these communities who, from their livingroom couches, listen to the gunshots ring out nightly. The solutions for reducing gun violence remain varied. Some are calling for more economic opportunities. Others demand fewer guns. But many argue that the key to reducing violence means dusting off city laws and programs that have never been enforced. ON SEPT. 2, Davis was standing across the street from the Bedford Dwellings housing community, a few blocks from her home in the Hill District. On Aug. 13, 26-year-old Ramar Grant had been shot and killed in the housing development. “They shot him for nothing,” Davis says. “It’s fearful when it gets dark around here. You wonder if your kid’s going to come home.” Word travels fast throughout her neighborhood, Davis says. As soon as the yellow police caution tape goes up around the scene of a shooting, she says, many residents are already hearing rumors about the cause behind it. “The majority of things happening in the Hill District are because of these online videos. This group is disrespecting this other group,” says Davis, who explained that shootings are spurred when rival factions post videos on websites like YouTube insulting each other. Davis often worries about her children and others in the neighborhood, where she says they are being pressured or forced to join an ecosystem where arguments quickly turn to violence. “What they’re doing is they’re preying on the meek,” Davis says. “As soon as they step outside, people are shooting at them. Right now, some of them haven’t picked up a gun yet, but if people are shooting at them, it won’t be long before they go out and get a gun.” Throughout the summer, City Paper reporters often struggled to find people willing to talk about gun violence in their communities. The families of the victims killed in these shootings were also often unwilling to come forward. “They are afraid because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Andre Scott, a former Hill District resident, currently living in Wilkinsburg, who has known several of this summer’s victims. “People are becoming somewhat numb to it. [They think], ‘This happened, I’m going to mourn, then I’m going to post on Facebook and be done with it.’” His own cousin was shot and killed four weeks ago in Rankin, a Pittsburgh suburb also struggling under the weight of gun violence. CONTINUES ON PG. 08
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