Un altro giorno di morte in America. 24 ore, 10 proiettili, 10 ragazzi

by Gary Younge, Silvia Manzio (Translator)

Gary Younge, giornalista inglese inviato negli Stati Uniti, ha scelto una data a caso, il 23 novembre 2013, partendo dal presupposto che ogni giorno, in America, vengono uccisi 7 ragazzi sotto i vent’anni da un colpo di arma da fuoco. Soprattutto neri, soprattutto maschi, soprattutto in alcune città, spesso nel silenzio dell’informazione che non riesce più a tenere il conto delle vittime. Quel giorno di novembre sono stati dieci i ragazzi sotto i vent’anni che hanno perso la vita dopo una sparatoria, un colpo accidentale o un omicidio premeditato. Con la penna da grande reporter e la delicatezza di un narratore, Younge va sui luoghi dove sono morti e dove hanno vissuto, racconta il contesto e le storie che hanno nutrito e poi tradito le vite di questi ragazzi. Ne esce un ritratto lancinante della società americana prigioniera delle armi da fuoco, incapace di salvaguardare i propri figli e in cui è facile, troppo facile, essere portati via da un’assurda e incontrollata violenza. “Ho scelto un giorno, la data è del tutto arbitraria. Ed è proprio questo il punto: quello che ho raccontato sarebbe potuto succedere un giorno qualsiasi. Il destino ha scelto le vittime, la cornice temporale ha dato forma al racconto.Il più piccolo aveva nove anni, il più grande diciannove. La verità è che cose del genere succedono ogni giorno. E il 23 novembre 2013 non ha fatto eccezione.”

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Politics, Sociology, Crime, Social Justice, Race

350 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 4, 2016

About the author

Gary Younge is an author, broadcaster and editor-at-large for The Guardian, based in London. He also writes a monthly column, Beneath the Radar, for the Nation magazine and is the Alfred Knobler Fellow for The Nation Institute. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives; The Speech, The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream; Who Are We?, And Should it Matter in the 21st century; Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South. He has made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit.

Born in Hertfordshire to Barbadian parents, he grew up in Stevenage until he was 17 when he went to Kassala, Sudan with Project Trust to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school. On his return he attended Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh where he studied French and Russian, Translating and Interpreting.

In his final year of at Heriot Watt he was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at City University and started working at The Guardian in 1993. In 1996 he was awarded the Laurence Stern Fellowship, which sends a young British journalist to work at the Washington Post for three months.

After several years of reporting from all over Europe, Africa, the US and the Caribbean Gary was appointed The Guardian’s US correspondent in 2003, writing first from New York and then Chicago. In 2015 he returned to London where is now The Guardian’s editor-at-large.

He has enjoyed several prizes for his journalism. In 2017 he received the James Aaronson Career Achievement Award from Hunter College, City University of New York. In 2016 he won the Comment Piece of the Year from The Comment Awards and the Sanford St. Martin Trust Radio Award Winner for excellence in religious reporting. In 2015 he was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year by The Comment Awards and the David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “It’s the powerless on whose behalf he writes,” said the Center’s director. In 2009 he won the James Cameron award for the “combined moral vision and professional integrity” of his coverage of the Obama campaign. From 2001 to 2003 he won Best Newspaper Journalist in Britain’s Ethnic Minority Media Awards three years in a row.

His books have also won many awards. In 2017 Another Day in the Death of America won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation, was shortlisted for the Helen Berenstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from New York Public Library and The Jhalak prize and was longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Books and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction from American Library Association. Who Are We? was shortlisted for the Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. No Place Like Home was shortlisted for The Guardian’s first book award.

He has also enjoyed considerable acclaim from academia. Currently a visiting professor at London South Bank University, he was appointed the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor for Public Policy and Social Administration at Brooklyn College (CUNY) from 2009-2011. in 2016 he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and in 2007 he was awarded Honorary Doctorates by both his alma mater, Heriot Watt University, and London South Bank University.

He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Dr. Appu Sasidharan (Dasfill) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fourth of July weekend is the time to celebrate with barbecues, fireworks, parades, and concerts. But it was disheartening to hear at least 220 people were killed and 570 others injured during the Fourth of July weekend last year. Shootings were reported in almost all fifty States. Why are people opting for violence during a time when everybody should stay happy with their family? Is the second amendment, which should have helped citizens to protect themselves, getting misapplied by the impetuous actions of a few heedless people? Gary Younge gives answers to the above questions through this book.

The author tries to describe the lives lost due to gun shootings in one day across America. He tries to evaluate the reasons for gun violence in each case, how it could have been prevented and what happened to their families after the incident.

What I learned from this book
1) Why Gun safety and children is an important topic we should discuss?
America has one of the best healthcare facilities for children in the world. The latest technologies are made accessible to the US public first before some countries even start to think about it. This is made possible by the extraordinary willpower, determination, and hard work shown by the Government, people working in the health care sector, and all the citizens of America.

Then comes the scary part on the other side of the spectrum. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, firearm-related deaths are the leading cause of death in children in the USA. The death rate increased by 13.5% between 2019 and 2020, and fatality jumped by nearly 30%. The Government should give this rapid increase in rate immediate attention. Whatever changes in gun laws, awareness, and safety control which is needed should be implemented soon to curb this increasing destructive trend.

“Do you love guns more than your children. How does the freedom to bear firearms measure against the freedom to know that your children will be safe in elementary school?

In more than half of American homes where there are both children and firearms, according to a 2000 study, the weapons are in an unlocked place, and in more than 40 percent of homes, guns without a trigger lock are in an unlocked place. Almost three-quarters of children under the age of ten who live in homes with guns say they know where the guns are. A 2005 study showed that more than 1.69 million children and youth under eighteen live in homes with weapons that are loaded and unlocked. According to a Department of Education study, 65% of school shootings between 1974 and 2000 were carried out with a gun from the attacker's home or the home of a relative. And the laws, it seems, are effective. One study indicated that in the twelve states where child-access prevention laws were on the books for at least one year, unintentional gun deaths fell by 23 percent."

2) Media and gun deaths.
This is yet another important topic discussed by the author. The media has started giving gun violence cases less importance in recent times unless there is a mass shooting involving the death of many people. The author thinks that the media should take these cases more seriously to help prevent future cases.

It is only after the advent of social media that even media has started discussing this topic by giving it a little more importance.

"In most US cities where children were shot in the day profiled in this book, such a murder would have barely made through the 24-hour media cycle, a few seconds on the television, maybe, a few hundred words in the paper with a quote from the family member, maybe and that is it. If the perpetrator was caught, that too would be made a couple of hundred words.

The development of social media, citizen journalism, and new technology has made it more difficult for the established media to simply ignore gun deaths in certain areas."

3) How social media is racially misinterpreted in the name of gun violence?
In order to fit a stereotype, a picture of a young black individual taken out of the contest on social media could be distorted. The media takes the picture out of context and tries to project in the way they like to make some people a scapegoat based on their presumed presumption. A respectable peace sign can be interpreted as a threatening gang sign to fit a stereotype. This is considered a type of racism towards African Americans. A few youngsters have been facing a lot of trauma in their life due to the media making them a scapegoat on the basis of color.

Stricter gun laws should be implemented, and necessary actions should be taken against these public racist attacks.

"One should be cautious when drawing conclusions about people's characters from social media. On Facebook, nobody's children cry, nobody's marriage is imperiled, and everyone has beautiful days under the bluest of skies. These are performance platforms where we present versions of ourselves that are curated for public consumption”

4) Peculiar pattern seen in the gang killings.
Multiple studies have shown that there is a particular pattern followed in the gang killings in gang-ridden areas.

