Giving Compass' Take:
- Jamiles Lartey discusses the problems of gun violence and racial bias in the U.S. and the concerning implications of "stand your ground" laws.
- What are you doing to support Black-led organizations addressing racial violence and protecting Black life?
- Read about the racial stressors and trauma of Black youth.
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At least seven people were shot — one fatally — for showing up at the wrong place, in separate incidents over the course of just six days earlier this month.
Kaylin Gillis, 20, was shot and killed in Hebron, New York, as a car she was traveling in turned around in a stranger’s driveway. Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot in Kansas City, Missouri, after ringing the wrong doorbell. Payton Washington, 18, and Heather Roth, 21, were shot in Elgin, Texas after Washington accidentally got into, and then quickly exited, a stranger's car in a parking lot. In Gaston County, North Carolina, when children went to retrieve a basketball from a stranger’s backyard, he allegedly came out of his house with a gun and fired, striking 6-year-old Kinsley White and her father.
According to The New York Times, these kinds of wrong-place shootings are uncommon relative to the larger backdrop of American gun violence — but that’s a big backdrop. Even a small fraction of 49,000 gun deaths per year adds up. The Times tells the stories of several other people who were shot by trigger-happy residents when they were either lost or mistaken as a threat — including utility and maintenance workers on the job.
While wrong-place shootings may be rare, it’s quite common for gun violence to erupt over petty matters. In reporting I did several years ago, one St. Louis man told me he’d seen guns pulled over a cigarillo — literally pennies-worth of flavored tobacco.
Read the full article about gun violence and racial bias by Jamiles Lartey at The Marshall Project.