Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/tag/gun-violence/)
For the past two years, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has partnered with other media organizations on Precious Lives, a wide-ranging effort that examined the causes and consequences of gun violence on Milwaukee youth.
Gun violence costs Wisconsinites billions of dollars a year. Taxpayers pay for most of it in medical bills and incarceration costs. Victims suffer lost wages and trauma that can have long-lasting effects. Communities pay through lowered property values and higher police costs.
Guns and teens can be a lethal mix. Immaturity and impulsiveness, combined with weapons that can kill with the squeeze of a trigger, have caused death and devastating injuries to Wisconsin children and adults.
On this week’s episode of Precious Lives, a two-year project examining gun violence among young people in the Milwaukee area and statewide, reporters Kate Golden and Sean Kirkby visit the Madison area’s Allied Drive Boys and Girls Club to ask children what they know about guns. The reporters found that nearly all of the young people they talked to had some level of experience with guns.
African Americans were more than 30 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be murdered by guns in 2014, a Center analysis found.
A newly launched two-year project investigating the problem of gun violence among young people, its causes, and potential solutions in the Milwaukee area and statewide.
This story is the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s first report for Precious Lives, a newly launched two-year project investigating the problem of gun violence among young people, its causes, and potential solutions in the Milwaukee area and statewide. Read more about the project. Main story
Bullets exacted terrible toll on children, African Americans A Center analysis found that African Americans were more than 30 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be murdered by guns in Wisconsin last year. James A. Witt: In January, police asked to check on the well-being of this 60-year-old resident in the village of Summit in Waukesha County found his body wrapped in a blanket; he had died from a gunshot wound. His son Shawn Witt was charged with first-degree intentional homicide and possession of heroin.