December 13, 2023 • 40 mins
What if we told you that the key to preventing gun violence in youth lies not just in legislation, but also in acknowledging and addressing the root causes of trauma? Kelly and JJ sit down with Dr. Sonali Rajan , President of the Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms (and also, as you'll learn, about a million other things!). Our conversation orbits around the interconnection between a child's environment, school health, and gun violence, with Dr. Rajan casting light on the findings from the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and the associated risk factors of gun carriage. Dr. Rajan unpacks how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have a profound impact on a child's development, and how we — even if you're childfree, and don't work with children — can be helping kids still reach positive outcomes.
Further reading:
Youth exposure to violence involving a gun: evidence for adverse childhood experience classification (Journal of Behavior Medicine)
Fast Facts: Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (CDC)
Shots that Echo for a Lifetime (Teacher's College Columbia University)
Surviving a school shooting: Impacts on the mental health, education, and earnings of American youth (SIEPR)
For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.
Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
In a crisis? Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a Crisis Counselor 24/7.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the legal disclaimer, where I tell you
that the views, thoughts andopinion shared on this podcast
belong solely to our guests andhosts and not necessarily Brady
or Brady's affiliates.
Please note this podcastcontains discussions of violence
that some people may finddisturbing.
It's okay, we find itdisturbing too.
Hey, everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red, blue
(00:45):
and Brady.
I'm one of your hosts, jj.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And I'm Kelly, your other host.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And I am so excited that we are bringing you this
episode with someone who I amjust forcing to be my friend, dr
Sonali Rajan.
I first met Sonali through theNational Research Conference for
the Prevention ofFirearm-Related Harms, which has
been put on by the ResearchSociety for the Prevention of
Firearm-Related Harms Recentlywas just at the conference, but
(01:11):
really I cannot thank Sonali,her colleagues at Columbia and
the other folks that are reallyworking to push the envelope on
gun violence prevention research, especially as we'll talk about
today on how it relates tochildren and adolescents.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, and I was delighted to meet Sonali through
you, jj, because she is aprofessor at Teachers College at
Columbia and that is where Iactually study for the bar, so
it's been a lot of days in thatlibrary in particular.
So it was a lovely littleconnection to see all the great
work that she's doing, justreally diving into gun violence
(01:52):
and how it impacts youth notjust in the immediate moment but
also throughout their lives.
But it's not a downer, becauseshe also her research has
implications on how we can helpchildren to sort of move to
flourishing.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh, move to flourishing.
I like that it can't be thetitle of this episode, but it's
what you should all keep in mindas you're listening to it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
You guys are so kind and so lovely and thank you
first of all for having me ontoday.
So my name is Dr Sonali Rajanand I am an associate professor
in the Department of Health andBehavior Studies at Teachers
College, columbia University.
I also have a facultyappointment in the Department of
Epidemiology at the MailmanSchool of Public Health and I am
(02:37):
currently the inauguralpresident of the Research
Society for Firearm-RelatedHarms.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So many hats, maybe one head.
How do you?
like that, Lots of hats, and Ididn't even add in the part that
I'm a mom to an eight-year-oldmaybe my most important title
and we're going to dig into alot of those titles and a lot of
those departments and what theymean functionally when we're
talking about gun violence andresearch.
But I think Kelly and I areboth always really curious how
people ended up here of allplaces, especially considering
(03:06):
obviously all of thehealth-related work kind of that
these departments are.
How did you end up focusingwithin that on gun violence and
I'm for our listenersedification like on violence and
childhood experiences morebroadly?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
That's such a good question and I think if you had
said to me when I was in collegeor when I was in graduate
school that this is what I wouldend up devoting my career to, I
would have.
This is not necessarily how Iwould have pictured it, but I
love the field of gun violenceprevention science and I'm very
grateful and privileged to dothe work that I do.
And I did arrive here in alittle bit of a roundabout way.
(03:42):
So when I was a doctoralstudent and working in my
dissertation and in the veryearly stages of my postdoctoral
lifetime and early facultylifetime, I was really broadly
focused on an area that we callschool health, and so all of my
research was really interestedin understanding connections
(04:03):
between health and learning, andI was particularly interested
and this was reflected in mydissertation work.
But how does a school's climateand a school's environment
shape a child's sense ofwell-being?
And a lot of the work I didlooked at health issues such as
physical activity and sleep andnutrition and substance use and
(04:25):
mental health and really tryingto understand how do we support
children so that they aremotivated and ready to learn,
and I think about everything Ineed every day to come to work
and do my job well.
I go running and I sleep anddrink water and lots of coffees.
I know what I need as an adultto do that, as a privileged
(04:45):
adult.
And so certainly for children,we need to make sure that they
are also well-fed and cared forat home and at school, because
I'm looking at all the things myeight-year-old is doing right
now in school multiplicationquizzes and the expectations
that we hold for our childrenand so they need to be supported
health-wise in all aspects todo that.
(05:07):
So that kind of was the broadarea of my research focus for a
number of years and in 2014,.
So my best friend, kelly Ruggles, is also a professor at NYU.
She was my college roommate andwe've known each other for many
, many, many years and she's abioinformatic scientist.
(05:30):
We had a lot of fun again earlyon in our faculty careers
writing papers together and when, in 2014, she and I just took
10 years worth of the CDC data.
The CDC has a surveillancesystem, the Youth Risk Behavior
Surveillance System, and it's anational database that collects
(05:51):
data on teenagers on all sortsof different health issues, and
Kelly and I took I think it wasdata across 10 or 12 years worth
of that data.
And what precipitated this wasthe Sandy Hook shooting had
happened just a couple yearsprior.
But Kelly and I for both of uswe were both in high school when
(06:12):
Columbine happened.
I'm dating myself now, butwe'll just go with that.
We were both in high schoolwhen Columbine happened.
She and I were both in graduateschool when Virginia Tech
happened.
We were both beginning ourfaculty careers when Sandy Hook
happened.
So, like many of us and ourlisteners, gun violence and
certain gun violence incidentshave punctuated moments in our
(06:35):
lifetime, and so one of thequestions in this CDC survey is
how frequently do you carry agun?
And lots of really excellent,compelling literature that
describes the risk that just guncarriage alone places place
right, and so that by itself isa risk factor.
(06:57):
And Kelly and I were justinterested in saying, if we
employ some of her informaticsmethods and played with this
data and tried to make sense ofit and look for patterns, what
are some of the behavioralcorrelates that might associate
with gun possession?
Like if we were just reallyjust to think outside of the box
.
So you hear a lot of discoursearound mental health and all of
(07:18):
that, but we were like what elseis going on.
And so we wrote this paper thatwas published in plus one, and
both of our moms, who are alsoscientists, had never been
prouder.
And we wrote this paper and init there were sort of many
things that we found, butsomething that I thought was we
both thought that wasparticularly compelling was and
interesting was that, yes,indicators of poor mental health
(07:39):
, substance use all of thosethings that you might expect
correlate with gun carriage wasthere and present.
But in our work we also clearlyshowed, year after year and
across the sample of kids, thatkids who had been previously
exposed to gun violence orviolence of any kind, kids who
were reporting that they don'tfeel safe on the way to and from
(08:00):
school, in school itself, athome, kids who had been
previously exposed to violenceof any kind or even threats of
any kind, those kids whoseperceptions of safety were not
there, they were the kids morelikely to report carrying a gun.
And I know what I'm sayingright now is so obvious Like
(08:20):
this.
What I'm describing doesn'teven feel like rocket science,
because it's not.
It's very intuitive, but for methat was certainly a light bulb
moment in that my whole work upuntil that point was focused on
, like I was saying, physicalactivity and sleep and all these
other outcomes.
But then I was like, well, ifkids don't fundamentally feel
safe at home or in school orwherever, they're not going to
(08:44):
sleep well or eat well or,honestly, they're not going to
have good mental health, howcould they?
And it seemed so.
I kind of had this moment whereI was like what precedes all of
these other positive healthoutcomes, you need a sense of
safety and stability which againfeels very intuitive.
It's so something that weshould all expect and hope for
(09:07):
all children, but clearly is notthe case for many, many kids
across the country.
And so that was around the timethat I really just was starting
to get more and more interestedin this area of work and
started to learn a lot moreabout the field and the gaps in
funding and how little there was.
A lot we knew, but also so muchwe didn't know and lots of
(09:31):
opportunity for questions to beasked and answered, and there
was just so much more we neededto do.
And so that all came togetherand over the past several years
I've been just delving rightinto that.
And so here I am and the vastmajority of the research I
engage in is very much centeredon this topic and in this area.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So, before we dive more into your work, I'm
wondering if we can define theterms in a playing field.
And so what is an adversechildhood experience, and is it
an ACE or an ACE?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Great question, ok.
So yes, I tend to use theseterms and then I don't explain
them up front.
So thank you for asking.
Ok, so an adverse childhoodexperience is essentially a
potentially traumatic event thatundermines a child's sense of
safety and stability.
And historically so, the termACE so we call them ACEs for
(10:25):
short, the term ACE wasintroduced into the literature
via a very famous, well-knownstudy that was conducted in 1999
.
And in that work it wasscientists from Kaiser
Permanente and others and inthat work they really
operationalized this concept ofan ACE.
