As a journalist, I spend a lot of time talking to strangers, knocking on the doors of people I don’t know, and driving in and around unfamiliar neighborhoods. I go into these situations trusting that the worst that can happen is people will say they don’t want to be interviewed. But rarely do I consider that I might be putting my own life at risk.
Over the past week and a half, five men have opened fire on seven American youth who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One of them, Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old in Kansas City, was shot in the head after ringing the wrong doorbell while trying to pick up his siblings.
Another, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis from Hebron, New York, was shot and killed after the car she was in pulled into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house.
Payton Washington, 18, and Heather Roth, 21, were shot after opening the wrong car door in a grocery store parking lot; and Waldes Thomas Jr., 19, and Diamond D’arville, 18, were shot at for driving into the wrong driveway while attempting to deliver an Instacart order.
The youngest of the victims is Kinsley White, a 6-year-old from North Carolina, who was shot because a basketball rolled into a neighbor’s yard. Her parents were also shot.
Shootings like this happen all the time. Earlier this year, Farai Chideya, host of Our Body Politic, spoke with Jennifer Mascia, senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace about the growing crisis of gun violence in the U.S. During their conversation, Mascia recalled the tragic death of 16-year-old Japanese exchange student, Yoshihiro Hattori, in Louisiana in 1992.
“He and his host brother are on their way to a Halloween party that is thrown by another Japanese exchange student, and they knock on the wrong door,” she said. “The person whose door they knocked on took one look at him and they were very confused, and the families believed that racism played a role, and the homeowner opened fire and killed this young student.”
Mascia said Hattori’s death made international news and caused people from across the world to question, “What is going on in America that [people] can’t even knock on someone’s door and make it out alive?”
It’s been 31 years since Hattori was shot and killed, and gun violence has seemingly only gotten worse.
Following three mass shootings in California over the course of eight days at the start of the year, URL Media partner Black Voice News published an editorial titled “America loves guns more than it loves its children.”
“The combination of firearms and fear has created a nation of fools, so blinded by their obsession with gun ownership and their constitutional right to bear arms it seems to supersede all else—even the safety and lives of our children,” S.E. Williams wrote.
Last year, firearm-related injuries became the number one cause of death among children and adolescents. Previously, motor vehicle accidents held the top spot.
“And so, babies die, loved ones cry, gun manufacturers continue to make billions to buy politicians that we elect to do absolutely nothing at the worst and the bare minimum at best to stop the madness,” S.E. Williams wrote for Black Voice News.
Maybe eventually our legislators will take action, but until they do, I will continue to tell the stories of the communities I serve — though perhaps with a bit more caution.