"In several studies of gang homicides in Los Angeles, researchers uncover a range of characteristics that distinguish gang killings from other killings. They are more likely to take place on the street and involve guns and cars, take place in the afternoons and have the participation of people from the younger ages; usually, men."

5) Parenting and gun violence
Parenting has a significant role to play in the case of gun violence among children. Lack of proper parenting will push the children into the realm of ballistic experimentation, further complicating gun-related problems.

“The gun problems starts with parents. It starts before someone brings a gun into their home. If parents can't decide to raise the children properly, they should not have children."

My favourite three lines from this book

“Rights come with responsibilities. All freedoms come with some restrictions. ”

"So long as you have a society with a lot of guns- and America has more guns per capita than any other county in the world- children will be at risk of being shot. The questions are how much risk, and what, if anything, is being done to minimize it?"

“I don’t think the second amendment means what they think it means.”

What could have been better?
Dallas is known as the 'City of Hate' after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The people of Dallas are trying to shake away that nickname. If you are someone from Dallas, you will feel that the author was a little harsh in how he mentioned Dallas and its people. You will feel the same if you are from the rust belt regions like Wisconsin or Illinois. The author is trying to tell us some facts about these places. Still, I think he could have written it in a better way.

Rating
5/5 It is generally accepted by most people that the best method to prevent gun violence is to make sure that the criminals are not getting access to firearms. Similarly, it is equally important that children and immature individuals also won't get access to it by increasing the safety features as there are so many cases of accidental deaths due to the use of firearms by minors. If the Government and authorities cannot ensure these, they will have to take drastic measures like changing the gun laws to solve this crisis.

The US Congress recently passed a gun control bill which is the most significant firearms legislation in nearly 30 years. As about two-thirds of Americans support strong ownership regulations, let us hope that the Government will take adequate steps to change gun laws.

When US mass shootings are getting deadlier and more common, books like this should be widely read and discussed among the public.

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[jv poore · Rating 5 out of 5]

One random day. 10 children died. From gunshot wounds.
Mr. Younge boldly bears witness to each of these tragedies. He clearly and concisely conveys each of these stories that so desperately needed to be told.

This book is not about gun control. Not once, in any of the interviews conducted with victims’ families and friends, does anyone mention the second amendment.

It is about ten tragic deaths and the circumstances that led up to each shooting. And it is vital.

None of the stories are alike. The victims are all male, but that is the essentially the only common denominator. Well, that and they share the death-by-gun date.

There is so much information in this book that I could feel my mind sharpening, yet it is in no way tedious or boring. There’s no hiding this author’s empathy, rage, deep seeded desire to help, or his hope. Those emotions ring loud and clear making this a consuming, compelling read.

*Reminder to 'my' students: This book is in Mrs. Heyssel's classroom library.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having finished this book I am left with the overwhelming impression that it was a book that needed to be written. Author Gary Younge is a journalist who spent many years living in the States. Although living in America, he is British and as a black man he was very aware of both the differences and similarities between cultures. One of the most obvious differences is the number of guns that are readily available in the States. I don’t think most Americans understand how shocked us Brits are to visit a supermarket in America and find guns openly on sale. Younge himself was shocked, after snow thawed in the spring and a gun was found near his house and another near his children’s school.

Every day in America, on average, ten children are killed by guns. That is not including suicides, just murders. In fact, gunshot fatalities are so common that they are often not reported. The murder of a child does not even merit a mention on the news, or a paragraph in a newspaper – especially if the child in question is poor or black. The author’s idea was a simple one and incredibly moving. He took an ‘average’ day – Saturday 23rd November, 2013. On this day, ten children were killed (possibly more in fact, but these are those that he could find). The youngest was nine years old and the eldest nineteen. You may say that nineteen is not a child. My eldest child is nineteen and he is currently at university – possibly straddling the difficult age between childhood and adulthood. One of the teenagers killed, eighteen year old Gustin Hinnant, listed his favourite movies as, “Toy Story,” and “Happy Feet.” Despite any bravado or teenage posturing, these are children…

In this book, Younge tells the stories of these children. As also befits the ‘average’ statistics around such shootings, all of these were boys. One was white, two Hispanic and seven were black. They were all from poor backgrounds, meaning that most lived the areas that experience the most crime. These boys were all individuals though and so were their stories and their deaths. These shootings range from gang related killings to an unsupervised boy shooting his friend in a town where hunting seems to be the main preoccupation and loaded weapons available and accessible.

Much of this book is depressing, dispiriting and tragic. Along with the boys stories, Younge weaves the history of gun related crimes into the text. There is the terrible statistic that between 20 and 30 percent of Chicago children in public schools have witnessed a shooting, the fact that poorer parents often do shift work and thus cannot both be at home and earning a living – leaving their children in areas they know are unsafe and, perhaps most depressing, is the fact that parents of these children are often blamed by both the media and their own community. Alongside the fact that the community is unable to face the fact that society has a role in these horrifying statistics, there is the accompanying fact that most of those interviewed seemed to accept without question the presence of guns in their country. Those who own guns can claim that it is personal responsibility and teaching safety that is important, but until America really faces the facts that they have more gun deaths than any country that is not at war, and does something about it, then nothing will change. The names below represent ten of those unlived lives that represent the sad statistics. Ten children killed by guns – every day, including today.

Jaiden Dixon
Kenneth Mills-Tucker
Stanley Taylor
Pedro Cortez
Tyler Dunn
Edwin Rajo
Samuel Brightmon
Tyshon Anderson
Gary Anderson
Gustin Hinnant

This was a very well written, intelligent and thoughtful read. I was very impressed by Gary Younge as both an author and a journalist and I certainly want to explore more of his work. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of this book is simple – take a random day (Saturday, 23 November 2013) and write an account of all the kids who were shot and killed in that 24 hour period in the USA. There were ten. (Note – suicides are omitted because they are never reported. So the figure is probably higher than ten.)

The author Gary Younge (a black British journalist) quickly makes clear : this is not a book about the need for gun control, although to a British reader, it may appear that it is. Gary Younge is writing about the whole difficult Gordian knot of intractable problems which has led the USA into the horrendous levels of violence it now suffers.

We do have to mention some comparative figures.

In the USA (population 323 million) in 2014 there were 15, 872 homicides, of which 11,008 were homicide by firearm

In the UK which has a population of 65 million there were 573 homicides in 2016 in total of which 51 were by firearms

There are cities in America which have more murders than the whole of the UK. Such as Chicago (population around 3 million) – 762 in 2016.

TEN KIDS AND TEN USEFUL MORAL LESSONS

Here are the basic details of the cases in this book.

Jaiden Dixon. Grove City, Ohio. Aged 9. Killed by his mother’s deranged ex-boyfriend.
Moral of this story : sometimes there’s nothing you can do.

Kenneth Mills-Tucker, Indianapolis. Aged 19. Shot on the street, no one arrested, no motive discovered.
Moral of this story : don’t walk around at night.

Stanley Taylor, Charlotte NC. Aged 17. Shot by a 27 year old guy at a gas station. No motive discovered. No arrest.
Moral of this story : Don’t drive a car.

Pedro Cortez, San Jose, California. Aged 18. Drive by gang murder. No arrest.
Moral of this story : don’t be in a gang or know anyone in a gang or know anyone who’s in a gang which you’re not aware of.

Tyler Dunn, Marlette, Michegan. Aged 11. Accidentally shot by best friend aged 12.
Moral of this story : don’t have a friend who lives in a house full of unlocked loaded guns.

