Guns in the United States – Stories of Trauma

by Kevin Wolf

Content Advisory: this review contains school shootings, mass shootings, gun violence, suicide statistics, and suicide attempts (latter occurring in one or more books reviewed here). The crisis Lifeline number in the U.S. and Canada is 988, in the U.K. it’s 999; and for elsewhere go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines.

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2020 – 2022 (most recent year available when report published), “Firearms Remain Leading Cause of Death for Children and Teens, and Disproportionately Affect People of Color.” The books reviewed here are about non-war-caused, gun-related trauma and deaths in the United States. I’m sorry I have to write this review, because this medical issue—gun-caused physical and mental trauma, death, grief, injury, and related issues—was and remains a human creation and therefore has been preventable. Humans design guns, participate in their manufacture, distribute the guns, market the guns, sell the guns, and shoot the guns. The United States, because of their Second Amendment to their Constitution (and the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation thereof), is especially prone to gun violence. I was going to gather data that showed how each day of the year is an anniversary of a mass shooting (four or more people killed or injured) in the United States, but a mass shooting (almost) occurs (on average) each day of the year, every year. And, more sadly, mass shootings are less than 2% of all the gun-related deaths in the United States. However, most gun shootings are actual or attempted homicides, suicides, or accidental discharges by individuals to individuals. All of them cause trauma to the victims (including the shooter), their families, their friends, and society at large—the latter from increased medical costs and lost future productivity and whatever creations might’ve been made by the many victims. I do not use the names of any of the shooters throughout these reviews. I will provide reviews of five graphic novels and, later, statistics about gun violence, Supreme Court decisions and gun control information by state.

Except for the gun-related statistics discussed in the books under review, I provide most of the statistics after the reviews. Those statistics include number of deaths and injuries, estimated costs from those deaths and injuries, and some gun regulation information by state. Since the books reviewed are primarily about mass shootings in the United States, I provide a bit of information about such shootings here. There is a Wikipedia website that lists “most notable” mass shootings in the United States. I cannot vouch for its reliability. The list includes “only shootings that have Wikipedia articles of their own.” As of January 2025, this Wikipedia website lists over 250 shootings going back to the year 2000, but they also provide a summary table of mass shootings back to 1900; but there are also links to a comprehensive list of all mass shootings by year (e.g., 2024, 2023, etc.), where it becomes clear that mass shootings are an almost daily occurrence.

The Second Amendment to the U.S Constitution states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Where We Live, an anthology (reviewed later) has a story with a message about the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Showing recent multi-death, multi-wounded shooting locations, a child asks an adult why he keeps shooting people (“The Watershed” by Matt Clay & Gary Spencer Millidge, pages 199 – 204)? The adult responds, “to stop the bad guys [page 199].” The child shows how Scotland (1996) and Australia (1996) reacted to their mass shootings by limiting access to firearms. The child points out that when the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written “firearms were muzzle-loaded, single shot weapons which took time to reload … [204]” so they were hardly appropriate for “self-defense.”  And from “Everyone Knows the Answer to Solve the Problem” (Where We Live by Chris Wisnia, Bill Sienkiewicz and Jeromy Cox, page137) provides this quote with its source: “For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides [from 1998 National Institute of Health study].”

There are many possible definitions of “mass shootings” depending on the source. From the Wikipedia page already mentioned,

The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks shootings and their characteristics in the United States, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator(s), are shot in one location at roughly the same time, with the FBI having a minimum of three. The Congressional Research Service narrows that definition further, only considering what it defines as “public mass shootings”, and only considering victims as those who are killed, excluding any victims who survive. The Washington Post and Mother Jones use similar definitions, with the latter acknowledging that their definition “is a conservative measure of the problem”, as many rampages with fewer fatalities occur. The crowdsourced Mass Shooting Tracker project uses a looser definition than the Gun Violence Archive’s definition: four people shot in one incident regardless of the circumstances.

Summary of the Reviews.

Where We Live – A Benefit for the Survivors in Las Vegas. This anthology was a fundraiser for the Las Vegas Nevada Country music festival’s survivors of the United States’ (so far) largest mass shooting (2017, 60 dead, at least 413 wounded, 800+ injured) by a single person.

Should We Buy a Gun? This is a fictional story of young newlyweds who are mugged at gunpoint and weigh owning a gun against their liberal politics.

Numb to This – Memoir of a Mass Shooting. Memoir of a student who lived through the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting (9 dead, 8 injured) in Oregon.

Activist – A Story of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Shooting. Written by a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas (aka, Parkland) high school shooting (2018) with 17 dead and 18 others injured.

Long Way Down. Award-winning fictional story of a long ride down an elevator where the riders discuss their connection to guns, revenge, and generational trauma.

For further reading, you can check out the earlier review by Lorraine Chun: The Golden Hour (a fictional tale of a school shooting), where Lorraine wrote “The Golden Hour by Niki Smith addresses how an adolescent copes with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after witnessing his teacher gunned down.”