And historically the term hasincluded household dysfunction
(10:49):
and parents with mental illnessor children who experience abuse
of some kind.
So really for a very long timeACEs really focused in on about
eight or nine of those kinds ofvery particular experiences that
happen at home.
Interestingly, and over thepast few years the types of ACEs
have expanded to involvedifferent kinds of experiences,
(11:14):
partly as our scientificunderstanding of children and
their well-being has evolved andalso our recognition of real
systemic factors racism, povertythat also drive these
experiences, that do placechildren at high and risk.
So the definition of whatcomprises an ACE has expanded,
(11:35):
and a few years ago so I'm veryfortunate to work with a number
of wonderful colleagues, amongthem Charlie Brandes, who is the
Epidemiology Department Chairhere at Mailman, and he and I
have been having thisconversation around.
Well, we have all of these ACEs, but exposure to gun violence
during childhood is notconsidered an ACE.
(11:56):
It had not been operationalizedin the actual definition and
data collection and surveillanceof how we think about ACEs, and
I think we, along with a coupleof our colleagues Dr Nina
Agrival, who's a pediatricianand just a brilliant leader in
this field and one of ourwonderful students all of us
really said, well, let's reviewthe literature, let's do a
(12:18):
systematic review, let's sitdown and understand what have
historically been consideredACEs.
What Does gun violence exposurelook like in children and does
it make sense, right from atruly from a conceptual
perspective and how weunderstand ACEs to impact
children and their brain andtheir development?
(12:39):
Does it make sense to includeyouth exposure to gun violence
as an ACE and can we make anargument for that?
And we did, and so so, spoileralert, gun violence is an ACE.
So in the context of that, wewrote a paper in 2019 and really
argued again, using theliterature as a framework for
(13:01):
our understanding, not only thatgun violence during childhood
should be considered an ACE, butwhy that's so important?
So to get to your questionabout what an ACE is, an ACE has
a very specific impact onchildren and their development.
So experiencing an ACE and I'llput probably says by saying also
(13:21):
I was just talking about thisin a meeting like right before
this part of why I love studyingkids is because as much as we
as a society do to place kids atrisk and we don't do nearly
enough to consider theirwellbeing on so many levels.
But kids are amazing and whenthere is access to good support
(13:43):
and interventions and resources,kids can thrive.
And so what I love about kidsis you can work with them and
even if society has messed, hasplaced them at all this high
risk and messed them up, we cando so much to try and undo that.
There's like room for that hopeand optimism which makes me
feel a little bit better in thecontext of trying to do
(14:03):
something in this space.
And so when you have experiencein ACE, if a child does not
receive active intervention andsupport in the aftermath of that
ACE, then what happens is thatACE actually disrupts the
neurodevelopment in a child'sbrain and that then leads them
to be far more likely to engagein other higher risk behaviors.
(14:27):
It places them at higher riskfor all sorts of things.
I'll talk about this in onesecond.
And then it actually then,without again, without any
intervention or support, placesthem at such high risk that
they're more likely to exhibit arange of poor health outcomes
on a number of things.
In the process of writing thispaper, I was just sharing my
(14:48):
doctoral student who's aco-author on that paper, and
just phenomenal, I remember this.
We were working through ourThanksgiving break because we
had a deadline for this paper,so I remember this really
vividly.
In our conversations aroundthis work, we were all just
continually amazed at how everypoor health outcome you could
possibly imagine in some formcan be tied back to having had
(15:08):
one or more ACEs, like cancerrisk, chronic disease, heart
disease, substance use, mentalhealth, oral health, adhd I mean
you name it.
There is a paper out there thathas linked some poor health
outcome back to an ACE.
So what we showed in our workis that it's really important to
understand what comprises ACEsto begin with.
(15:30):
We need to do that at a veryminimum and then we need to
enter if we know it's an ACE andwe could intervene, right, we
could intervene immediately inthe aftermath of that experience
so that we prevent.
So this is the beautiful thingabout kids, right?
So if we don't do anything,kids in our place are at a
higher risk for all the things Ijust described.
But if we do intervene, thenkids actually that those
(15:54):
interventions mitigate the harmsthat ACEs then place on their
short and long-term healthoutcomes.
And that was like somind-blowing in some ways,
because it's like well, gunviolence is increasing, right,
it has only increased in thepast few years.
Some of the work that mycolleagues and I did last year
showed not only is it increasing, but if you look at the
(16:17):
post-COVID trends, it has gottenso much worse for children
across the US, and not just inthe context of those who were
shot and killed, although thatobviously is horrific and a big
portion of the tragedies we'retrying to prevent but even for
children who are survivors ofgun violence, who hear gun shots
(16:37):
as they walk to and from school, who are witnessing gunfire,
who have lost friends or lovedones to gun violence.
This range of experiences needsto be understood.
It needs to be prevented, mostimportantly, but if it happens
we need to intervene,particularly for children, in
the aftermath of and part of ourargument in this work.
(17:00):
And the reason I'm interestedin ACEs as a general area is
because, well, yeah, gunviolence is a we'll talk about
it.
I'm sure today it's acontroversial topic and there's
lots of perspectives on whatsolutions look like, but ACEs
are something that we can allagree.
We should be preventing, rightACEs?
Gun violence as a child healthand child wellbeing issue should
(17:23):
hopefully be something that wecan all come to agreement on,
and so I think that's where alot of my interest in ACEs
specifically has come from,because I do see it as an avenue
to think more creatively aboutmeaningful advocacy and progress
in a space that has often beenmired with politics and that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
No, and I think it's the yeah, how can you not get
behind helping children?
And one of the things that Ithink that you're really
articulating well here, too, isthat we need research in these
areas, because it seems, onceyou connect those dots, it
appears obvious, but you have toconnect those dots first.
Someone has to put thattogether and correlate all this
information, and so I'mwondering it may seem like a
(18:04):
really simplistic question, butI know it doesn't have a simple
answer Like what is the role ofresearch playing, then in gun
violence prevention?
That is an helpful you know howdo we take things out of
Columbia and into the widerworld?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yes, Well, I am biased as a gun violence
researcher.
Obviously, I think research inthis space is really important
and in leading this researchsociety now I am having the
opportunity to get a real bird'seye view of the field, which is
just this extraordinary fieldof just completely devoted,
(18:36):
collaborative, phenomenalindividuals at all career levels
, I might add, who are just allhands on deck on this, and I
love and appreciate so much theenergy and the collaborative
nature of that.
You know, I know it feels sillysometimes to say have to say
things like health and learningare connected or guns are an
(18:57):
adverse child, gun violence isan adverse childhood experience.
But here's what I will say, andI do think this is really
important Gun violence as just aphenomenon is politicized,
whether we like to, whether wecan't change that right now.
The politic I mean maybe we canchange it down the line, but at
the moment it just is and ithas been for many, many years.
So we want to move forward withsolutions and the best way to
(19:19):
do that is to move forward withevidence, informed solutions.
I do a lot of as I know we'vetalked about, I do a lot of
interviews with journalists andmedia, usually in the aftermath
of different shootings and intalking through this issue with
the public.
And something that I alwaysthink is really important is
yeah, people know, for example,I'm a parent, I talk about my
kid all the time.
(19:40):
I can't help it, okay, I'mcrazy about him, but I say that
to say I want people to know.
I want reporters in the publicor whoever I'm talking to
schools, principals, I want themto know that whatever I'm
bringing to the table, I'mbringing to the table as a
scientist, that what I'm sharing, what we're and it's not just
me, it's all of us in this fieldthat the solutions we're
putting forth are not driven bypersonal preference or personal
(20:04):
experiences or politicalaffiliation.
These are nonpartisan,data-driven, evidence-informed
solutions that are driving whatwe should or should not be doing
, and I think it's reallycritical that in order to do
that well and this is, I think,so important in fields like this
, to do that well we need tohave really good quality data
(20:25):
informing those solutions.
So I think, from just like a howdo we move forward together
perspective, the research pieceis key because we want to look
to the research for thesolutions.
You don't want to talk to me asa mom and ask me my opinion.
That's not appropriate.
It doesn't even make sense,right?
How could I speak to a solutionin that context without any
(20:48):
bias?
That's just not possible.
But if you talk to me as ascientist, you talk to my
colleagues or my students asscientists.
We are all saying, well, thisis what the data are telling us,
right?
This is what we know and maybewhat we?
Maybe the answer is we don'tknow, right.
So I get a lot of questionsabout certain types of solutions
in schools or otherwise, andsometimes my answer to folks is
(21:10):
well, we don't actually know ifthat works or not, but this is
something that warrants study orwarrants more evaluation, and I
think that's something that thefield as a whole is really
committed to doing and thatfeels particularly important in
this piece, I think, to answeryour question sort of.
The other component of that isalso, I think, that the public
(21:31):
discourse around solutions togun violence tends to be very
myopic in nature, in that we arefocused often on debate and
discourse around very specificpolicies that speak explicitly
to access to firearms forprescribed users in different
contexts.
(21:51):
And what have you Now?
That absolutely ought to be andshould be a part of the public
discourse.
It should be something that ourelected officials are thinking
through in thoughtful ways.
Again, there's an extraordinarylevel of excellent research
driving what we know and don'tknow about lots of different
policies, but that's like onecomponent of what the range of
(22:13):
solutions look like.