Edwin Rajo, Houston. Aged 16. Accidentally shot by his female best friend.
Moral of this story : if you’re going to buy a gun for self-protection against all the gangbangers in the neighbourhood, learn how to use it.

Samuel Brightmon, Dallas. Aged 16. Random street shooting. No arrest made.
Moral of this story : if you’re young and black, don’t leave the house.

Tyshon Anderson, Chicago. Aged 18. Gang murder. No arrest made.
Moral of this story : this was the only acknowledged gangbanger of the ten victims. So, I guess, the moral is you reap what you sow. But the other nine victims never reaped what they sowed. So that moral is just not true.

Gary Anderson, Newark NJ. Aged 18. Shot in a drive-by, everyone agreed it was mistaken identity. No arrest.
Moral of this story : don’t look like anyone else.

Gustin Hinnant, Goldsboro NC. Aged 18. Everyone agrees, shot by accident. They were aiming at the other guy in the car. No arrest.
Moral of this story : don’t leave the house, don’t have any friends

THE DAILY TORRENT

This book is a companion piece to another wrenching piece of journalism, Ghettoside by Jill Leovy, which I also recommend. Both books cover the same ground in different ways. But heck, there are so many others too. This is not uncharted territory. Great tv shows like Homicide and The Wire have charted all this stuff already. But it seems every time we get reminded of it, we then forget.

What Gary Younge does is lament the invisibility of these kids’ deaths (they barely register in the media, after 24 hours they’re gone and forgotten) and link them to various immense trends in American society. He interviews the families where he can (some refuse to speak); he transcribes 911 calls; he creates portraits of these kids as far as he’s able. As you can see from the summary, in seven of the ten cases no murderer was ever discovered, no arrests were made.

This book takes a snapshot of a society in which these deaths are uniquely possible and that has a political culture apparently uniquely incapable of creating a world in which they might be prevented

We get pages on the collapse of manufacturing, the implosion of the black family, the failure of politics, the corrosive segregation of the American city –He throws out various insights. Regarding the famous school/workplace/mass shootings, he remarks

They disturb America’s self-image and provoke its conscience in a way that the daily torrent of gun deaths does not

And he ploughs on to the next sad case. Okay, you may be thinking this is not a very cheerful or hopeful book. You’d be right. “Researching this book has made me want to scream” he says in the Afterword. That may be your reaction too.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★ [Note this book was published in 2016]
Reposting again, again, AGAIN March 2023 after a Tennesee Christian school shooting that killed three children and six adults.

"In 2019 and 2021, [Tennessee Governor] Lee signed legislation loosening Tennessee gun laws. The 2021 bill, which was opposed by many police and prosecutor associations, allows most adults to carry handguns in public without a permit, background check or training."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
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Reposting again, May 2022, following today's Reuters report "FACTBOX: Grim chronology of mass shootings in the United States" https://www.reuters.com/world/us/grim...
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Reposting again, June 2020, as the Black Lives Matter protests continue during the Covid19 pandemic and the statues continue to fall. That won't help these families, but maybe it will save some other kids.
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(Reposting May 2018, following yet another school shooting. We need to know this.)
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I considered a lower rating, but Younge makes the subject so compelling and the people so familiar, I don't know how he could have done it any better.

WARNING: if you have lost someone through sudden violence, especially a child, this book, and possibly my review, is going to be even more disturbing than it is for someone like me, who has lived a pretty sheltered life. And he lets us into these families’ lives so well, that I’m still afraid for them all.

Author Gary Younge is in a unique position to look at the American way of life and death, and I think he’s done an admirable job.

“I was raised black and poor (though in England, where race and class interact differently), and I have two black American children.”

He says when he moved to Chicago, his son’s day care centre had a meeting on traffic awareness. The teacher recommended that parents travel the same route to school so that kids might have some sense of where they are. Then the teacher explained the routes the centre uses to take kids on outings.

“One of the parents asked whether they would continue to pass the site by the subway where there had been a recent shoot-out. The teacher smiled. ‘I knew that would come up,’ he sighed. ‘It’s a good point, and we are really going to have to get on top of it. We must talk to the children about how to handle situations like that, because the big problem in those moments is that they panic.’

I thought this was odd. Panic in the presence of gunfire seems a perfectly rational response, whether you’re four or forty-four. The problem, it seemed to me, wasn’t the panic but the shooting.”

Un-bloody-believable! He says in England, sometimes the culture feels more violent (fights and such) but less deadly.

He mentions that the first child who died on Saturday, November 23, 2013, was actually shot on November 22, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy. But he said he just chose a Saturday, because “it’s over the weekend, when school is out and parties are on, that the young are most likely to be shot.”

He also explains, “it is not a book about gun control; it is a book made possible by the absence of gun control.”

He pulls no punches for his readers, rather he tells these stories with great care and concern and with affection for some of the victims and families he came to know. They are the ones left with the empty chair at the table, the bedroom with clothes strewn around, posters on the wall. It’s impossible not to share the sudden, violent and unexpected loss of their kids.

I'll mention only a couple of stories, but there is a chapter devoted to each child and their family. How it happened that the kid was where they were, whether someone should have known better, or whether it could have been prevented. One little boy was shot point-blank when he opened the door at breakfast time to his mother’s violent, crazy ex who was the father of one of his older brothers.

The father’s own son remembered his dad had said he might opt for “suicide by cop” (to escape his troubles) but never thought to find out what that meant. The father was, indeed, gunned down, but that didn’t save the little boy.

I grew up in America a long time ago and was never aware of guns, except for hunting. It was more like the movie “Grease” where parents worried about their kid joining a gang and getting beaten up or maybe stabbed with a switchblade (flick knife). How times change.

The father of one victim said “Back in the day, when we grew up, you get in a fight, somebody might jump you, you know, but the next day you speak to the person and you keep going. But now you get in an argument with somebody, they come back and shoot you.”

These days:
“Many young people in certain areas are gang members in the same way that Soviet citizens were members of the Communist Party . . . – there was precious little choice.”

California is divided between north and south at Bakersfield: Noreños and Sureños, with special dot tattoos. They wear blue or red (nothing political!), and one grandmother said she always took away her grandson’s red shirts, in case it made him a target. It didn’t save him.

I’ve lived in Australia since the late 60s, and nobody really ever talked about or heard much about guns, except for farmers and hunters and The Mob (or whatever we called them then), until the Port Arthur Massacre led to gun law changes (see below).

“Five years after his retirement from the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Nixon, insisted that the Second Amendment ‘has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word 'fraud' – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Younge explains, the New York Times did some investigations in 2013 and reported:

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced findings and reports on how to limit gun deaths in the same way that they produce reports on healthy eating and how to prevent sudden infant death syndrome. They found, among other things, that the presence of guns in the home increased the likelihood of death rather than reduced it. The National Rifle Association was not pleased with this particular conclusion or the research in general.

‘Our concern is not with legitimate medical science,’ Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, told The New York Times. ‘Our concern is they were promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated.’ So the NRA used their immense lobbying power to effectively put a stop to the government’s finding out how to make people safer around guns.”

No. They were promoting the idea that one of the biggest risks to the health of children in America was the lack of safety around guns. One kid in this book came home from school to show demonstrate the gun safety lesson they'd had. He too the gun out of the cupboard, loaded it, went to put it back and it discharged, killing his friend. He understood the safety lesson . . . but not well enough to have a gun where he could get it.

“Researching and writing this book has made me want to scream . . . I’ve wanted to scream at journalists and police to treat these deaths as though the lives mattered.