Where We Live – A Benefit for the Survivors in Las Vegas

Where We Live – A Benefit for the Survivors in Las Vegas is an anthology of seventy-five stories (42 fiction, 25 non-fiction, and 8 combination) by 168 writers/artists/colorists/letterers that range from one to eight pages for each story. Where We Live was edited by Will Dennis with assistance from Michael Perlman, curated by JH Williams III (including writing the introduction) & Wendy Wright-Williams, with an Afterword by Will Dennis. Many of the non-fiction stories come from interviews of those at the Las Vegas shooting or from health care providers treating the victims. On October 1, 2017 (still the deadliest and most injurious mass shooting in the U.S. as of this review posting) 60 people were killed, 413 wounded with panicked people resulting in over 800 injured; all caused by a single shooter out of an upper story Mandalay Bay hotel window overlooking a country music concert on the Las Vegas strip. In ten minutes over 1,000 rounds were fired, primarily with fifteen modified AR-15s with bump stocks[i] that allowed for 13-14 (correction from 90) rounds per second being fired. The shooter ended his own life with a Smith & Wesson revolver. There were more rounds and explosives found in the trunk of his car. Image Comics, the publisher of Where We Live indicated “100% of the proceeds for the WHERE WE LIVE anthology will be donated to Route 91 Strong, a non-profit organization;” “dedicated to raising awareness and funds for victims, survivors and families of gun violence.” I tried to contact the public relations department at Image to find out how much was raised, but I didn’t receive a response. The shooting occurred during the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a 3-day music festival, which ran from 2014 – 2017 with no festivals since the shooting. I’ll be discussing a few of the specific stories from Where We Live.

Brian Michael Bendis’ 3-page piece (“Untitled”) is written from the heart out of frustration and beginning, “This is ridiculous. This is, like, the seventh draft of the fifth take of a script for this project. Everything I write about this is S**T. So obvious … Guns are bad. The world is madness. Being a victim sucks … Everyone buying this book is doing it because they feel the same silent rage … But none of us know what to do … I was going to write a piece about how I wonder what the victims feel like … I was going to write a piece about following a bullet to its horrible conclusion … Guns are money … The only thing that connects the bubbling madness … all the way to this s**t is … money … It will never stop … Sandy Hook [2012] … Congress people [while playing baseball in 2017 were] … attacked by a gunman … and they still [did nothing] … We’re so lost to this madness that we turn to [Parkland, 2018; see Activist, below] children … [13 – 15]” to do something …

“Selling the AR” is the first interview-based story. Michael R. Weisser (adapted by Joshua Dysart, drawn by Pere Perez, and lettered by Bernardo Brice) relates that the selling of AR-type rifles follows from “the fantasy of the American gun [17].” We watch the little boy with an air rifle growing into the adult as the marketing-promoted hero of his own story and uses actual gun copy ads to show this (e.g., for AR-15, “Consider Your Mancard Reissued [19]”). With the ad copy, we see a kid shooting off rounds and spent shell casings flying everywhere. Weiser said, “No one can say why a rampage shooter does what they do, what mental illness or hate or fear drives them … All we can say is that somewhere along the line the fantasy they were sold and the darkness already inside them intersected … and the AR did exactly what it was built to do. Provide fire superiority [19].” Weisser is now an ex-gun retailer.

Be aware that graphic depictions of the Vegas shooting appear in this paragraph and in this story under review. During a talk once, and according to Ford Madox Ford, I heard about a book-related thought experiment; namely that what appears on page 99 (“Page 99 test”) is often a reasonable symbol of the entire book. That experiment held true for Where We Live from the story “Are You OK?” by eyewitness Autumn K., Mariah McCourt (script), Ariela Kristantina (art), Bryan Valenza (color), Bernardo Brice (letters), 97 – 102. Autumn attended the Vegas concert. Initially she thought she heard firework’s “pop … pop …” but there were no fireworks in the sky. Her nearby mom calmly said, “Everything is fine, but we have to move away from here … NOW [97].” With “pops” all around, Autumn lost her aunt in the ensuing panicked melee (across two pages, 98 – 99, of randomly running people, fallen and bloodied bodies). Her mom went to help fallen victims. As Autumn moved away there was blood on the sidewalk and a “thick iron-y” smell. “My mom found my best friend and we hid in our truck … for hours … all you could hear were sirens … my sense of time was lost [98 – 99].” When they arrived home, they found their clothes bloodied. The next day Autumn went to school and was very upset when other students in the cafeteria made exploding sounds by smashing the air-filled lunch bags. “I couldn’t deal with the hallways for a month … now people treat me like … ‘the girl from the shooting’ … and that’s not who I am [101].” Autumn’s (undiagnosed) PTSD appears understood by her alone among her peers.

We read an argument against “The Hero Fantasy” (175 – 179) by Paul Tobin (writer), Dustin Weaver (pictures) and Bernardo Brice (lettering) where even one death or injury after the hero prevents other deaths or injuries isn’t good enough; what is good enough is “eradicating the event entirely [178]” by “stepping in to give money to organizations that support mental and physical health … who provide aid and counseling for those who are too marginalized … who support reasonable gun control … and who are honestly making a difference in the real world … rather than standing around believing that ‘hero’ means there’s still blood on the floor [179].” Six weblinks are provided, including The Trevor Project, Planned Parenthood, Doctors for America, and the Violence Policy Center.

“What Can Be Done” (Greg Pak (writer and artist), Triona Farrell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters), 187 – 190) has text with metaphorical imagery with each shooting (Las Vegas and subsequent) symbolized by a giant stone block fall (sound: KTHOOOM) on bean-like, stick-figure critters. The blocks fall ever faster KTHOOOM KTHOOOM KTHOOOM ! And still, we wait for federal legislation. Then we see tiny beams (vertical and horizontal), easily crushed by future blocks falling, being assembled as states and cities begin banning bump stocks …

In a fictional tale Mason, a masked, jacketed, protected, cyborg, re-enters his high school after his long absence. His teachers and fellow students all wear bulletproof vests. The class goes silent for an exam on gun-related topics. And yet another person enters the school with AR-15 spitting bullets, blood flying. The story closes with Mason unclothed, his metallic body being repaired by his dad … and they talk:

Mason: I finished the test right before the man shot himself …

Dad: There. No real harm done. How do you feel?

