Fred Clasen-Kelly and Daniel Chang
PHILADELPHIA — Leon Harris, 35, is intimately accustomed to the devastation weapons can inflict. Robbers shot him within the again practically twenty years in the past, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. The bullet stays lodged in his backbone.
“When you get shot,” he mentioned, “you stop thinking about the future.”
He is anchored by his spouse and baby and religion. He as soon as wished to work as a forklift driver however has constructed a steady profession in info know-how. He finds camaraderie with different gunshot survivors and in advocacy.
Still, trauma stays lodged in his every day life. As gun violence surged within the shadows of the covid pandemic, it shook Harris’ fragile sense of safety. He moved his household out of Philadelphia to a leafy suburb in Delaware. But a nagging concern of crime persists.
Now he is considering shopping for a gun.
Harris is one in every of tens of 1000’s of Americans killed or injured every year by gun violence, a public well being disaster that escalated within the pandemic and churns a new victim right into a hospital emergency room each half hour.
Over the previous twenty years, the firearm trade has ramped up production and stepped up gross sales campaigns by social media influencers, convention shows, and promotions. An trade commerce group acknowledged that its conventional buyer was “pale, male and stale” and in recent times started focusing on Black people and other communities of color who’re disproportionately victimized by gun violence.
The Trump administration has moved to scale back federal oversight of gun companies, heralding a new era introduced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as “marked by transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry.”
The ache of gun violence crosses political, cultural, and geographic divides — however no group has suffered as a lot as Black individuals, similar to Harris. They had been practically 14 occasions as more likely to die by gun murder than white individuals in 2021, researchers said, citing federal information. Black males and boys are 6% of the inhabitants however more than half of murder victims.
Washington has provided little aid: Guns stay one in every of few client merchandise the federal authorities does not regulate for well being and security.
“The politics of guns in the U.S. are so out of whack with proper priorities that should focus on health and safety and most fundamental rights to live,” mentioned legal professional Jon Lowy, founding father of Global Action on Gun Violence, who helped symbolize Mexico in an unsuccessful lawsuit towards Smith & Wesson and different gunmakers that reached the Supreme Court. “The U.S. allows and enables gun industry practices that would be totally unacceptable anywhere else in the world.”
KFF Health News undertook an examination of gun violence in the course of the pandemic, a interval when firearm deaths reached an all-time excessive. Reporters reviewed educational analysis, congressional stories, and hospital information and interviewed dozens of gun violence and public well being consultants, gun house owners, and victims or their relations.
The examination discovered that whereas public officers imposed restrictions meant to forestall covid’s unfold, politicians and regulators helped gas gun gross sales — and one other public well being disaster.
As state and native governments shut down colleges, suggested residents to remain residence, and closed gyms, theaters, malls, and different companies to cease covid’s unfold, President Donald Trump saved gun shops open, deeming them essential businesses important to the functioning of society.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai didn’t reply to interview requests or reply questions in regards to the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back regulation of the firearm trade.
During the pandemic, the federal authorities gave firearm companies and teams greater than $150 million in monetary help by the Paycheck Protection Program, at the same time as some companies reported brisk gross sales, based on an analysis from Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group.
Federal officers mentioned this system would maintain individuals employed, however thousands and thousands of {dollars} went to firearm corporations that didn’t say whether or not it could save any jobs, the report mentioned.
About 1 in 5 American households purchased a gun in the course of the first two years of the pandemic, together with thousands and thousands of first-time patrons, based on survey information from NORC on the University of Chicago.
Harris is keenly conscious of what drives the demand.
“Guns aren’t going away unless we get to the root of people’s fears,” he mentioned.
Surveys show most Americans who personal a gun really feel it makes them safer. But public well being information means that proudly owning a gun doubles the risk of murder and triples possibilities of suicide in a house.
“There’s no evidence that guns provide an increase in protection,” mentioned Kelly Drane, analysis director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “We have been told a fundamental lie.”
Record Deaths
Less than a 12 months into the pandemic, 20-year-old Jacquez Anlage was shot lifeless in a Jacksonville, Florida, condo. Five years later, the killing stays unsolved.
His mom, Crystal Anlage, mentioned she fell to her knees and wailed in grief on her garden when police delivered the information.
She mentioned Jacquez overcame years within the foster care system — dwelling in 36 properties — earlier than she and her husband, Matt, adopted him at age 16.
Jacquez Anlage had simply moved into his personal condo when he was shot. He liked animals and wished to develop into a veterinary technician. He was form and loving, Crystal Anlage mentioned, with the 6-foot-4, 215-pound physique of the soccer and basketball participant he’d been.
“He was just getting to a point in life where he felt safe,” Crystal Anlage mentioned.