But more than its making me want to scream at anyone in particular, it has mostly made me want to just howl at the moon. A long, doleful, piercing cry for a wealthy country that could and should do better for its youth and children—for my children—but that appears to have settled, legislatively at least, on a pain threshold that is morally unacceptable.”

If you’re interested in the various gun buyback schemes, Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buy...

Our family sold back the only newly "illegal" repeating shotgun from our farm and kept the rifles and shotguns that were still okay. When we quit farming, we sold the guns, lock, stock and barrel to another farmer, along with the heavy steel gun cabinet that bolts to the floor and has a separate locked compartment for ammunition.

Thanks to NetGalley and Nation Books for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted (so some quotes may have changed since).

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Day in the Death of America is an interesting and stark look at the effects of gun violence in the United States. Gary Young is a UK born journalist who has been living in the United States for a number of years. He decided to take a random day in 2013 and look at all of the deaths of children caused by guns that day. His definition of children is fairly expansive, but he looks in some detail at the deaths of 10 children, ranging in age from 7 years old to 19 years -- which is close to the daily average of 7 deaths. Each chapter is about one child and the circumstances of his death -- they are all boys. Some deaths are accidents and some are intentional. Most kids are black or Hispanic, and live in difficult economic and family circumstances -- but not all of them. And most of them have close ties with their mothers, siblings, friends and teachers who give a human face to what have often been short lived and brief news stories. Young's premise is that while these deaths are often tied the challenging circumstances in which each child lives, the frequency and commonality of these deaths is due to the prevalence of guns in the US and the lack of gun control. Interspersed amongst the narratives about each child, Younge presents statistics, historical information and analysis in support of his argument. Coming from Canada where guns are far less common and much more tightly controlled, it wasn't hard for Younge to convince me. But I still found this an interesting, sad and scary read -- and from the sidelines it strikes me as a very timely topic for the US and an original approach to tackling it. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Brilliantly reported, quietly indignant, and utterly gripping. A book to be read through tears."-NAOMI KLEIN

I don't know who Naomi Klein is, but she is spot on with that quote. Gary Younge, an accomplished journalist, a Briton, and a black man, searches for understanding of these daily senseless killings and their anonymous victims. Like Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, this book haunts me with it's powerful message about a heartbreaking trend in the America that I don't see or even hear about. This book is so important. I'd like to quote the entire Afterward here but instead I will encourage everyone to read this book. Something has to give. 5 stars

Researching and writing this book has made me want to scream. But more than its making me want to scream at anyone in particular, it has mostly made me want to just howl at the moon. A long, doleful, piercing cry for a wealthy country that could and should do better for the youth and children – for my children – but that appears to have settled, legislatively at least, on a pain threshold that is morally unacceptable.
I want to bay toward the heavens, because while kids like those featured in this book keep dying, the political class refuses to do not only everything in its power but anything at all to minimize the risks for the kids who will be shot dead today or tomorrow.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It isn't about gun control.

Well, it is and isn't.

Gary Younge takes a look at ten children/teens who died by gunshot in the course of one day in America. Rather than the mind-numbing data of total number of people killed, he examines each life in its own context of socioeconomics, family, education, gang connections (or not), race, etc.

The author himself is transplanted from the UK, living in an area of Chicago where suddenly he has to worry about his own children living inside these data points. I found his outsider to insider perspective helpful in not making assumptions off the cuff as to why children are shot, and really taking the time to explore the realities. He does not have any easy answers.

This is recommended as a slow read, one life between other things. I was reading it over the election and just had to put it aside for some time.

[shakespeareandspice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I write this review on July of 2017. We are halfway into 2017 and United States of America is already on it's way to making 2017 one of the deadliest years for people killed by cops.

Does that shock you? It shouldn't. This has been coming for a long time. And keep watching, under our newly elected nationalists, 2018 will be the next deadliest year.

In Another Day in the Death of America, Gary Younge captures the stories of 10 people who were killed on just another average day in the US. He tackle cases with children here so he isn’t going to be gentle about describing what happens. Brace yourself, this one might break your soul.

One of the key aspects that cannot be avoided when discussing gun rights is the racial profiling by the American police force. Case after case has proved that the American justice is morally bankrupt. The vile that anti-gun control activists spew is often a slap across the face of a mother or father who lost their child because the government can’t get its act together. Instead of actions, we get reactions from people like Joe Walsh proclaiming, ‘I have a dream that Black America will take responsibility for improving their own lives.’

Ironic. The words he steals come from a man who also told us, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’

This isn’t just about race. In one of the cases he covers we have on our hand the ruined lives of two white children—one being the victim and the other being the culprit (for the lack of a better word). Two kids playing around with guns. In the home of a man who leaves an arsenal of deadly weapons lying around. In a state which allows kids to use guns under the guise of hunting practices with parental supervision. Until one of them gets shot and the other one has to bear this burden of shame his entire life. Who do we blame? Was it really that difficult to see how we could’ve kept this from happening?

Younge talks a little about the role that journalists play in bringing these issues to the forefront as well. A journalist isn’t social worker, he suggests, but if journalists don’t cover daily human atrocities then we become participants of its normality. When we become complacent, we stop protesting. We stop voting. We stop asking for change. We proclaim ourselves great and sit on our hands.

Another smaller concern he suggests here is that newsroom are also dominated by white journalists. So those who are covering the news aren’t necessarily the kind of people affected by these issues. (To be clear, I don’t believe this was a suggestion that people of color are purposely not hired based on skin color but, well, we all know how institutionalized racism works in the end.)

The only reason why this wasn’t a five-star in the end was because I’m coming from a more knowledgable place when it comes to gun rights and racial profiling. A lot of what he said is something I’ve been hearing for years and it just didn’t surprise me as much as I’m sure it would to others who aren’t used to reading these books regularly. Don’t take this as a criticism of the book or the topic—it’s just that my informed background here leaves a little less to explored in this book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

By coincidence, I finished this book on the same day I finished A Mother’s Reckoning, Sue Klebold’s book about the Columbine shootings. A more depressing pair of books I defy you to find. I felt that Klebold could have gone further in calling for gun control, but that’s not really a fight anyone can win in America, so most people don’t even try. (Keep in mind the terrible irony that the NRA carried on with their 1999 convention the very month of Columbine, even though it took place in nearby Denver.) By contrast, Gary Younge occasionally offers too much in the way of biased commentary. At times I thought to myself, just get on with it and tell the stories! But when so much is at stake, I guess he feels he has nothing to lose by being forthright about the social forces behind gun deaths.

Crucially, he stands at a slight remove from events in America: born in England to parents from Barbados, he moved to Chicago in 2011 as a Guardian correspondent and lived there for about four years. Although he had young children, so definitely had a stake in safety, he maintains a slight outsider’s perspective that allows for incisive observations, as when he visits an NRA convention and picks up on the link between guns and chauvinistic male sexuality and the false idea that threat is everywhere and Americans need guns to defend their way of life.

Essentially Younge built this book by choosing a 24-hour period (November 22 to 23, 2013) and delving into all the gun deaths of young Americans that he could find on record for that time. (I know he discounted suicide deaths. What I’m not clear on is whether he weeded out older adults.) He ended up with 10 victims, aged nine to 18: seven black, two Latino, and one white. About half of the incidents were at least vaguely gang-related, while in two – perhaps the most crushing ones – there was an accident while playing around with a gun. He interviews neighbors, friends and family members; he reads up on news stories and police reports; he looks at the victims’ Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. It’s a mixture of true crime recreation (the chapter set in South Chicago reminded me of The Wire), biography and social study. I dare anyone to read this and then try to defend gun ‘rights’ in the face of such senseless, everyday loss.