It turns out and again theresearch shows this that there
is a very wide range of actualinvestments in our communities
and in our schools that goes waybeyond specific firearm
policies.
That would allow us tounderstand and be creative in
thinking about what solutions tothis look like Greenspace and
(22:36):
affordable housing and universalschool-based violence
prevention programming andreally thinking about the role
of basic infrastructure aspublic libraries and all sorts
of things that have been shownin the research to have
connections to gun violence,that disrupt those cycles of
disenfranchisement.
(22:56):
I mean, those are really like weneed to be.
The problem is so vast and weneed to be thinking about
solutions that encompass thevastness of the problem.
It's such a big problem, so howdo we actually intervene and
prevent that?
And I think this is where thatall hands on deck,
(23:17):
interdisciplinary, creative wayof being is so needed, and
that's what I, among manyaspects of the research
community in this space that Ilove and appreciate, but that
has been so heartening to seejust the again, the real
creativity and sharing of ideasand coming together of new
methods and disciplines to belike all right, how could we
(23:39):
think about this differently?
And that's where I feel likethe research community can play
a really and is playing a verybig role in progress on this
issue.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
You touched on something that I've personally
experienced working in this area, which is like there's this
weird tension where some of thetruths that we deal with are to
your point, they're so obviousright, we still need the data,
but they're imminently obvious,like if you're a six year old
and you see a shooting that'sgoing to do something to you.
But then there's also the otherthing you touched on, which is
(24:11):
that gun violence is complex.
It interacts with differentcommunities in different ways.
It has intersections withinfrastructure and all these
things, and so sometimes,whether someone is feeling stuck
because they are disillusionedand sad, or they're feeling
stuck because they just don'twant to deal with it and it
seems complicated, how would youbreak down for someone that,
(24:33):
yes, there are angles anddimensions to gun violence that
require a multifaceted approach,but also it doesn't mean that
we can't do anything and thatit's impossible to solve?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
That's like the million dollar question that is
the fundamental problems at theheart of our movement.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Just yes, yes, that is the tension I think all of us
in this field and in this spaceare wrestling with day in and
day out.
I've used this line indifferent contexts, but I'll
share it here, which is, I think, all of us probably feel.
I certainly feel this way.
I am often walking that linebetween hope and hopelessness,
(25:15):
right.
So it's devastating to see theshootings, the prevalence of
this issue, the way it impactsfamilies and communities, and
also then to go to work everyday and to think about how can
we do better.
And I think the thing thatgives me a lot of hope is, again
, the community of scholars andpartners that we work with to do
this.
Now, that being said, I think Itry to answer the first part of
(25:38):
your question.
So I try to think aboutdescribing the nuance of gun
violence, kind of like we wouldconsider the nuance for other
health issues or conditions.
So, for example, if I just saidchronic disease, well, there's
lots of types of chronic disease, right, and within that,
there's lots of differentvariations.
(25:58):
Or even if I said diabetes morebroadly, right, within the
context of diabetes, there'stype one, there's type two, they
, depending on when in yourlifetime you develop this, it
might impact how you treat it orhow you respond to it, or if we
think about cancer prevention.
You know, cancer prevention isactually a great example in some
ways, because lots of differenttypes of cancer, they affect
(26:19):
different populationsdifferently, different groups
might be at higher risk or not.
Our screening and preventionlooks different given the type
of cancer.
So, in that same way that weknow and understand and have
normalized the nuance of othertypes of diseases and health
conditions, by that same token,gun violence is also equally
(26:41):
complex.
We have suicide, right.
We have mass shootings, schoolshootings, with which can be a
subset of that, but also othertypes of school shootings that
happen, unintentional oraccidental shootings that take
place, community based violence,gun violence and everything in
between, interpersonal violencethat involves firearms and, as I
(27:02):
was saying earlier, ace is the,the idea of an ACE, which is
that there's other types of justthe exposure to gun violence,
the indirect experiences thatare so critical to understanding
and then preventing.
So part of what I think isreally important is, you know,
as we all know far too well, youknow, the vast majority of
media coverage typically focuseson the very public mass
(27:25):
shootings that tragically happenand those are so important to
prevent and to respond to and weneed to attend to those
absolutely.
But, to quote my colleagues,that is the proverbial tip of a
much larger iceberg of gunviolence.
Right, and we most.
Gun violence in this countrydoesn't make the daily news, it
(27:45):
doesn't make often forget, thenational news, may not even make
your local news.
Right, because it is thatprevalent and happens so
frequently and sometimes to whomit happens to also impacts.
Right, how, as you can, youboth know better than me how the
public consumes thatinformation.
And so I think that piece ofthis is to sit back and say
(28:06):
listen, we need to understandthe nuance here.
We need to recognize thatpreventing suicide there might
be overlap, right, withpreventing school shootings.
You know we think about firearmstorage and other efforts that
we all know work really wellthat could play out and have
impact on different kinds of gunviolence.
But there's also nuance, right,very specific nuance.
(28:29):
I mean I specifically studyschool gun violence prevention.
I have colleagues who are alsogun violence researchers but
specifically study suicideprevention and it varies across
geography, across the lifecourse, across different
communities.
It just looks different and sopart of our individual expertise
(28:49):
and experiences to try andunderstand the nuance here.
Now, what I have said often andthis is where I just think is so
important to share is that, yes, there's a lot we still need to
know and to understand, butthere is so much we already know
works.
That would not necessarilyrequire Congress coming together
(29:10):
and agreeing on a specificpolicy.
It could require us to be morecreative with how our budgets
look like at the federal, stateand more municipal levels.
It could.
It would require us to rethinkhow we structure schools or
where our financial prioritiesgo.
There are lots of things thatwe could do, and I'm happy to
(29:31):
give examples, but there's lotsof things we could do now that
we could say well, right nowschools are doing XYZ and that's
expensive and we don't evenknow if it works, and instead
maybe we could do.
These three things that we doknow have an impact and even if
they don't fix gun violencealtogether, they would reduce
its harm, and I think that'swhere we want to go right.
(29:54):
We're not.
Listen, I'm a real.
I'm an optimist 90% of the time, but also a realist in the
sense of I understand that weare limited in making progress
here and there.
So any reduction in harm is apositive step forward, and I
think that's where I don't knowif you both feel our listeners
maybe feel frustrated in thisway, but I do sometimes feel
(30:17):
like, yeah, if the federalgovernment came to me and said
we need a plan for preventingschool shootings, we have one.
We have lots of ideas andpublished papers that have
literally documented a frameworkfor actually doing this.
But it requires leadership, itrequires reprioritizing budgets.
It also requires reimaginingthe possibilities here, and I
(30:39):
think that's where, if nothingelse, I would love the public
framing and there's journalistswho are absolutely doing this
beautifully and I'm so gratefulto them for sharing and
amplifying these stories but weneed to just flip the lid on how
we talk about it.
So how do we start to associateother active solutions with
(31:00):
moving progress forward and howdo we bring that to the ballot
box and how do we actually thinkabout engaging our elected
officials on those components?
And so, yeah, you're hearing, Iguess, both but my optimism and
maybe frustration as we thinkabout what solutions look like,
but I do feel like that.
The encouraging thing to me isthat there's a lot we know and
(31:24):
that makes me feel better.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
That makes me feel better too.
So you're not alone.
You're not alone in that boatof like cautious optimism or
like happiness, but couched.
But one of the things, though,that is present here within this
is that then the public, or theour elected officials, have to
then trust researchers.
And I think about this a lot,especially kind of in the post
(31:46):
COVID world, where I used tothink honestly, going into COVID
, that public health officialswere a trusted source, right,
that people kind of just went,okay, yeah, exactly, dr
So-and-so said it.
I must do.
We learned I think the countrylearned that's actually not the
case that there actually is alot of skepticism or a lot of
distrust of kind of medical orpublic health officials.
And so I wonder how, if youhave any thoughts on how we
(32:08):
bridge that gap to of one,establishing very firmly that
gun violence prevention is apiece of public health work that
can't be up for debate, andthen two, and within that, the
prescription that is being giventhen by public health officials
needs to be followed.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
You are tapping into something I have thought there
is.
Another day has gone by where Ihave not thought about exactly
this in the past three years.
I think we all have.
I've nothing else has beenheartbroken by some of the
public health leadership andsort of public response to the
public health asks during COVIDand the divisions that ensued on
(32:47):
everything from how maskefficacy was communicated to why
it's important to ensureschools are safe and what clean
air should look like and howthat connects to learning and,
you know, vaccine uptake and thesystemic factors driving a lot
of that as well.
I mean just so many aspects toour collective COVID response.
(33:13):
You know I wrote this littlething last year drawing a lot of
connections between the US, theUS's response to COVID and its
response to gun violence, whichis a reliance on tertiary
strategies very reactive, verylittle on the context of
prevention, very little thatconsiders why prevention is so
(33:35):
important and how to messagethat.
I think that I see a lot ofparallels there and, to be clear
, these are not easy decisionsor easy leadership choices to
make and so much of COVID.
What we know now was verydifferent two, three years ago
and a lot of things and mistakesget learned in hindsight.
So I understand that thecomplexity there, but I also
(33:58):
think the good leadership thenneeds to own and redirect and
re-correct.
