Children Under Fire

Starred review from November 23, 2020
Washington Post reporter Cox debuts with a hard-hitting report on the impact of gun violence on American children. Noting that, on average, a child is shot every hour in the U.S. and that 30,000 kids and teenagers have been killed by guns in the last 10 years, Cox argues that America is in the midst of a public health crisis. The story of pen pals Ava Olsen, who lost her friend and first-grade classmate in a school shooting in 2016, and Tyshaun McPhatter, whose father was killed in 2017, illuminates both the emotional trauma of gun violence and the healing power of friendship for its youngest victims. Cox also explains how the NRA pressures lawmakers to reject gun control measures that have broad public support, details the rise of a $3 billion school safety industry, and debunks myths about school shooters and the effectiveness of teaching gun safety to children. His solutions include universal background checks, increased funding for research into the causes of gun violence, and child access prevention laws. Balancing sound research with moving profiles of victims and activists, Cox makes an impeccable case for how to solve the problem and why it’s essential to do so now. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary.

January 1, 2021

Washington Post journalist Cox analyzes the devastating effects of gun violence on children. He advocates three concrete measures to combat this public health emergency: universal background checks, laws that prevent children from having access to firearms, and government support for empirical research. Cox draws from extensive data and from poignant stories, including pen pals Tyshaun McPhatter and Ava Olsen. McPhatter, a nine-year-old living in Washington, DC, and Olsen, an eight-year-old South Carolinian, both experienced violence firsthand. Tyshaun's father was killed during a wave of violence in DC, and Ava witnessed a shooting at her school, which claimed the life of a close friend. Cox sketches portraits of other victims, activists, teenage school shooters, parents, and legislators who now champion gun control after many years of taking the opposite side. The author also cogently considers issues surrounding the Second Amendment and investigates the successful attempts by the NRA to influence legislation and research. VERDICT A carefully reasoned, compelling, and persuasive study of a crisis that requires immediate attention.--Jacqueline Snider, Toronto

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February 1, 2021
Conversations about guns in America often focus on the headline-grabbing cases of mass shootings at schools or group events, but the impact of gun violence reaches far beyond the lives lost in such tragedies. Children Under Fire illustrates the devastating, long-term effects of gun violence on children who lose loved ones. Washington Post reporter Cox dutifully shares gun-control statistics that have become wearily familiar, but he also zooms in to examine the personal impact of gun violence on a few specific kids. By some measures, the traumas suffered by the children Cox profiles are fairly (and horrifyingly) mundane, the kind of small-scale gun violence that doesn't get national headlines. Yet children like Ava and Tyshaun will be grappling with the emotional fallout for the rest of their lives, and their experiences are mirrored by hundreds of thousands of other kids across the country. Children Under Fire is a difficult but important book, refusing to allow its readers to look away from the true human cost of America's continued failure to protect its children from gun violence.

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April 15, 2021
In a stellar debut, Cox expands his Washington Post series on the invisible wounds of children damaged by gun violence, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. In 2016, after the fatal shooting of a classmate at her South Carolina school, 7-year-old Ava Olsen was so traumatized that she developed severe PTSD. She even used stickers to cover up the "scary words" in Little House on the Prairie: "gun, fire, blood, kill." In this powerful report on the emotional scars left by gun violence, Cox argues that Ava is one of millions of American children "who weren't shot and aren't considered victims by our legal system but who have, nonetheless, been irreparably harmed by the epidemic." With deep sympathy for his young subjects, he probes the roots of--and possible solutions to--the crisis, taking sharp aim at the $3 billion school security market, which exploits parental fears by touting products of unproven worth, such as "$150 bulletproof backpacks." But the beating heart of the narrative consists of the heart-rending stories of vulnerable children. Ava's pen pal Tyshaun McPhatter wouldn't let his mother wash a sweatshirt worn by his father, murdered in Washington, D.C., so he'd remember the scent. Her schoolmate Siena Kibilko, prepared for another shooting, had picked out a hiding spot at school "where she just knew the gunman wouldn't think to look." Especially moving is the story of Ava's 6-year-old superhero-loving classmate, Jacob Hall, killed in the shooting at her school and laid out at his funeral in a Batman costume, mourned at the church by friends dressed in his honor as Captain America and other superheroes. Cox analyzes the gun crisis astutely, but his surpassing achievement in this eloquent book is to let children speak for themselves about their grief. Put this one on a shelf with Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here--and have a box of tissues handy. An indispensable contribution to the debate about gun violence.

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