Addressing Gun Violence as a Public Health Crisis in Our Communities

I'm your host, Dr. Val De Crowder, also known as Dr. V, Board Certified Emergency Medicine Physician, and today we're talking about something that every one of us has the power to influence, and that is violence in our communities and our families and in our everyday lives. We have the ability every day to pursue peace. So today's topic is choosing peace over violence and how we can all make a difference. A while back we asked whether we can cure violence with soldiers or solutions, and today we're going to take a step further. Because here's the truth solutions don't only always come from City Hall or from Washington. Peace is a choice that we make in our homes, on our blocks, in our churches, in our schools, and how we actually handle conflict says a lot about us as a person and us as a community. So let's get into some of the some of the good news and some of the hard truths around violence. So first of all, the United States is one of the most violent industrialized countries. We have the highest homicide rate at 4.3 per 100,000. And if you compare us with something like Canada, Canada is 60 percent or so less. So we specifically in this country have an issue have an issue with violence. Now we have seen some improvement in violence. Um in some of our largest cities, uh homicides dropped 21 percent, 2024 and 2025. 21 percent drop in homicide rates may not sound like a lot, but that is 922 people that are actually alive as a result of successful programs. When you look at the first half of 2026, homicides seem to be going down again, and uh it's going down about uh 18 percent across uh our largest uh 30 cities. Now, here's the hard truth. Even though these numbers are falling, our community, the black community, is still carrying the heaviest load. According to the Violence Policy Center in 2026, black Americans are 13.7 percent of the population, but we are 52 percent of all homicides. And eight out of ten homicides are actually committed with a gun, and homicides are still the leading cause of African American young people dying between the age of 10 and 24 years old. So the other interesting thing that I think is really, and this was what made me really want to do this show today, is that 70% of people who are killed by a homicide are killed by somebody they knew. So these are not random people coming out of the bushes, these are people that you actually know in your lives. And that last number is why today's topic really, really matters. A lot of the violence isn't random, it's conflict that's escalated, which means that we can learn how to de-escalate. We can actually learn how to teach people how to walk away and give someone time to actually call for help before things get out of hand. So I wanted to talk today a little bit about what choosing peace actually looks like. Um, but before we get into that, I want to actually just go over what some of these mayors are doing because I think this is really, really important. And if you look at some of the major cities, our our black mayors are really leading the way. They are treating violence like the public health crisis that it is, and they are pairing smart and focused policing with community intervention, youth investment, and healing. So I just want to go over a couple of the uh programs that I think are really, really making a difference. In Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott uh has a signature solution called group violence reduction strategy and community violence intervention. Um it also is dealing with decreasing the amount of vacant homes. Um homicides in Baltimore are down 60 percent from 2022 to 2025, and they have been down another 15 percent this year uh through the 1st of October. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has peacekeepers and violence interrupters in in hot spots, and he has an approach that involves investing in people and summer youth jobs. The summer of 2025 had the fewest homicides in Chicago since 1965. In Atlanta, Mayor Andre Dickens had year of the youth. They invested 185 uh million uh in youth investments, and they have had uh 98 homicides in 2025. That is down 40 percent, and youth crime is down about 60 percent. Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield has the new Office of Neighborhood and Community Safety. Uh they have shot stoppers. Uh they've invested $10 million in community violence intervention and $1.5 million in Occupy the Summer Youth Events. Uh violence has dropped sharply in Detroit shot stopper zones. In Washington, D.C., Marion Muriel Bowser has the One's Office, the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. They've been operating now for several years with violence interveners and pathways for transitional job programs. The Attorney General's office actually has another program called Cure the Street with violence interrupters and partnerships with local and federal police. In the first half of 2026 in Washington, D.C., uh violence has been down 41%. So if you notice what all of these programs and all these strategies have in common is one is they have a significant investment. Two is they've got credible messengers from the community, jobs, activities for young people. They also involve mental health, life coaching, they also involve physically fixing up the neighborhoods as far as lighting, vacant home, safe spaces. This is not soft on crime, this is smart on crime. So here's the challenge though. In April of 2025, the Department of Justice canceled $169 million in community safety and violence reduction grants from the federal government. So the question is when federal dollars disappear, who keeps the peace going? So I say today that we're the ones that actually keep the peace going. And I'm gonna bring in our guest, Dr. Myers, after uh our News You Can Use segment. But I we want to really unpack some of the things that are actually occurring and some of the things that really make a difference. All right, what the health is happening is actually uh our podcast. That is where all these shows are rebroadcast. So if you missed any shows, you can go to What the Health is Happening. It's on Apple Podcasts, it's on Spotify, it's on Audible, you can catch it everywhere. It is your dose of medical reality with me and my friends and all of the interviews that we do. So download, subscribe, and comment. All right, today we're gonna actually uh to help us unpack how we can all choose peace. I'm glad to welcome Dr. Stephanie Myers. She is president of the Positive Change Foundation and the national co-chair of Black Women for Positive Change. She's also the author and vice president of RJ Myers Publishing and Consulting Company. Dr. Myers has spent years organizing black women and community leaders around solutions that strengthen families and neighborhoods. For 15 years now, she has been doing a month of nonviolence in the month of October. Dr. Myers, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Dr. V. Appreciate the invitation to be with you.

