T's over.
This is the Paul Revere Show. This is Attorney Craig Mast in Tuno sitting in for
regular host Attorney Mark Thompson. And tonight we are joined by our guest
Reggie Moore, Director of Community Safety Policy and Engagement for the
Medical College of Wisconsin. Reggie, welcome to the show. And Reggie, I just
want to start right in. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your
current role at Medical College of Wisconsin. And then we'll kind of go
backwards and talk about your transition from the city to that current role.
Awesome. So I joined the Comprehensive Injury Center, which was actually
founded back in 1998 by Dr. Steve Hargarten, who since stepped down. And now
is led by Dr. Terry DeRune Cassini. And the Comprehensive Injury Center,
historic focus has been on gun violence research. But in addition to that, we
now have expanded with a focus on community safety policy and engagement. We
also have a division on suicide research and healing. We also have a division
of data and informatics, which a lot of data pertaining to what's happening in
the city and in the state is monitored by that division and shared back out to
the community. They also help co facilitate the infant death reviews as well in
partnership with the medical examiner's office and also supports that work
throughout the state as well. We also housed Wisconsin Alcohol Policy project,
which was previously housed by UW Madison, but is now is housed at the
Comprehensive Injury Center. And we're the only comprehensive injury center
in the state. And so those, that's some of the work that we do. And that's
where I'm stationed. Well, that is a lot of stuff. It makes you sound like
you're in a big role. Let me, let me pull some of that apart because if I was
listening to our show right now, I'd be like, well, what do you do? Exactly.
So good point. So let's pull some of that apart and tell our audience what
you do in your role. So specifically in the role of the division of community
safety policy and engagement, it really is around helping improve the capacity
and coordination of violence prevention work throughout the state. We
administer a $10 million fund, which was established through our
funding allocated by governor Evers, where we funded 10 communities throughout
the state who are taking a public health approach to addressing violence and
particularly violence that was exacerbated by the pandemic, whether we're
talking domestic, gun violence, even suicide as well. We also work with cities
throughout the country as well, who are either looking to build what some
may call offices of violence prevention. We are encouraging people to really
move towards a brand of community safety over violence prevention. And I can
explain a little bit as to why in a moment, but it's a lot of the work that we do
or end or helping communities who are developing their own comprehensive
community safety plans like we have in Milwaukee called the blueprint for peace.
Okay. Couple of things about that. Let me ask you. So it sounds like part of your
job is to award monies to different different localities. Right. And these
monies are grant funding either from the state or federal funding that go to
communities that are taking their own local approach to violence prevention,
health safety. Yeah. And so how do you make decisions over who's receiving money,
say for Wisconsin? And then I want to talk about Milwaukee. And then I'll ask you
about the kind of newer trend of offices of violence prevention in various cities.
Good question. So with the funding from the governor, we established something
called the Wisconsin Community Safety Fund. It's just first of it's kind of
fund in the state that's focused on violence prevention. And that funding, the process for
that we formed an advisory committee to help design the actual requests for proposals.
And that advisory committee was comprised of experts and practitioners in the field,
whether again, talking gun violence prevention, domestic violence, etc.
mental health. And then from there, there was an RFA issued where communities could apply
for the funding. And intentionally it was designed for communities outside the city of Milwaukee.
And the reason for that is because Milwaukee got its own direct allocation of 8.4 million
for the governor specifically just from Milwaukee. So Milwaukee did not have to compete for the 10
million dollars. That was allocated or available to other communities throughout the state.
There was also an independent review committee that reviewed the proposals and scored them.
We had over 40 million in requests for 10 million dollars. So the demand is clear
in terms of interest in this fund and for communities. Again, who are looking to do more than
just law enforcement and to say what can we be doing upstream? What can we be doing with young
people and families to prevent harm in the first place? But then also ensure that there's access
to quality and consistent support and healing services if harm happens.
Is the 10 million awarded now? Yes. So the 10 million has been awarded to communities throughout
the state and including for example, Green Bay is established in Office of Community Safety.
There will be launching our street outreach and violence and eruptors.
Racine has also established a department of community safety as another example.