When we see children who aregetting repeated infections, and
schools yes, private schoolswith lots of resources, very
well protected from COVID,versus public schools that have
32 kids in a classroom and nowindows or working AC to keep
(34:21):
that air clean.
So lots of just realopportunity for investment that
we didn't do as a nation and Ithink that has been
extraordinarily disappointingand it's been a feeling that I
think has reverberated in thegun violence world too.
I mean, that's just that'swhere.
I mean gun violence is theleading cause of death among
(34:43):
children and teens in the US andwe, frankly, have allowed it to
get to that point.
So that is a failure of our.
That is a failure that as anation we have to own.
And now we have to say what arewe doing to move forward on
this, you know, I think in thecontext of how do we garner that
trust back.
So I think there's lots oflessons learned, what worked
(35:05):
well, but what have we doneright?
What have we done lesscorrectly?
But I think, importantlyunderstanding a couple of things
.
One is yes, gun violence is apublic health issue, but that
doesn't mean that only those inpublic health should be involved
in its solution.
So this is something I think isreally important, again, as
from my vantage point of leadingthis research society.
(35:28):
You guys know we have 700people coming to Chicago for the
largest national conference ongun violence prevention science
ever, and we have close to twodozen academic disciplines
represented.
Right, that means we areworking with social workers and
school nurses and medicaldoctors and epidemiologists and
criminologists and lawenforcement and everyone in
(35:50):
between to really generate goodquality, evidence driven
solutions.
So I want to also.
So part of this, I think, is usas a field being very clear that
we are working together all ofus because no community is
immune to gun violence in the USand it's important and
imperative that we are workingtogether on all and pulling all
(36:12):
the possible levers to move thisforward.
And I think that's an importanttrust piece here, because it's
not just public health as thisotherized entity.
It is all of us together inthis.
In fact, even me myself.
I'm not pure public health.
I'm someone who really sits atthe intersection of education
and public health.
So it's even I don't reflectpublic health purely.
So I think that's reallyimportant, but I will also say
(36:34):
that part of I think thatsomething that I think is really
important for us to connectwith publicly and as we talk
about this, is that solutionsare go beyond policy.
They involve, by the way, inputand and reflections and support
from gun owners, that they arenot.
It is not about a red state,blue state issue.
(36:55):
This is that these areinvestments.
What are we asking for in thecontext of gun violence
prevention?
We are saying, before, yearsand years before a child feels
so isolated and or let down andor whatever, we play well before
they, even well before a childchooses to pick up a firearm and
(37:16):
bring it to school to hurtthemselves or someone else, that
is a last resort and we havefailed a child over and over and
over again.
If that is where they are at atthe age of 16, 17, 18, we have
failed that child, not just inthe context of where they got
that gun although that is alsosomething that has to be part of
the conversation but whatbrought them to a point where
(37:38):
they needed to, they feltcompelled to commit that kind of
violence.
So when I talk, we talk aboutschool shooters and all of that
understanding prevention is likewhat's happening way, way, way
before.
That feels so critical and soimportant.
So like this idea that mentalhealth only gets talked about
after a mass shooting.
And then last year, yeah, okay.
(37:59):
So, as many of us know, ofcourse, the mass shooting in
Ubalde, texas, at Rob elementaryschool, happened and lots of
calls by elected officials allover for investments, increased
investments in mental health.
And you know what?
There was a school safety billa few months later that would
have increased state levelresources for mental health
(38:21):
services and access to like justincreasing the number of social
workers and guidance counselors.
And how many elected officialsjust didn't didn't vote for that
.
That is a choice to say.
We are choosing at this pointto not invest in the thing we
said mattered four months agoand that, frankly, is
unacceptable.
That's not a red or blue issue.
That is failing to meet theneeds of what your constituents
(38:44):
need and are asking for, and Ithink this is where I'm going a
little off, I realize, but thisis just no.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
I'm literally about to just start saying like amen,
yeah, I'm enjoying this deeply.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
I just feel like you know we need to, we.
I just feel like we really needto think about where the field
is.
Yes, we need to grow the, weneed to grow that trust, but we
also then need to not be okaywhen our like elected officials,
who do have privilege and powerand resources, when they are
not making the choices that bestrepresent what the data say,
(39:19):
what the science is, and we asresearchers, scholars, those of
us in the public healthleadership, need to then step up
and say this is not okay.
And I think that is a verydifficult thing, a very
difficult line to walk.
I think that's challenging onlots of levels.
It's not always easy to do that, but I would like to see more
of that and, frankly, not justamong public health.
(39:41):
I will say this also I thinkpublic health as a field is
phenomenal, has done so muchgood for so many parts of the
world.
We have so much, there's somuch good that comes out of the
field of public health.
So I am not a critic of thepublic health field because I
think it is an extraordinaryfield, full of dedicated
scholars and partners who makeso much of the world better and
(40:03):
safer and more tenable.
I think what the expectation weare holding the public health
field to needs to be held,frankly, to other fields too
education, right, our, ourcriminal justice system,
thinking about all the facets ofour federal government all the
way on down to our localmunicipalities.
We need to be looking andsaying what, how are what?
(40:25):
Where is this funding goingright?
Like, why does New York Cityspend over half of its school
safety budget on police inschools, when that is an example
of an quote intervention thathas no evidence guiding its
effectiveness.
Right, there's 32 kids in aclass, we have underpaid
teachers, but we have police inschools.
I'm not opposed to some babypolice being in schools and very
(40:49):
specific roles, and maybethat's something that we need to
look more closely at theliterature to better understand.
But that's an example right ofwhere are we putting our
resources?
That's not on public health,that's on leadership.
Right, that's on other systems.
To also speak up and understand, what should we be investing in
?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I know public health is saying no, but politicians
are saying yes.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
And that's happening.
And this is where I will sayexactly like, what are we trying
to do here?
You know, gun violence is apublic health issue, but
something I often talk about inmy work is it's a child health
issue.
As we talked about before, it'sa learning issue.
So lots of conversation anddiscourse around learning loss
and all of that.
Well, gun violence is alearning issue.
You want kids to learn and taketests and do well and learn to
(41:35):
read.
They need to feel safe atschool in all aspects, right.
We want families to feelengaged and supported.
Well, we need to make sure thatthey and their families are
safe from firearm violence.
There's lots of ways to reframegun violence.
So, yes, it's a public healthissue and it is also an issue
(41:55):
that needs to be taken up byother areas.
In fact, if we think about itright, we've organized our lives
around the inevitability of gunviolence in many ways Shooter
drills and bystander programsthat teach people how to tie a
tourniquet in the case of ashooting, and just thinking
about, you know, real estatecosts in different neighborhoods
and thinking about the systemicfactors, right?
(42:17):
So just thinking about all theways that gun violence in this
country impacts our day to day.
We need to.
Then that's where it goes backto kind of my initial piece here
we need to think about what dothose solutions really really
look like at all levels?
So again, pulling all thelevers.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Hey man, and she's just saying you know something
you're up in Detroit and I getso annoyed even now in the
discourse where, if you'retalking about, you know, black
and brown people in a city,oftentimes politicians will say,
well, some politicians whodon't want to do anything will
just say, well, you need to juststudy hard and stay in school
and get a job and ignore.
(42:55):
You're asking, like children,to study and focus and do all
these things when they have PTSD.
You're not doing anything aboutit.
You're just saying like I don'tknow, kid, like figure it out,
and if you don't, that's not.
I have no responsibility to youso everything you're saying
certainly resonates for sure.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
That's a perfect example, exactly Like how could
a traumatized kid now needs togo take a standardized test
without any resources, supportor understanding of what is
happening at home, outside ofschool or during, even during,
the day, like why are they notfocusing or why are they not
paying attention?
And you know what?
That is a failure, right,that's a failure of our systems,
(43:35):
right, collective systems andthe onus, by the way, in that
case isn't on the teachers, whoare underpaid and overworked, it
is on the collective ed systemthat has been, frankly,
underfunded for years and yearsand years.
So it requires and this iswhere I know that the problem
can feel too vast and toooverwhelming for folks to really
wrap their head around.
So, you know, I do feel likeit's important for us
(43:56):
collectively to step back andsay okay, let's take it one step
at a time.
Here, here are the things wecould start with.
Right?
Here is the way we're not evenasking for more money.
We're saying can we reallocateexisting funds to be used in a
more reasonable and effectivemanner?
That might be, in and of itself, like a great place to start.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And for folks who are interested in doing the right
thing or learning more.
Where did they find all of thefabulous work that you're doing?
Oh, that's so nice.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Okay, so on my website I type a website my own,
sonali Rajan.
You can just Google.
I come up as my faculty websiteis right there.
But our research society, theNational Research Conference for
the Prevention of FirearmRelated Harms, has a website
firearmresearchsocietyorg.
Those of you who may not beable to join us this year, we
(44:45):
will be hosting this conferenceagain in 2024 and every year
subsequent to that, and we verymuch look forward to hoping to
have you and your colleaguesjoin us in these conversations
and in the space and so folkscan check that out.
Yeah, those would be a good twoplaces to start and appreciate
so much the opportunity to behere today and talk.
(45:06):
Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Hey want to share with the podcast.
Listeners can now get in touchwith us here at Red Blue and
Brady via phone or text message.