M: Dad, can I ask you something?

D: Hit me.

M: Mason … the real Mason I mean … am I anything like him?

D [wide-blue-eyed]: Mason was … No. No, you’re not.

M: How am I different? [we see long ago photograph of happy, laughing Mason on his dad’s shoulders]

D: You’re SAFE. [clicks the light off]

M: [wide-blue-eyed, now in the dark]

(From “Stopping Power” by Alex Paknadel (writer), Chris Wildgoose (art), Triona Farrell (color), Aditya Bidikar (letters), 281 – 284; this story brought tears to my eyes … instead of the more common anger …)

 

There’s an earlier essay providing some history of the Second Amendment (“A Primer to the Second Amendment by Chistina Rice and illustrated by Richard Pace, 71 – 73) with some Supreme Court decisions. The penultimate closing piece is an essay (“Resiliency Rarely Feels Like Strength” by Rachel Crosby (Las Vegas journalist), J.H. Williams, III (illustration), Bernardo Brice (letters)). Crosby’s editor sent him an “active shooter” text about the Vegas shooting which led Crosby to text “heading to the closest trauma center” where Crosby learns Bob’s story of waiting but never getting a response from Bob’s texts and calls to his wife, Lisa Patterson. At the hospital Bob, his son, and daughter (latter arrived from her Arizona college) … learn Lisa died. Tearfully we read that weeks later, Brooke, Lisa’s youngest daughter, was enthusiastic about the memorial tree the family planted for Lisa.

Though out of print, I recommend Where We Live for the variety of viewpoints presented.

Should We Buy a Gun?

Should We Buy a Gun? is a mix of tropes that moves on to nuance. For example, Maggie, an NPR (national public radio) journalist and Adam (high school student counselor) are vegan liberal newlywed Austinites (Texans, that is; current motto: Keep Austin weird”) who are mugged at gun point. They have to decide on their response. There are additional stories of, interactions with the police, news report, a frustrated filmmaker and state politics after a tragic mass shooting at the state capital. I found that Should We Buy a Gun? might be a good opening for discussion about “both sides” of gun control. Do guns make us safer or do they increase personal danger; does the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution carry limitations; can middle ground be found in politics; and what happens when a baby is brought into the mix? I enjoyed some aspects of Should We Buy a Gun? and disliked others, but isn’t that what we should want from such a heated topic? Regarding the imagery, the drawings are often stiff which matches some of their stereotypical discussions.  I suggest getting a copy of Should We Buy a Gun? and using that for your book club to start a discussion on this important topic.

Should We Buy a Gun? includes some real entities but overlaid with pseudo-facts that led me to try to dig into the actual truth of some events portrayed. The conversations between characters in this book are often truer—with incomplete arguments for or against guns sometimes with stray ellipses, hesitations, exaggerations, or losing their train of thought—than many well-reasoned, literary word balloons found in most graphic novels. I do have a preference for “alleged facts” being true, but for most people when they discuss such an important topic as gun use/control, emotions often take over and reasoned arguments are left behind. I think it would’ve helped if there was an Afterword or Introduction with the author pointing out which events in Should We Buy a Gun? are factual and which are artistic license or wishful thinking for the sake of the fictional story. Readers should treat this book as a philosophical argument on, as the title implies, whether or not to buy a gun and not as a real presentation of facts when developing that argument. One horrific real event that is never mentioned in Should We Buy a Gun? is that in Austin on August 1, 1966 the University of Texas tower sniper shot and killed 15 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 31 others. That shooter had stabbed to death his mother and wife earlier that same day. This was the deadliest shooting in the U.S. by a lone gunman up to that date. The sniper was a 25-year-old Marine veteran. If you want to learn more about this shooting, then Tower (2017) provides a mixed animation/live-action documentary about that event.

I will provide some of the real vs. not real events presented in this book.

Real: Austin TX exists and might be the most politically liberal city of Texas; except that it’s also the Texas capital housing the Texas legislature, which is currently very conservative. Not real: liberals are anti-safety (they often feel a lot fewer guns and gun regulations are safer than more guns and no regulations).

Real: Websites entitled EverytownResearch.org and Giffords.org (page 251) whose organizing theme is gun control. At the end of this review, I provide additional statistics (not provided in the graphic novel) from some of the sources that Should We Buy a Gun? refers to in its body. Not real: Alleged quotes/headlines from those websites. Though Red Flag laws exist in 21 states according to EverytownResearch.org, they don’t exist in Texas but fictionally occurred in Should We Buy a Gun? Red Flag—so named as a warning symbol—are also known as Extreme Risk Laws, which permit “state court to order the temporary seizure of firearms (and other items regarded as dangerous weapons, in some states) from a person who they believe may present a danger” to self or others. The court orders are called Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs). “Despite the fact that three of the five worst mass shootings since 2015 have taken place in Texas,” it’s unlikely Red Flag laws will pass in Texas (unlike its occurrence on page 235 of Should We Get a Gun?). Real: Texas is among the states (#32 of 50) with weaker gun control laws and above average gun deaths per 100,000 residents according to EverytownReseacrh.org.