Food for thought:

Retired Chief Justice Warren Burger: the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word ‘fraud’ – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Did you know that on the very day of the Sandy Hook massacre, a mentally ill man ran amok with a knife in a Chinese elementary school and stabbed 24 people? Guess what? None of them died.

A 1998 study: “for every gun in the house that was used for self-defence in a ‘legally justifiable shooting’, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and eleven attempted or completed suicide.”

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

BOTW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w99dj

Description: On Saturday 23rd November 2013, ten children were shot dead in the US. The youngest was nine, the oldest was nineteen. They fell in suburbs, hamlets and ghettos. None made the national news. It was just another day in the death of America, where on average seven children and teens are killed by guns daily. Gary Younge picked 23rd November at random, and set out to tell the stories of the lives lost during that single day.

First is Jaiden Dixon, age nine: The day began with the usual routine for Jaiden, as his mum Nicole chivied him out of bed at their home in suburban Columbus, crowned Best Hometown in central Ohio for that year. By the time Jaiden should have been arriving at school, he was fighting for his life in a trauma unit. He'd been shot twice on his doorstep. Nicole hadn't seen the gunman, but she knew who he was. Her ex-partner, Danny Thornton, was running amok.



Kenneth Mills-Tucker was shot dead just three days shy of his twentieth birthday. It was nine days before he was due in court, charged with failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign and possession of a pipe with marijuana residue in it. His death wasn't noteworthy enough to get any media coverage. But if it had been, how would Kenneth have been remembered?



Eleven year old Tyler Dunn spent the day with his friend Brandon [not his real name]. Just before 8.30pm, Brandon walked out of the house with his hands up, wearing red shorts with no shirt or socks, the police telling him to keep his hands where they could see them. He had just called 911 and told them he had shot Tyler.

Who should bear responsibility for the killing? Brandon's father couldn't say for sure how many guns were in the house, or whether any of them were loaded. If Michigan had laws to prevent child-access to guns, would Tyler still be alive?



At around 11.05pm, on the echoey, rank, first-floor stairway of a four-storey walk-up in South Chicago, just around the corner from his home, someone walked up to Tyshon Anderson, shot him in the head, and left. By 11.50pm he was dead. No one knows who killed him.



Samuel Brightmon's shooting was reported in the Dallas Morning News: "Police are investigating after a teenager was fatally shot on Saturday night when walking down the street in Southeast Dallas," the article read. "Police say Samuel Brightmon, 16, and another 16-year-old were walking in the 7300 block of Schepps Parkway around 11 pm when they heard gunshots. As the teens tried to run away, Brightmon was shot and collapsed in the street. Brightmon was taken to Baylor University Medical Center of Dallas where he was pronounced dead. No suspect has been identified."

"That was it," writes Younge. "They didn't have an awful lot to go on. The police report is similarly minimal, adding only that it believed the shooting was not gang-related. There was no profile, no testimony from his school friends or teachers. No sense of who he was, let alone why he was killed. His death was counted. It just didn't count for much."





Fraternal Order of Police union endorses Trump

[Britany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary Younge picked a random day- November 23rd, 2013 to research child deaths by gun. I was all riled up about the concept of this book. Let's give a name to those that lost their lives and have nothing to show for it, opening up a patch of America that has been fighting to stay silent. I thought that this was a brilliant idea especially given the current environment and all the unnecessary shootings.

10 children (under the age of 19) were shot within the 24 hours of November 23rd. Some were accidents, other malicious gang attacks, and still others were random killings. The very first story opens up with young Jaiden- only 9 years old and shot in the face by his mother's ex-boyfriend. My heart opened right up and I couldn't wait to keep reading and to keep shining a light on these stories. The more I read though, I started to lose interest. Not all the lives had a poignant story- many had families that refused to talk to Gary Younge (for one reason or another) and that lost the narrative these stories so badly needed. Instead, those chapters were filled with statistics or quotes from other people's books. I ended up skimming over many of these chapters as the dryness of the words read more like a textbook than anything else and left me bored. So, I'm falling right down the middle on this one.

Thank you to Netgalley and Nation Books for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

First a disclaimer. Because I was there and witnessed the Southwest side of Chicago, I read the beginning chapters and then that Chicago section on Tyshon Anderson. And both told me enough to know that I wouldn't want to spend my time reading the rest. That's all I read.

First the methodology is false to causes of death, IMHO. Tyshon didn't die because of guns he died because of criminal gangs. Second he has the progression and actual history of South side neighbors, both in formations and in context of composite- incorrect. Both in origins and in progression of formations. He uses South Chicago as the representation for the South side. That is ridiculous in itself.

This is a piece written toward an already concluded premise. Chicago has had tough, tough gun laws. In Illinois you need a FOID card to approach gun ownership. Legally. The problem is that felons or criminals making a living on property crime don't care about what is legal. We have had the toughest in the nation for a decade or more. I have a FOID card and I know how/ what it takes to get it.

I could go on and on to make my own personal eye witness history to assault, shootings upon a small Mom & Pop corner store owner family, how a weapon has also saved more than one life and a close relative's twice, but I don't want to share all of that. I'd rather look forward and not hold to old troubles. I role model that for a purpose way beyond my own.

Proper and educated gun ownership is core to the Constitution for the American citizen from America's conception. That's why that particular Amendment was put 2nd- only after Free Speech. Which is also being assaulted by those who "know more and better" as well. Nearly 400 million, it is not Canada. And it is not Sweden.

People who come from nations of so few millions and closed borders and boundaries for citizenship have different models for conception of "rules" from the get-go.

But my strongest objection to this book isn't the gun question at all. It's accuracy for "facts". Gary Younge doesn't know Chicagoan history. Nor does he once describe what and how the public housing projects were originated, and what they became. And how they were torn down in huge percentages, either. He doesn't document the children's deaths caused by accident in them, or by other children purposely dropping them over the sides, or of the feral environment of the stair wells or the elevators. He also picks and chooses facts, even the latest facts in this book from 3 or 4 years ago. And he continually categorizes "white flight" to be in a time frame and in actuation to something in Chicago that it absolutely was not. Many of my relatives, friends and neighbors never moved away- even to this decade when there are boarded and fire hallowed frames upon their very streets. And in my town now, a suburb, we are not moving toward segregation- there are people from every continent but Antarctica who live on my block.

He never even lived on the South or West sides. Never took a bus to school. Never mentions the knife attacks, the baseball bats, the mobs dragging truck drivers out of their cabs at stoplights because they are White and trying to make supply delivery. (I saw that twice and once he was killed in a way that you would never want to hear about.) The story is not only two sided but 6 or 7 sided and complex. And guns are not the determining factors.

I read some of these replies and I am flummoxed by the incredible delicacy. People who have been assaulted or shot or raped- they have to turn the page and forgive. And sometimes it is completely stranger based and for reasons you, yourself, don't begin to understand. "Because they thought you were Cuban?"

Believe what you want. But reducing the quantity of guns or if they are legal to strict laws is barely a fragment of the picture. This book is the equivalent of a Northern Minnesota native who never left the state, writing a book with intrinsic detail in educating yourself to surf in the ocean. And the way in which he picks his cases is just as off.

It's also dated. His facts "guesses" upon the future in my Chicago are wrong too.

