Approaches to Preventing and Intervening With Gun Violence

Abstract

The importance of local context cannot be overly emphasized in shaping how helping professions can best aid in preventing and intervening early in gun violence, but that does not mean that the national picture cannot provide a broader context to help understand local situations. Interventions requiring many different institutional and community partners have garnered saliency as pathways to solving gun violence. Multifaceted interventions by their nature are complex, requiring contextual grounding to maximize success and taking localized circumstances into account. A cookie-cutter approach is ill-advised. Successful interventions also require cooperation of multiorganizational entities, all requiring considerable expenditure of time, energy, and other resources. In addition, these approaches require engendering trust. This chapter grounds readers with various approaches to dealing with urban gun violence.