Intentional injuries claimed nearly two hundred lives every day in the United States in 2020, about two-thirds of them suicides, each a story of irretrievable human loss. This essay addresses the complex intersection of injurious behavior with mental illness and access to firearms. It explores what more can be done to stop gun violence while respecting the rights of lawful gun owners, preserving the dignity of persons with mental illnesses, and promoting racial equity. Strategies to prevent firearm injury in the United States are uniquely conditioned by a constitutional right to bear arms, the cultural entrenchment and prevalence of private gun ownership, and strident political disagreement on regulatory solutions to stem gun violence. Broad implementation of a range of complementary policies is needed, including community-based programs to address the social and developmental determinants of violence, improved access to a continuum of mental health services, firearm restrictions based on behavioral indicators of risk (not mental illness, per se), licensing for firearm purchase or ownership, comprehensive background checks for firearm purchase, and supply-side approaches to interrupt illegal firearm markets.

Hip-hop, created by black and Latino youth in the mid-1970s on the East Coast of the United States, is now represented throughout the world. The form's core elements – rapping, deejaying, breaking (dance), and graffiti art – now join an ever-growing and diversifying range of artistic, cultural, intellectual, political, and social practices, products, and performances. The artistic achievements of hip-hop represent a remarkable contribution to world culture; however, the “hip-hop nation” has created not just art and entertainment, but art with the vision and message of changing the world – locally, nationally, and globally.