{"id":202140,"date":"2026-03-03T12:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T12:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/202140\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T12:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T12:23:08","slug":"contributor-the-human-cost-of-gun-violence-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/202140\/","title":{"rendered":"Contributor: The human cost of gun violence in America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I love coaching basketball. Being around young people, seeing their potential and helping them become the best versions of themselves is incredibly gratifying. But the job also offers a glimpse into how fragile it can all be. One injury, one bad break, a change in circumstances can shift everything for a player in a single moment. <\/p>\n

Life is the same way. I found that out when I lost my dad, Malcolm Kerr, to gun violence in 1984 when I was just 18 years old. He was 52 and missed out on so much. I think about him every day. My family\u2019s loss was profound and has shaped how I feel about gun violence, and why I\u2019m so passionate about trying to move the needle on how we view this issue across America.<\/p>\n

We talk about gun violence like it\u2019s abstract, like it\u2019s theoretical. But it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s human loss. That\u2019s the real cost, and the families of children lost to gun violence carry that loss every day.<\/p>\n

Gun violence is now the No. 1 killer of children in America<\/a>. That\u2019s astonishing, and it\u2019s unforgivable. But what\u2019s just as dangerous is becoming numb to it \u2014 reading about it again and again, shaking our heads and going back to our lives unchanged.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spoken out after shootings before, after Parkland, after Uvalde, after too many. I\u2019ve said I\u2019m tired, and I meant it. I\u2019m tired of moments of silence that don\u2019t lead to anything. I\u2019m tired of condolences as a substitute for action. We can\u2019t keep saying \u201cthis is horrible\u201d and then move on like that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A scene from \u201cAll the Empty Rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Courtesy of Netflix)<\/p>\n

When I first heard about \u201cAll the Empty Rooms,\u201d a short documentary released last year about the victims of gun violence, I knew it was a project I believed in. I joined as an executive producer because I could see director Joshua Seftel approaching this crisis with the care and respect it deserves. What mattered to me right away was how the film listens to families. It gives them room to speak about their children without exploiting their stories into politics or spectacle. There\u2019s a dignity in that choice, which is difficult to find in the way our country usually talks about gun violence.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all seen the headlines and we\u2019ve all heard the escalating numbers. But at a certain point, human nature kicks in. We get used to it. We turn away. We tell ourselves we can\u2019t carry all of it. I understand that instinct. I feel it, too. But we can\u2019t live there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the Empty Rooms\u201d follows journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp as they travel across the country, stepping into the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. They don\u2019t rearrange anything. They don\u2019t explain what you\u2019re supposed to feel. They just let you sit with what\u2019s left behind: the bed, the posters, the trophies, the trinkets \u2014 the little things that tell you who a child was before everything stopped.<\/p>\n

One moment that stayed with me is when Bopp takes his shoes off before entering one of the bedrooms. It\u2019s a small gesture, but it says everything. Respect. Humility. An understanding that you\u2019re stepping into a sacred space.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A child\u2019s shoes in \u201cAll the Empty Rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Courtesy of Netflix)<\/p>\n

As a parent and a grandparent, that\u2019s the part that hits hardest. I have two sons and a daughter. Two granddaughters. Watching \u201cAll the Empty Rooms,\u201d I kept thinking, \u201cThis could be our kids. Our family.\u201d That\u2019s the power of the film. It takes something we\u2019ve learned to keep at arm\u2019s length and brings it right back to where it belongs.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the Empty Rooms\u201d reaches people in a way arguments can\u2019t. Whether people agree on policy or not, they recognize the humanity in these parents and the weight of their grief, the chill of the voids left in their lives.<\/p>\n

The parents are not asking to be symbols. They\u2019re talking about their children, about love, about absence, about time standing still. If we really allow ourselves to feel what these families are living with, we might finally be ready to do something about it.<\/p>\n

Steve Kerr is the head coach of the NBA\u2019s Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I love coaching basketball. Being around young people, seeing their potential and helping them become the best versions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7625,3409,7363,217,93810,1431,5364,93812,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,3289,7087,51333,36523,93811,7163],"class_list":["post-202140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-america","tag-child","tag-country","tag-day","tag-empty-rooms","tag-family","tag-gun-violence","tag-human-cost","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-loss","tag-parent","tag-respect","tag-same-way","tag-single-moment","tag-young-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}