Simply call or text us at480-744-3452 with your thoughts.
Questions concerns ideas, catpictures, whatever.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Thanks for listening.
As always, brady's lifesavingwork in Congress, the courts and
communities across the countryis made possible thanks to you.
For more information on Bradyor how to get involved in the
fight against gun violence,please like and subscribe to the
podcast.
Get in touch with us atBradyUnitedorg or on social at
BradyBuzz.
Be brave and remember.
(45:47):
Take action, not sides.
This is the legal disclaimer, where I tell you
that the views, thoughts andopinion shared on this podcast
belong solely to our guests andhosts and not necessarily Brady
or Brady's affiliates.
Please note this podcastcontains discussions of violence
that some people may finddisturbing.
It's okay, we find itdisturbing too.
Hey, everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red, blue
(00:45):
and Brady.
I'm one of your hosts, jj.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And I'm Kelly, your other host.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And I am so excited that we are bringing you this
episode with someone who I amjust forcing to be my friend, dr
Sonali Rajan.
I first met Sonali through theNational Research Conference for
the Prevention ofFirearm-Related Harms, which has
been put on by the ResearchSociety for the Prevention of
Firearm-Related Harms Recentlywas just at the conference, but
(01:11):
really I cannot thank Sonali,her colleagues at Columbia and
the other folks that are reallyworking to push the envelope on
gun violence prevention research, especially as we'll talk about
today on how it relates tochildren and adolescents.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, and I was delighted to meet Sonali through
you, jj, because she is aprofessor at Teachers College at
Columbia and that is where Iactually study for the bar, so
it's been a lot of days in thatlibrary in particular.
So it was a lovely littleconnection to see all the great
work that she's doing, justreally diving into gun violence
(01:52):
and how it impacts youth notjust in the immediate moment but
also throughout their lives.
But it's not a downer, becauseshe also her research has
implications on how we can helpchildren to sort of move to
flourishing.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh, move to flourishing.
I like that it can't be thetitle of this episode, but it's
what you should all keep in mindas you're listening to it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
You guys are so kind and so lovely and thank you
first of all for having me ontoday.
So my name is Dr Sonali Rajanand I am an associate professor
in the Department of Health andBehavior Studies at Teachers
College, columbia University.
I also have a facultyappointment in the Department of
Epidemiology at the MailmanSchool of Public Health and I am
(02:37):
currently the inauguralpresident of the Research
Society for Firearm-RelatedHarms.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So many hats, maybe one head.
How do you?
like that, Lots of hats, and Ididn't even add in the part that
I'm a mom to an eight-year-oldmaybe my most important title
and we're going to dig into alot of those titles and a lot of
those departments and what theymean functionally when we're
talking about gun violence andresearch.
But I think Kelly and I areboth always really curious how
people ended up here of allplaces, especially considering
(03:06):
obviously all of thehealth-related work kind of that
these departments are.
How did you end up focusingwithin that on gun violence and
I'm for our listenersedification like on violence and
childhood experiences morebroadly?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
That's such a good question and I think if you had
said to me when I was in collegeor when I was in graduate
school that this is what I wouldend up devoting my career to, I
would have.
This is not necessarily how Iwould have pictured it, but I
love the field of gun violenceprevention science and I'm very
grateful and privileged to dothe work that I do.
And I did arrive here in alittle bit of a roundabout way.
(03:42):
So when I was a doctoralstudent and working in my
dissertation and in the veryearly stages of my postdoctoral
lifetime and early facultylifetime, I was really broadly
focused on an area that we callschool health, and so all of my
research was really interestedin understanding connections
(04:03):
between health and learning, andI was particularly interested
and this was reflected in mydissertation work.
But how does a school's climateand a school's environment
shape a child's sense ofwell-being?
And a lot of the work I didlooked at health issues such as
physical activity and sleep andnutrition and substance use and
(04:25):
mental health and really tryingto understand how do we support
children so that they aremotivated and ready to learn,
and I think about everything Ineed every day to come to work
and do my job well.
I go running and I sleep anddrink water and lots of coffees.
I know what I need as an adultto do that, as a privileged
(04:45):
adult.
And so certainly for children,we need to make sure that they
are also well-fed and cared forat home and at school, because
I'm looking at all the things myeight-year-old is doing right
now in school multiplicationquizzes and the expectations
that we hold for our childrenand so they need to be supported
health-wise in all aspects todo that.
(05:07):
So that kind of was the broadarea of my research focus for a
number of years and in 2014,.
So my best friend, kelly Ruggles, is also a professor at NYU.
She was my college roommate andwe've known each other for many
, many, many years and she's abioinformatic scientist.
(05:30):
We had a lot of fun again earlyon in our faculty careers
writing papers together and when, in 2014, she and I just took
10 years worth of the CDC data.
The CDC has a surveillancesystem, the Youth Risk Behavior
Surveillance System, and it's anational database that collects
(05:51):
data on teenagers on all sortsof different health issues, and
Kelly and I took I think it wasdata across 10 or 12 years worth
of that data.
And what precipitated this wasthe Sandy Hook shooting had
happened just a couple yearsprior.
But Kelly and I for both of uswe were both in high school when
(06:12):
Columbine happened.
I'm dating myself now, butwe'll just go with that.
We were both in high schoolwhen Columbine happened.
She and I were both in graduateschool when Virginia Tech
happened.
We were both beginning ourfaculty careers when Sandy Hook
happened.
So, like many of us and ourlisteners, gun violence and
certain gun violence incidentshave punctuated moments in our
(06:35):
lifetime, and so one of thequestions in this CDC survey is
how frequently do you carry agun?
And lots of really excellent,compelling literature that
describes the risk that just guncarriage alone places place
right, and so that by itself isa risk factor.
(06:57):
And Kelly and I were justinterested in saying, if we
employ some of her informaticsmethods and played with this
data and tried to make sense ofit and look for patterns, what
are some of the behavioralcorrelates that might associate
with gun possession?
Like if we were just reallyjust to think outside of the box
.
So you hear a lot of discoursearound mental health and all of
(07:18):
that, but we were like what elseis going on.
And so we wrote this paper thatwas published in plus one, and
both of our moms, who are alsoscientists, had never been
prouder.
And we wrote this paper and init there were sort of many
things that we found, butsomething that I thought was we
both thought that wasparticularly compelling was and
interesting was that, yes,indicators of poor mental health
(07:39):
, substance use all of thosethings that you might expect
correlate with gun carriage wasthere and present.
But in our work we also clearlyshowed, year after year and
across the sample of kids, thatkids who had been previously
exposed to gun violence orviolence of any kind, kids who
were reporting that they don'tfeel safe on the way to and from
(08:00):
school, in school itself, athome, kids who had been
previously exposed to violenceof any kind or even threats of
any kind, those kids whoseperceptions of safety were not
there, they were the kids morelikely to report carrying a gun.
And I know what I'm sayingright now is so obvious Like
(08:20):
this.
What I'm describing doesn'teven feel like rocket science,
because it's not.
It's very intuitive, but for methat was certainly a light bulb
moment in that my whole work upuntil that point was focused on
, like I was saying, physicalactivity and sleep and all these
other outcomes.
But then I was like, well, ifkids don't fundamentally feel
safe at home or in school orwherever, they're not going to
(08:44):
sleep well or eat well or,honestly, they're not going to
have good mental health, howcould they?
And it seemed so.
I kind of had this moment whereI was like what precedes all of
these other positive healthoutcomes, you need a sense of
safety and stability which againfeels very intuitive.
It's so something that weshould all expect and hope for
(09:07):
all children, but clearly is notthe case for many, many kids
across the country.
And so that was around the timethat I really just was starting
to get more and more interestedin this area of work and
started to learn a lot moreabout the field and the gaps in
funding and how little there was.
A lot we knew, but also so muchwe didn't know and lots of
(09:31):
opportunity for questions to beasked and answered, and there
was just so much more we neededto do.
And so that all came togetherand over the past several years
I've been just delving rightinto that.
And so here I am and the vastmajority of the research I
engage in is very much centeredon this topic and in this area.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So, before we dive more into your work, I'm
wondering if we can define theterms in a playing field.
And so what is an adversechildhood experience, and is it
an ACE or an ACE?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Great question, ok.
So yes, I tend to use theseterms and then I don't explain
them up front.
So thank you for asking.
Ok, so an adverse childhoodexperience is essentially a
potentially traumatic event thatundermines a child's sense of
safety and stability.
And historically so, the termACE so we call them ACEs for
(10:25):
short, the term ACE wasintroduced into the literature
via a very famous, well-knownstudy that was conducted in 1999
.
And in that work it wasscientists from Kaiser
Permanente and others and inthat work they really
operationalized this concept ofan ACE.
And historically the term hasincluded household dysfunction
(10:49):
and parents with mental illnessor children who experience abuse
of some kind.
So really for a very long timeACEs really focused in on about
eight or nine of those kinds ofvery particular experiences that
happen at home.
Interestingly, and over thepast few years the types of ACEs
have expanded to involvedifferent kinds of experiences,
(11:14):
partly as our scientificunderstanding of children and
their well-being has evolved andalso our recognition of real
systemic factors racism, povertythat also drive these
experiences, that do placechildren at high and risk.
