Making Sense of the Data on Gun Violence

Coming up on today’s show:

• The United Nations General Assembly is holding its annual meeting in New York this week. All eyes are on President Donald Trump, who will address the group of world leaders for the first time on Tuesday. Nicholas Burns, a former ambassador to NATO and under secretary of state, explains what you should expect. 

• The U.S. is the biggest financial contributor to the United Nations. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration proposed cuts for U.N. aid programs and peacekeeping operations overseas, something that’s concerning countries that are in the throes of crisis, like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here to weigh in is Herman “Hank” Cohen, a former ambassador to Senegal and the Gambia under President Jimmy Carter, and a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President George H.W. Bush.  

• On September 24th, voters in Germany head to the polls for federal elections. The parliamentary vote is considered something of a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is running for a fourth term. Constanze Stelzenmüller, Robert Bosch senior fellow with the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution, discusses the issues at hand. 

• Federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of 10 members of a previously uncontacted tribe. Sarah Shenker,senior campaigner with Survival International, a global indigenous rights group, was in Brazil working with indigenous groups this summer. She joins The Takeaway to discuss the alleged massacre and what it could mean for indigenous groups in Brazil going forward. 

• Vermont Public Radio has found that 89 percent of gun deaths between 2011 and 2016 were suicides, and 30 percent of those suicides were committed by veterans. Vermont Public Radio’s Taylor Dobbs walks us through the project, and reflects on the unique challenges Vermont faces when it comes to preventing gun deaths.

• In Wilmington, Delaware, young people between ages 12 and 17 are more likely to be shot than any other city in the U.S. Yasser Payne is a professor at the University of Delaware who studied Wilmington’s gun problem for year. He discusses how the violence grew over the years, and what it has done to the city’s social fabric. 

• A new exhibit by the artist Kara Walker opens in New York City this month. Rebecca Carroll, editor of special projects for WNYC, and writer Ashley C. Ford react to the exhibit, and discuss some of the history and criticism of Walker’s work, who is the youngest recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant. 

This episode is hosted by Todd Zwillich.