It's Always the Guns

Gun violence takes a relentless toll on our nation

- Marian Wright Edelman

Every day more than 300 people are killed or injured by guns in the United States, and most of their stories never make the news at all. But this was yet another week when multiple gun tragedies made national headlines.

One of those tragedies started as a celebration: Alexis Dowdell’s sweet 16 birthday party at a dance studio in Dadeville, Alabama, on April 15. She and her family had been planning the party for months, and the dance floor was filled with young people and a DJ when gunfire broke out. More than thirty people were injured, and four were killed, including Alexis’s older brother, 18year-old Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell. Alexis remembered Phil pushing her to the ground to protect her in the chaos, but the next time she saw him he was lying in a pool of blood. She told an interviewer, “I got on my knees, and he was laying face down. And that’s when I grabbed him. I turned him over--I was holding him...I was trying to be strong instead of panicking. And so I said, ‘You’re going to be all right, you’re a fighter, you’re strong.” But Phil, a high school senior and star athlete who had a football scholarship to Jacksonville State University, was gone—along with another 17year-old Dadeville High senior; and two more young guests. Many of those injured remain hospitalized in serious condition.