So the definition of whatcomprises an ACE has expanded,
(11:35):
and a few years ago so I'm veryfortunate to work with a number
of wonderful colleagues, amongthem Charlie Brandes, who is the
Epidemiology Department Chairhere at Mailman, and he and I
have been having thisconversation around.
Well, we have all of these ACEs, but exposure to gun violence
during childhood is notconsidered an ACE.
(11:56):
It had not been operationalizedin the actual definition and
data collection and surveillanceof how we think about ACEs, and
I think we, along with a coupleof our colleagues Dr Nina
Agrival, who's a pediatricianand just a brilliant leader in
this field and one of ourwonderful students all of us
really said, well, let's reviewthe literature, let's do a
(12:18):
systematic review, let's sitdown and understand what have
historically been consideredACEs.
What Does gun violence exposurelook like in children and does
it make sense, right from atruly from a conceptual
perspective and how weunderstand ACEs to impact
children and their brain andtheir development?
(12:39):
Does it make sense to includeyouth exposure to gun violence
as an ACE and can we make anargument for that?
And we did, and so so, spoileralert, gun violence is an ACE.
So in the context of that, wewrote a paper in 2019 and really
argued again, using theliterature as a framework for
(13:01):
our understanding, not only thatgun violence during childhood
should be considered an ACE, butwhy that's so important?
So to get to your questionabout what an ACE is, an ACE has
a very specific impact onchildren and their development.
So experiencing an ACE and I'llput probably says by saying also
(13:21):
I was just talking about thisin a meeting like right before
this part of why I love studyingkids is because as much as we
as a society do to place kids atrisk and we don't do nearly
enough to consider theirwellbeing on so many levels.
But kids are amazing and whenthere is access to good support
(13:43):
and interventions and resources,kids can thrive.
And so what I love about kidsis you can work with them and
even if society has messed, hasplaced them at all this high
risk and messed them up, we cando so much to try and undo that.
There's like room for that hopeand optimism which makes me
feel a little bit better in thecontext of trying to do
(14:03):
something in this space.
And so when you have experiencein ACE, if a child does not
receive active intervention andsupport in the aftermath of that
ACE, then what happens is thatACE actually disrupts the
neurodevelopment in a child'sbrain and that then leads them
to be far more likely to engagein other higher risk behaviors.
(14:27):
It places them at higher riskfor all sorts of things.
I'll talk about this in onesecond.
And then it actually then,without again, without any
intervention or support, placesthem at such high risk that
they're more likely to exhibit arange of poor health outcomes
on a number of things.
In the process of writing thispaper, I was just sharing my
(14:48):
doctoral student who's aco-author on that paper, and
just phenomenal, I remember this.
We were working through ourThanksgiving break because we
had a deadline for this paper,so I remember this really
vividly.
In our conversations aroundthis work, we were all just
continually amazed at how everypoor health outcome you could
possibly imagine in some formcan be tied back to having had
(15:08):
one or more ACEs, like cancerrisk, chronic disease, heart
disease, substance use, mentalhealth, oral health, adhd I mean
you name it.
There is a paper out there thathas linked some poor health
outcome back to an ACE.
So what we showed in our workis that it's really important to
understand what comprises ACEsto begin with.
(15:30):
We need to do that at a veryminimum and then we need to
enter if we know it's an ACE andwe could intervene, right, we
could intervene immediately inthe aftermath of that experience
so that we prevent.
So this is the beautiful thingabout kids, right?
So if we don't do anything,kids in our place are at a
higher risk for all the things Ijust described.
But if we do intervene, thenkids actually that those
(15:54):
interventions mitigate the harmsthat ACEs then place on their
short and long-term healthoutcomes.
And that was like somind-blowing in some ways,
because it's like well, gunviolence is increasing, right,
it has only increased in thepast few years.
Some of the work that mycolleagues and I did last year
showed not only is it increasing, but if you look at the
(16:17):
post-COVID trends, it has gottenso much worse for children
across the US, and not just inthe context of those who were
shot and killed, although thatobviously is horrific and a big
portion of the tragedies we'retrying to prevent but even for
children who are survivors ofgun violence, who hear gun shots
(16:37):
as they walk to and from school, who are witnessing gunfire,
who have lost friends or lovedones to gun violence.
This range of experiences needsto be understood.
It needs to be prevented, mostimportantly, but if it happens
we need to intervene,particularly for children, in
the aftermath of and part of ourargument in this work.
(17:00):
And the reason I'm interestedin ACEs as a general area is
because, well, yeah, gunviolence is a we'll talk about
it.
I'm sure today it's acontroversial topic and there's
lots of perspectives on whatsolutions look like, but ACEs
are something that we can allagree.
We should be preventing, rightACEs?
Gun violence as a child healthand child wellbeing issue should
(17:23):
hopefully be something that wecan all come to agreement on,
and so I think that's where alot of my interest in ACEs
specifically has come from,because I do see it as an avenue
to think more creatively aboutmeaningful advocacy and progress
in a space that has often beenmired with politics and that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
No, and I think it's the yeah, how can you not get
behind helping children?
And one of the things that Ithink that you're really
articulating well here, too, isthat we need research in these
areas, because it seems, onceyou connect those dots, it
appears obvious, but you have toconnect those dots first.
Someone has to put thattogether and correlate all this
information, and so I'mwondering it may seem like a
(18:04):
really simplistic question, butI know it doesn't have a simple
answer Like what is the role ofresearch playing, then in gun
violence prevention?
That is an helpful you know howdo we take things out of
Columbia and into the widerworld?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yes, Well, I am biased as a gun violence
researcher.
Obviously, I think research inthis space is really important
and in leading this researchsociety now I am having the
opportunity to get a real bird'seye view of the field, which is
just this extraordinary fieldof just completely devoted,
(18:36):
collaborative, phenomenalindividuals at all career levels
, I might add, who are just allhands on deck on this, and I
love and appreciate so much theenergy and the collaborative
nature of that.
You know, I know it feels sillysometimes to say have to say
things like health and learningare connected or guns are an
(18:57):
adverse child, gun violence isan adverse childhood experience.
But here's what I will say, andI do think this is really
important Gun violence as just aphenomenon is politicized,
whether we like to, whether wecan't change that right now.
The politic I mean maybe we canchange it down the line, but at
the moment it just is and ithas been for many, many years.
So we want to move forward withsolutions and the best way to
(19:19):
do that is to move forward withevidence, informed solutions.
I do a lot of as I know we'vetalked about, I do a lot of
interviews with journalists andmedia, usually in the aftermath
of different shootings and intalking through this issue with
the public.
And something that I alwaysthink is really important is
yeah, people know, for example,I'm a parent, I talk about my
kid all the time.
(19:40):
I can't help it, okay, I'mcrazy about him, but I say that
to say I want people to know.
I want reporters in the publicor whoever I'm talking to
schools, principals, I want themto know that whatever I'm
bringing to the table, I'mbringing to the table as a
scientist, that what I'm sharing, what we're and it's not just
me, it's all of us in this fieldthat the solutions we're
putting forth are not driven bypersonal preference or personal
(20:04):
experiences or politicalaffiliation.
These are nonpartisan,data-driven, evidence-informed
solutions that are driving whatwe should or should not be doing
, and I think it's reallycritical that in order to do
that well and this is, I think,so important in fields like this
, to do that well we need tohave really good quality data
(20:25):
informing those solutions.
So I think, from just like a howdo we move forward together
perspective, the research pieceis key because we want to look
to the research for thesolutions.
You don't want to talk to me asa mom and ask me my opinion.
That's not appropriate.
It doesn't even make sense,right?
How could I speak to a solutionin that context without any
(20:48):
bias?
That's just not possible.
But if you talk to me as ascientist, you talk to my
colleagues or my students asscientists.
We are all saying, well, thisis what the data are telling us,
right?
This is what we know and maybewhat we?
Maybe the answer is we don'tknow, right.
So I get a lot of questionsabout certain types of solutions
in schools or otherwise, andsometimes my answer to folks is
(21:10):
well, we don't actually know ifthat works or not, but this is
something that warrants study orwarrants more evaluation, and I
think that's something that thefield as a whole is really
committed to doing and thatfeels particularly important in
this piece, I think, to answeryour question sort of.
The other component of that isalso, I think, that the public
(21:31):
discourse around solutions togun violence tends to be very
myopic in nature, in that we arefocused often on debate and
discourse around very specificpolicies that speak explicitly
to access to firearms forprescribed users in different
contexts.
(21:51):
And what have you Now?
That absolutely ought to be andshould be a part of the public
discourse.
It should be something that ourelected officials are thinking
through in thoughtful ways.
Again, there's an extraordinarylevel of excellent research
driving what we know and don'tknow about lots of different
policies, but that's like onecomponent of what the range of
(22:13):
solutions look like.
It turns out and again theresearch shows this that there
is a very wide range of actualinvestments in our communities
and in our schools that goes waybeyond specific firearm
policies.
That would allow us tounderstand and be creative in
thinking about what solutions tothis look like Greenspace and
(22:36):
affordable housing and universalschool-based violence
prevention programming andreally thinking about the role
of basic infrastructure aspublic libraries and all sorts
of things that have been shownin the research to have
connections to gun violence,that disrupt those cycles of
disenfranchisement.
