gun violence

April 14, 2023 - After a shooter recently killed six people at an elementary school in Tennessee's capital city, mass protests demanded tougher gun laws, which are supported by most Americans. But the state's Republican-controlled legislature instead took action to lift restrictions on guns while refusing to debate new ones — and it's not alone in the region.

April 12, 2023 - The expulsion of two Black lawmakers from the Tennessee House for participating in a nonviolent protest recalls an earlier expulsion of dozens of Black lawmakers from Georgia's General Assembly because of their race. Here's the defiant speech delivered in response by one of those expelled lawmakers, the Rev. Henry McNeal Turner.

January 6, 2016 - By the time President Obama announced a series of executive actions to restrict firearms this week, 147 Americans had already lost their lives to gun violence in the new year, with the first fatal shooting taking place in Florida just 15 minutes into 2016. But the ongoing carnage didn't stop the gun lobby and politicians it backs from threatening to block the plan.

August 31, 2015 - Longshore Local 1422 is spearheading "Days of Grace" Sept. 5 and 6, with a march in downtown Charleston, South Carolina and a strategy conference. Themes include policing, wages, union rights, voting rights and Medicaid.

June 26, 2015 - The shooting deaths of nine African-American churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina is the latest mass killing to focus attention on lax U.S. gun laws. South Carolina, like many states in the South, has a high rate of gun violence.

June 24, 2015 - Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the NC NAACP and leader of the Moral Monday movement, delivered a sermon Sunday about the messages of the Charleston church shootings: that nine people were killed because their church fought racism, that racism is not just ugly words but policies often promoted through coded racist language, and that we need not closure but systemic change.

April 22, 2014 - Giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention money for gun violence research is a "request to fund propaganda," a Georgia congressman says.