Gun violence researchers say dad and mom like Crystal Anlage carry trauma that destroys their sense of safety.
Anlage mentioned she endures post-traumatic stress dysfunction and anxiousness. She is scared of weapons and fireworks.
But she has made one thing significant of her son’s killing: She co-founded the Jacksonville Survivors Foundation, which works to lift consciousness in regards to the affect of murder and to help grieving dad and mom.
“Jacquez’s death can’t be in vain,” she mentioned. “I want his legacy to be love.”
His legacy and that of different younger males killed by weapons is muted by firearm producers’ highly effective message of concern.
During the pandemic, gun entrepreneurs informed Americans they wanted firearms to defend themselves towards criminals, protesters, unreliable cops, and racial and political unrest, according to a petition filed by gun management advocacy teams with the Federal Trade Commission.
In a since-deleted June 18, 2020, Instagram post from Lone Wolf Arms, an Idaho-based producer, a protester is depicted being confronted by cops in riot gear between the phrases “Defund Police? Defend Yourself,” the petition exhibits. The caption says, “10% to 25% off demo guns and complete pistols.”
Impact Arms, an internet gun vendor, posted a picture on Instagram on Aug. 3, 2020, displaying an individual placing a rifle in a backpack, the doc says. “The world is pretty crazy right now,” the caption reads. “Not a bad idea to pack something more efficient than a handgun.”
The National Rifle Association in 2020 posted on YouTube a four-minute video of a Black lady holding a rifle and telling viewers they want a gun within the pandemic. “You might be stockpiling up on food right now to get through this current crisis,” she mentioned, “but if you aren’t preparing to defend your property when everything goes wrong, you’re really just stockpiling for somebody else.”
The messaging labored. Background checks for firearm gross sales soared 60% from 2019 to 2020, the 12 months the federal authorities declared a public well being emergency.
The identical 12 months, greater than 45,000 Americans died from firearm violence, the best quantity up until then. In 2021, the record was damaged once more.
Weapons offered firstly of the pandemic had been extra more likely to wind up at crime scenes inside a 12 months than in any earlier interval, based on a report by Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, citing ATF information.
Gun producers “used disturbing sales tactics” following mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, “while failing to take even basic steps to monitor the violence and destruction their products have unleashed,” based on a separate memo launched by congressional Democrats in July 2022 following a House Oversight and Reform Committee investigation of trade practices and earnings.
The firearm trade has marketed “to white supremacist and extremist organizations for years, playing on fears of government repression against gun owners and fomenting racial tensions,” the House investigation mentioned. “The increase in racially motivated violence has also led to rising rates of gun ownership among Black Americans, allowing the industry to profit from both white supremacists and their targets.”
In 2024, then-President Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior supplied a $215,000 grant to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a number one firearm industry trade group, to assist corporations market weapons to Black Americans.
The Federal Trade Commission is accountable for defending customers from misleading and unfair enterprise practices and has the ability to take enforcement motion. It issued warnings to corporations that made unsubstantiated claims their merchandise might stop or deal with covid, as an illustration.
But when households of gun violence victims, lawmakers, and advocacy teams asked the FTC in 2022, throughout Biden’s time period, to investigate how firearms had been marketed to kids, individuals of colour, and teams that espouse white supremacy, officers didn’t announce any public motion.
This summer season, the National Shooting Sports Foundation pressed its case to the FTC and derided “a coordinated ‘lawfare’ campaign” that it mentioned gun management teams have waged towards “constitutionally-protected firearm advertising.”
FTC spokesperson Mitchell Katz declined to remark, saying in an e mail that the company doesn’t acknowledge or deny the existence of investigations.
Serena Viswanathan, who retired as an FTC affiliate director in June, told KFF Health News that the company misplaced not less than 1 / 4 of the employees in its promoting practices division after Trump got here into workplace in January.
Gun corporations Smith & Wesson, Lone Wolf Arms, and Impact Arms didn’t reply to requests for remark. Neither did the National Shooting Sports Foundation or the NRA.
In an August 2022 social media post, Smith & Wesson President and CEO Mark Smith mentioned gun producers had been being wrongly blamed by some politicians for the pandemic surge in violence, saying cities experiencing violent crime had “promoted irresponsible, soft-on-crime policies that often treat criminals as victims and victims as criminals.”
He added, “Some now seek to prohibit firearm manufacturers and supporters of the 2nd Amendment from advertising products in a manner designed to remind law-abiding citizens that they have a Constitutional right to bear arms in defense of themselves and their families.”
Guns and Race
In 2015, the National Shooting Sports Foundation gathered supporters at a convention in Savannah, Georgia, and urged the firearm trade to diversify its buyer base, based on a YouTube video and stories from Everytown for Gun Safety and the Violence Policy Center.
