 | | By
John Woodrow Cox
 Email | For five years, I've covered the effects of gun violence on children in America. I've written dozens of stories on the subject, co-created the country's most comprehensive school shootings database and published a book on the subject, "Children Under Fire: An American Crisis." But the epidemic's human cost never ceases to feel devastating. A few months ago, as it became clear that 2021 would likely shatter more gun violence records, my editor, Lynda Robinson, pitched me an idea: a collection of 12 short stories profiling children killed in each month of the year. Three other writers — Lizzie Johnson, Reis Thebault and Emily Davies — joined the project, and we all set out to find families willing to tell us about their life's worst moments. The aim was to force readers to look beyond the staggering statistics and confront the reality of who's being lost: the devoted sisters, ages 6 and 9, shot to death by their father; the artistic 15-year-old who aspired to become a nuclear physicist before using his mother's gun to kill himself; the talented 14-year-old who was shot at Oxford High just hours before her entire family was going to watch her first basketball game of the season. As I wrote in the introduction, children killed by bullets are too often memorialized only by brief news reports or anguished obituaries. But the way they lived matters as much as the way they died.  Top row: Troy Dueñez, Ava and Alyse Williams, and DaMya Hudnall. Bottom row: Hana St. Juliana, Sterlyn Bullock and PJ Evans. (Family photos) The country's gun violence epidemic is killing more children than ever. Who they were matters just as much as how they died. By John Woodrow Cox, Emily Davies, Lizzie Johnson and Reis Thebault ● Read more » | | | |
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