One City Tackles Gun Violence.

Earlier this week, the city of Springfield, MA recorded its 25th gun murder of the year. Given that there are still 4 more months in 2023, there’s a good chance that at least 30 fatal shootings will occur before we reach 2024.

Springfield has 150,000 residents, which means that as of today, the city’s gun-homicide rate is 16.67, more or less the same rate as countries like El Salvador or South Sudan, places like that.

Meanwhile, the state of Massachusetts not only has the lowest gun homicide rate of all 50 states, but it’s also rated as a very safe state because it has all of the laws which are considered necessary to protect the public against gun violence — universal background checks, ERPO, required safe storage, childproof gun design.

The last time the Giffords Law Center rated the strength of state gun laws, which was 2022, Massachusetts ranked 6th strongest of all 50 states and had a statewide gun-death rate of 3.4. So, Springfield’s gun-homicide rate is only 4 times higher than the overall state number — what’s so bad about that?

To celebrate Springfield’s new record for annual shootings in a year which still has four months to go, the city convened a meeting of its gun violence ‘task force’ to review the situation and come up with some new ideas on what to do.