Three people are dead after a shooting in a Torrance.
California, more than people have been shot shot shooting security. I really don't like that. I think that this is not the way to solve a dispute.
This is not the way to deal with the fact that somebody has dishue.
A new study shows that the city of LA has seen three hundred less murders than in the last five years. Now that number of deaths is down eighteen percent from December of twenty twenty three. For much of the twenty tens, annual homicides range from two hundred and fifty to three hundred. LA, like other major cities across the country, saw deadly gun violence surge during the pandemic.
You make that decision to pick up a gun and to take another light, you add more problems for yourself, first of all life.
But that narrative is starting to take a turn in a positive direction. The charge is led by rapper Iced Tea, along with LA filmmaker Terry Carney, Sr. With a new documentary titled Put the Guns Down, A World have Pandemic, featuring first hand accounts from families affected. The film challenges conventional narratives and shifts the focus to the root causes
of these tragedies. Carney has personally been impacted by gun violence, including the time he lost his very own brother to a senseless shooting.
He was murdered. He was going to school to become a horse jockey, and he wanted to come back to the city and hang out with some of his old friends and stuff like that, and he was in private school and stuff. So he came up for a weekend, and believe it or not, he was murdered the day that he came up to hang out with its friends and stuff. They blew his loans through his back. With AK forty seven, the.
Film takes an unfiltered look at the mental health struggles feeling gun violence.
We just had so many murders that was taking place all over the city, so we just felt like we needed something to do to try to help stop some of these murders.
And Carney isn't wrong. According to data from the LAPD, homicides rose to over four hundred killings in twenty twenty one, when the pandemic was at its peak. It's easy to draw a gun now to shoot somebody, and they don't even think about the cost courses still as too late. We didn't foresee the future death incarceration. It was much worse in the nineteen eighties and early nineties, mostly because
of gang violence. Karney grew up in LA during the eighties and nineties and recollected how bad it actually was. By nineteen ninety three, LA had nearly eleven hundred murders for the year. Carney credits the major decrease in gun violence among young people with documenting the real life conversations of those that used to participate in the epidemic.
We have a lot of the ogs from different street gangs that supported this film, as well as a lot of the community activists that used to be ex gang bangers and stuff that's given back to the city, and they have created a lot of different nonprofit organizations and we all working together.
Carney also says that it's really been a three sixty turnaround with some of the gang bangers, ogs and former criminals getting in front of kids and young people and making them understand there's a better way.
They're telling the kids it ain't about that. It's about you getting education, It's about you making someone yourself. We even have some of our guys in the penitentiary that once the kids is incocerated, they're turning them around in the penitentiary system.
Right now, he says, for the most part, a lot of community leaders that are helping kids put their guns down, our ex gang bangers who in a sense are self policing their neighborhoods in streets.
Been law enforcement, and a lot of authority figures is allowing us to work for our communities and do what we need to do to get these kids turned around.
With nearly fifty awards, Carney is taking the show on the road as he kicks off his official college tour. He says, what's happening in La happens in other neighborhoods also.
It used to being just broken and homes and you know a lot of different things. But now you have a new type of kids that's out here running the streets. And it's not just the urban areas. This in every community, every neighborhood. Kids are at the point to where they just want to do what they want to do. And you know, I don't want people out there to be thinking this is just a South central LA thing. This
is a Woodland Hills, this is a Beverly Hills. This is you know, these bullets out here, they don't have eyes on them, they don't discriminate against nobody, And it's happening in every community right now out here in Los Angeles and in other states as well, in countries.
It's like seeing a monster in through gun violence. We do he create a monster after on monster, because it could create a cula. Carney's efforts to bring light to gun violence through his film makes its college campus debut on February twenty sixth in Victorville at Victor Valley College. The film is in partnership with a nonprofit DVL Project and the Victor Valley College's EUMOJA program, which dedicates itself
to enhancing the cultural and educational experiences of students. Following the film, a Q and a panel with some of those featured in the documentary will take place.
We touch bases on every aspect, from mental health to gun violence to what works and what helps in the community.
The screening and panel discussion is free to attend and open to the public. In studio. Andrew Caravella KFI News