Yeah, so you you've been doing this now for 15 years, you've been doing uh a month of nonviolence in the month of October. Um so I guess you're completing now uh uh your activities for the month. Can you share a little bit about um what you've been doing and the type of programs that you've had over the years um that that you think have been the most helpful?

Well, absolutely. And this is an example of a community group that started off doing one day of nonviolence back in 2012. And then when Trayvon Martin got killed, we got all upset and decided we've got to go bigger than this. So we went from one day in Washington, D.C., and then spread it to a week. And as you mentioned, we've now been dealing with a month of nonviolence, voting rights, self-worth, and understanding artificial intelligence in this year. We expanded the the uh the themes that we were addressing because there's so many things going on. So, yes, we are trying to prov trying to motivate people to understand that the culture of violence, particularly in America, is real. America was born into violence, the genocide of the Native Americans, the enslavement of black folks, the indentured status of white Europeans. So we learned violence. And when we look at television every night, we see people getting shot over and over and over. Between the hours of 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., there's violence everywhere. So we really have to get people to realize the culture of violence is what has to be changed, not just in the United States, but all over the world. And that's what we've been working with for the last uh 15 years.

So tell me what sort of activities did you have going on this month in the month of October?

Well, we had a range of things. We had activities over in uh Zimbabwe where a group of people came together to talk about violence communication, and they pulled together village people and city people to talk about how you talk makes a difference in how you communicate and collaborate. Oftentimes we have people who just love, you know, running their mouth, saying something rude, confrontational. So we had an event there that addressed that subject. Another event we had that was particularly powerful had to do with depression. We had two of our mental health experts, Saul Corbin with the DCP's team and Marcia Skeet, who's a nurse, and they really talked about how most people don't realize when they are depressed. And they don't appreciate that depression can lead to violence. So we had a workshop on that subject for a couple of hours, and it was really powerful. And a lot of people realize that if they've been victims of violence when they were children or abuse, they have so much anger in them, even as adults, that they're still ready to lash out and have violence. Tomorrow we're going to have an event on sex trafficking, labor and sex trafficking, and that is a real devastating event happening with our young people. And as you know, Dr. V, black suicide rates are rising faster than any other racial group in the United States. Yes. So here we have young women and young men being trafficked and used as laborers, which is like slavery or sex trafficking. So tomorrow we're going to have a workshop on that. Your audience can go to our website, monthofnonviolence.org, and they can sign up for that event.

