Tishaura O. Jones made history in 2021 when elected the first Black female mayor of St. Louis and proudly refers to that achievement. However, on Jan. 17, at the 92nd Winter Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors at the Capitol Hilton in Northwest D.C., she revealed that despite her power, she could not save loved ones from being killed by firearms.
“I have lost four relatives to gun violence,” Jones, 51, said at a forum, “Reducing Gun Violence in Our Cities.” “Three of my relatives lived in the St. Louis area and one was in Chicago. I lost a 7-year-old cousin to gun violence in August when he accidentally shot himself.”
She explained that “there has been a spike in homicides across the country since the start of the pandemic.”
“In 2023, there has been a significant decrease in homicides,” Jones added. “But lives are still being lost and hopes are being shattered.”
Jones was joined by many of her colleagues from throughout the country that attended the annual conference, which encompassed a wide range of topics— from municipal finance, to climate change.
However, gun violence was talked about publicly even in forums and workshops unrelated to it. At a luncheon on Jan. 18, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her thoughts on the issue.
“So, on the issue of gun violence, let me start with this… I started my elected career as the elected District Attorney of San Francisco,” Harris, 59, said. “And I will tell you that I was following a career of being a courtroom prosecutor, where, among the cases that I prosecuted—homicide cases.”
Harris said working as a prosecutor, “I have witnessed and seen autopsies.”
“I know what guns do and gun violence does to the human body,” she said. “For so many of you, you too know what gun violence does to people, to a community, to families, to the psyche of a community, to the well-being and health of a community. So, when we have this conversation among us, this is not some intellectual academic discourse. It is very real. It is part of our lived existence,” Harris emphasized.
The vice president said gun violence is the leading cause of death among American children, not car accidents or cancer. She said one in five Americans has a family member that was killed as a result of gun violence.
Harris said she favors the Second Amendment, but posed a question to the crowd.
“Is it not reasonable that we would have an assault weapons ban, understanding that assault weapons were literally designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly and are weapons of war with no place on the streets of a civil society?”
Mayors Talk Gun Violence
Statistics compiled by the St. Louis Police Department reveal 158 homicides in the city in 2023 , down considerably from 200 in 2022 and a reduction from a recent peak at 263 in 2020. Jones credits the dip in homicides to programs that emphasize prevention, intervention, and enforcement.
She spoke of: hiring a new police chief that utilizes data to combat homicides; co-convening a regional meeting of police department professionals and municipal leaders in the St. Louis metropolitan areas that encompass Missouri and Illinois; allowing recreation centers to stay open until 1 a.m. on weekends; and defining gun violence as a mental health issue.
“We have tried things such as having pop-up concerts and art contests in the community,” Jones said. “Plus, we have a program where we pair cops with mental health professionals when they answer a call. Cops are not trained to deal with mental health issues.”
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has received praise for his city’s declining homicide rate. Last year, Baltimore had under 300 homicides for the first time in nine years. Embracing the praise from state and federal leaders, Scott, 40, said his priority since taking office in late 2020 has been stopping the gun violence in his city.
“We had to turn the tide,” he said. “Safety of our residents had to be the top priority. Easy access to guns is one of the main problems.”
Scott said fighting gun violence doesn’t have a single solution. He said residents must get involved in stopping homicides also because “we cannot put it on the backs of law enforcement officers.”
Like Jones, Scott believes gun violence is a public health issue and needs the support of mental health professionals fully engaged in order to tackle the problem. Scott said his Safer Streets program has played a major role in helping the dip in homicides.
“We know that a lot of the violence is being committed by a small group of people,” the Baltimore mayor said. “So, we created the Safer Streets program where we approach the criminals and tell them what they are doing is wrong and offer them job training and employment. We do this through credible messengers. If they don’t accept what we have to offer, then they will pay the price.”
Even though he has been in office for less than a year, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said his city has also seen a decline in murders, with 617 in 2023 as opposed to 709 in 2022. Shootings are also down Chicago.
Johnson, 47, explained that cities must fight poverty and urban blight.
“We must invest in people and where they live,” he said.
