Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey Prepared To Tackle Gun Violence Issue Head On
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Gun violence, especially among our young, is a national epidemic come home.
Last year, gun violence took the lives of 28 teenagers in Allegheny County, and Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey says he take the issue head on.
"It's picking up whether it's Pittsburgh, Cleveland, wherever you look at, you're hearing about it," Gainey said. "We've got to do something. Not just the government, everybody, this is our city."
Pittsburgh is a city especially hard hit by shootings and homicides involving younger and younger victims.
Gainey calls the violence a public health crisis and says the entire community must come together to address the underlying causes -- drug addiction, poverty, lack of education and unemployment.
"If we look at violence like we look at COVID and understand that this is a pandemic that needs to be addressed, we get to a solution," Gainey said.
In the mayor's view, the problem is beyond the capabilities of the neighborhood, city and police. In the coming months, he wants to bring together the hospitals, universities, corporations and foundations to craft a comprehensive approach to stemming the violence.
On Tuesday, the mayor will speak at the Community Empowerment Association, which runs after-school programs for neighborhood kids. Director Rashad Birdsong, who lost his grandson to gun violence two years ago, said programs like it could be expanded with the concerted help of all those institutions.
"One thing about young folks, if you create a safe space for them, you have activities for them, things they're interested in doing, they'll come," Birdsong said.
As the city's first Black mayor, Bridson said Gainey is in a unique position to bring about change where others have fallen short. Gainey said the problem cannot be ignored.
"There are no easy answers to this, but we have to do something because our young people are losing, and this is not a culture that we can accept," he said.