Kenosha knows focused on youth employment and youth engagement, particularly in the
neighborhoods that were hit hardest by the civil unrest there. There's also funding around mental
health, particularly in the Fox Valley. And so particularly looking at among Latino populations
and suicide prevention within those communities. I was going to ask you because our listeners are
statewide to describe some of the statewide communities that are receiving funding. So that
thank you for answering that question in advance. Sounds like everybody's taking their local
approach to this. So I want to talk about the trend of offices of violence prevention or community
wellness and public safety as the current office in Milwaukee is called. When did that
trending start? When did we start looking at, hey, we have to do something in addition to
traditional police departments and look at this as a long-term prevention initiative nationally.
Right. So the surge in general back in the early 2000s, that was sort of the first in terms of
declaring like violence as a public health issue is taken a while for that to catch on.
In terms of funding and implementation, obviously for years or decades, the CDC was actually
restricted from funding research on gun violence. And that is only since turned around where
funding now is being made available by the CDC to actually do increased research on gun violence.
Was that prior trend of funding not being available just a matter of lobbying by the gun lobby?
Yes, correct. So there were restrictions put on by the federal government in terms of that
research being done. Also the ATF their hands were tied as well in terms of being able to track and
document firearm trends as well. And so we're seeing some of that reversal just given again the
historic increase in gun violence that we've seen across this country, not just in mass shootings
but also at the community level. And so the bipartisan safer communities act as an example of again,
I think legislation that was literally 30 years overdue but has been the most significant
legislation passed to really look at one, how do we reduce the likelihood of firearms ending up
in the hands of people who are either likely to harm themselves or other people and then also
increase funding in public health approaches to violence prevention. And so to answer that question
in terms of the trend, I know that under former mayor Tom Barrett, Milwaukee was one of the
early cities that adopted that approach. I was going to be a question about that. So we were
early on on that. Yes, and he was one of the founding mayors of mayors against illegal guns at that
time, which has evolved into something called cities united. And so we were ahead of the curve,
but unfortunately I don't think the city's investment really backed that idea. And so it wasn't until
2016 that you saw an increased investment in terms of at the local level in expanding the office
of violence prevention. Honestly, I didn't know we had an office of violence prevention until I was
approached to direct it. And you know, as an organizer, you know, our approach was how do we make
this a movement because one office can't solve this problem. It really has to be an all hands-on
deck effort. And that's what we built, which also results in what we call the blueprint for peace.
Okay. Well, let me follow up on some of that. We're here with Reggie Moore, director of community
safety policy and engagement for the medical college of Wisconsin and formerly director of the
office of violence prevention city of Milwaukee. So you mentioned a couple of things. First of all,
the bipartisan safer communities act. We're talking about federal legislation. You mentioned
legislation. And I wanted to get to that in a moment. But talk about your prior work at the
city of Milwaukee office of violence prevention and then the transition to your current role.
Right. So I served as director for five years and was housed in the health department. So I
reported both to former health commissioner Bevan Baker as well as former Mayor Tom Barrett.
And it really was, you know, our consent agreement was that in commitment was that the community
would need to define the priorities not just for the office, but violence prevention in the city.
And so that process, which took a year, which is a very aggressive process, was developing the
blueprint for peace. And we involved young people, residents, and particularly from communities that
are deeply impacted by gun violence in the city. And so oftentimes we're doing things to those
communities where we're talking about Bob 2206. And this was an effort to say, no, like they have ideas
and they have power and they have expectations of what they would like to see happen.
Let me stop you there because I do think that's unique. As you know, I'm criminal defense attorney.
Our audience may not know that offhand. I have been in and around criminal justice and
criminal justice policy for 31 years of experience. And what you just said rings very true to me
about doing things to communities. I've been involved in very big cases that make, you know,
local and national news because something awful happens. You know, and all of a sudden the police
captain is there and we're going to send police into the streets. The sheriff is going to send
additional patrol. We're going to do things and it happens for a couple of months and then goes
away. And that has been the traditional kind of public safety response model. There's nothing wrong
with that attention that is paid because I think people in those offices feel like they need to do
something. But it strikes me that you're absolutely correct about that. There's never a long-term
approach where you go into the communities and say, look, let's go door to door. Let's talk to
young people. Let's talk to the people affected by violence. They have ideas. They know their
neighborhoods. Let's take a real intel gathering approach to this. And so how did that go for you
and what did it result in in the blueprint for peace? So interestingly, at the very first community
gathering, there was over 150 community members there and it was a cross-section of folks,
whether it be law enforcement, business community, grassroots activists, survivors.
