What is
TNGV?
Transforming Narratives of Gun Violence (TNGV) is a collaborative initiative that reimagines how communities, institutions, and the media understand and communicate about gun violence in the United States. Rather than focusing solely on crime statistics or sensational headlines, this project centers the lived experiences of those most affected—survivors, families, neighborhood leaders, and frontline workers.
We work across storytelling, research, and civic engagement to expose the structural roots of gun violence, including racial injustice, economic inequality, and disinvestment. By amplifying community voices and shifting dominant media frames, we aim to foster new pathways for public understanding, policy change, and healing.
While this issue impacts everyone, it is felt most profoundly in communities of color.
In Massachusetts, Black males aged 15-35 have a firearm homicide rate 22 times higher than their White counterparts. These communities and the Black youth living there are facing a public health crisis.
Yet, the type of attention given to incidents of gun violence often perpetuates stereotypes and ignores certain realities. When a tragic act of violence occurs and it makes the news cycle, we see yellow tape and police activity, often paired with narratives that demonize the perpetrator and victim alike, as well as the neighborhoods they live in.
These narratives flatten communities to their most tragic moments.
News stories often fail to convey the complexity of the problem – how gun violence ripples through a community, what circumstances lead someone to pick up a gun, and how the community comes together to grieve and heal. Nor do they call adequate attention to the systemic failures that cultivate community violence -- including mass incarceration, failures of the justice system, and racial disparities in education, health, and wealth.
The reductive media coverage gives the perception that Black neighborhoods are “dangerous” despite the many within these communities working tirelessly to interrupt cycles of violence and create conditions for peace in the face of structural barriers. As long as public narratives focus only on individual responsibility and consequence, programs and policies will do the same.
Boston has one of the lowest gun death rates among U.S. cities and is often looked to as an example of gun control and prevention. But for those of us who live in Boston neighborhoods such as Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, it doesn’t feel that way.
There have been over 700 shootings in Boston since 2018, 75% of which occurred in these three neighborhoods. Research shows that the stress of growing up in communities plagued by gun violence impacts learning, mental health, and chronic disease. To dismiss the problem in Boston because of stats that are comparatively low, is to dismiss the hundreds of individuals who are impacted each year by gun violence in our city.
In 2019, the CDC released a report calling attention to gun violence as a pervasive public health crisis, growing steadily over the last two decades. The report shows that nearly every person in America is affected in some way by gun violence.
The effects of these incidents ripple through families and entire communities causing grief, trauma, fear, and further perpetuating cycles of violence.