Red, Blue, and Brady

Ethan Song was 15. He had just had his braces removed, and had plans for the future that he outlined to his mother:  to go to college, to join the army, to get married, and to have seven children. His family and friends knew of other plans of Ethan's -- from eating the best sushi in the world with his dad to continuing to rescue abandoned dogs.

But Ethan never got to see those plans to fruition,  as on Jan. 31, 2018, he was killed with an unsecured gun while at a friends house. Today, Ethan's parents Mike and  Kristin Song fight to protect children like Ethan from gun violence with their organization Song Strong and through their amazing legislation efforts to make Ethan's Law (which requires safe storage of guns in Connecticut) national policy. 

Together they join hosts  Kelly and JJ to discuss Ethan's life, what family relationships are like after such a traumatic loss, the importance of safe storage, and how legislation like Ethan's law could save lives.   
 
Mentioned in this podcast:
Ethan's Law (Song Strong)
‘Ethan Song Film' Tells Story of Teen's Final Days Before Deadly Accidental Shooting (NBC)
Mother of Guilford’s Ethan Song testifies before Congress on gun storage law (CT Post)
Keep Your Family Safe and End Family Fire (Brady)

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

Every day, 316 people are shot in the United States. Of those, 106 are killed. But Americans aren't great at dealing with grief. As a result, major questions survivors of gun violence have -- "what is the "right" way to grieve after a shooting?"; "how can I best give support to those I love after a shooting?"; "how are communities supposed to put themselves back together after such a loss?" -- aren't even discussed, let alone answered. And because we don't talk about grief, we get trapped. As best-selling author, psychotherapist, and grief advocate Megan Devine puts it, "so we’re stuck: friends and family want to help, grieving people want to feel supported, but no one gets what they want."

To learn how to better have these conversations, and  truly support the survivors in our lives, Megan joins  Kelly and JJ for an illuminating discussion.

Mentioned in this podcast:
Refuge in Grief
There is no “right” way to grieve (Speaking Grief)
It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand (Megan Devine)
How do you help a grieving friend during the holidays? 10 tips to help you help someone you love (Refuge in Grief)
How to Provide Emotional Support for Survivors and People Impacted By Gun Violence (Brady)

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

Grief is complex, and personal -- but sadly for many who have lost loved ones to gun violence, their loss is made public. How do you deal with grief when your loss is national news? When the reason you are in  mourning is trending on twitter?  Hosts Kelly and JJ are joined by survivors Andy Parker and Simone Paradis to discuss their own experiences with grief, how to deal with your grief when your loss is all over social media, and how to manage your pain when you're continuously re-traumatized with legal battles and conspiracy theorists.

Andy Parker is the father of Emmy Award-winning reporter Alison Parker, who was only 24 years old when she and her colleague, photojournalist Adam Ward, were murdered on live television  on August 26, 2015. The video of that shooting remains online and often monetized, despite Andy's continued fight to have it removed.   Simone Paradis' is from Newtown, Connecticut, and her then  3rd grader sister survived the December 14, 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 students and 6 staff members dead. In the years following the shooting, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones claimed that the massacre was faked, and in part was "orchestrated by the U.S. government as part of an elaborate plot to promote stricter gun control laws." 
 
Mentioned in this podcast:
Now the world knows about Gray Television (Change.org)
Facebook and Google profit from video of my daughter being murdered (USA Today)
For Alison: The Murder of a Young Journalist and a Father's Fight for Gun Safety (Amazon)
In a win for victims and facts, Alex Jones is being held accountable for misinformation (USA Today)
Complicated Grief: Why We Mourn People We've Never Met (Talkspace)

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

100 people a day die from gun violence in the US. They leave behind hundreds of family, friends, and community members, who then have to try to answer terrible questions like: "how do I go on without my loved one?"; "what is life going to be like now?"; and "how do I support the folks in my life who are hurting?". To discuss how the answers to these questions can be very different, how to manage grief and mourning, and how every loss is different,  hosts Kelly and JJ are joined by  J. Nicole Jones, the Grief Bully. J. Nicole, an author, podcast host, and grief expert, has spent years making sure others grievers know that they are not alone in their experiences.