There are some good books out there on gun control purpose and process, I hear. But this is certainly not one of them.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic, but the writing felt a little repetitive and dry after a while.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very important but also difficult book to read. Gary Younge, a British journalist living and working in the US, sets out to tell the stories of the ten children and teenagers that were killed on a day he picked more or less at random. Thus he manages to give faces to the statistics and effectively shows how much of a problem the abundance of guns is.

To be fair, he didn't really need to convince me of the fact that there is something seriously wrong when on average seven children die of gunshot wounds in one of the richest countries in the world. This prevalence of guns is something that is very difficult for me to understand; I am German and I know literally nobody who owns a gun (at least that I know of); I lived in the UK for five years and didn't know anybody who owns a gun. For me this whole idea of basically everybody owning guns is kinda absurd. And yes, I understand that other countries have similar rates of gun ownership without there being so many deaths by them.

Younge tells the stories of the young people who died that day and uses those to paint a broad picture of the plentitude of factors that lead to the high number of gun deaths. He manages to effectively show how those victims are blamed for their deaths or how their parents are blamed for the deaths, and shows how absurd that is.

Overall, I think this book was needed and even though I do not live in the US, I was thoroughly engaged - but it made me so mad at the injustice that I had to take a break after each chapter.

___
I received copy of this book curtesy of NetGalley and Faber and Faber Ltd. in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the opportunity!

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Day in the Death of America – Life is cheap

Gary Younge latest book is just about one day in America at random, which happened to be Saturday 23rd November 2013, on which like any other day ten children and teens were killed by gunfire. The youngest being nine and the oldest was nineteen a sad indictment on the state of America as all these deaths rarely raised any news interest, other than Younge’s.

What Younge’s investigation reveals is a portrait of the vulnerability of the young in American and shows that it just seems that America’s love of guns out ways the love for the youth of America. What Younge does do is investigate the way that these children lived and died in their short lives. What we get is a chapter on each child that has been killed and shows the life they wanted and the life they were living. This is taking the microenvironment in which they lived to see what it may tell us about America as a whole.

What does come across is that you cannot say that there is a typical victim or more typical area in which you face the danger of facing a gun. What we find that there is a mix of White, Black and Latino victims who were killed in areas as diverse as the suburbs, hamlets and ghettos, what comes across is that it can happen anywhere. This is twenty-four hours where ten young lives were lost across eight states and none made the news, which viewing from afar tends to shock.

It would have been easy for Younge to have written a polemic dripping with anger mourning the loss of life, but what we get is some excellent investigative analysis. What he does do is examine what are the structural roots of the crisis and death from guns. When Younge investigated and wrote this book it was in the shadow of Sandy Hook, while at the same time argues that there is a problem when the focus is just on the angelic victims, as it suggests that some may deserve to die, when people infer it should not be happening here.

What comes across is that when it is a black child is killed it is no big news which alone is a very sad indictment on a country. What I learnt from this book is that if you are poor, Black or Hispanic then you are invisible in America, what happens to you does not matter.

It would have been easy for Gary Younge to turn this book into a polemic but instead has delivered a book that is empathetic, while told through clear prose, you cannot help but to be touched, while at the same time asking how can a civilised society live like this?

[Kitty G Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

* I was sent this for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review *

This book was exactly what I thought it would be. It's a book about gun control and gun death in America. The author is a reporter who decided to embark on a project, documenting all the deaths of young people in America within a single 24-hour period, as a result of guns. This book ONLY focuses on the deaths as a result of guns, nothing else... There are still 10 deaths.

What I think this book is good for, is making people who try not to think about this, realise just how present the problem of guns is in America today. The day which Gary Younge chooses to talk about is randomly chosen, nothing too significant about it, not more or less deaths than any other really. The day doesn't matter... it's the people who died that matter.

At various points of the book we see both intentional and accidental shooting take place and a young person lose their life, their dreams and their potential, in just a few hours or minutes. It doesn't matter who these people were before the shooting. No one, whatever they've done, really deserves to be shot.

One element which I think makes this book more hard-hitting and interesting than some, is the amount of back-up research that Younge has done. Younge looks into the surrounding areas that the victims come from, the statistics about chance of death there, racial stats, and gang crime. All of these factors play into why an area may be more likely to have deaths caused by guns than another, ultimately, no matter what the statistics, all this death is nearly always unnecessary.

One element which made me take a look at myself is the numbness. I think it's easy to close yourself off from books like this, whether you live in the US or not. It's often easy to take a step back and say, if it doesn't affect me or people I know then what can I do? It's true, it's hard to live in the UK and actively work to stop the use of guns in America. It's even hard for me to imagine how it has ever been allowed to get this bad. The first three deaths I read about in this book I cried, teared up, got emotional, the next 7 were no less undeserved, yet I didn't open myself up. Automatically our brains and bodies try to shut us away from pain, this book tries to make you realise that this is a big problem and a major factor for why gun crime and death is such a growing problem. If you live in America, I'd recommend reading this. Even if you don't I still would. It's a book which is sad, but it's also necessary. If you want to be an informed individual, make choices for yourself and your family, and your safety, read this... 4*s overall.

[Book Riot Community]

I was lucky enough to snag a galley of this Editor’s Buzz pick when I attended Book Expo America in May. Younge, an author and columnist for the Guardian and Nation, uses the lens of a single day to explore the uniquely American phenomenon of children killed by gun violence. The stories of the 10 children killed on Nov. 23, 2013 are each harrowing in their own ways, but Younge takes the book even further, looking at the wide range of social, economic, and political factors that contribute to America’s epidemic of gun violence. This is a book that I hope will reach many people, and prompt some thoughtful discussions on what we can do to try and make our communities safer and less violent.

– Kim Ukura


from The Best Books We Read In July 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/08/01/riot-r...

[Liz Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first thing I heard when researching this book was that it was a gun legislation book, it is not that at all. This is a work about a country with almost non-existent gun control, and ten of the victims and their families’ stories, in the events of one single day. We follow kids who were shot by their mother’s ex-boyfriends, by people who mistook their identity, by other gang members, and through the small snippets of the event, we discover how society simply moves on.

Day by day, people are murdered by gun violence, and in America, nothing changes. Australia had one mass shooting, it shook the country for the last time, immediately after that, the conservative government decided there is no price on human lives, and conducted sweeping gun legislation. Within months, the laws were implemented, and the homicide and suicide rates went down. The same fears Americans have were shared by Australians at the time, fear of government oppression, of immigrants and refugees, of minorities, but those needed to be put aside over the well-being of the community. Turns out they had nothing to fear, people just moved on with their lives. How much is a life worth? How much do we truly care about the lives of the people that love here, that we cannot put forth any logical gun regulation?

“Like a flash of lightning. You see it and you’ll be like, was that lightning? That’s how it is when a black child gets murdered or gets killed. No big news… in the end result you are still living in a white world. And we’re still thought of as less than. And basically, they’re saying we don’t matter. But if it was their child, they want the world to come to a halt.”

The other focal point is the disparity between the ethnicity of the victims, and the reaction of the community around it. Black and Latino were the majority of those murdered by gun violence, but their deaths did not cause as much friction as those of white counterparts. This is not a new thing, the discrepancy has always been there, yet it should not be the norm. Then, this leads to people assuming that it is the victim’s fault, that it is in their culture, their blood, when in reality, it comes more to where the person lives, the systematic oppression around it, the help people are able to get in the place they live, the education system, and many, many more factors, often forgotten for the racist reason.

I would not say this book is for everyone, even though it is, but it is a story that should mostly be read by people that are not aware of the standardized inequality plaguing the streets of America, the people that forget that there is more to gun violence than guns. Worthy of a thorough read.

