Author Archives: eunicesunmie

About eunicesunmie

Communication Design student at Carnegie Mellon University

Interview with Coordinator of Community Org

Keywords: reduce crime, service pool, dispute resolution, behavior change

– interviewee works with mostly black males (20-30s) in homicides
– many gang affiliations

How do you target your audience?
– people well-known to law enforcement
– offenders known by community members as trouble makers

Other key points:
– dispute resolution is approachable and solvable
– many problems related to guns start with broken family
– other people have to take the role of family such as community organizations, churches, service pool staff members, etc.
– gangsters don’t have family to teach them values and principles.
– many young black males who fall into these issues act irrationally with a gun and only realize that it was a “dumb mistake” after the fact
– along with connecting offenders to service pools for mentorship, jobs, drug treatment, and GED, the org is trying to pair the efforts with education of values
– short term solutions are leading the offenders to a job. Long term solutions need to be paired with education
– it’s hard for programs to take place of family and family values
– mental health issues are a big problem; there are not enough resources and manpower behind the support offenders need
– revenge is a common reason for gun incidents

Project Statement- Eunice & Danielle

2/22/13

Specifically, we are looking at developing a strategy for change agents to better understand the perceptions of stakeholders within the community. We are focusing on helping change agents gather qualitative information to unveil root causes of issues related to guns in Pittsburgh affecting 0-20 year olds. Our objective is to look at the stories, ideas, and information coming from the relevant stakeholders because quantitative data alone doesn’t seem to reveal social implications and the areas that may need problem solving in a holistic way. Therefore, we are first investigating what processes for qualitative data collection are currently in place for us to better understand any gaps or needs that exist.

We will be looking at opportunity areas through investigation for this strategy (currently expressed as a design research tool), create the tool, develop communication strategies to teach and facilitate the use of the tool along with the design and implementation strategy of making use of the data collected with the tool (debrief/analysis/synthesis phase).

Stats

1. Currently, one in four adults owns a gun of some kind, but owners of four or more guns (about 10 percent of the adult population) are in possession of 77 percent of the total U.S. stock of firearms (Cook and Ludwig 1996). 

Hemenway, David. Private Guns Public Health. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2006. 6. Print.

2. The direct medical costs of gunshot wounds were estimated at six million dollars per day in the 1990s. The mean medical cost of a gunshot injury is about seventeen thousand dollars and would be higher except that the medical costs for deaths at the scene are low. Half of these costs are borne directly by U.S. taxpayers; gun injuries are the leading cause of uninsured hospital stays in the United States.

Hemenway, David. Private Guns Public Health. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2006. 4. Print.

3. Living in a home where there are guns increases the risk of homicide by 40 to 170% and the risk of suicide by 90 to 460%.

Garen J. Wintemute, Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public’s Health, 358 New England J. Med. 1421-1424 (April 3, 2008), at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0800859.

4. For every one person gets dies from gunshot, 5 survive.

 

5. Guns kept in the home are 43 times more likely to be used to kill someone known to the family than to be used to kill in self defense.

1. Kellermann AL,

2. Reay DT

(1986) Protection or peril? An analysis of firearm-related deaths in the home. N Engl J Med 314:1559-1560.

6. 4,166 children shot accidentally in 2010 in U.S. due to unsecured guns in the home

Centers for Disease Control, WISQARS 2012