So the um the thing that you talked about that they're doing in Zimbabwe, the um the language, I find that to be kind of I find that to be very interesting. You know, I was driving into the studio today to actually do this show, and there was a car in front of me, and the bumper sticker said, Kill bad dudes. And I was thinking to myself, what in the world is going on? Who are bad dudes? And I and and we're going straight to kill on a bumper sticker. So I I think, you know, language and what people say and what people represent, um, whether or not they say it on their t-shirts or whether or not they say it out loud, I think are really, really important. I want to go over a couple of phrases that people say that are violent that you could actually change and make something else. So let me give you a couple let me give a couple examples here for our audience. I'll kill you if you touch my food. Please don't touch my food. I mean it. That's a better way of saying it. I'll beat you behind. We need to talk right now. That's a better way of saying it. He killed it. He murdered that song. Or she or he was amazing. She or he nailed that song. And then here's another one that I always hear. These people are animals. Or we have right now our president saying, these people are crazy, right? As opposed to really describing the behavior and describing what you actually encountered. Right? I have someone who is not speaking to me anymore for this reason. We have people say, I'm about to go off on somebody. So they almost announce it, as opposed to, you know, I'm really frustrated and I need a minute to calm down. So most of us don't mean anything by these words, but the words really shape our environment and really shape our community. And some people think it's a joke and it's really, really not a joke. Um so so Dr. Myers, tell me what have you all um looked at other things that would make a difference as far as how people speak or what people are really committed to.

Absolutely. And what you just pointed out is very critical because people learn through rap music, television shows, uh, fights on the yard and at school. They learn all that language from each other. And they think it's hip. They think that's the way you're supposed to talk. So we have to change all of that. And one of the methods that we have really become very, very impressed with is something called peace circles, where you take young people and adults, but let's say we focus on young people, and you sit them down together and let them talk to each other, and then they can correct each other's language and explain to each other. When you say to me, you're gonna beat my behind, that really scares me. You know, they can begin to respond back and forth to each other, but in a safe environment. We had a peace circle Saturday down in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the attorney general for the state of Virginia came along with the mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia, and sat down with 16 young youths, young, young black um boys and girls, and talked with them about their experiences with peace and their experiences with violence. So we have to find ways and opportunities for families, schools, churches, businesses to have these peace circles which are non-judgmental and allow people to talk about what's on their mind and then let people respond back to them and say, this is how what you said makes me feel. And this is something we've really been uh promoting around the world and around the country, and we hope we can get people to look at it as a real method of helping people learn how to communicate better.

So if you so if you have or or you put together a peace circle, are there particular ground rules? Because what stops people from sitting around and just fighting in a peace circle? Like what sort of ground rules are there that actually make the space more constructive?

That's a really good question. We have facilitators who actually coordinate the discussion. So if a group has access to a psychologist or a therapist or someone who is trained with how to get people to communicate better. But if they don't have access, they can still do it. And I'll give you an example, Dr. V. My father was not a psychologist, he was a real estate broker. But whenever the family would come together for barbecue, Christmas, Thanksgiving, he would have everyone go around the table and express how they were feeling right then. And it was really a form of a peace circle. It wasn't called that, and he didn't know that. And I remember that as a child, people would talk about their problems, what they were upset about, they would talk about what they were happy about. And so families can sit down and actually experiment with this. Let me give you just a quick little anecdote. We had a peace circle in Pittsburgh about three years ago, and an 11-year-old boy was in the peace circle with his classmates. He came back to school the following week and told his teacher, My mommy and my daddy fight every weekend. And last weekend my mommy and daddy were screaming at each other, and I said, Mommy, daddy, can we sit down and have a peace circle? 11 years old. And his mother and father sat down with him and they talked.

Wow. Wow. And and I think that's, you know, just like violence is contagious, I think we need to realize that peace is also very contagious, right? So you can be the spark for something that can go much further than you would actually think. So so just with him being in the peace circle, he actually made a difference in his own household.

Um absolutely did.

Yeah, I think I think it's I think this is really, really important because you know, just as things ek escalate, you know, insults lead to threats, threats lead to pushing and shoving. Shoving leads to weapons um and leads to violence. You can actually bring it down in the other direction. And I think And depression, and depression, and depression. Correct. And we can bring all of this down in the um other direction. You know, a lot of people don't realize, and you know, as much as we talk about um, we talk about gun violence, and you see gun violence uh on TV. Uh recently we had the school shooting in Oregon, um, and those things get a lot of publicity, but 55% of gun violence is suicide, which is linked to depression. So I never, ever, ever want to leave that out. That is the majority of our gun violence, even though it is not on TV. Um and so I always remind people, uh I always remind people of that because um, you know, we have to look at violence from all ends and all um and all perspectives.

