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We began reporting and production for this week’s Reveal before a gunman killed 10 people at a Tops Friendly Markets grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14; before a gunman killed one person and injured five others at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California, on May 15; and before a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday.
“Nowhere else in the world does this happen but here in America,” host Al Letson says at the top of the show.
These are tragedies that come as firearm deaths in the United States are at an all-time high. In 2020 alone, gun factories produced more than 11 million firearms, gun homicides jumped 35%, and firearms became the leading cause of death for children and teens.
You’ve heard the question and maybe have asked it yourself: What can be done to decrease gun violence in this country? U.S. lawmakers have been unable – and, in many cases, unwilling – to make meaningful change with the politics of guns being so polarized. So on this week’s Reveal, we examine why previous legislative efforts have failed and look at one unexpected breakthrough.
You’ll hear:
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How the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut opened a path to common ground on new federal gun regulations – and how that common ground abruptly disappeared. Since then, new gun laws that both loosen and tighten gun restrictions have come only from the state level.
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From reporter Alain Stephens, a former Reveal fellow who now covers emerging violence and gun technology for The Trace. He tells us how the rise of the auto sear, a small device that can turn a semiautomatic weapon into an automatic machine gun, is the most troubling thing he is seeing now. It was used as recently as April in a mass shooting in Sacramento, California, but it’s difficult to know how widely it’s been used in other shootings – and that’s by design. “When it comes to gun violence and gun reporting, the federal entities that are involved in this are particularly secretive,” Stephens told us.
And he has direct knowledge of this. In 2017, as he was investigating police guns used in crimes for us, he filed a public records request with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for crime gun data. We ended up having to file a lawsuit, with the court coming to a groundbreaking decision that would lift a veil of secrecy at the bureau.
How killings by intimate partners have been climbing, like many types of gun violence. Lawmakers had seemed gridlocked until March, when Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to agree on national legislation to combat domestic violence. The bill, spurred by our reporting, included measures that give state and local law enforcement more power to crack down on abusers who have weapons unlawfully. Reveal reporter Jennifer Gollan discusses what happens next as authorities put those measures into action.
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