A voice for victims of gun violence

Every so often, I volunteer to edit books that I believe need to exist. As someone who deplores gun violence, I was honoured to provide pro bono editorial support to a project that gives a platform to survivors to tell their stories. The result — The Forgotten Survivors of Gun Violence: Wounded — was published on June 30th by Routledge.

Back in the day, I ran a project called the Embark Editorial Agency, a pro bono editing service that matched hard-up nonprofits with newly trained copy editors needing to build a professional portfolio. Although I closed the agency in 2018, I occasionally get requests for free help from new editors and nonprofits that, sadly, I have to decline. But when Loren Kleinman approached me in early 2022 for help, I made an exception. Why? The anthology of 20 essays Loren had commissioned simply HAD to exist, and if I could help it on its way, then I was all in. Eighteen months later, I’m delighted to announce that the anthology has been published.

As I write this (July 3rd), there has just been another mass shooting in the United States, this time in Baltimore. It was one of 340 mass shootings so far in 2023. The issue is monitored and reported daily by the Gun Violence Archive, and the tally for July 3, 2023, shows that the US is on track to hit its average yearly gun-violence death toll of around 40,000 (a number that includes suicide). The statistics for deaths from guns are so tragic that it’s easy to forget that some people survive bullets, and it is the testimonies of a tiny fraction of these survivors that comprise this book.

This collection of essays is an important contribution to the ongoing conversation about gun control in the US. It is a subject close to Loren’s heart, and she has published articles and other content in the past. About this project, she says: “Mass shootings have changed how we move through the world and caused collective reverberations of trauma in our society. The best way we can support survivors is to be present with them, listen, attune to their feelings, and never judge their reactions to their experiences.”

To provide Loren with the help she needed on this project, I gathered a team of 3 editors who each had an editing qualification but needed to grow their professional experience. I produced a style guide and oversaw its implementation, doing a final editing pass of each essay. All the editors did brilliantly on this challenging project. On a personal level, they were exposed to hard-hitting stories that include shocking accounts of shooting incidents, graphic descriptions of injuries, and heartbreaking insights into living with the physical and emotional wounds inflicted by gun violence. On a professional level, the challenge lay in preserving the authors’ voices and intentions. Since the essays are not written by professional writers, there were some issues to address. But because these pieces come from the heart, some tasks that copy editors would normally undertake to enhance writing craft had to be kept to the bare minimum on this project. Instead, we focused on spelling, grammar/punctuation, clarity, and consistency across the essay collection.

I’m proud to have been a part of this publication, and it was a welcome reminder of the power of the written word to communicate the human experience. Sadly, there is still a long way to go before a mass shooting is no longer an everyday reality for millions of Americans. However, in the meantime, we must keep listening to survivors’ stories and hope that, one day, common sense and peace prevail.