In this Slugger Session at Queen’s we will be in discussion with Elizabeth Charash on the topic of Gun Violence in America.
Wide access to firearms and loose regulations lead to more than 39,000 men, women and children being killed with guns each year in the USA.
In 2017, some 39,773 died from gunshot injuries, an average of nearly 109 people each day. Per capita, this is significantly higher than in other industrialized countries. Firearm homicides in the USA disproportionately impact communities of colour and particularly young black men.
Firearm homicide was the leading cause of death for black men and boys aged 15-34 in 2017, and they were more than 10 times more likely to die from firearm homicide than white men and boys of the same age group.
Women facing domestic violence and children are also disproportionately affected.
In 2017, the number of children who died from firearm-related deaths in the USA rose to 1,814 from 1,637 in 2016. Between 2% and 7% of all injuries treated at US pediatric trauma centres are gun-related.
Most children who are victims of firearm killings in the USA are from minority communities. Homicide is the second leading cause of death among black children and 65% of those killings are committed with guns.
Source for stats – Amnesty International
Elizabeth Charash is a MA student in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University, Belfast. She graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa and with Honors from the University of Connecticut in History and Human Rights. Her work on inequality in the gun violence prevention movement has been published in Teen Vogue, US News and World Report and Northern Slant, and she has a joint article forthcoming in Sociological Forum. She has most recently co-founded the Mitchell Institute podcast on peace, security and justice, MPod (available on ITunes, Stitcher and Spotify), and leads a mentoring program for young people in Belfast.
This is a joint Slugger O’Toole, Queen’s University Belfast event.
Tuesday the 28 May 2019, 7pm, Queen’s University Belfast Main Building.
Tickets are free, but please book here so we can manage numbers…
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