And one of the things that two things wrong true for me at that, even that very first meeting,
number one to your point, that this blueprint cannot just address interpersonal violence.
It also had to identify and call out and address some of the systemic and structural violence
in this community and the history of this city that's led to the conditions that obviously
allow for violence to permeate the interpersonal violence that we see on the news.
And then the second one is that at that time, resilience was a word. The same way that we talk about
trauma was kind of a buzz word. And really being clear that when we talk about resilience,
that it's not about making people comfortable in their pain or comfortable in their oppression.
But really saying, how do we address the root causes of the pain and not just making people
able to bounce back from it? Although that is important, we also have to be doing everything
possible to prevent that harm in the first place. So those were two things that, again,
when you look at the blueprint for peace, ring true in that in terms of the six goals and
30 strategies that resulted from that process. Okay, well, when we come back on the other side,
we're about to take a break. I'm going to ask you to identify for a given example of one of those
goals and the approach taken when you were at Office of Violence Prevention. We're here with
Reggie Moore, Director of Community Safety Policy and Engagement for the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Reggie Moore, Director of Community Safety Policy and Engagement for the Medical College of
Wisconsin. Reggie, welcome back. Thank you. So when we left off, we were discussing
your initiative as the first director for the Office of Violence Prevention at the City of Milwaukee.
And the blueprint for peace and local engagement that you did in leading up to that.
And what was an example of one of the six approaches that you took or that produced itself
from that process? Right. So the six goals and 30 strategies that encompass the blueprint
really outlined and again, there could have been 20 strategies and 1,000 share activities
within that blueprint, but there were certain criteria that we used to narrow it down in terms of
if it had been, you know, in terms of evidence, has this been implemented in another community and
shown impact or promise? Is there a public will in meaning that has there been a local effort to
implement and or if not a desire to implement this particular strategy? Are there resources
both local or national that could support and sustain this work? Because the last thing that we
wanted to do was to kind of replicate some of the systemic and structural harm that's been done
in the past. Number one, people feel planned to death. They feel committed to death. And so
at the end of the day, we didn't want to repeat that process and we really wanted strategies to
emerge that could be executed and that could be measured. And so an example of that is 401 for
life. And 401 for life is a violence interruption strategy that is modeled after the cure violence
approach and cure violence is an organization out of Chicago that was originally known as cease
fire Chicago. There's a documentary called the interrupters for folks that or listeners that are
interested in learning more about that approach, but it really is about number one looking at
gun violence almost similar to a disease. And so if you take COVID-19, for example, you could
look at maps and to see where was clustering happening of transmissions. The same way you look at
crime data or gun violence data, there are certain areas where gun violence clusters or
unfortunately is concentrated year after year. It's looking at what are the factors that are
driving that transmission? We know that many of the shootings in the city in like cities across
the country are driven by conflict. So whether that's arguments, road rage, domestic violence,
retaliation are kind of the driving force of a lot of shootings that we see in communities throughout
the country and obviously in our city. And so then it's looking at who are the best folks to
interrupt that transmission and what are strategies to interrupt the same way that we took measures
to interrupt the transmission of COVID-19. It's really saying, okay, who are the credible messengers
that may have in their lives had experience with violence and have credibility and relationships
and fearlessness to still engage in the streets and in the community with individuals that are
high risk of shooting or being shot. So it peer to peer is the goal within these local communities?
Yes. And so this program is something that was launched when I was the director of the office
of violence prevention. And we always have an implementation partner. And so the medical college
of Wisconsin is currently the implementation partner with the city's office of community safety
and wellness to implement the form for life program. What that means is we're the only medical
college in the country that's housing this type of program, which federally is called a community
violence intervention program. You may hear CVI use a lot. And so that's an example of a CVI
program that's again trying to reduce the likelihood of retaliatory and conflict driven violence
through mediation and working with gun shot survivors at freighter hospitals example.