Hopefully never real: Maggie fictionally shares an extreme misuse of a firearm story that her dad once saved her with a gun. Holding onto the car keys, 8-year-old Maggie had locked herself in the car trunk and her dad shot out the lock (72 – 73) to free Maggie. Why didn’t they have a second set of keys? Adam explains how dangerous that was, saying, “That’s exactly why it’s, like, 17 times likelier people will be shot by a gun if they own one [74].” Adam’s 17-times number is made up; while a U.S. National Institute of Health study indicates it’s closer to 4.5 to 5.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault. While men are 8 times more likely to die of gun suicides and women 35 times more likely than those who don’t own a gun. That is, easy access to guns carries a high risk for completed suicide attempts. The latter (8 times and 35 times) is from a Stanford 2004–2016 study, which also found “Handgun owners did not have higher rates of suicide by other methods or higher rates of death generally.” The Stanford study also looked at whether the gun was purchased with suicidal intent, finding “more than half of all firearm suicides in this group occurred a year or more [after gun purchase].” Since the suicide was often delayed a year or more after purchase, buying the gun with suicidal intent was unlikely.

Real: Austin Gun Club exists but how the club is presented in Should We Buy a Gun? is probably not real. For example, the book shows the club having a firing range with minimum instruction for new gun owners (111 – 144). I, at least, hope there would be more gun usage instruction before allowing newbies to use the gun range unsupervised (e.g. providing gun muffling protection for the ears, which weren’t provided). They’re also asked to sign something that’s unreadable (for us) and left to Maggie and Adam to figure out after signing (Adam says, “The form says they’re not liable for the behavior of other patrons. Says guests risk fatalities. … It says you can’t shoot if you’ve ever suffered from mental illness … The CDC now says more than 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lifetime … I’m currently experiencing feelings of anxiety, anger, shame and … [119 – 120].” The “50%” factoid is real (according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security) though I couldn’t find it on the CDC’s own website.  Maggie and Adam primarily learn some safety tips from another firing range user. But the feeling of initial scariness followed by (sexual) excitement while at the range seems real. There’s one lesson left for the reader to recognize. After getting the hang of using their gun, Adam shoots at a target of a shooter dressed in black holding a theater hostage with a shotgun. After reeling back the target, we see that Adam shot the target’s shooter six times and one theatergoer in the head. Of course, shooting at a static target is nothing like dealing with a real hostage situation.

Real: KUT – Austin TX NPR station. Not real within Should We Buy a Gun?: the KUT “reportage” and the characters working there (45 – 46, 178 – 185).

Especially if the source isn’t given, when I see a quotation from a well-known historical figure, I try to look up where it might’ve come from to make sure it’s not a partial quote, taken out of context, misattributed, or misquoted. The alleged George Washington quote favoring firearms on page 279, appears to be misattributed; it was made by C. S. Wheatley (not Washington) in a 1926 article from Hunter, Trader, Trapper entitled “Other Ideas of Firearms.” Should We Buy a Gun? has a quote from Abraham Lincoln (282) and another from Susan B. Anthony (284) that don’t seem to have anything to do with personal gun usage under discussion, so I don’t understand their inclusion.

Two gun-related Supreme Court decisions ((correction) United States v. Cruikshank and District of Columbia v Heller) are mentioned (former on 192 and latter on 194 and 285) in Should We Buy a Gun?, while there have been six additional gun-related Supreme Court decisions (supreme.justia.com), which might be of importance, since Heller. The Heller decision isn’t explained in Should We Buy a Gun? Heller only supported gun use for protection inside one’s home. See the after report, following these reviews, for more information about all these U.S Supreme Court decisions.

Now I’m going back to the start of Should We Buy a Gun? Some of the tropes are oddly provided through dialogue between Maggie and Adam that I would’ve expected were long known by these two and only repeated for the benefit of the reader. We find Maggie and Adam are the young, newly married protagonists having “wholesome” sex “trying for a baby.” Here are some of the liberal, strawman tropes. Maggie and Adam tell each other; M: “We’re forever sex-positive, but monogamous, progressives [5].” And two weeks later, when they go out to buy a pregnancy test at a pharmacy, Maggie sees a confederate flag on a car. Maggie is concerned their baby might differ from themselves politically,

M: … What if it … hates immigrants or trans people? Or doesn’t care about the environment? … What if it’s a bad person? … What if it’s evil, like a Jeffrey Dahmer? And we’re just not able to get through to it [7 – 8]?

A: Hold on, nobody is completely evil. Psychologists have proven even a diagnosed psychopath can’t be predicted to commit violence … it’s possible to get through to anyone with empathy, communication, and love … [9]

I’m not a parent, but I haven’t heard of potential parents having these types of discussions about “it” (“our baby?”); the more common discussion is whether to bring a child into this dangerous (e.g., due to guns or war) locale or world.

Mugging trope follows when immediately after leaving the pharmacy with the pregnancy test, they’re held up at gunpoint. Adam hands over his wallet and Maggie’s purse. Maggie initially refuses to hand over her wedding ring because they just got married; but the mugger threatens death. Adam—feeling humiliated—cries and hands over her ring. Muggers ridiculously ride off on manual kick-scooters, leaving the pregnancy kit broken on the ground.

When Maggie and Adam talk to the police, Adam adds to their liberal trope by saying, “They looked like the kind of young men whose circumstances drove them to make a poor choice today but could definitely evolve into better people later in life [18].” While Maggie is fearful and wants an officer to protect them at home, because the muggers mentioned their address from their identification and threatened her life. The officers say that’s not protocol; and Maggie says, “But I can’t just go to sleep … we don’t have anything to … can you give us some pepper spray? An extra stun gun? [19]”

Fearing the muggers return, Maggie wants to acquire a gun from friends (Eva and Reagan who have a baby, named Barack), who stiffly speak for the benefit of the reader, because Adam and Maggie should already know. Reagan says, “We have a baby. And don’t forget we’re an interracial queer family in Texas … Can’t let us get hate crimed.” And Eva says, “All we have are some old heirloomed hunting rifles. Properly locked and stored. To shoot deer. Not robbers.” And Reagan adds, “But maybe [will shoot] hate crimers [33].” Maggie once shot bottles with her father. Reagan and Eva suggest that Adam and Maggie get a guard dog.

