Interviews with Experts
These interviews were conducted by New York City high school students as part of the Freedom and Citizenship Civic Leadership Project. The summary below was written by Jainecia C. with help from undergraduate Teaching Assistants Carolina C. and Daniel K.
View the rest of the 2023 group project here.
We interviewed Professor Jeffrey A. Fagan about how to prevent gun violence in our communities. He is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. Each of us posed a question to him and here are some of the questions and responses:
F&C: What is the problem with guns or the way people use them?
Professor Fagan: Guns have a symbolic value in our culture because they have a material value. Guns make people feel powerful and. Because of their power guns are substantial to some. You can't separate the gun from the values it holds and carries.
F&C: How would we be able to decrease this attraction towards guns specifically for the youth considering that the environment they are in influences them?
Professor Fagan: Eliminate gun advertisements everywhere and impose restrictions in television programming to take away the symbolic power of guns. Mass shootings are a real problem. More damage is done killing with handguns versus automatic weapons. Nothing we have done has proven to be effective, so we must try harder and push more on your elected officials.
We also interviewed Nza-Ari Khepra, Co-Founder of Wear Orange and Project Orange Tree, is a recent graduate of Columbia University where she majored in Economics and concentrated in African American Studies. During our interview, she gave us her perspective as someone who lost her friend to gun violence. Here’s some of the questions we asked and her responses:
F&C: Why should young people care about making efforts towards ending gun violence? Do you have advice for young people who feel like their voice won't be heard?
Nza-Ari: If no one listens in one group go to another, start off small then go big. Appeal to what matter to the people and combine interests to make people care. Use your voice.
F&C: How do we continue to push for action to be made on gun violence?
Nza- Ari: We should tackle both problems hand in hand. If it was only a people problem then we would all have this problem. Other nations have people that are bad and good but don't have high gun rates.
F&C: How do you get people to care about gun violence when this has become so normalized in our society?
Nza- Ari: Most people are empathetic. Storytelling is more powerful to make people care.