I got to tell you from my experience that's really interesting because I couldn't agree with you
more that violence and gun violence result from conflict, right? Whether it's interpersonal
or stranger to stranger, I would say interpersonal more often in my experience and that the availability
of guns has proliferated when that becomes gun violence. And we'll get to that in a minute.
But I think that my business, the criminal justice business is the most misunderstood
policy discussion piece in society. I think we have a very simplified analysis in the public of
crime criminal justice and violence. And I think the narrative that is very popular is that there
are just simply bad people roaming around looking to do bad things because they're evil. And they
got guns and procured them because they're evil and that we the people that aren't doing that are
all going to be their next victim. And I have to say working in the criminal justice system,
this narrative is perpetuated by police, by prosecutors, by judges, and by lawyers.
And you know, these are people that should know better. And so I think the program that you're
describing, you know, really does try to go right at the conflict, conflict resolution or conflict
interruption, right? Because I imagine the research shows that if you can just put a pause button
on some of this conflict, you can you can prevent tragic outcomes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
So talk about who are these violence interrupters? I it sounds great. But I want to know who are
these masked men and women that that you know, whip off their shirts and have a four one four life
costume underneath and get dispatched into the five three two oh six to go disrupt or interrupt
violence. Yeah. So their their coordinate neighborhood is actually Oh, North Milwaukee, which is
geographically if you're familiar with garden homes, it's just west of that. So that's sort of
their geographic focus area. And a lot of the gun violence that happens in that neighborhood are
not driven by folks who live there. And so when you think about Villa Boulevard and a lot of the
bars and clubs along that strip and gas stations as well, we see a lot of shootings at gas stations
where individuals who are in conflict with each other run into each other oftentimes we it's hard
to explain why that particular area or neighborhood. But that's where again, our outreach is focused
building relationships with the neighbors, business owners and the individuals on the street that
no other nonprofits are talking to. And so those are individuals that typically the grandmothers
are calling the police on because they're hanging out on the corner or there's a dice game
consistently going that's who our team is engaging with. And they're not there to police them. That's
not their job at all. It really is about building relationship connecting them to resources. And
again, trying to get ahead of things before they escalate to gun violence. It sounds like a
massive and complex undertaking to recruit these individuals and to get them, you know,
endeavoring on these tasks. How does that go? Yeah. So basically, we don't like to use the term
case management, but essentially they become what we call participants. So each outreach worker
of violence in a rep, there's a part of four for life has a case load of about 10 individuals.
That again, these are the folks that are high risk of shooting or being shot. And again,
it's connecting them to employment resources. If there's issues with substance issues, all of those
things also even issues with family and relationships that could lead to a domestic violence incident
or shooting. If they're in conflicts, we also will intervene and help mediate those conflicts.
And so that's just the street side of the program. And so we were really intentional about that
in the design of the program because when we went and looked at these programs in other cities,
for example, in Chicago at that time, they were getting funded by the state. But again,
depending on the political winds, the funding would stop. And so you would have people who were laid
off, you know, for months or only working part time with no benefits. And this is life risking work.
And although I don't do it full of time, there's, you know, I've been a part of mediating some of
the conflicts and showing up to scenes. And I can tell you they don't have a gun or badge. All they
have is their credibility and their feelings and their 40 hours of extensive training from
cure violence in terms of the tools, tactics and techniques of mediation and de-escalation
in higher situations. Okay. Wow. So that's a multi-skilled person that does this work. So we're
going to take a break shortly. When we come back on the other side, I want to stay on that subject
to talk a little bit more about how you recruit these people or train them to do this increasingly
valuable. But as you mentioned, dangerous work. We're here with Reggie. More the director of
Community Safety Policy and Engagement for the Medical College of Wisconsin. See you on the other side.
This is the Paul Ribeiro Show, Craig Mastintuno, filling in for regular host, Mark Thompson. And we
are joined by the director of Community Safety Policy and Engagement for the Medical College of
Wisconsin. Reggie, more Reggie. Thanks for being here and welcome back. Thanks for having me.
When we left off, we were talking about violence disruptors for one for life. That first was
started up and brought to the city by the Office of Violence Prevention when you were at the city.