I’ll briefly mention a few more plot occurrences that are strange, to say the least. For example, Adam dreams of being accosted by Jeffrey Dahmer (“I killed and ate sixteen people [38]”) and Adolph Hitler (“I murdered six million of your people [38]”) and a random mugger. To bring out some coincidental technical information about gun control, a petition solicitor, named Yuki, just happens into Maggie’s place of employment (NPR KUT Austin station) and asks Maggie “… will you petition our representatives to pass some gun regulations into law here. In this great and perhaps more and more progressive state of Texas [43]?” Yuki’s petition is to raise the gun purchase age from 18 to 21, and to implement a “red flag” law. This is too much of a coincidence to be believable, let alone implying that Texas is becoming “more progressive.” These coincidences could have been more believable by leaving out the petitioner and simply using narration to explain these topics at some point. Strangely, the reader sees Ms. Sangha, Director of KUT, carrying a holstered gun at work, because she’s worried about “our inevitable civic collapse from Climate Change or a 2^nd Civil War … Next virus comes from India? It’s the elder single woman with a red-dot who needs to be prepared against AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] hate from their fellow Americans [46].” Though I don’t like having to point out this insensitivity (“red dot” is called the bindi for Hindi women and represents the opening of the third eye, “the bindi is said to retain energy and strengthen concentration.” Why was it even mentioned? To show that Ms. Sangha’s roots were in India? And would NPR, or any radio station, permit employees, other than security guards, to carry a gun on the premises? And with bulging eyes, Sangha demands Maggie’s next station video be “Progressives who own guns [46]” even though Ms. Sangha doesn’t know that Maggie had been mugged and acquired a gun.

Other far-fetched fictional occurrences include the Texas state legislature passing and governor signing a “red flag” law which also raises the purchase age to 21 after the fictional 18-year-old son of the governor kills people at the Austin state capital. The T.V. news reporter says, “An unprecedented mass shooting at the Texas capital building leaves 47 dead and … 76 wounded, including many representatives … [105].” And to provide an equal-opportunity trope, the shooter was the Governor’s eldest son, Bill Armstrong, who’s found “wearing women’s clothing and blackface and left behind a White Nationalist manifesto. He was killed at the scene … which started when he shot at his own father missing but grazing his nose [107].”

The more believable parts of Should We Get a Gun? cover several other important events including Maggie and Adam have marital frustrations and end up with very different opinions on keeping their gun. Other storylines include Adam’s sisters and mother providing gun control and marriage advice, and a frustrated film student, who was counseled by Adam, deciding to make a movie of his own (attempted) suicide with Maggie and Adam as witnesses.

I feel that Should We Get a Gun? has real potential for opening discussions about gun usage and control, but its trope inclusions are off putting.

Numb to This – Memoir of a Mass Shooting

Numb to This – Memoir of a Mass Shooting is a fairly fast-paced story of one shooting and its aftermath for one surviving victim, Kindra Neely. One important point that Neeley makes on several occasions is that she has trouble accepting anyone speaking for the survivors of the shooting other than those survivors. So, I want to make it clear that my review of Numb to This is no substitution for actually reading Numb to This. We learn about Neely’s experience on October 1, 2015, the day of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Roseburg Oregon, her later PTSD-induced panic attacks, survivor’s guilt, attempted suicide, her strong connections to others (mother, friends), and her resolution. As time progresses Neeley provides some headlines of additional shootings, especially those that occur near anniversaries of the UCC shooting, which often cause Neeley’s panic attacks.

I’ll get my own confusion out of the way, first. I had trouble figuring out the names of people or locations, because they sometimes aren’t provided or are provided pages later. We never learn what UCC stands for in Numb to This, though it is given on the back cover: Umpqua Community College. We don’t get much background about UCC, shootings in the United States, nor about Neeley or her friend’s lives before the shooting. Except for a bit about Neely’s youth, we almost immediately are thrown into the shooting with event after event from Neely’s perspective alone … moving from mostly unnamed location to unnamed location, overhearing unnamed people, and meeting a few named friends along the way. But maybe that was the goal to try and put the reader in Neeley’s lack of knowledge, actual fears, and awareness as the shooting events unfolded. A campus map might’ve been helpful providing the location of the shooting relative to Neeley’s and her friends’ locations. Neeley does not give the year of the shooting—we only see from her phone it was October 1^st— until we learn indirectly from its first anniversary being on October 1, 2016. She wears a Red Cross t-shirt on the day of the shooting, but don’t know if that has special meaning, is coincidental, or ends up being ironic.  That’s enough of my qualms about Numb to This.

Neeley narrates, “My mom and I moved to [Roseburg] Oregon … [1]” after a “… shooting a few houses down from us … [7]” in Wichita Falls; so, “Gun violence wasn’t something I was unaccustomed to [in Texas] … it wasn’t expected … not here [in Roseburg, 17].” The UCC shooting unfolds over forty pages (18 – 61). Before Neeley even left the campus with her mom, “By the time we reached the car … a picture of Josh [a UCC classmate and friend] and me hugging had been posted by a national newspaper … I felt so violated. People were going to make their own assumptions about the people in the photo without ever knowing how we actually felt or what it was like … the nation was watching us while we were most vulnerable, but it felt like we were entertainment [58 – 59].” Its aftermath begins with some words from President Obama’s address, “Somehow this has become routine … somehow we’ve become numb to this [60 – 61].”

