{"id":388790,"date":"2025-11-19T01:04:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T01:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388790\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T01:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T01:04:14","slug":"experts-explore-philadelphias-success-on-gun-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388790\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts explore Philadelphia\u2019s success on gun violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

An inaugural forum put on by nonprofit newsroom The Trace, hosted at WHYY\u2019s Philadelphia studios, convened civic leaders, researchers, local practitioners and youth voices to spotlight what\u2019s working \u2014 and what still needs doing \u2014 to reduce gun violence in American cities.\n<\/p>\n

The event, titled \u201cSafer Together: A Forum on Gun Violence Solutions,\u201d brought together national experts, community stakeholders and policy leaders for a five-panel program followed by a networking reception.\n<\/p>\n

Philadelphia \u2014 a city that recently recorded its lowest homicide rate<\/a> in more than five decades \u2014 was chosen as the forum site in part because it illustrates how progress is possible in even deeply challenged urban environments.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, no other major city reduced gun violence<\/a> more per capita than Philadelphia, making the case for just how much progress is possible, but too few people know about these gains today,\u201d said Jennifer Mascia, senior news writer at The Trace. \u201cWe\u2019re changing that over the course of this event.\u201d
\n\"PanelistsA panel of gun violence intervention activists discusses a broad range of strategies to prevent shootings during the \u201dSafer Together\u201d forum organized by The Trace at WHYY. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

\u2018No. 1 issue\u2019<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis joined the conversation as the keynote speaker and was interviewed by The Trace\u2019s Philadelphia correspondent Mensah M. Dean. Davis told the gathering that an early incidence of gun violence molded his political life.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cGun violence is the very issue that brought me to public service when I was 16 years old,\u201d he said, recalling the shooting outside his childhood home that pushed him to launch a youth-led violence prevention group in McKeesport near Pittsburgh.\n<\/p>\n

He went on to help Allegheny County create its first Office of Gun Violence Prevention, established Pennsylvania\u2019s Violence Intervention and Prevention grant program as a state representative, and, now as lieutenant governor, chairs the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.\n<\/p>\n

He said the Shapiro administration has made public safety its core promise, because \u201creally everything else we do doesn\u2019t matter if we\u2019re not meeting that basic need.\u201d Asked where combating gun violence sits on his daily priority list, Davis said it is \u201cthe No. 1 issue that I have worked on and that I continue to work on.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Davis called \u201cfederal instability\u201d 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\u2019s decision to fully fund the state\u2019s Office of Gun Violence Prevention for the first time.\n<\/p>\n

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.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way to take a gun out of somebody\u2019s hand is to put a paycheck in,\u201d he said, calling for expanded education pathways, apprenticeships and small-business support so that young people \u201chave multiple opportunities to succeed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

However, he explained that the issue is not isolated to Philadelphia or the region.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cGun violence is uniquely an American problem, and it\u2019s a problem that we can and must do something about,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

He noted, however, that the issue manifests itself differently in different places.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIn rural Pennsylvania, it\u2019s suicides \u2026 Domestic violence is another huge topic that often doesn\u2019t 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\u2019re at,\u201d Davis said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":388791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,185263,115661,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-388790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-austin-davis","10":"tag-gun-violence-prevention","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115573677963134093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}