And I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the people that do this work. And what are their
backgrounds? I imagine varied and what kind of training do they receive to mediate disputes,
have a case load of people within these neighborhoods that they are checking in with and trying to
keep out of conflict. Right. So some folks may, especially when you say the word for life, it's a
brand that people know. And people may think that there's 50 or a hundred of them. But right now,
the team is the largest it's been and it's 15 people total. And that includes both the street
side of the program, which is the outreach workers and violence interruptors and then also the
hospital response component of the program, which we'll get to in a moment. Yeah, talk about that.
And so I would say for all of the individuals who do this work, they all share number one,
a commitment and love for our community. And many of them have in one way or another experience,
pain or trauma related to gun violence on their own, whether it's in their family or themselves
directly being survivors of gun violence or someone close to them. In some cases, some of them
have committed gun violence in their place. I was just going to ask any survivors of the criminal
justice system. Yes, absolutely. And so to your point, it is a cross section of individuals
who have a fearless and relentless commitment to trying to prevent individuals from making
a decision that could lend them or lead them to either a graveyard, a hospital bed or prison.
And so that's the, that's what drives for many of them, the motivation for this work.
And what does the hospital side look like? So the hospital responders are basically a team right
now of four individuals that includes the supervisor. And basically their focus is on responding
to gunshot survivors in their families. So it basically went in individual shot. What people,
many people don't realize is number one that freighters the only level one trauma center in this
region. And so your likelihood or your best chances of surviving a gunshot wound would be at freighter.
No knock to the other hospitals in the area, but many of the other hospitals, depending on
the severity of the wound, will transport a patient to freighter if the injuries are significant
enough. And I definitely want to give a shout out to the the trauma team there led by Dr. Mark
Damoya as well as Dr. Melia and Libby Schroeder who are amazing trauma surgeons and do life-saving
work every day. You know, we jokingly talk about heroes and you know, literally meeting and
working with people every day who literally save lives for a living and understandably every life
won't be saved. But essentially being injured by gun violence coming to the hospital is the
most tragic incident that any human being could experience. And so in the course of that,
the team responds to the hospital, the hospital responders meet the family in the waiting room
because oftentimes that's retaliation. That conversation can begin where a cousin and nephew
or another relative or a friend comes in. I know who did this, you know, I'm going to go
handle this and they run out the door. And so our team are the folks who are trying to stop that
person from running out the door, deescalating the situation. Like you said, slowing down that
impulse in that in that process because again, outrage and justice is a human reaction, right?
The problem is is that we understand that the likelihood of that individual either being harmed
trying to retaliate and being caught for retaliating and then ending up in prison for 15 or 20 years
is something that we don't want to see. And so we want to let the enforcement side of the
system do what it needs to do to investigate and address the harm that has happened.
While our team is really focused on how do we break the cycle of retaliatory violence that happens?
But then also a lot of deeper work goes into making sure that the individual who was injured
can return safely. So imagine being, you know, one of our first cases was an individual shot
multiple times in front of his house, in front of his family. Nobody in that family wanted to
return to that house. In addition to the physical damage done to the house, in addition to the
fact that the folks who shot him hadn't been caught. And so with all of that, there's a lot of
psychological support that goes into not just with the individual who was injured, but also the
children and the family also addressing and delaying discharge to say, let's work with the
county and other partners to find safe housing to relocate this family to a different
different home. All of those things the team is doing every single day.
Yeah, let's go back to the street side. And I have two questions for you. One is just a quick
observation that is a form of a question, though, is how much does social media complicate all of this?
I had a recent case that resulted in the death of a person and I was representing the person
that caused the death. Now this was a reckless driving incident, but this was two weeks ago.
And you know, there's 30 people from each family, the defendant's family and the
deceitant victims family in the courtroom on each side. And one person was broadcasting from
the hallway of the courthouse proceedings in a disinformation style about what was going on inside.
And we had to do something about that. A person from my client's side of the family was the hothead
you were talking about earlier at the hospital who wanted to rush off and go take care of that.
So we had to calm him down during break. We worked collaboratively with court staff, my client,
the family members, trusted peers within the family to kind of quell all this. And that's similar
to the work you're doing on a daily basis. So it seems to me that social media can make all of
this exponentially faster. Right. And then on the street side, you know, are your
interuptors and violence preventers able to gain a level of trust where people think they're
not working with and for police and be able to talk to people in a trusted fashion.