So absolutely. And one other thought is we have to find alternatives because our young people, just the thought that black youth are committing more suicides than any other group, what else can they be doing? Right. And so one of the things that we're promoting is music. We need to go back to positive, uplifting spiritual music. Let's help our kids learn how to sing and write songs and perform, but not negative stuff, not heavy rap that's gonna go against somebody, but positive things and help our kids do art and be in theaters and dramas. We've got to find alternatives because the millennials and the Gen Zs are not into reading a whole lot of 200 and 300 page books. They certainly, they certainly, they certainly, they certainly are not.

So the other thing that I want to really talk about, and I'm gonna I'm gonna uh just kind of describe this first for the audience, and then if you could actually talk a little bit about work that you've done in this area is de-escalation and de-escalation training. So I really want to talk about this because this is kind of like what you need to do when things heat up in the moment. So someone is in your face, they are arguing, it is turning ugly, it could be at home, it could be at work, it could be uh out on the street. So one of the things that is really, really important is that you actually check yourself first, right? Because if you are actually uh hyped up, um there's no way that you can calm anybody else down. And so um some people actually stop, some people take a step back, observe what's happening in your body or around you. Um taking a deep breath is particularly calming to slow down your breath, lower your voice, speaking softly actually really makes a difference. I know in the emergency department when I'm dealing with sometimes patients that are violent for medical reasons, I specifically actually lower my voice and talk to them in a in a gentler voice. Give space and watch your body language, stepping back, keeping your hands visible, listen more than you talk. A lot of people really, really want to talk, and they're talking both people are talking at each other and no one is listening. It's really, really important to listen more than you talk. Don't interrupt, don't try to win every point. If someone says something you don't agree with it, you can deal with it later. Um, you can also name feelings. It sounds like you feel disrespected. Um, you want to s you want to use I statements and refer to yourself. I want to understand what happened, as opposed to you statements, which can be uh very attacking. You want to avoid trigger words and ultimatums, whatever, you're crazy, cursing, or else. These are all words that are actually very violent and very triggering. And we're hearing these words a lot in the news from our president. So I I want people to really like recognize that this is actually violence that we're seeing in our leadership, and we want something different in our communities and our homes. Offer choices and ways to save face. Do you want to talk about this now or do you want to cool off? Take time out, walk away. Um, and if you actually really, really need Need to you can call 911, reach out to a trusted member in the community or a trusted older person in your family to actually get some resolution. Now, Dr. Myers, I know that you've kind of worked a lot with de-escalation and uh de-escalation techniques. What have you seen related to that?

Well, what you've described is right on target because this is a really an incredible career for people to go into. Conflict resolution, de-escalation training, anger management, these are all training tools that are available to people. They can go in and become uh certificated in those areas. The National Center of the National Association for Community Mediation, NASCAM, is one of our partner groups, and they have mediators all over the country. I really didn't even know this before we started doing this uh work 15 years ago. How this is such an incredible profession. So, yes, even a family might decide to do de-escalation training. They can go on the internet and they can get books and materials that can help them train. Because a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old needs to learn how to de-escalate at that age. Absolutely absolutely.

Absolutely. So we've got a caller online too. Uh, Reggie, you have a question for either myself or a comment for myself or Dr. Myers?

Uh yes. Uh uh good morning. I wanted to uh ask the doctor, um has she had a chance to research the effect of between ninety million people in America and one point five billion, uh three point five billion in the world addicted to video games that are mostly full with violence. That's my first question. And my second question is they were doing a scientific research that wherever you found in any urban city or anywhere around the world where the trees are being cut down, they found a loss of calming effect on the brain and an effect like an aggression.

Right, the effect of nature. So we only have we only have like 90 seconds left. Yeah, we thank you very much. We only have about 90 seconds left on the show. I am going to actually do a show on the impact of video games and uh screen time with children. That show is coming up, but it actually has been shown to have a problem, to people have a problem regulating and actually communicating and interacting with others, which definitely would make a difference with conflict resolution. So I just want to really close here. I want us to leave with this truth. Peace is not passive. Peace is not weakness, it is a decision. And sometimes it is the bravest decision that you can actually make, and it can actually save a life. I want to thank you guys today for talking. Thank you, Dr. Myers, for talking to us about violence. I want to thank you for joining me today. And remember, you can always choose peace over violence. Stay strong, stay safe, and choose peace. Thank you.