It’s become a recurring pattern and it can almost be numbing. When you open the newspaper or turn on the television, you see lives cut short due to gun violence – and tragically, so often, children’s lives.

Nationally, guns now kill more children than car crashes.

Talking to residents in the last few months, I have heard story after story of individuals affected by gun violence. Recently, while I was knocking on doors in South Richmond, a driver pulled over to share the story of losing his son to gun violence. 

Tragically, this is not isolated. You hear stories of young adults worried to go out at night and teens for whom mass shooting drills have become as regular as gym class. The work of mitigating gun violence is too important to fail. Behind the statistics are sons and daughters, neighbors and co-workers, friends and – increasingly – children. And, as we saw in Pennsylvania just last week, the danger of gun violence can tragically reach everyone from the bystander of gang violence to the bystander of political violence.

Richmond will only succeed if every resident feels their neighborhood is thriving – and that starts with ensuring every resident feels their neighborhood is safe.

It can’t be done with the same approach that politicians have taken in the past. It’s going to take a change – a new, people-focused, outcome-based approach that taps into what’s truly needed to address Richmond’s gun violence epidemic.

Our city is rich with talent and diversity. We’re home to advocates and faith leaders, community organizers and PTA presidents, experts on trauma and residents who’ve turned their own tragedy into life-saving gun violence intervention programs. Empowering Richmonders to take action in their own communities is one of the best ways our city can reduce gun violence. 

Here are four ideas we can use to change our trajectory so that Richmond is a community where every child can grow up in a neighborhood safe from gun violence.

First, I will bring Richmond’s gun violence prevention leaders directly into City Hall by creating the city’s first Mayor’s Office for Gun Violence Prevention. Richmond’s office will be tasked with coordinating community and government efforts to reduce gun violence by focusing on the root causes, collecting and sharing data, and working across various city agencies and nonprofits.

Second, we will make the largest investment in Community-based Violence Intervention (CVI) programs in Richmond’s history. These programs empower community members to engage those most likely to be involved in gun violence and provide them wraparound services to address the root causes of violence. By intervening in violence before it occurs and stopping cycles of trauma and retaliation, CVI programs in Richmond, and across the country, have been proven to work.

For example, 76% of participants in a CVI program at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital for gun violence. And in Illinois and California, CVI programs have seen reductions in violent crime arrests among participants reach as high as 73%.

Third, we will bring the country’s most effective school-based gun violence prevention programs to Richmond. Our city is facing a crisis of youth gun violence. Nearly 170 minors have been shot in Richmond since 2019, a staggering statistic that causes ripple effects far beyond the children and families immediately harmed. Research shows that after being exposed to a neighborhood homicide, children will test as if they had missed two years of schooling, regardless of whether they witness the violence directly.

The root causes driving youth gun violence are complex, and we can’t simply lock them away with a curfew at night hoping they won’t be there in the morning. We need to empower local leaders to address root causes head on. School-based programs that combine trauma-informed therapy with wraparound supports can do exactly that. A study of Chicago’s Becoming a Man (BAM) program found it reduced violent crime arrests by 45% and increased on-time high school graduation rates by 19%.

The program’s success helped shape former President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which currently operates across the country. There are other BAM’s out there, and we should bring them to Richmond.

Finally, in addition to investing in new community resources to address gun violence, we need to empower community members to shape new policies.

Every time a Richmonder is shot and killed, it’s a policy failure that demands a response. That’s why I would create a Richmond Community Shooting Review to bring all stakeholders to the table when a resident is killed.

Together, community leaders, Richmond Public Schools, Richmond Social Services, the public defender’s office, and the police department will assess what went wrong and identify policy fixes. Cities like Milwaukee and Philadelphia have created similar commissions to reform government policies and save lives.

These are just some of the ideas I will take to the Mayor’s Office so we can address the scourge of gun violence that continues to plague Richmond’s families and communities. We can do it with a new kind of approach, one that listens, one that values, and one that leads.

Community-focused change is exactly the type of work I have done starting a nonprofit in Richmond. That’s why listening to and empowering Richmonders is at the heart of my campaign for mayor and will be at the heart of my strategy to make the city we love safe for all of us.

The writer is a candidate for mayor of Richmond.