Over the course of one week between January 28 and February 4, we scoured news outlets and social media for cases of gun violence committed in the Greater St. Louis Area. By the end of those seven days, we had acquired over 10 cases that involved guns, five of which ended in death. We took this information and focused on aspects we believed to be the most important.
We didn’t start this project to solve gun violence, or give a negative or positive look at gun culture in St. Louis. We did this project to give an unfiltered look at a real week in our city. Our reporting introduced us to police chiefs, gang members and politically left gun clubs. We sat down with mothers who lost their sons, families who lost their daughters and had honest conversations with activists on both sides of the gun debate.
The Center of Disease Control and Prevention says up to 40 thousand people died by gun violence in the U.S. in 2016. Within Webster University’s national campuses, someone somewhere has been affected by this.
In carrying out this project, we managed to get a better insight into how people deal with violence, whether it is once in a lifetime or everyday, whether they set out to stop it or prepare for when it comes.
We want to thank everyone who opened up to us and let us into their homes, lives, and histories. Every experience was significant. Every story was worth telling.
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