United States since 2020, and then drew a quarter-mile circle around the scene of each one to determine how many people lived in proximity to the killings. The total was 47 million Americans, 8.7 million more than before the pandemic — a sign of how gun violence has spread into new neighborhoods.
“There are a lot more guns on the street, and when people get angry and frustrated, instead of getting into a fistfight, they get into a gunfight,” said Dr. Regan Williams, an emergency room director at a children’s hospital in Memphis. He told The Times he had seen a surge in the number of young shooting victims.
The level of violence seems to have fallen since the worst days of the pandemic, but it’s still higher than it was before 2020. “The long-term impact of the surge in violence is being felt in many corners of the nation,” my colleagues wrote.
Read their full analysis of how the pandemic reshaped American gun violence.
The analysis includes a searchable map that shows in detail where gun violence has occurred in U.S. cities. I learned that there was a fatal shooting half a block from my apartment building in San Francisco in 2022.
The map also includes data on how many people in a city live near a recent gun homicide, and how those numbers have changed. You can explore the map here.
In California, the percentage of people living within a quarter-mile of recent fatal gun violence can vary greatly from city to city. For example, in Stockton in the San Joaquin Valley, 40 percent of residents live near a shooting, while in Riverside in the Inland Empire, a city of roughly the same size, only 15 percent do.
Here are figures for the 10 most populous cities in California, in descending order of the share of residents living near gun violence:
Oakland: 73 percent of residents live near a recent fatal shooting
Long Beach: 46 percent
San Francisco: 37 percent
Los Angeles: 36 percent
Fresno: 33 percent
Bakersfield: 28 percent
Sacramento: 24 percent
Anaheim: 21 percent
San Diego: 17 percent
San Jose: 16 percent
The rest of the news
More than 5.8 million fentanyl pills were seized by law enforcement agencies across the state from January to April, with more than 2.3 million pills seized in April alone, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced yesterday.
A proposed ballot initiative that would require schools in California to notify parents if their child asks to change their gender identification failed to attract enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in November, The Associated Press reported.
Southern California
Academic workers expanded their strike to U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis yesterday, protesting the University of California system’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests on its campuses, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Bill Walton, the N.B.A. Hall of Famer who won championships in high school, college and the pros before becoming a TV commentator, died on Monday at his home in San Diego.
Central California
A former water district manager in the San Joaquin Valley pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to steal water from a federal irrigation canal and sell it to farmers and other water districts, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Northern California
David DePape, who was convicted for breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home two years ago and beating her husband with a hammer, apologized for the attack as a judge considered a more lenient prison sentence. But the judge kept the original 30-year sentence.
The Atherton Police Department has turned about 50 homes into “bait houses” in an attempt to quell a recent spike in burglaries, NBC News reports.
A Starbucks outlet in Sacramento, the first in the region to unionize, shut down this month, The Sacramento Bee reports.
And before you go, some good news
Spending time at the beach is a staple activity for many families in the summer. Depending on the children’s ages and personalities, different beaches will appeal to different families.
The travel writer Freda Moon recently compiled for The Times a list of six beaches in the United States and Mexico that are especially good for specific beach activities, and one that made the list is Mission Beach in San Diego.
Moon wrote that Mission Beach is a sand-castle builder’s dream, offering not just the ideal type of sand for creating imaginative castles, but also castle-building lessons from the sand sculptor JT Estrela. The beach has a boardwalk amusement park, a beachfront swimming pool and several playgrounds as well.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Soumya
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword.
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The post This Is How Close We Live to Gun Violence appeared first on New York Times.