(22:56):
I mean, those are really like weneed to be.
The problem is so vast and weneed to be thinking about
solutions that encompass thevastness of the problem.
It's such a big problem, so howdo we actually intervene and
prevent that?
And I think this is where thatall hands on deck,
(23:17):
interdisciplinary, creative wayof being is so needed, and
that's what I, among manyaspects of the research
community in this space that Ilove and appreciate, but that
has been so heartening to seejust the again, the real
creativity and sharing of ideasand coming together of new
methods and disciplines to belike all right, how could we
(23:39):
think about this differently?
And that's where I feel likethe research community can play
a really and is playing a verybig role in progress on this
issue.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
You touched on something that I've personally
experienced working in this area, which is like there's this
weird tension where some of thetruths that we deal with are to
your point, they're so obviousright, we still need the data,
but they're imminently obvious,like if you're a six year old
and you see a shooting that'sgoing to do something to you.
But then there's also the otherthing you touched on, which is
(24:11):
that gun violence is complex.
It interacts with differentcommunities in different ways.
It has intersections withinfrastructure and all these
things, and so sometimes,whether someone is feeling stuck
because they are disillusionedand sad, or they're feeling
stuck because they just don'twant to deal with it and it
seems complicated, how would youbreak down for someone that,
(24:33):
yes, there are angles anddimensions to gun violence that
require a multifaceted approach,but also it doesn't mean that
we can't do anything and thatit's impossible to solve?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
That's like the million dollar question that is
the fundamental problems at theheart of our movement.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Just yes, yes, that is the tension I think all of us
in this field and in this spaceare wrestling with day in and
day out.
I've used this line indifferent contexts, but I'll
share it here, which is, I think, all of us probably feel.
I certainly feel this way.
I am often walking that linebetween hope and hopelessness,
(25:15):
right.
So it's devastating to see theshootings, the prevalence of
this issue, the way it impactsfamilies and communities, and
also then to go to work everyday and to think about how can
we do better.
And I think the thing thatgives me a lot of hope is, again
, the community of scholars andpartners that we work with to do
this.
Now, that being said, I think Itry to answer the first part of
(25:38):
your question.
So I try to think aboutdescribing the nuance of gun
violence, kind of like we wouldconsider the nuance for other
health issues or conditions.
So, for example, if I just saidchronic disease, well, there's
lots of types of chronic disease, right, and within that,
there's lots of differentvariations.
(25:58):
Or even if I said diabetes morebroadly, right, within the
context of diabetes, there'stype one, there's type two, they
, depending on when in yourlifetime you develop this, it
might impact how you treat it orhow you respond to it, or if we
think about cancer prevention.
You know, cancer prevention isactually a great example in some
ways, because lots of differenttypes of cancer, they affect
(26:19):
different populationsdifferently, different groups
might be at higher risk or not.
Our screening and preventionlooks different given the type
of cancer.
So, in that same way that weknow and understand and have
normalized the nuance of othertypes of diseases and health
conditions, by that same token,gun violence is also equally
(26:41):
complex.
We have suicide, right.
We have mass shootings, schoolshootings, with which can be a
subset of that, but also othertypes of school shootings that
happen, unintentional oraccidental shootings that take
place, community based violence,gun violence and everything in
between, interpersonal violencethat involves firearms and, as I
(27:02):
was saying earlier, ace is the,the idea of an ACE, which is
that there's other types of justthe exposure to gun violence,
the indirect experiences thatare so critical to understanding
and then preventing.
So part of what I think isreally important is, you know,
as we all know far too well, youknow, the vast majority of
media coverage typically focuseson the very public mass
(27:25):
shootings that tragically happenand those are so important to
prevent and to respond to and weneed to attend to those
absolutely.
But, to quote my colleagues,that is the proverbial tip of a
much larger iceberg of gunviolence.
Right, and we most.
Gun violence in this countrydoesn't make the daily news, it
(27:45):
doesn't make often forget, thenational news, may not even make
your local news.
Right, because it is thatprevalent and happens so
frequently and sometimes to whomit happens to also impacts.
Right, how, as you can, youboth know better than me how the
public consumes thatinformation.
And so I think that piece ofthis is to sit back and say
(28:06):
listen, we need to understandthe nuance here.
We need to recognize thatpreventing suicide there might
be overlap, right, withpreventing school shootings.
You know we think about firearmstorage and other efforts that
we all know work really wellthat could play out and have
impact on different kinds of gunviolence.
But there's also nuance, right,very specific nuance.
(28:29):
I mean I specifically studyschool gun violence prevention.
I have colleagues who are alsogun violence researchers but
specifically study suicideprevention and it varies across
geography, across the lifecourse, across different
communities.
It just looks different and sopart of our individual expertise
(28:49):
and experiences to try andunderstand the nuance here.
Now, what I have said often andthis is where I just think is so
important to share is that, yes, there's a lot we still need to
know and to understand, butthere is so much we already know
works.
That would not necessarilyrequire Congress coming together
(29:10):
and agreeing on a specificpolicy.
It could require us to be morecreative with how our budgets
look like at the federal, stateand more municipal levels.
It could.
It would require us to rethinkhow we structure schools or
where our financial prioritiesgo.
There are lots of things thatwe could do, and I'm happy to
(29:31):
give examples, but there's lotsof things we could do now that
we could say well, right nowschools are doing XYZ and that's
expensive and we don't evenknow if it works, and instead
maybe we could do.
These three things that we doknow have an impact and even if
they don't fix gun violencealtogether, they would reduce
its harm, and I think that'swhere we want to go right.
(29:54):
We're not.
Listen, I'm a real.
I'm an optimist 90% of the time, but also a realist in the
sense of I understand that weare limited in making progress
here and there.
So any reduction in harm is apositive step forward, and I
think that's where I don't knowif you both feel our listeners
maybe feel frustrated in thisway, but I do sometimes feel
(30:17):
like, yeah, if the federalgovernment came to me and said
we need a plan for preventingschool shootings, we have one.
We have lots of ideas andpublished papers that have
literally documented a frameworkfor actually doing this.
But it requires leadership, itrequires reprioritizing budgets.
It also requires reimaginingthe possibilities here, and I
(30:39):
think that's where, if nothingelse, I would love the public
framing and there's journalistswho are absolutely doing this
beautifully and I'm so gratefulto them for sharing and
amplifying these stories but weneed to just flip the lid on how
we talk about it.
So how do we start to associateother active solutions with
(31:00):
moving progress forward and howdo we bring that to the ballot
box and how do we actually thinkabout engaging our elected
officials on those components?
And so, yeah, you're hearing, Iguess, both but my optimism and
maybe frustration as we thinkabout what solutions look like,
but I do feel like that.
The encouraging thing to me isthat there's a lot we know and
(31:24):
that makes me feel better.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
That makes me feel better too.
So you're not alone.
You're not alone in that boatof like cautious optimism or
like happiness, but couched.
But one of the things, though,that is present here within this
is that then the public, or theour elected officials, have to
then trust researchers.
And I think about this a lot,especially kind of in the post
(31:46):
COVID world, where I used tothink honestly, going into COVID
, that public health officialswere a trusted source, right,
that people kind of just went,okay, yeah, exactly, dr
So-and-so said it.
I must do.
We learned I think the countrylearned that's actually not the
case that there actually is alot of skepticism or a lot of
distrust of kind of medical orpublic health officials.
And so I wonder how, if youhave any thoughts on how we
(32:08):
bridge that gap to of one,establishing very firmly that
gun violence prevention is apiece of public health work that
can't be up for debate, andthen two, and within that, the
prescription that is being giventhen by public health officials
needs to be followed.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
You are tapping into something I have thought there
is.
Another day has gone by where Ihave not thought about exactly
this in the past three years.
I think we all have.
I've nothing else has beenheartbroken by some of the
public health leadership andsort of public response to the
public health asks during COVIDand the divisions that ensued on
(32:47):
everything from how maskefficacy was communicated to why
it's important to ensureschools are safe and what clean
air should look like and howthat connects to learning and,
you know, vaccine uptake and thesystemic factors driving a lot
of that as well.
I mean just so many aspects toour collective COVID response.
(33:13):
You know I wrote this littlething last year drawing a lot of
connections between the US, theUS's response to COVID and its
response to gun violence, whichis a reliance on tertiary
strategies very reactive, verylittle on the context of
prevention, very little thatconsiders why prevention is so
(33:35):
important and how to messagethat.
I think that I see a lot ofparallels there and, to be clear
, these are not easy decisionsor easy leadership choices to
make and so much of COVID.
What we know now was verydifferent two, three years ago
and a lot of things and mistakesget learned in hindsight.
So I understand that thecomplexity there, but I also
(33:58):
think the good leadership thenneeds to own and redirect and
re-correct.
When we see children who aregetting repeated infections, and
schools yes, private schoolswith lots of resources, very
well protected from COVID,versus public schools that have
32 kids in a classroom and nowindows or working AC to keep
(34:21):
that air clean.
So lots of just realopportunity for investment that
we didn't do as a nation and Ithink that has been
extraordinarily disappointingand it's been a feeling that I
think has reverberated in thegun violence world too.
I mean, that's just that'swhere.
