Senior reporter @GuardianUS. I cover guns & gun violence prevention. Views=mine. 
lois.beckett@theguardian.com.
You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more
I am sick of media outlets making a case for hopelessness and stalemate after the latest mass shooting. There are ways to prevent some of these these shootings. But people don't know about them because WE DON'T COVER THEM.
From what we know so far, the Thousand Oaks shooting is a *textbook case* where a gun violence restraining order law could have been used to disarm the shooter. California has had this law since 2016, but many family members/law enforcement still don't know the law exists.
Florida used its new gun violence restraining law more often in the first *five months* after the law was signed than California did in the first *two years,* @misstessowen reported yesterday.
Public education and awareness are crucial here. And that's *our job.*
In the face of an increasing number of mass shootings, media outlets give intense coverage to the terror and the trauma of these events, but almost no coverage of solutions, including solutions ordinary people can use. Look at this post-Las Vegas contrast: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/16/las-vegas-attack-tv-coverage-gun-violence-report …pic.twitter.com/4OwG40mlwI
It's not just TV that's the problem. Headlines like this one are just not helpful. And in the case of Thousand Oaks, not accurate. What's depressing is not the lack of solutions, but the fact that options to help exist and people DON'T KNOW ABOUT THEM.https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-depressing-absence-of-solutions-after-the-thousand-oaks-shooting …
In years of talking to gun violence prevention advocates and researchers, what I've heard over and over is that the biggest enemy of this work isn't the NRA. It's the cynicism and hopelessness of the general public--their belief that nothing can be done, why even bother.
None of this is easy. None of the fixes are simple. None work all the time. But as media outlets, we could choose to focus on the solutions. We could include, in every segment or every story, resources for people who are worried and want to know what options they might have.
People just don't snap. There are almost always red flags--small dots that were not connected. There are often quotes like this one, from the Thousand Oaks shooter's former roommate: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-shooter-profile-20181108-story.html …pic.twitter.com/T5wPBwI5w0
There must be so many Americans who watch the coverage of the latest mass shooting with a funny feeling in the pit of their stomachs, worrying about someone they know, but not certain, nothing's clear, and anyway, what could they actually do? Who might actually help?
Our media coverage after mass shootings and other acts of violence could focus on those readers and listeners -- offering them what we know about the options they have, however limited and imperfect, and who's working to improve those options. We could do this.
To Gabriella's point here, there are research-driven solutions to offer that are supported by gun rights advocates. One of the largest focuses on training gun owners on suicide prevention. We could offer a menu of solutionshttps://twitter.com/Gabby_Hoffman/status/1061270239202172930 …
There is so much happening right now that feels completely out of our control. But media outlets *do* have control over how we cover these escalating catastrophes. We could choose to focus more on solutions. To interview more people who are taking action.
I'm very grateful to @tirosenberg and @soljourno, who have been working to advance "solutions" coverage across many areas where it's desperately needed. If you're a journalist and this thread resonates with you--they have resources for you/your newsroom:https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/
Hi Lois, valid point abt the hed. The piece was trying to say the conversation needs to start in a very different place than it does right now. PS I wrote some of the early pieces abt gun seizure orders yrs ago, and I wrote abt them again after Parkland.https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sad-reality-of-trying-to-keep-guns-away-from-mentally-ill-people …
Michael -- of course I know and admire your many years of investigative reporting on this issue. That's why I flagged the headline in particular. But I do think it's dangerous to understate the possible effect of meticulously carrying out a few targeted laws + prevention efforts.
Certainly some policy researchers would disagree with --> "As long as the discussion about gun control continues to start from the premise that an individual has a right to bear arms, finding solutions that make an actual dent in the number of mass shootings will remain elusive"
For me, the real hurdle is less in finding the solutions, and more in the extreme difficulty of implementing them well, especially across fragmented law enforcement/local government bureaucracies. Similar to: someone gets a prescription, doesn't take it regularly, stays sick
There are real and profound and maybe insurmountable hurdles. But a lot of them are problems of logistics. They're petty. Like funding for violence interrupters running out during high-violence summer months bc of the way nonprofit funding is distributed. Dumb reasons people die.
“Hopelessness is the enemy of justice” - Bryan Stevenson.
That quote is spot on. Journalism can be a powerful force for hope and positive change.
That's why I do Recharge, and probably a reason why you do Solution Set.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
