American Community Media’s weekly national briefing opened with a familiar contradiction: mass shootings have become a defining feature of American life even as their frequency has fallen to a two-decade low. Moderator Sunita Sohrabji, the outlet’s health editor, told reporters the United States still records more gun-related deaths than its peer nations, while political responses remain “uneven and polarized,” shaped by constitutional battles and a deeply entrenched gun culture.
The panel was built to bridge lived experience, clinical research, and public-health policy. It began with Sarah Lerner, a Parkland survivor and veteran educator who has taught since 2002 and has worked at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School since 2014. Lerner was on campus on Feb. 14, 2018, when a gunman killed 17 people, injured 17, and upended the lives of students and staff. She described hearing what she first thought were “firecrackers,” then shepherding students back into her classroom, where they stayed on lockdown for hours. “It was the most horrific experience I have had in my entire life,” she said.
Lerner’s account moved between the immediate chaos of that afternoon and the long recovery that followed. She described texting her own child during the lockdown, losing two former students, and returning to a school where academics felt impossible. “Speaking only for myself, there was no teaching happening,” she said, explaining that teachers focused instead on social-emotional support, therapy dogs, and basic stability for students. Lerner also framed her response as both educator and journalist. As a yearbook and newspaper adviser, she said she felt urgency to document the aftermath accurately and without sensationalism, later helping compile the 2019 anthology Parkland Speaks featuring work from survivors. “It was our story to tell,” she said, arguing that first-person accounts were essential to prevent outside narratives from distorting what happened.
In the policy portion of her remarks, Lerner rejected proposals to arm teachers, calling the idea dangerous and ill-suited to the work educators are trained to do. “I went to college to study English, not to become a police officer,” she said, warning that adding more weapons to campus increases the risk of accidents, misidentification in a crisis, and additional trauma for students, particularly students of color. She argued instead for what she called “common sense gun laws,” including secure storage, licensing, and stronger regulations on high-powered firearms and ghost guns.
Next, psychiatrist Dr. Ragy Girgis, a Columbia University professor of clinical psychiatry and director of a center focused on prevention and evaluation, brought an evidence-based lens to the most common public explanation offered after mass shootings: mental illness. Girgis said his research team assembled what he described as the largest mass murder database available, examining cases globally since 1900 to test whether mental illness drives mass shootings. The conclusion, he said, is clear: “95% of mass shootings are not related to mental illness.” In his framework, only a small subset of shootings can be attributed directly to psychosis in which delusions or hallucinations compel violence.
Girgis warned that repeatedly blaming mental illness functions as a diversion and carries real harm. When asked about stigma, he said the effect is immediate and measurable, discouraging people from seeking care and reinforcing discrimination. He also emphasized the role of suicide, noting that more than half of mass shooters now die by suicide during the event, and argued that firearms are often chosen because they are the method intended for self-harm. While Girgis discussed cultural factors, including what he called the “romanticization” of violence in media, he returned repeatedly to policy as a dominant driver, saying mass shootings are strongly associated with weaker firearm laws and that most weapons used are legally acquired.
The final presentation came from Dr. Daniel Webster, the Bloomberg Professor of American Health at Johns Hopkins University, who focused on trend lines and the mix of interventions that appear to be reducing gun violence in many cities. Webster said headlines often obscure a sustained decline in homicides since the surge of 2020. Using 12-month rolling averages compiled by the Real-Time Crime Index, he noted that U.S. homicides have dropped about 40% from their 2021–2022 peak, with especially steep declines reported in several cities that historically have high rates of violence. Webster cautioned that researchers still need time to fully test causal explanations, but he pointed to a combination of pandemic “unwinding,” strengthened civic systems, large federal investments in community violence intervention, and targeted policy changes, including expanded background check requirements and a federal rule aimed at regulating ghost gun kits.
Webster also pushed back on political narratives tying violence trends to immigration crackdowns, stating that research shows immigrants offend violently at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens and that recent federal enforcement surges have not primarily targeted people with histories of serious violence. He highlighted domestic violence as a major driver of gun deaths and said the risk of fatal outcomes increases dramatically when an abuser has access to a firearm, adding that laws restricting gun access for domestic abusers save lives, especially when enforcement is strong.
When the moderator asked how journalists should cover mass shootings, the three speakers converged on a common message: gun violence is not inevitable. Webster urged reporters to emphasize preventability and evidence, arguing that policy and programs can drive rates down even if they do not eliminate shootings entirely. Girgis echoed that point directly. Lerner, speaking from the perspective of a survivor and educator, added a practical standard for coverage rooted in ethics rather than ideology, calling for “trauma-informed journalism” and warning that the way reporters approach survivors can either reduce harm or compound it.
Useful Links:
Teachers Unify To End Gun Violence
Teachers Unify Podcast
https://teachersunify.transistor.fm
“Parkland Speaks”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601937/parkland-speaks-by-edited-by-sarah-lerner/
