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An inaugural forum put on by nonprofit newsroom The Trace, hosted at WHYY’s Philadelphia studios, convened civic leaders, researchers, local practitioners and youth voices to spotlight what’s working — and what still needs doing — to reduce gun violence in American cities.
The event, titled “Safer Together: A Forum on Gun Violence Solutions,” brought together national experts, community stakeholders and policy leaders for a five-panel program followed by a networking reception.
Philadelphia — a city that recently recorded its lowest homicide rate in more than five decades — was chosen as the forum site in part because it illustrates how progress is possible in even deeply challenged urban environments.
“Last year, no other major city reduced gun violence more per capita than Philadelphia, making the case for just how much progress is possible, but too few people know about these gains today,” said Jennifer Mascia, senior news writer at The Trace. “We’re changing that over the course of this event.”
A panel of gun violence intervention activists discusses a broad range of strategies to prevent shootings during the ”Safer Together” forum organized by The Trace at WHYY. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
‘No. 1 issue’
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis joined the conversation as the keynote speaker and was interviewed by The Trace’s Philadelphia correspondent Mensah M. Dean. Davis told the gathering that an early incidence of gun violence molded his political life.
“Gun violence is the very issue that brought me to public service when I was 16 years old,” he said, recalling the shooting outside his childhood home that pushed him to launch a youth-led violence prevention group in McKeesport near Pittsburgh.
He went on to help Allegheny County create its first Office of Gun Violence Prevention, established Pennsylvania’s Violence Intervention and Prevention grant program as a state representative, and, now as lieutenant governor, chairs the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
He said the Shapiro administration has made public safety its core promise, because “really everything else we do doesn’t matter if we’re not meeting that basic need.” Asked where combating gun violence sits on his daily priority list, Davis said it is “the No. 1 issue that I have worked on and that I continue to work on.”
Davis called “federal instability” a recent challenge to prevention efforts, but said that the state has been working to make up for that loss. He highlighted the recent bipartisan budget that delivered a 10% increase in state prevention dollars and the administration’s decision to fully fund the state’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention for the first time.
Davis credited the drop in shootings in Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania cities to a comprehensive approach that mixes community-based work, law enforcement support and economic opportunity. He argued that reducing violence requires confronting root causes directly.
“The best way to take a gun out of somebody’s hand is to put a paycheck in,” he said, calling for expanded education pathways, apprenticeships and small-business support so that young people “have multiple opportunities to succeed.”
However, he explained that the issue is not isolated to Philadelphia or the region.
“Gun violence is uniquely an American problem, and it’s a problem that we can and must do something about,” he said.
He noted, however, that the issue manifests itself differently in different places.
“In rural Pennsylvania, it’s suicides … Domestic violence is another huge topic that often doesn’t get talked about. This is a concern I think that really cuts along racial lines in many ways. The concern is just slightly different depending on where you’re at,” Davis said.