On average, the number of people shot each year in America is over 116,000 -- that's by murders, assaults, suicide and suicide attempts, unintentional shootings and police interventions. The statistic comes from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and it's one of many points being made in Gun Violence: A Brief Cultural History, an exhibit on display through November 10 at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology on the UNM campus in Albuquerque.
"We wanted to present a myriad of opinions, histories and stories," says Devorah Romanek, who co-curated the exhibit with David A. Phillips, "to give a perspective on other places' and times' attitudes towards guns, to indicate that they have varied greatly over time and place. And so the situation here in the United States [with the Brady Campaign statistics] -- it needn't stay that way."
In this more complete version of the conversation, Devorah speaks in further detail about the exhibit and also mentions a free public event being held in conjunction with the exhibit, a lecture on September 29 at the Museum by William Briggs, author of How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis.
Copyright 2018 KUNM