Neeley doesn’t spend much time with mental health professionals. At the end of Numb to This, Neely provides several resources, including The Rebels Project, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline link which no longer works (if needed, try https://988lifeline.org/) and March for Our Lives. The remainder of Numb to This provides painful retraumatizing events (close quarters in crowds, UCC shooting anniversaries, and shootings elsewhere), her suicide attempt, completing college in Georgia at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and Neeley’s seeming primary coping mechanisms: talking to others, distance in time and perhaps space from the UCC shooting and most of all artistic expression through creating a mosaic soon after the shooting and writing Numb to This which gives her story the way she wants it told.

Activist – A Story of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Shooting

Activist is a memoir by Lauren Elizabeth Hogg a high school freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (Parkland, Florida) where seventeen students or faculty were killed on Valentine’s Day 2018. Seventeen additional people were injured. We learn about Lauren’s life in California before the family moved to Florida, her mom’s political activism, how closer she is to her three-year-older brother, and her distance from  away-from-home father because he’s a special agent with the FBI. Lauren teaches us her life lessons. On Lauren’s first day at Douglas, she becomes fast friends with two girls Lauren calls Heart and Soul.  Those two friends were killed that day. To her credit, Lauren never names the shooter. Given that this book was published in 2019—a year after the events presented—Lauren was only fifteen when she wrote it. We see Lauren’s actions on that fateful Valentine’s Day and her activism that follows. I recommend Activist as an appropriate presentation for high school students for its life lessons and being a real story that students, unfortunately, have to be concerned about, because, as Lauren wrote, “… the adults failed us. They aren’t keeping us safe anymore [63].” And if this book isn’t a form of activism, I don’t know what is.

This book is part of The Zuiker Series (including Goodbye – A Story of Suicide) which present first person “memoirs” from the perspective of teenagers, typically.  Zuiker’s website is no longer available. That website had provided information for educators including “reading guides, vocabulary activities, writing prompts, extension activities, assessments, and answer keys [from Teacher’s Corner on page 5].” Instead, Zuiker Press books are now distributed through Simon & Schuster. Other Zuiker Press stories cover autism, body image, bullying, courage, cyberbullying, divorce,  racism, and transitioning.

Life lessons come from Lauren’s parents (Rebecca and Kevin) and brother (David). Lauren gives some of Rebecca’s history of activism from being on student council, helping at soup kitchens, “teaching homeless kids [14],” attending school board meetings in support of higher teacher wages and better benefits. Rebecca was a 30-year public school teacher in 2018. Lauren’s father, Kevin, was an FBI Special Agent. Her father showed affection when he was around, but was often busy with his work. “The steady male figure in my life was my brother, David Miles Hogg [18].” David stopped other kids from bullying Lauren. Lauren reciprocated by pushing back against kids who “spread rumors” that David couldn’t read because of his dyslexia. David and Lauren hung out together. Hindsight justified a seemingly twisted lesson from David when he buried Lauren to her neck in sand and she tearfully had to free herself. David justified this by telling her, “You’re not always going to have me to save you … and if you ever find yourself in a tough situation, you need to keep a clear head and get out of it [26].”

I won’t recount Lauren’s presentation of her period-by-period activities on March 14, 2018—I’ll leave that for Activism readers—but I will provide one snippet of that day … some texts (from pages 47 – 50) between students after the shooting started.

And it got worse from there …

After Lauren had a three-day cry including feelings of survivor’s guilt, Lauren’s mom told Lauren, “Crying is not going to bring your friends back. Neither are thoughts and prayers … you have work to do …” This begins Lauren’s activism. The students protested to have the memorial they wanted, and not what the school administrators offered. Lauren wrote, “My heroes were kids like Cameron Kasky, Sam Fuentes, David Hogg [her brother], and Emma Gonzalez, just to name a few … [61].” David gave a televised 4 ½ minute speech at March for Our Lives on March 24, 2018. I just hope such actions don’t come across as people caring about shootings only when it affects them directly while gun violence in the United States have been a constant risk for decades. Lauren used social media to try to counter the gun lobby, those claiming the students were “crisis actors” (67), “I mean we were fighting for our lives after that horrible day [67].” February 23, 2018, Lauren posted a Tweet to correct Melania Trump and received over 2.3 million likes. Lauren went on to work for March for Our Lives, to register voters, educate the public, talking at town halls and to congresspeople, and asking people to vote. “We may just be kids, but our voices are loud and strong [75].”

Rebecca closes the book with Five Parent Take-aways about a school shooting’s aftermath (81):

1. Listen to your children when they want to talk about a shooting and be supportive.
2. “If your child is a survivor of a school shooting, get immediate professional help.”
3. Avoid media coverage in the immediate aftermath.
4. Keep a “normal” home routine.
5. “Prepare your child to take action in the event of a shooting.”

Beyond discussing these five lessons, I suggest giving a copy of this book to teenagers in your life.