Absolutely. So the short answers to both of those questions is yes. Number one, I mean,
I think social media has caused significant psychological harm not just in a sense of community
violence, but I think it's society as a whole. Unfortunately. And so I think when
one of the things that we find particularly with street conflict is when you feel deprived
or powerless in every aspect of your life, respect is the last kind of ounce of power you feel
like you have. That's true. And in a world where social media allows you to have and broadcast
well audience of millions for acceptance, for validation, for respect, or at least perceived
validation and respect and admiration, that becomes a it triggers dopamine in the brain
where the adrenaline of that and the attention seeking of that becomes extremely harmful.
And then you add on top of that to adolescent brain. And for a lot of the gun violence that we're
seeing with young people in the community, which as you know, gun violence is now the leading cause
of death of children in this country since 2020, social media unfortunately has had a significant
impact on where you know, when we were in school, I'm not sure what side of the bullying
equation you were on, but if you were being bullied, you know, you you're just dreaded seeing
that person at school where now that person has access to you 24 seven through social media.
Unless you block them or all of that. But and so in some cases, you have conflicts that may have
resulted in a fist fight at school back in the day, which are now resulting in gun play. And also
where you have young people who are forming clicks and groups in honor of friends who've been
killed by gun violence. Yes. And then when those folks are disrespected on social media,
are then taking that retaliation off, I mean, offline into the street. And there's been a number of
young people killed just for disrespecting a deceased young person from another group online.
Wow. Wow. That's yeah. And social media makes makes that all possible in a way that it wasn't
possible before, right? I want to just briefly address your question around law enforcement.
I want to say leadership matters. I mean, I have to say that every law enforcement leader has not
always embraced this approach. Yes. I can say that Chief Norman and his leadership team have.
And what that means is that they respect the autonomy of the program. They understand that
there is not a relationship. There's a respect. They have a law enforcement has a role to play
and a job to do. And this program has a role to play in the job to do. Ultimately, the agreement
is that everybody's trying to stop and reduce the bloodshed that we're seeing in the streets.
But in no way is information shared with law enforcement around the work that's happening
with former for life. And that's for again, their credibility and understand the relationships
and the work that this program has to be able to do. It has to have that credibility. And without
that, it can compromise people's safety and compromise the integrity of the program.
What's good to know, it sounds to me like that's absolutely a precondition to any type of
success, right? Is to have buy-in from the mayor's office, from the office of community wellness
and public safety to the chief of police. And then the criminal justice professionals that are
administering these cases at the courthouse. It also sounds to me like this stuff isn't easy.
Like you can't just show the people of Wisconsin that this is working in Milwaukee because of
X, Y and Z, right? And I think that we talked about that simplified approach to criminal justice
that I kind of paraphrased earlier. You know, a prosecutor can always say person A killed person B
and received because of the efforts of my office of a lifetime sentence, okay? And that is a tangible
thing that he or she, the DA can deliver to the public, right? And this is just a little bit more
nebulous, right? This isn't, this isn't like that. But why would you, and I presume you would,
say that something like this is worth investing in? That's a great question.
One of the things I want your audience to realize is that a single homicide,
gun homicide, cost the community a million dollars. And one single nonfatal shooting cost 600,000.
And this is research has been done by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.
And when you think about the return on investment in totality,
for one for life, the budget is approximately three million dollars a year.
And so when you think about if they have saved three lives, the investment is going to work.
And understanding these aren't like conflicts where it's like a threat of, hey, I'm going to slap you
or I'm going to break your window. These are, there may have been gunfire or gunplay that's already
transpired, threats of gun violence happening, and definitely high likelihood of retaliation.
And what we know about individuals who've been shot is that they are 40% more likely to be shot
again within three years of that injury. And so what we find is that, and I'm sure with your clients,
they've ultimately been on both sides of the gun at some point in their life, not all, but many.
And so again, by the way, I did not start to interrupt. I have so many clients over the years
that have shown me where they have been shot multiple times. So what you said brings so true.