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 4 out of 5]

November 23, 2013 was an ordinary day for most of us. That's the whole point of author Gary Younge's book. Within the span of 24 hours of this ordinary day, he chronicles ten shootings which took the lives of youths under the age of 21. The youngest was nine; the oldest was 19. None of these deaths were part of mass shootings. None of the victims could claim 15 minutes of fame. No headlines heralded their passing. That too is a point Younge is making. Gun deaths for even children have become the new norm.

At the time Younge conducted his research there was no comprehensive source for gun deaths. Information was being compiled by Joe Nocera in the New York Times(“The Gun Report”), and by Dan Kors in Slate (“Gun Death Tally”). Additional information was available on DNAinfo.com. All three of these sources are currently inactive. DNAinfo.com ceased in November 2017. Today, statistics are from 2014 to the present are compiled in the “Gun Violence Archive” (http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/)

Younge researched these ten cases by scouring the internet, accessing 911 tapes, and performing the thankless task of interviewing bereaved families. Despite his sensitivity to their grief, two of the families refused to speak with him. One person left him a blunt voicemail: “'Don't call again.'” (p.37) Much of the information that humanizes the victims comes from their facebook pages and twitter accounts. Favorite TV programs, video games, references to music, longing for independence, looking forward to getting together with friends, and conflicted ideas about their futures form the substance of these posts. These passages are an eloquent and moving contrast to the desperate calls made to 911. Disbelief and terrified pleas of the callers clash with attempts by the operators to assess other elements of the situation: is there more than one victim, will first responders be caught in a dangerous situation, are others on the scene still at risk, how many shooters are there, can the shooters be identified, and in what direction have they fled. The panic and frustration is evident.

Younge forces the reader to confront the ways we as a society attempt to distance ourselves from these events. Like insurance adjustors, we “write-off” the majority of these claims being made daily on our moral consciences. One common narrative tries to shift the blame on parents. Younge counters that glib accusation in a number of ways. He observes that adolescent boys, as any parent will tell you, are notoriously secretive. It's difficult to monitor their curiosity fueled interests and fluctuating circles of acquaintances. Younge recounts a conversation with a physician who worked at the University of Chicago: “'...Black parents in low income neighborhoods go to extreme lengths to keep their children safe. It is not simply a matter of setting boundaries, establishing curfews, and making sure that their homework gets done. It is about hermetically sealing them from their immediate environment, where the risks are too great to leave anything to chance....I have a lot of parents and also grandparents who create cocoons for these young people. They transport them everywhere. They don't get on public transportation. They don't go out and hang out in the parks. Because it's just too dangerous.'” (p.65) Younge also wonders if we tend to connect white victims to words like “a tragic accident” while black victims are connected to accusations of “negligent parents.” Finally, he inserts a note of personal incredulity: “In 2013, the United States suffered eight times the per capita rate of gun murders as the average for Western Europe. The U.S. rate was more than five times higher than the one for Portugal, the nearest contender in Western Europe. Even if Americans did make worse parents, they couldn't be that bad.” (p.63)

Criminal connections are another source of blame frequently mentioned. It is almost as if the victims themselves were being blamed, that they “deserved” to die. Younge concedes that many black teenagers do have criminal records — for traffic violations or marijuana discovered in stop-and-frisk encounters. Do they deserve to be executed for these transgressions? Other teens are labeled gang members. Younge pointedly notes that street gangs don't exactly hand out membership cards. Gang membership is typically inferred from a list of markers: slang, clothing of a particular color, pagers, hairstyles, jewelry, tattoos, neighborhoods frequented, and even circles of acquaintanceship. A teacher of one of the victims offers some context: “'You join for protection...Even if you're not cliqued in, so long as you're associated with them, you're good. You have to claim a clique to be safe. If you're not, if you're by yourself, you're going to get jumped.'” (p.126)

Just as the real explanations are complicated, the ten deaths Younge chronicles do not fall into simple patterns. Two were cases of children handling a gun that accidentally fired. One was killed by his estranged stepfather with a history of domestic violence eerily similar to that of the perpetrator of the Sutherland Springs church massacre (an event that occurred after I read this book). Three victims were mistaken for someone else: someone in their group, someone wearing the wrong color clothing in the wrong place, someone wearing a hoodie matching the description of another kid a gang was seeking. One teen was killed without any apparent motive. He was walking with his friend less than 7 minutes from his own home. One was a confirmed gang member probably shot for revenge. One child lived in rural upper Michigan. One lived in a low crime suburb of Columbus, Ohio. Eight killings occurred in cities. Racially, one victim was white, two were Hispanic and seven were black.

Younge's book is about much more than gun control. It is an examination of our willful blindness to a problem that affects not just the victims, but moves like a fast-spreading infection through society, leaving depression, suicidal thoughts, despair, more violence and hopelessness in its wake.

NOTES: A sobering article with more disheartening statistics on minors killed by guns: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...

The author contemplates the same ideas from his very personal viewpoint as a father in this Guardian "Long Reads" podcast from October 9, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/news/audi...

[Alessia Scurati · Rating 5 out of 5]

La faccio breve: questo è il libro migliore che ho letto almeno da 4 mesi a questa parte - ma probabilmente resterà tra i migliori letti nel 2019.
L’ho letto con stupore e angoscia, con piacere (quello del lettore) e sgomento. Gary Younge è rigoroso e toccante insieme, atto di bravura che di per sé varrebbe la lettura della sua indagine.
In realtà, però, penso che bisognerebbe leggerlo perché questo libro parla di sicurezza. Quella che cerchiamo nelle urne, nei decreti, nelle case, nelle armi. Parla anche di discriminazione, di (in)giustizia e di economia, di potere e manipolazione (credi che tuo figlio muoia per colpa tua, ma è davvero così?). È anche e soprattutto un atto d’accusa contro la legislazione statunitense sulle armi, senza però Sare voce alla pancia, né al cervello (cioè, guarda sono l’intellettuale che ti dice cosa è giusto e cosa no). Qui ci sono: numeri, documenti, dati. Eppure non è un racconto dei fatti freddo, senza emozione. C’è dell’indignazione.
E io potrei andare avanti anni a scrivere, quando in realtà l’unica cosa che vorrei dire è: leggetelo, leggetelo, leggetelo… (leggetelo).
Per una consapevole presa di posizione sulla questione ‘armi e sicurezza’. Leggetelo. Ciao.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Younge chose a random day in US history to see how many children and teenagers died by gun violence on that particular day. The date chosen was November 23, 2013. And on this day ten children and teens were killed (and this excludes suicides - Younge explains why they were excluded).


This book is hard to read, downright painful at times. But it is so perceptive and informative and necessary as it explores the tragic young lives that were lost to gun violence. As I was reading this, I kept thinking: Wake up, America!! How many lives need to be buried six feet underground before you decide that gun regulation is a necessity? And that it will save so many lives?


Younge doesn’t make any judgments here, but his extensive research leads you to only one fair conclusion: Gun violence and gun culture are out of control. Not every victim’s attacks were the same, but their assailants were all by individuals who probably shouldn’t have been allowed to carry a gun.


In this book, Younge explains how race, class, and socio-economy comes into play. It’s all very fascinating and compulsively readable.


Takeaway: The sad and vicious irony is that Younge could have chosen a different date altogether, and although it would be a completely different book, it would also be very much the same. Think about that. That’s sobering. And so unbelievably tragic.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me vs NRA after reading this book:



This review is taking me embarrassingly long to finish. Another Day in the Death of America is such an important and emotional book, I keep sitting here, typing sentences and immediately deleting them. I feel like I cannot do it justice. This book… is so very good.