Long Way Down     

The original literary (non-graphic) Long Way Down won or was shortlisted for over fifty book awards (e.g., American Library Association’s Newberry and Michael L. Printz Award Honors, National Book Award Longlist, Edgar Allan Poe Award). Jason Reynolds teamed up with graphic artist Danica Novgorodoff to create the graphic novel version of Long Way Down. Since I haven’t read the original novel, I will only base my review on the graphic novel edition. Novgorodoff’s illustrations are in two forms of watercolor, those emphasizing multiple colors and those primarily using light or dark blueish-gray washes. Color emphasizes the present while the grey emphasizes the past. Time slows as the protagonist, Will, takes a long ride down his apartment building’s elevator and speeds up with few words on most pages while we watch all the gun deaths that surround Will’s life. Shooting begats shooting … killing begats killing … can or will the pattern be broken? I highly recommend Long Way Down for its realistic portrayal of a gun’s destructive nature in a human’s hands and Long Way Down’s lack of resolution.

Though fiction, Long Way Down is narrated as if a first-person memoir by 15-year-old William “Will” Holloman (“You probably ain’t gon’ believe it … but I’m telling you …  This story is true. It happened to me [emphasis in original, unpaginated].” William’s nickname is pregnant with possible meanings … about potential or future plans or self-control or having any kind of control over one’s life … over those around you … over events. Just as Will talks with those now dead from his past who pique possible futures, Long Way Down is meant to be talked about among us, the living, in a classroom … with friends … between parents and children …. What should Will do? What will Will do? What would you do?

Early on, we learn The Rules! There are only three.

“The Rules weren’t meant to be broken. They were meant for the broken to follow.”

1. No crying
2. No snitching
3. Revenge – kill the killer of those you love.”

Immediately after Will’s brother’s (Shawn’s) death, Will retrieves Shawn’s .45 grey-steel handled gun … “piece … burner … heater … tool …” for revenge! There are fifteen bullets left in the gun … one for each year Will has lived. He knows (or does he?) who killed his brother and Will’s ready to follow The Rules.

We have two measures of time. First, a running clock giving hours: minutes: seconds notching time of Shawn’s death and Will’s later activities. And second, the elevator in Will’s building counting down from the 7^th floor … 6^th … 5^th … 4^th … 3^rd … 2^nd … L. And that long way down are the chapter breaks … stopping on every floor with a different person previously killed by a gun getting on to tell Will their story.

The significant people in Will’s life died by gunfire. In that descending elevator, we see the dead father figure (“Buck”), childhood girl-friend (Dani), uncle Mark, actual father (Mikey), accused killer (“Frick”), and brother, all who teach Will hard lessons. For example, 6^th floor Dani, a “fine girl,” and dead bystander gets on and questioned Will’s need for his gun; “What if you miss? … 3^rd floor. Stranger “Frick” (real name Frank) came on elevator; Frick killed Buck in a robbery gone wrong; 2^nd floor Shawn enters elevator (now called “vertical coffin”) wearing bloodied shirt; Shawn never speaks; Will wants confirmation of who killed Shawn; … Lobby. All step off elevator, leaving Will alone … to his future!

United States Gun Trauma-Related Statistics and U.S. Supreme Court decisions

While reading the books under review, I’ve been trying to collect information about the “costs” and “benefits” of gun use in the United States by using reliable sources, but I’ve been encountering walls that I can’t seem to break through or get around. I found some data to compare non-war-related gun violence in the U.S. to some other countries (addressed in the next paragraph). The walls I’ve encountered for both costs and benefits involve estimations or unknown holes and the sources of the information might not provide the sources of their information, which would allow me to check their results for reasonableness.  I seem to have a reliable measure of the deaths and injuries that have occurred from non-war firearm shootings in the United States. I show those deaths and injuries from 2015 – 2024 in the next table; only, suicides in 2024 are still unknown. Other measures that I’ve wanted to derive have been harder to find. Those measures are money spent to buy firearms, physical and mental health medical costs (current and lifetime) by those injured or killed from firearms, income lost (current and lifetime) from those injured or killed by firearms, and ripple effect of those losses by society at large. I relied on these sources in this order: Peer reviewed studies, federal governmental agencies, and finally non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that might often have a reason for showing or not showing specific data that supports the goals of their organization. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of data that I could find from the federal government, and studies are often based on small samples; so, the NGOs becomes my primary source. Since I’ll provide some data from both sides of the divide, I’ll leave it to you to decide which makes sense.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, an independent entity researching health care issues, in 2022 (the most recent year available), when compared to the United States (in the 93^rd percentile) at 13.5 deaths per 100,000 population, among high income countries only five (Greenland, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, and U.S. Virgin Islands) have worse gun mortality (death) rates. In 2022, among all 195 countries only fifteen have worse gun mortality than the U.S. In 2022 for self-harm (i.e., suicides) from guns, only twelve countries have mortality nearing the U.S. with only one (Greenland at 12.85 per 100,000 population) being worse than the U.S. (8.19 per 100,000 population); and Greenland has a very small population. The Commonwealth Fund explained “Where possible, we used the latest 2022 mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the United States …  and age-standardized to the World Standard Population (WHO 2000–2025).”

According to my source for “benefits” of firearms: the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the Firearm Industry Trade Association “for the firearm, ammunition, hunting and recreational shooting sports industry,” 2025 economic impact report states about 151,000 people manufacture, distribute or sell firearms with direct wages of $8.8 billion. This report goes further to claim the firearm and ammunition industry has an additional impact of $82.9 billion on the economy by indirect employment of others (not defined). And the taxes paid by the industry is $11.8 billion. This information was developed by John Dunham and Associates, an economic research firm in New York.