I had clients show me their scars, you know, from three separate incidents, sometimes within
18 months of each other. And so really having credible messengers and folks who can break that
cycle is critically important and worth the return on investment if we really care about the future
of our community. Sounds like it. One of the biggest factors that's changed in my practice as a
criminal justice lawyer has been the proliferation of firearms. Now you have mentioned it and I want
to take the rest of our couple minutes here and then into the period of time after the break to
talk about gun violence specifically. You mentioned 2020 became the first year that it became the
leading cause of death for children. I have 2021, according to Pew research that I gathered,
the most recent year for which complete data is available. 48,830 people died from gun related
injuries in the United States according to the CDC. The majority of that suicides, I think most
people would, I think typically guess murder. That is a large category. 43% were murders, 54%
were suicides and then the rest were accidental law enforcement caused and undetermined circumstances.
I think that in my own practice, I have seen arguments become threats with guns and so from a legal
perspective, they go from disorderly conduct to disorderly conduct while armed and I have a lot of
people who take gun safety classes and armed themselves mistakenly pull out a gun in what used to
be a road rage or an argument or argument in a parking lot, right? And now I have clients with no
records saying, I'm 50 years old, I'm charged with a crime. I felt threatened and I pulled my gun out
and I thought, gosh, I always think to myself, but for the gun, you'd have yelled at that person
some profanity probably and driven away. And then all the way down the spectrum, we see arguments
turned deadly because of the presence of firearms. And so I want you to talk about gun violence a
little bit. We'll head up the subject here and I invite a few comments from you now and then we'll
head into the break. Okay, I just want to briefly say at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a
significant increase in gun purchases. And so what we saw is a lot more firearms and a lot more
homes and individuals who were first time gun buyers, not experienced in terms of shooting. And so
just critically created a dynamic and a situation where people who are prohibited from having
firearms getting a crease access, including children in terms of accidental shootings as well.
And on the backside of the break, I'll go deeper into the impact of that. Okay, sounds good. We are
here with Reggie Moore, the director of community safety policy and engagement for the medical
college of Wisconsin. This is the Paul Revere Show, Craig Maston, Tune-O-Filling, and from Mark Thompson.
We have Reggie Moore, director of community safety policy and engagement for the medical college
of Wisconsin with us, formerly the director of the office of violence prevention,
city of Milwaukee. And Reggie, when we went into the break, we were talking about gun violence in
the United States. And off break, I was commenting to you that really in my own practice of criminal
justice law, which spans 30 plus years, really the last 10 for me have been a game changer in terms
of the proliferation and acquisition of guns, being a huge factor that's changed the very practice
that I work in that, you know, more arguments are armed and more tragic outcomes are caused because
of gun violence. Guns are the leading cause of death of children in the United States. And 48,830 people
died from gun related injuries in the United States in 2020, the majority of those suicide.
So let's talk about gun violence and public safety as it relates to guns.
Right. And like I mentioned before the break, you know, we saw this significant increase in
gun purchases at the beginning of the pandemic, where now you have an increase in unsecured
on firearms in homes, but then also more gun carrying and cars and vehicles. And again, situations that
may result from road rage or other arguments that are cooked out or in a home that may have resulted
in a few profanities being exchanged or a fist fight on our resulting in gun play with tragic
outcomes. In addition, young people getting and children getting access to unsecured firearms,
also leading to tragic results, either of peers, parents, etc. And so there's also a misconception
and I know there's a lot of folks who have taken CCW classes believing that they're going to learn
how to use the firearm and that's not the intent of the course. It really is around how to
get away with self-defense from a legal perspective. And I think we do need more gun safety
programs and courses because unfortunately, I don't think, you know, firearm, you know, the
proliferation of firearms, the reversal of that is not going to happen overnight. So we have guns
in our community. There's a lot of responsible gun owners. And at the end of the day, we should be
doing everything possible to ensure that people who do own firearms understand how to secure them safely,
the legal ramifications of owning a firearm and the misuse of their firearm as well. And so I know
the General Sentinel just published, I think John Dietrich from the General Sentinel just did a deep
dive and did a statewide survey of gun owners in terms of their perceptions and realities around
gun ownership and their views in terms of firearms. Overall, take away people seem to think that
they need to protect themselves and their own safety with guns more than ever before.
Right. Right. And one of the misconceptions historically is that gun violence is driven by young
people. And historically, the average age even in Milwaukee of a shooter was 29 years old.