Mentioned in this podcast:
How to Provide Emotional Support for Survivors and People Impacted By Gun Violence (Brady)
What happens when being strong is all you have left? (Youtube)
The Grief Bully: A Guided Journal (Grief Bully)
Examining Grief In The Workplace With J. Nicole Jones (Toxic Leadership Podcast)
Grieve and Grow (Clubhouse)

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Mark Glaze.

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

America’s deadliest shootings are the ones we rarely talk about: Over half of all gun deaths are suicides. This crisis has an outsized impact on the veteran community, with 63 veterans dying by suicide each day. But veterans from across the country are uniting to address this crisis by practicing and promoting safe firearm storage. This Veteran's Day, to discuss suicide prevention, safe firearm storage, and how their “service never stops” as veterans, host  JJ is joined by  Charles Tawiah, Chris Jachimiec, Sean McDaniel, Shay DeBarr, and Dr. Ted C. Bonar. Charles is a Navy veteran, Chris is an Air Force veteran, Sean is an Army veteran, and Shay is a Marine Corps veteran. Together, we discuss End Family Fire's newest campaign, “Service Never Stops,” veterans' relationships to their firearms, their views on safe storage, and on how we can keep ourselves and those we love safe.

A live, extended version of this podcast aired on 10/19/2021.

Mentioned in this podcast:
Chris' story (End Family Fire)
Charles' story (End Family Fire)
Shay's story (End Family Fire)
Service Never Stops (Ad Council) 

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

Private planes. Thousand dollar suits. Yachts. Russian spies. And a lie -- that the solution to gun violence was just "a good guy with a gun."

A one time nonprofit group meant to encourage marksmanship and sports shooting, by the new millennium the National Rifle Association (NRA) had become "a powerful lobbyist organization that maintained an iron hold on gun legislation in America." And at the head of that changed organization sits CEO Wayne LaPierre, a man who has remained the NRA's figurehead despite decades of mismanagement and corruption.

In this episode, hosts Kelly and JJ are joined by journalist Tim Mak, who spent over four years investigating the NRA, including but not limited to the dissolution of their relationship with marketing firm Ackerman-McQueen, the NRA's involvement with Russian spies, and gross money mismanagement by top NRA officials. All is revealed in Mak's new book, Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA.

For a chance to win your own copy of Misfire, simply email us at [email protected], or text/call us on the RBB line at (480) 744-3452‬ and tell us what you could do with $274,695.03 to fight gun violence -- that's the amount of NRA money LaPierre spent on clothes from one luxury retailer alone from  2004 to 2017.
 

Mentioned in this podcast:
The NRA Files for Bankruptcy, Says It Plans to Move to Texas (the Trace)
NRA Funded LaPierre’s Search for $6 Million Mansion, Document Shows (the Trace)
Lobbyists Sold Out Your Grandfather’s NRA (Brady)
NRA Not Above the Law (Brady)

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

On the 18th of January 1984,  Dr. Malcolm H. Kerr,  president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated on campus.  The gunmen were never caught.

Now, 37 years later, Dr. Kerr's son -- former award-and-title-winning National Basketball Association (NBA) player, and current head  coach of the Golden State Warriors -- Steve Kerr, remains a gun violence prevention advocate. Kerr, who has spoken at length about the need for policies like universal background checks and the need to remember the names of those lost to gun violence, is also deeply concerned with a lack of action by government officials. 

Today, Coach Kerr joins hosts Kelly and JJ to discuss how  he came to be publicly involved in gun violence prevention efforts, why generation Z may save us all, and how we can all better fight for gun violence prevention. 

Mentioned in this podcast:
Coach Steve Kerr on Why He Fights to Prevent Gun Violence (Brady)
Steve Kerr calls for tougher gun control measures following Boulder shooting (CNN)
Kerr, touched by gun violence, humanizes mass shooting victims (NBC Sports)
Steve Kerr paints a dark picture of gun violence: 'We're all vulnerable' (SF Gate)

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

In the final episode of season two, Brady's VP of Policy, Christian Heyne, joins host JJ, to discuss how policies either prevent gun violence and reduce racial inequities— or exacerbate both—that is why we must reckon with racism’s role in gun violence as we craft solutions today.

