Mass shootings and gun violence have become so commonplace in the news that many have become tone-deaf to the reality. But we may want to start paying attention because daily “death by gun violence” – through homicides, gun suicides, family violence – continues to rise, claiming close to 30,000 lives a year nationally.
In the greater Houston area, roughly 200 children and 2,000 adults annually are injured or killed by guns. What’s often lost in those horrific numbers are the thousands of children and adult shooting survivors. Though often under-reported or ignored altogether when gun violence is discussed, these survivors and their families carry with them ongoing trauma.
So, what’s being done to confront this situation?
That’s what Houston Ethnic Media sought to spotlight at a recent convening of area gun control activists, youth organizers, public health professionals, police and educators to share with media representatives what communities in the Greater Houston area are doing to prevent gun violence.
The event was held at and hosted by the College of Biblical Studies (7000 Regency Square Blvd, Houston, 77036).
Participants included Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, chief pediatric surgeon, UTMB and member of Mayor’s Commission on Gun Violence (MCGV); Emilee Whitehurst, executive director, Houston Area Women’s Center (HAWC); Sandy Close, executive director, Ethnic Media Services and others.
The human cost of gun violence
Naik-Mathuria set the tone for the gathering, complimenting the many community entities working collectively to curb gun violence, including the Women’s Shelter, Big Brothers Big Sisters, HPD and (MCGV).
She also reminded attendees that gun violence is the leading cause of death among U.S. children, a fact she described as “shocking.”
“More children in the U.S. are killed by guns than they are by cars ever since 2020,” said Naik-Mathuria. “I mean, that’s just shocking. I never thought I would see that day. It’s getting worse every year.”
“At first, it used to be ‘oh, it’s just in the bad parts of town and, you know, gangs, and this and that,’ and then I started seeing it in children, and they’re not in gangs. These are young children as young as 3 years old, 2 years old, being shot either accidentally or often caught in crossfire.”
Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria
Naik-Mathuria told the story of a Houston-area three-year-old who was at home in his room watching cartoons when a bullet came through the door and hit his chest/abdomen and exited out of his back. She was on-call that night at Ben Taub, where she and her team were able to save the child’s life even though he had injuries to all his major organs and was partially paralyzed. Naik-Mathuria operated on the youth 30 times, who spent seven months in the hospital, many of those in intensive care and enduring intensive pain.
“He was the cutest little three-year-old, who didn’t do anything wrong to put himself in a bad situation or was part of any illegal activity that sometimes people relate to being shot, yet he was shot. And he survived… He’s a really great example of a non-fatal injury,” said Naik-Mathuria, who lamented that the public often only sees the number of gun violence deaths in the media, but doesn’t see gun violence’s largest pool of victims.
“So, a lot of people look at media, and they look at the numbers, and they just see the deaths. There’s a lot more people, in fact, three or four times more people that get shot and don’t die. And those have to count too, because they live with these injuries. And not only that, it’s the mental anguish. And also, other family members are affected. So, it’s a ripple effect… So, we can’t forget about the survivors,” she added.
Gun violence and domestic violence
Whitehurst, HAWC’s executive director, was on hand to inform attendees just how intertwined domestic violence is with gun violence, sharing numbers that prove her point.
73%
Houston area domestic violence deaths from 2019 to 2022 involving guns
500%
Increased risk of homicide when firearms are present in abusive households
68%
Of deadly mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 involved a perpetrator who killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of domestic violence
3X
As many children were shot in domestic violence incidents from 2017 to 2022 than in school shooting and eight times as many died. Most of those children were shot by a parent or guardian.
“We looked at this epidemic both with a gender lens and a racial lens. We understand that this is having a disproportionate effect on women of color
Emilee Whitehurst
Whitehurst listed HAWC’s work at a systems level to improve what happens to survivors the moment they call for help via its collaboration with the Houston Police Department (HPD) on the Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART).
DART teams are comprised of officers, medical professionals and advocates, like HAWC, who provide trauma-informed care and offer immediate access to safety resources.
DART is one of the only programs like this in the nation. In the last 12 months, DART has responded to 1,084 on-scene requests and placed 404 adult survivors in emergency shelters, saving untold lives, including the number of children who often accompany those parental survivors.
A police officer’s story
Senior Police Officer Raul Collins, a member of the Houston Police Department’s Office of Community Affairs, and recipient of almost every local and national award and accommodation imaginable for exceptional police work, said a childhood surrounded by violence both shook and shaped him.
“I was 11 when my father shot my mother five times with a 38 Special,” said Collins. “He shot himself one time in the chest; they both lived.
“I grew up in a house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one of the four kids, and that kind of violence, it does change you, but sometimes it helps you find your purpose.” Collins was one of many on the panel who stressed that gun owners use gun locks and store their weapons away safely.
Youth speak out
Youth were represented at the HEM event, as well. Saami Baig, a local high school student and member of the gun violence prevention group March For Our Lives (MFOL), shared how he was moved to get involved with this issue when he was in middle school and learned that his neighbors were killed in their home by gun violence.
Additionally, Rice University junior Jasir Rahman, a member of Brady United Against Gun Violence’s youth cohort, Team ENOUGH, said he and his organization are about “helping to cultivate the next generation of voices and activists to end gun violence.”
“What’s radical is when one in five people… knows somebody who has died or has been shot by a gun, and yet we still don’t have universal background checks.”
“What’s radical is when one in five people… knows somebody who has died or has been shot by a gun, and yet we still don’t have universal background checks.”
Jasir Rahman
“In 2018, a loaded gun made its way onto my high school’s grounds,” said Rahman. “And as rumors spread and people started fleeing campus, I thought to myself, ‘Am I next? Are we collectively next? Am I gonna make it home today or am I just going to be another name on the long list of people who have been lost to mass shootings in this country?’”
Rahman said at the time the Sandy Hook school shooting was still in his head, a mass shooting that happened when he was in fourth grade and led to K-12 active shooter drills becoming commonplace nationally. Moreover, the same year Rahman endured his potential school shooter scare, when the loaded weapon made it to his high school campus the Parkland shooting where 17 children were murdered on school grounds happened.
“It’s become normal to read these headlines about kids getting shot… but this is not normal.”
Saami Baig
In an article in “The Rice Thrasher,” Rahman wrote, “We believe that while it’s not fair that we must rise against a problem that we did not create, we have no choice. Our lives depend on it. Because for 360,000 of us since Columbine, the cursed emotional vocabulary of survivorship has become our story…We believe that we should not wait, and we will not wait, for individual trauma to affect us all before we respond together.”