And it may be down to 21 now with some of the younger shooting that's happened. But by and large,
this is an adult problem. Young people are being victimized even in mass shootings are often shot
by adults. And at the end of the day, we have to be doing everything possible as a society to make
our community safer. Yeah, there's a lot of misperceptions out there. You know, this is such a
political cudgel. You see that all the time. And I see on the kind of the Republican side of
the national political scale, you know, Chicago, my hometown being thrown out as an example of, you
know, just a war zone, the awful names that it's called by people in Senate hearings. I just saw
one last week, you know, where the Senator from Louisiana was calling Chicago names. And, you know,
according to the same research that I pulled in preparation for the show in 2021, if you want to talk
about states with the highest rates of gun related deaths, counting murders, suicides, and other
categories, the states that were leading were Mississippi number number one, Louisiana number two,
New Mexico number three, Alabama, followed by Wyoming. These are states that are new Mexico
aside, really conservative places. And, you know, that have tough on crime laws, many of them,
and also easy access to gun laws. And so, you know, how hard is it to be involved in community
wellness, public safety, violence, violence, disruption without getting pulled into the political
debate over guns, gun violence, and gun availability? Right. I think the safer communities act
at the federal level, which was a bipartisan piece of legislation. That again is historic. And
I think it was the largest piece of legislation on gun violence. So the first legislative federal
action on violence in over 20 years. So what does it do? And so one of the things that it does is
adds restrictions for in terms of young people accessing to buy firearms. Number two looks at
incentivizing states, but they have to vote at the state level to enact what's called
herbal emergency risk protection orders, also known as Ray Flag laws, where if someone has
demonstrated issues with mental health or domestic violence or has had a high risk of committing
violence, either against themselves or the folks that their firearms can be temporarily removed
from the home and returned once that person. But the fact that even basic, well, we would consider
common sense gun safety laws take that long to enact. Really is indicative, I think, of just the
misinformation that's been put out. And we also, you know, research shows that individuals may have
the perception that having a gun will keep them safe and oftentimes in terms of self-defense.
But oftentimes, if someone is causing harm to you with a firearm, they usually have pulled on
you first. And so at the end of the day, a firearm is not a guarantee for safety. And we even have
seen this even when law enforcement has responded, you know, to, I believe it was a youth all day
shooting where the children were in the school. You had a plethora of guns, present, and again,
you feel had exactly. So what we try to focus is upstream to say, how do we focus on what are both
policy and programmatic measures that can be taken to prevent this harm in the first place?
You know, it's such a shame. And 80% of Americans agree with these comments as well.
No, they do. They make perfect sense. And it's such a shame, you know, what it doesn't take long,
it seems from my perspective to pass our laws that increase penalties for possession of
firearm by a felon or, you know, just blacks from where we are in studio today in Waukesha,
the Waukesha Christmas Parade tragedy, you know, in the aftermath of that, it didn't take long
to change our constitution to, you know, affect the bail system that we have in our state.
And I'm not saying any of that should or shouldn't have occurred. Actually, I'm hinting that it
shouldn't have, but it shouldn't take as long to have a meaningful discussion around what we can do
to keep somebody that's losing it temporarily from temporarily being able to access their guns
during that time period. You know, suicide is a huge part of what you do. We didn't even get to
that subject and we're winding down to our last minute, but talk about it briefly address that.
Yeah, so Dr. Sarah Colbeck leads our division on suicide research and healing is done
amazing job. Really, number one, building up our postvention work. So providing support to families
that have lost someone tragically to a suicide as well as research, particularly with farmers and
veterans and looking at measures to reduce suicide, lost throughout the state as well.
This is Craig Mastin Tuno. This is the Paul Revere Show. I'm filling in from Mark Thompson.
We're here with Reggie Moore from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Reggie, where can our listeners go to more to access more resources? Find out more about these
subjects. Definitely would encourage them to visit the Medical College of Wisconsin comprehensive
injury center website. A lot of our reports and research and programs are listed and described
there. It's a great show. Very important topic. I hope you'll join us again. Thank you very
much. Thank you for having me. Mark Thompson will be back. Craig Mastin Tuno, Paul Revere Show,
signing off.