Then, JJ is joined by co-host Kelly Sampson and the Pulitzer-prize winning historian Heather Ann Thompson, to discuss Dr. Thompson's book Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy .  Listen as Dr. Thompson breaks down the ways in which the Attica prison riot of 1971 (and the resulting massacre) had on prisons and policing in the United States. In particular, it changed how people thought about the rights of currently and formerly incarcerated and firearms. 

Mentioned in this podcast:
Blood in the Water (Heather Ann Thompson)
Why Mass Incarceration Matters to our Cities, Economy, and Democracy (Ash Center)
The Ugly History of Racist Policing in America: Interview with Heather Ann Thompson (Vox)
How Prisons Change the Balance of Power in America (Atlantic)
Inner-City Violence in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Atlantic)

A version of this podcast initially ran as "Prisons, Punishment, Policing--and Guns."

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

This week, the shooter who killed 17 students and faculty members and injured 17 others in the deadliest shooting at a high school in US history plead guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. The plea comes more than three and a half years after the Valentine's Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As a result of the shooter's plea, attention has once again focused on the perpetrator of a massacre, rather than the lives senselessly taken. Constant coverage and reporting on perpetrators, rather than those impacted, does more harm than good. To discuss why that is, host JJ is joined by Team Enough Executive Council members Stephan Abrams and Aalayah Eastmond, who is also a survivor of the Parkland attack. Together, all three discuss the importance of the No Notoriety Campaign and its mission of shifting attention from shooters to victims and survivors

Then JJ sits down with Tom Teves to discuss how the Teves family created No Notoriety after their eldest son Alex was the Aurora Colorado movie theater shooting in July of 2012 while shielding his girlfriend, Amanda.. That shooting left 12 people dead and 70 injured, but in the long days of media coverage that followed, attention was largely focused on the profile of the shooter -- not on the acts of heroism done by people like Alex or the lives of the taken. Tom goes on to share why the campaign is so important, and how individuals and news organizations can “minimize harm” while reporting on mass shootings.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of the 17 lives taken in Parkland that day:
Aaron Feis, 37;
Alaina Petty, 14;
Alex Schachter, 14;
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14;
Cara Loughran, 14;
Carmen Schentrup, 16;
Chris Hixon, 49;
Gina Montalto, 14;
Helena Ramsay, 17;
Jaime Guttenberg, 14;
Joaquin Oliver, 17;
Luke Hoyer, 15;
Martin Duque, 14;
Meadow Pollack, 18;
Nicholas Dworet, 17;
Peter Wang, 15;
and Scott Beigel, 35.

Mentioned in this podcast:

 Brady urges attention to the ongoing needs of survivors and affected families, not shooters (Brady)
FBI to media: Don't name mass shooters (KSAT)
Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings (PLOS One)
A call to end the media coverage mass shooters want (Ted)
Don’t Name Them, Don’t Show Them, But Report Everything Else: A Pragma

In our second special  birthday episode, host JJ is joined by Joan Peterson, a longtime Brady chapter member and leader, who became a gun violence prevention and domestic violence activist after her sister, Barbara Lund, was murdered. Barbara and her boyfriend, former Iowa state legislator Kevin Kelly, were killed by Lund's estranged husband. Together, they detail why domestic violence cannot be left invisible. 

Then, hosts Kelly and JJ are joined by Kate Ranta (author of Killing Kate: A Story of Turning Abuse and Tragedy into Transformation and Triumph and gun violence prevention advocate) and American journalist, writer, and professor Rachel Louise Snyder. Snyder's eye-opening book, No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, is an absolutely essential read for those who want to address private violence, and addresses how in the US, 1 in 5 women report experiencing severe physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetime. Terrifyingly, when guns are introduced into that terrorism, the risk of serious death and injury only increases, with the American Journal of Public Health reporting that in domestic violence situations the risk of death is five times greater when a gun is present.

If you or someone you know may be at risk, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or by text at the same number by texting the word "START." There are also advocates available online 24/7 at thehotline.org.
 
Mentioned in this podcast:

Warning Signs of Abuse (National Domestic Violence Hotline)
Domestic Violence High Risk Team Model (Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center)
What Are Extreme Risk Laws (Brady)
Pass the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2021 (Brady) 

A version of this podcast initially ran as "What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence (and Guns) is Deadly."

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady