What Drives Gun Violence Outside America’s Big Cities

Long Guns
Various guns are displayed at the Chicago FBI office on July 22, 2010. M. Spencer Green / Associated Press
Long Guns
Various guns are displayed at the Chicago FBI office on July 22, 2010. M. Spencer Green / Associated Press

What Drives Gun Violence Outside America’s Big Cities

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While gun violence continues to decrease in big cities, it is a daily reality in small cities throughout America.

Vermont Public Radio has found that 89 percent of gun deaths between 2011 and 2016 were suicides, and 30 percent of those suicides were committed by veterans. In Wilmington, Delaware, young people between ages 12 and 17 are more likely to be shot than any other city in the U.S.

A new report by USA Today and The Associated Press found that during a three and a half year period, roughly three out of every 1,000 adolescents are injured or killed from gun violence in Wilmington each year — a rate nearly twice that of Chicago.

Vermont Public Radio’s Taylor Dobbs reflects on the unique challenges Vermont faces when it comes to preventing gun deaths. Yasser Payne is a professor at the University of Delaware who has studied Wilmington’s gun problem for year. He discusses how the violence grew over the years, and what it has done to the city’s social fabric.