America is under attack': Dem candidates call for gun control after shootings

[Remarkableriots]

https://time.com/5665679/st-louis-gun-violence/

Quote

On the evening of Aug. 23, 8-year-old Jurnee Thompson was watching pre-season football games at Soldan High School in St. Louis with family members — her cousin and her two sisters — as a reward for her recent good behavior. She had just started the third grade.

When the games ended and people started to exit the school grounds, fights broke out, and police officers responded to the scene. As they arrived, several gunshots rang out. Four people, including Jurnee, were shot and taken to the hospital. Two 16-year-olds boys were listed in a serious but stable condition and a 64-year-old woman who was listed as stable. All three were later released.

Jurnee, though, was pronounced dead.

Jurnee is one of 13 children who have been killed as a result of gun violence in St. Louis since April, according to the St. Louis Police Department. Last year, only two kids were killed in the same time period, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The shootings have left the city in turmoil, according to residents and activists in the affected neighborhoods. While differences of opinion exist in how best to respond, a near universal belief is that change — whether legislative, sociocultural or community-driven — is overdue. And concern remains that the systemic violence, and its impact, is being overlooked as the U.S. focuses instead on responding to singular but frequent mass shootings.

 

“We don’t get the same attention that a mass shooting garners,” Clark says. “It’s not just St. Louis, you can look at any African-American community with this problem. I guarantee you if white boys were being killed at the rate that African-Americans were being killed, the broader community would intervene.”