I mean gun violence is theleading cause of death among
(34:43):
children and teens in the US andwe, frankly, have allowed it to
get to that point.
So that is a failure of our.
That is a failure that as anation we have to own.
And now we have to say what arewe doing to move forward on
this, you know, I think in thecontext of how do we garner that
trust back.
So I think there's lots oflessons learned, what worked
(35:05):
well, but what have we doneright?
What have we done lesscorrectly?
But I think, importantlyunderstanding a couple of things
.
One is yes, gun violence is apublic health issue, but that
doesn't mean that only those inpublic health should be involved
in its solution.
So this is something I think isreally important, again, as
from my vantage point of leadingthis research society.
(35:28):
You guys know we have 700people coming to Chicago for the
largest national conference ongun violence prevention science
ever, and we have close to twodozen academic disciplines
represented.
Right, that means we areworking with social workers and
school nurses and medicaldoctors and epidemiologists and
criminologists and lawenforcement and everyone in
(35:50):
between to really generate goodquality, evidence driven
solutions.
So I want to also.
So part of this, I think, is usas a field being very clear that
we are working together all ofus because no community is
immune to gun violence in the USand it's important and
imperative that we are workingtogether on all and pulling all
(36:12):
the possible levers to move thisforward.
And I think that's an importanttrust piece here, because it's
not just public health as thisotherized entity.
It is all of us together inthis.
In fact, even me myself.
I'm not pure public health.
I'm someone who really sits atthe intersection of education
and public health.
So it's even I don't reflectpublic health purely.
So I think that's reallyimportant, but I will also say
(36:34):
that part of I think thatsomething that I think is really
important for us to connectwith publicly and as we talk
about this, is that solutionsare go beyond policy.
They involve, by the way, inputand and reflections and support
from gun owners, that they arenot.
It is not about a red state,blue state issue.
(36:55):
This is that these areinvestments.
What are we asking for in thecontext of gun violence
prevention?
We are saying, before, yearsand years before a child feels
so isolated and or let down andor whatever, we play well before
they, even well before a childchooses to pick up a firearm and
(37:16):
bring it to school to hurtthemselves or someone else, that
is a last resort and we havefailed a child over and over and
over again.
If that is where they are at atthe age of 16, 17, 18, we have
failed that child, not just inthe context of where they got
that gun although that is alsosomething that has to be part of
the conversation but whatbrought them to a point where
(37:38):
they needed to, they feltcompelled to commit that kind of
violence.
So when I talk, we talk aboutschool shooters and all of that
understanding prevention is likewhat's happening way, way, way
before.
That feels so critical and soimportant.
So like this idea that mentalhealth only gets talked about
after a mass shooting.
And then last year, yeah, okay.
(37:59):
So, as many of us know, ofcourse, the mass shooting in
Ubalde, texas, at Rob elementaryschool, happened and lots of
calls by elected officials allover for investments, increased
investments in mental health.
And you know what?
There was a school safety billa few months later that would
have increased state levelresources for mental health
(38:21):
services and access to like justincreasing the number of social
workers and guidance counselors.
And how many elected officialsjust didn't didn't vote for that
.
That is a choice to say.
We are choosing at this pointto not invest in the thing we
said mattered four months agoand that, frankly, is
unacceptable.
That's not a red or blue issue.
That is failing to meet theneeds of what your constituents
(38:44):
need and are asking for, and Ithink this is where I'm going a
little off, I realize, but thisis just no.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
I'm literally about to just start saying like amen,
yeah, I'm enjoying this deeply.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
I just feel like you know we need to, we.
I just feel like we really needto think about where the field
is.
Yes, we need to grow the, weneed to grow that trust, but we
also then need to not be okaywhen our like elected officials,
who do have privilege and powerand resources, when they are
not making the choices that bestrepresent what the data say,
(39:19):
what the science is, and we asresearchers, scholars, those of
us in the public healthleadership, need to then step up
and say this is not okay.
And I think that is a verydifficult thing, a very
difficult line to walk.
I think that's challenging onlots of levels.
It's not always easy to do that, but I would like to see more
of that and, frankly, not justamong public health.
(39:41):
I will say this also I thinkpublic health as a field is
phenomenal, has done so muchgood for so many parts of the
world.
We have so much, there's somuch good that comes out of the
field of public health.
So I am not a critic of thepublic health field because I
think it is an extraordinaryfield, full of dedicated
scholars and partners who makeso much of the world better and
(40:03):
safer and more tenable.
I think what the expectation weare holding the public health
field to needs to be held,frankly, to other fields too
education, right, our, ourcriminal justice system,
thinking about all the facets ofour federal government all the
way on down to our localmunicipalities.
We need to be looking andsaying what, how are what?
(40:25):
Where is this funding goingright?
Like, why does New York Cityspend over half of its school
safety budget on police inschools, when that is an example
of an quote intervention thathas no evidence guiding its
effectiveness.
Right, there's 32 kids in aclass, we have underpaid
teachers, but we have police inschools.
I'm not opposed to some babypolice being in schools and very
(40:49):
specific roles, and maybethat's something that we need to
look more closely at theliterature to better understand.
But that's an example right ofwhere are we putting our
resources?
That's not on public health,that's on leadership.
Right, that's on other systems.
To also speak up and understand, what should we be investing in
?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I know public health is saying no, but politicians
are saying yes.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
And that's happening.
And this is where I will sayexactly like, what are we trying
to do here?
You know, gun violence is apublic health issue, but
something I often talk about inmy work is it's a child health
issue.
As we talked about before, it'sa learning issue.
So lots of conversation anddiscourse around learning loss
and all of that.
Well, gun violence is alearning issue.
You want kids to learn and taketests and do well and learn to
(41:35):
read.
They need to feel safe atschool in all aspects, right.
We want families to feelengaged and supported.
Well, we need to make sure thatthey and their families are
safe from firearm violence.
There's lots of ways to reframegun violence.
So, yes, it's a public healthissue and it is also an issue
(41:55):
that needs to be taken up byother areas.
In fact, if we think about itright, we've organized our lives
around the inevitability of gunviolence in many ways Shooter
drills and bystander programsthat teach people how to tie a
tourniquet in the case of ashooting, and just thinking
about, you know, real estatecosts in different neighborhoods
and thinking about the systemicfactors, right?
(42:17):
So just thinking about all theways that gun violence in this
country impacts our day to day.
We need to.
Then that's where it goes backto kind of my initial piece here
we need to think about what dothose solutions really really
look like at all levels?
So again, pulling all thelevers.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Hey man, and she's just saying you know something
you're up in Detroit and I getso annoyed even now in the
discourse where, if you'retalking about, you know, black
and brown people in a city,oftentimes politicians will say,
well, some politicians whodon't want to do anything will
just say, well, you need to juststudy hard and stay in school
and get a job and ignore.
(42:55):
You're asking, like children,to study and focus and do all
these things when they have PTSD.
You're not doing anything aboutit.
You're just saying like I don'tknow, kid, like figure it out,
and if you don't, that's not.
I have no responsibility to youso everything you're saying
certainly resonates for sure.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
That's a perfect example, exactly Like how could
a traumatized kid now needs togo take a standardized test
without any resources, supportor understanding of what is
happening at home, outside ofschool or during, even during,
the day, like why are they notfocusing or why are they not
paying attention?
And you know what?
That is a failure, right,that's a failure of our systems,
(43:35):
right, collective systems andthe onus, by the way, in that
case isn't on the teachers, whoare underpaid and overworked, it
is on the collective ed systemthat has been, frankly,
underfunded for years and yearsand years.
So it requires and this iswhere I know that the problem
can feel too vast and toooverwhelming for folks to really
wrap their head around.
So, you know, I do feel likeit's important for us
(43:56):
collectively to step back andsay okay, let's take it one step
at a time.
Here, here are the things wecould start with.
Right?
Here is the way we're not evenasking for more money.
We're saying can we reallocateexisting funds to be used in a
more reasonable and effectivemanner?
That might be, in and of itself, like a great place to start.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And for folks who are interested in doing the right
thing or learning more.
Where did they find all of thefabulous work that you're doing?
Oh, that's so nice.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Okay, so on my website I type a website my own,
sonali Rajan.
You can just Google.
I come up as my faculty websiteis right there.
But our research society, theNational Research Conference for
the Prevention of FirearmRelated Harms, has a website
firearmresearchsocietyorg.
Those of you who may not beable to join us this year, we
(44:45):
will be hosting this conferenceagain in 2024 and every year
subsequent to that, and we verymuch look forward to hoping to
have you and your colleaguesjoin us in these conversations
and in the space and so folkscan check that out.
Yeah, those would be a good twoplaces to start and appreciate
so much the opportunity to behere today and talk.
(45:06):
Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Hey want to share with the podcast.
Listeners can now get in touchwith us here at Red Blue and
Brady via phone or text message.
Simply call or text us at480-744-3452 with your thoughts.
Questions concerns ideas, catpictures, whatever.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Thanks for listening.
As always, brady's lifesavingwork in Congress, the courts and
communities across the countryis made possible thanks to you.
For more information on Bradyor how to get involved in the
fight against gun violence,please like and subscribe to the
podcast.
Get in touch with us atBradyUnitedorg or on social at
BradyBuzz.
Be brave and remember.
(45:47):
Take action, not sides.
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