On the “costs” side, in addition to medical costs and loss of income, the costs for gun use include the number of deaths and injuries, quality of life reduction for those surviving a shooting, PTSD and mental health concerns for those surviving or witnessing a shooting and family and friends of those killed or injured from a shooting. The number of deaths and injuries can be found at the Gun Violence Archive, a “not for profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States. … GVA is not, by design an advocacy group.” The death and injury counts are given in the table that follows this paragraph. The quality-of-life reduction and lost years from lives dying below their life expectancy can only be estimated. And it’s even harder to guesstimate the cost of PTSD of witnesses, family and friends. According to a June 2021 U.S. congressional General Accounting Office (GAO) report, initial annual hospital costs from 2016 and 2017 were about $1 billion, physician costs were about $200 million from “about 30,000 inpatient stays and about 50,000 emergency department visits.” And hospital readmission costs were about $156 million (including 20% more for physicians) within one year of initial admission (page 27 of report). “One expert stated that it is difficult to estimate the costs of behavioral health care services for firearm injury survivors, because the data sources used to estimate utilization and cost of health care services often do not include information on behavioral health visits. Additionally, experts noted that the cost of behavioral health care services used by community members affected by firearm injuries, while important to capture for a comprehensive cost estimate, can be difficult to quantify [28 – 29 of report].” And the GAO report estimates annually that there are about 1,000 survivors with spinal cord injuries and 2,000 with traumatic brain injuries with each person having about $220,000 costs in the first year and $70,000 per year thereafter or $660 million first year and $210 million thereafter (pages 21, 28 – 29), which grows each year as additional cohorts of spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries accumulate until that population stabilizes (i.e., until their deaths match persons entering the cohorts). Therefore, the long-term costs appear to be very hard to measure.

Table of Gun-related Deaths and Injuries

Source: GVA (Gun Violence Archive) Table: United States’ Shootings Statistics 2015 – 2024, most recent years available (from www.gunviolencearchive.org as of June 6, 2025; note that in 2023 there were 2.8% of “Defensive Gun Use” as a percentage of all gun Deaths (including Suicides); down from 3.9% in 2015 so, self-defense with guns plays a very small role in gun shootings. Calculations: (1,286 / (19,135 + 27,310)) and (1,400 / (13,777 + 22,018)), respectively. Suicide by firearms is about 60% ± 2% of all gun-related deaths. Suicide by firearm counts is in addition to the deaths at the top of this Table. OIS is officer involved shooting.

EveryTownResearch.org “conducts independent, methodologically rigorous research, supports evidence-based policies, and communicates this knowledge to the public … Our groundbreaking original research seeks to understand the causes of gun violence in order to develop evidence-based solutions to America’s gun violence crisis.” EveryTownResearch.org (mentioned in Should We Buy a Gun? (251)) provides cost estimates beyond those the GAO provided earlier. Because their cost estimates were so high, I tried to contact them twice for them to explain their sources and how their costs were derived. I never received a reply. According to Everytown (for Gun Safety Support Fund) Research and Policy 2022’s report The Economic Cost of Gun Violence in the U.S. was $557.2 billion annually; broken down as $2.8B for medical, $53.8B lost income for current year, $11.0B for police and criminal justice, $.5B employer’s lost productivity and revenue, and $489.1B present value of future income from deaths and injuries “value of pain and wellbeing lost by victims and their families.” The latter is the most difficult to measure; and if left out, would leave annual costs of gun violence at $68.1 billion. This report was developed with assistance from the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, among others.

Other information from EveryTownResearch.org includes gun restrictions varying by U.S. state (e.g.  California, most restrictive; Idaho, least restrictive state; I created the table below with data from Every Town Research. Go to that website to learn what the gun restrictions are. Note that the least gun restrictive states tend to have the highest number of gun deaths per 100,000 population.

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first SC decision about the Second Amendment. Concluded the 2^nd amendment only restricted the federal government and not states or individuals; and the decision decided the Ku Klux Klan didn’t violate others’ rights under the 1870 Enforcement Act when three white men participated in killing 100+ African Americans; but US v. Cruikshank was overturned in McDonald v. City of Chicago in 2010 in that State laws are overruled by Federal decision that you can’t restrict guns.

From Where We Live (page 72): “Even when the National Firearms Act was passed in 1934 as a response to guns that were wielded by Prohibition-era gangsters, the Supreme Court upheld it with United States vs. Miller (1939), stating that weapons like sawed-off shotguns were not necessary for maintaining a well-regulated militia …”

District of Columbia v Heller (2008) held the Second Amendment “protects the individual right to possess arms and use them for self-defense inside the home” but wasn’t without restrictions with respect to undefined “dangerous and unusual weapons” or restrictions outside the home. According to supreme.justia.com, there have been six Supreme Court decisions since Heller, including (from website):

McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010). The Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. (In other words, the right is protected from state as well as federal interference.)

Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016). The Second Amendment extends to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding, and this Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the states.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022). When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify a firearm regulation, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

United States v. Rahimi (2024). An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another person may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.

Garland v. Cargill (2024; after the Las Vegas shooting). A bump stock—an accessory for a semiautomatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—does not convert the rifle into a “machinegun” for the purposes of federal gun control laws, because, unlike a machinegun, using a bump stock isn’t from a single pull of the trigger and requires continued pressure on the trigger. Had it been found to be a machinegun, bump stock could be banned under the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934.

Bondi v. Vanderstok (2025). The Gun Control Act of 1968 permits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers.

[i] Note the Supreme Court of the U.S. (Cargill v. Garland, 2023) found that the federal government’s attempt at regulating bump stocks as making the rifle a “machine gun,” which are permitted to be banned in the U.S., invalidated this Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm (ATF) rule, because, unlike a machinegun, using a bump stock isn’t from a single pull of the trigger and requires continued pressure on the trigger.