KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In late June, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared gun violence was a public health emergency driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.
“People want to be able to walk through their neighborhoods and be safe," Murthy told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that's going to put our life at risk.”
Everytown, an advocacy and research nonprofit, said Tennessee has the eighth-highest rate of gun homicides in the U.S. It said in an average year, around 1,404 people die by guns in the state.
Advocates and leaders in East Tennessee said for those numbers to fall, local leaders and state lawmakers would need to act.
"It takes the entire community to step in and recognize the problem," said Rashad Woods', Director of the Renounce Denounce Gang Intervention program. Woods' works with Knoxville leaders to prevent gun violence. "Just because a person doesn't get hit by a gun when somebody's shooting doesn't mean that it's not an issue."
He works with teens and young adults to prevent gun violence, teaching them conflict resolution and empathy in the hopes that they never turn towards a gun to solve their problems.
"They're getting the guns, whether they're breaking in houses, breaking in cars, or they're just buying it second-hand off the streets," he said. "Anybody with an undeveloped mind with a firearm is a problem."
The Knoxville Gun Violence Problem Analysis study said from 2019 to 2021, most victims and suspects of shootings were between 18 years old and 34 years old. Safer Tennessee, a nonpartisan nonprofit, said it is working with state lawmakers to change policy. Lisa Rottmann is on the State Board of the Knoxville delegation for Voices for Safer Tennessee.
"We are very pro-Second Amendment, but we're pro-responsible gun ownership," she said.
The nonprofit is calling for state lawmakers to pass laws allowing temporary transfers for people at risk of harming themselves or others, that require guns to be securely stored in vehicles and policies that expand background checks for all gun sales.
"Tennessee is number one in the country for guns stolen out of cars," she said.
The 2022 Child Fatality Annual Report shows children are killed with guns in Tennessee more often than the national rate. However, she also said solving problems like this will take nuance.
"There's so much duality. It's all or nothing. It's, have all the guns you want or take all the guns away, and that is not what's going to solve this problem," she said.
The Knoxville Police Department said it is seeing crime in general trend downward. From January to March, it said the number of non-deadly shooting victims was down by 58% compared to 2023.