Competitive shooter Chris Cheng gave a presentation referred to as “Diversity: The Next Big Opportunity.” Screenshots from the convention embrace slides purporting to indicate “demographics,” “psychographics,” and “technographics” of Black and Hispanic shooters.
The slides described Black shooters as “expressive and confident socially, in a crowd” and “less likely to be married and to be a college grad.” They mentioned Hispanic shooters had been “much more trusting of advertising and celebrities.”
Nick Suplina, senior vice chairman for regulation and coverage at Everytown for Gun Safety, mentioned trade advertising shifted within the latter half of the twentieth century as the recognition of looking declined. The new gross sales pitch: weapons for private security.
“They said, ‘We need to break into new markets,’” Suplina mentioned. “They identified women and people of color. They didn’t have a lot of success until the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the death of George Floyd. The marketing says, ‘You deserve the Second Amendment too.’ They are selling the product as an antidote to fear and anxiety.”
Gun producers had been harshly criticized within the Oversight Committee’s 2022 investigation for advertising merchandise to individuals of colour, as gun violence stays a number one explanation for dying for younger Black and Latino males.
At the identical time, some corporations additionally promoted assault rifles to white supremacist teams who imagine a race conflict is imminent, the investigation discovered. One firm offered an AK-47-style rifle referred to as the “Big Igloo Aloha,” a reference to an anti-government motion, it mentioned.
Still, Philip Smith desires extra Black individuals to get weapons for defense.
Smith mentioned he was working as a human assets advisor a decade in the past when he received the concept to kind the National African American Gun Association, which helped the National Shooting Sports Foundation compile its report on speaking with Black customers.
Smith encourages Black individuals to purchase firearms for self-defense and get correct coaching on use them.
After 10 years, Smith mentioned, his group has about 45,000 members nationwide. Single members pay $39 a 12 months and {couples} $59, which supplies them entry to reductions from the group’s company companions, together with gunmakers, and raffles for gun giveaways, based on its web site.
The police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the capturing dying of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin helped spark early curiosity from docs, attorneys, and others in becoming a member of the group, he mentioned. But curiosity took off in the course of the pandemic, he mentioned, even amongst Democrats who had resisted the concept of proudly owning a gun.
“Hundreds of people called me and said, ‘I don’t agree with anything you’re saying, but what kind of gun should I buy,’” Smith recalled.
Smith, describing himself as “quiet, nerdy, and Afrocentric,” mentioned criticism of weapons misses the purpose.
“My ancestors bled for us to have this right,” he mentioned. “Are there some racist white people? Yes. But we should buy guns because there is a need. No one is forcing us to buy guns.”
‘American Amnesia’
During the pandemic, gun violence took its best toll on racially segregated neighborhoods in locations similar to Philadelphia, the place roughly 1 in 4 residents dwell in poverty.
A city report says a one-year interval within the pandemic noticed greater than 2,300 shootings, or about six a day. Many of the circumstances haven’t been solved by police.
City officers cited the increase in gun gross sales within the report: Fewer than 400,000 gross sales occurred in Pennsylvania in 2000, however in 2020 it was greater than 1 million.
Gun gross sales have dropped for the reason that pandemic ended, however the hurt they’ve brought about persists.
At a convention final 12 months contained in the Eagles’ soccer stadium, victims of firearm violence or their relations joined activists to share accounts of near-death experiences and the grief of shedding family members.
Paintings flanked the stage and the assembly area to commemorate individuals who had been fatally shot, practically all younger individuals of colour, below messages similar to “You are loved and missed forever” and “Those we love never leave.”
Marion Wilson, a group activist, mentioned he believes the nation has forgotten the struggling Philadelphia and different cities endured in the course of the pandemic.
“We suffer from the disease of American amnesia,” he mentioned.
Harris was on his method residence from a job at Burlington Coat Factory practically twenty years in the past when robbers adopted him from a bus cease and demanded cash. He mentioned he had none and was shot.
Harris had spent his adolescence fixing automobiles along with his grandfather, when he wasn’t at college or attending church. He remembers mendacity in a hospital mattress, overcome with a way of helplessness.
“I had to learn to feed myself again,” he mentioned. “I was like a baby. I had to learn to sit up so I could use a wheelchair. The only way I got through it was my faith in God.”
Harris endured years of rehabilitation and counseling for PTSD. As somebody in a wheelchair, he mentioned, he generally fears for his security — and a gun could also be one of many few methods to guard himself and his household.
“I’m mulling it over,” Harris mentioned. “I’m afraid of my trauma hurting someone else. That’s the only reason I haven’t gotten one yet.”
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