An ACOM briefing gathers teachers, mental health experts, and researchers to address the root causes of gun violence and chart a path forward
Magazine, The Immigrant Experience
Can the U.S. Gain Ground on Mass Shootings and Gun Violence?
That was the question on the table at a national ethnic media briefing hosted by American Community Media (ACOM) on December 19. Moderated by ACOM Health Editor Sunita Sohrabji, the session brought together three powerful voices from the frontlines: Sarah Lerner, a teacher and survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and co-founder of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence; Dr. Ragy Girgis, a clinical psychiatrist at Columbia University and leading researcher on mass murder; and Dr. Daniel Webster, a public health expert from Johns Hopkins University who tracks gun violence trends and intervention strategies.
The conversation was framed by a chilling contradiction: while mass shootings are at their lowest level in two decades, the United States continues to lead peer nations in gun-related deaths. Despite repeated national outrage, policy responses remain disjointed and politicized. At stake is not only public safety but also the cultural soul of a nation gripped by easy access to firearms and the normalization of violence.
Sarah Lerner opened the panel with a sobering account of the day her classroom became a crime scene. On February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at her school in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 and injuring 17 more. Lerner, who sheltered students in her classroom for hours, lost two of her own pupils.
“I never thought I’d be texting my son, who was 12 and next door in the middle school, that I was okay and not shot,” Lerner said. “That’s a message no parent or child should ever have to send.”
The aftermath was not just media attention or political theater. It was PTSD, long-term anxiety, and the quiet collapse of normalcy for teachers and students alike. Lerner described the years of therapy she underwent and the sense of hypervigilance that never quite left. “Even the sound of a fire alarm can send me spiraling,” she said. This emotional toll, she added, is rarely factored into policy debates.
Her story is not isolated. Lerner has since co-founded a national teacher-led movement to raise awareness about gun violence’s pervasive grip on schools and communities. “There are so many layers to this,” she said. “It’s not just mass shootings. It’s domestic violence. It’s community violence. It’s students who live with this every day.”
Lerner was clear about where she stands on arming teachers, a policy enacted in Tennessee and supported in other states. “I went to college to teach English, not to become a police officer,” she said. Arming teachers, she argued, introduces more weapons into schools, increasing risk rather than reducing it. “You’re asking underpaid educators to also be first responders with lethal force. That’s not education. That’s a battlefield.”
Dr. Ragy Girgis came with data. His research at Columbia University led to the creation of the world’s largest database on mass murder. One of his most definitive findings: mental illness is not the main driver of mass shootings.
“Only five percent of mass shootings in the U.S. are attributable to psychotic illness,” he explained. “That’s far lower than public perception. The real factors are suicide, nihilism, narcissism, and an unhealthy fascination with firearms.”
He emphasized the damage caused by scapegoating mental illness. “Blaming mental health does two things: it stigmatizes people who need care, and it takes focus off the real issue—easy access to guns.”
When asked what can be done, Girgis pointed to red flag laws, universal background checks, and mandatory waiting periods as the most effective policy levers. He also noted that states with stronger gun laws consistently report fewer gun deaths.
The vast majority of weapons used in mass shootings, he noted, are legally obtained. And ghost guns—untraceable firearms assembled from kits—pose a fast-growing threat that federal regulation is only now beginning to address. A 2022 federal rule redefining gun kits as firearms has begun to reduce their proliferation, but enforcement gaps remain.
Dr. Daniel Webster delivered the most surprising news of the day: a sharp national decline in homicides. Since peaking in 2021, murder rates have dropped by more than 40% in major cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
What changed?
“It’s not about crackdowns or mass deportations,” Webster said. “It’s about investment. Cities have poured resources into community-based violence intervention programs, public health initiatives, and gun tracing. And it’s working.”
He pointed to Baltimore’s Safe Streets program and New York City’s Crisis Management System as leading examples. These initiatives train credible messengers—often former gang members or victims of violence—to mediate conflicts before they escalate. Combined with access to mental health care and job training, the approach treats gun violence as a disease, not just a crime.
He credited the Biden administration’s Safer Communities Act, passed in 2022, for pumping federal dollars into local solutions. That includes mental health services, youth outreach, and regulation of ghost guns.
Webster called gun violence a “social contagion,” noting that preventing a single shooting can interrupt the cycle of retaliation and despair that fuels ongoing violence. “We are finally seeing the numbers move in the right direction,” he said. “But it’s fragile. Sustaining this progress means funding it, defending it, and expanding it.”
Throughout the briefing, one theme echoed: survivors are being asked to become advocates. Teachers like Sarah Lerner are expected to teach by day and relive their trauma on national stages by night.
Yet, they continue to show up.
Because every policy that fails, every loophole left open, every silence after a shooting—that too leaves a mark.
The panel didn’t offer easy answers. But it did deliver what too often goes missing: clarity, urgency, and a demand for accountability.
Because the real emergency isn’t in the schools alone.
It’s in the laws. It’s in the culture. And it’s long past time to change both.
#EndGunViolence #GunReformNow #TeachersUnify #MentalHealthMatters #CommunitySafety #EthnicMedia #ACOMBriefing