Gary Younge has a real talent for writing persuasive essays, but he manages to keep a steady and convincing flow throughout a full length book too. Not even for an instant does it feel dragged out or padded with irrelevant information. Every chapter is lean and brings more to the discussion table. The thesis is never lost among tangential arguments, or muddled by overextended examples. Every point and every evidence hit right where it supposed to for a work that is hard dismiss once you read it. It lodges in your psyche for days afterwards.

I recommend everyone to read this book not only because it’s so well-crafted, but because... [more on Chaika Books]

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives is the harrowing story of 10 children murdered on just one day by men and women wielding guns. Younge randomly picked November 23rd, 2013, and he chronicled the deaths and short lives of the young people who were murdered within those 24 hours. His decision to use random selection aptly reflects the daily horror that afflicts American communities most ravaged by gun violence. If Younge had chosen any other day, an entirely different, yet eerily similar book could have been produced.

What quickly becomes clear is that, as always, impoverished communities inhabited overwhelmingly by people of color – suppressed by poor school systems, violent policing practices, and few job opportunities – are the most devastated. But even in exclusively white, rural communities, where guns are as common as heads of cattle, accidental shootings have left many families suffering. Gun violence is not an "inner city" problem, it's one that afflicts every group and town in the United States.

Younge's most important contribution to the ever-growing scholarship on gun violence in America is his humanization of its victims, ranging from innocent nine-year old Jaiden to violent gang member Tyshon. For Younge – and we should all be with him – it shouldn't matter if a young person hangs around with a "bad crowd," abuses drugs, or fails out of school. No one should have his or her young life cut short by someone with a gun.

Younge repeats that, as a British black man who grew up in a community as nominally violent as those profiled here, the sheer number of gun deaths in the US astounds him. In the UK, where gun ownership is heavily restricted, there are almost zero gun-related deaths. There has to be a causal connection. Younge also exposes (yet again) the hypocrisy of the NRA and other hate-filled groups that continue to advocate for the so-called "gun rights" that kill innocent people. The deaths of an average 7 children per day are without a doubt partially attributable to the NRA and its allied legislators.

The personal stories and extensive background research that compose this book will make it an important resource for activists for years to come. Recommended.

[Pink · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was amazing.

If you don't think you need to read it, see how many of these dead children's names you've heard on the news in the past 72 hours.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/las...

As of today, 3rd January 2017 there have been 25 child and teen deaths this year and it's barely Tuesday lunchtime in America.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org

This book isn't as depressing as you might think, but it's not exactly lighthearted reading material. Nor is it preaching that all GUNS ARE BAD. (Although they are.) It takes a more complex look at why people are against gun safety laws and why child deaths don't even make the news any more. Not just with black on black gang violence, but with white accidental victims as well.

It doesn't give you answers, because frankly how do you begin to solve a problem as big and complex as this. But it does make you think, and question, and sympathise, and try to find those answers, which is all many of us can do.

[Zak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author confuses me. He states the book is not about gun control but then goes on to elaborate instances where the NRA has opposed and stymied any past efforts to introduce, nay, even discuss, gun safety measures. He also states it's not about race but seems, at least to me, to imply more and more as the book continues, that racial discrimination and segregation are the main reasons for the poverty, hopelessness and wretched environments which give rise, inevitably, to gun violence.

Yes, the stories are undeniably sad but other than highlighting 10 gun deaths on a random day, the book fails to develop much insight as to why the situation is heartbreakingly so. One gets the feeling Younge had some pre-conceived notions in mind and set about to write a book supporting his opinions. While this, in and of itself, might not be an intrinsically wrong approach to adopt, it should be carried out with considerably more thought and investigation into factors other than those pre-supposed by the writer as well.

For one, I noticed that each and every one of the 10 victims came from broken marriages. Some had parents with numerous other offspring from multiple partners. Might not this commonality be a factor worth considering or investigating? The author evidently didn't think so. Is this a common phenomenon in the communities most stricken by gun violence? Is there a statistically significant relationship between this and the widespread existence of street gangs in those communities? No insight whatsoever.

It is also worth pointing out that a lot of the statistics presented in the book are pretty outdated and it makes me wonder why. Overall, I just feel this important topic should get hell a lot more diligent research and analysis than it got here.

[vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story in this book set a tone that I wish was present throughout the entire book. Younge's strength was gaining access to narratives from the families and people involved (for example, Jaiden's mother, Camilla in Edwin's case, Tyler's family). Many families (understandably) did not want to be interviewed for this book, so when Younge couldn't get access to families or friends, he pondered semi-related issues such as teen social media use, teen psychology and brain development, or what teens and children do for fun / to hang out.
Younge also comes back to the same core ideas about guns and (for many of the chapters) race, which I may agree with but were repetitive considering the chronology of the stories and the structure of the book. At times it was engaging, at times it was solely a barrage of quotes from Jill Leovy's Ghettoside, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, and other influential work.

This might be a 4-star read depending on how it sticks with me.

[MariaWitBook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously written by a journalist. 24 hours in America. A war that we are not aware off. Very very disturbing. But everyone needs to know about it. Thank you to the author for going through the pain of writing this book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author selected a day at random (Saturday, November 23, 2013) and researched the lives and circumstances of the children and teens in America that died from gunshot wounds in that 24 hour period. He chronicles 10 stories but makes clear there could have been more he never learned of. 9 of the 10 were shot and killed on that day, one was shot on an earlier day and died on November 23rd.

The oldest victim was 19 and the youngest was 9. The stories are told in order of death from earliest in the time frame to latest. 8 families spoke with the author and 2 did not. In the 2 stories where the families didn't speak with the author he gathered information from social media sources and from friends of the victims to tell about their lives. Those chapters also had more statistical information and were generally shorter.

This book is a reread to break out of a reading slump. I came back to it for the fluid and brilliant writing. While this isn't an anti-gun book the author makes clear that we have a gun problem in America that's unique to this planet. The victims' stories feel like they're told in a fair manner. The youngest victims are the most heart breaking (the families of the two youngest victims cooperated and these stories are very fully told).

Very highly recommended wherever you stand on gun issues.

[Astrid Langeveld · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gary Younge is geboren in 1969. Hij is een Britse journalist en auteur. Hij schrijft maandelijks een column voor The Nation. Zijn eerste boek No Place Like Home werd in 1999 gepubliceerd en stond op de shortlist voor de Guardian First Book Award. 

Het boek gaat over zomaar een dag. Eén willekeurige 23 november. De dag waarop tien jongeren - zwart, blank en latino, tussen de negen en negentien jaar oud - worden neergeschoten. Op een slaapfeestje, op een straathoek, in de deuropening van zijn eigen huis. En dit is geen uitzondering in Amerika: gemiddeld worden er elke dag zeven kinderen doodgeschoten. Gary Younge ging gedurende achttien maanden tot in de uithoeken van de Verenigde Staten op zoek naar de verhalen achter deze jonge doden, die soms het plaatselijke nieuws niet eens haalden. 

Ik had veel van het boek verwacht, omdat het erg actueel is, maar het kwam niet diep bij mij binnen. Wat ik echt jammer vindt, want ik vind het heel interessant om over dit onderwerp te lezen. Wat ook tegenwerkte waren de voetnoten. Als je meer wilde weten kon je steeds heen en weer bladeren naar de achterkant van het boek. Dit heb ik een paar keer gedaan en daarna ben ik ermee gestopt. Het irriteerde mij en het voegde niks toe. Ik geef het 2 sterren!