PHILADELPHIA — Leon Harris, 35, is intimately familiar with the devastation guns can inflict. Robbers shot him in the back nearly two decades ago, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. The bullet remains lodged in his spine.
“When you get shot,” he said, “you stop thinking about the future.”
He is anchored by his wife and child and faith. He once wanted to work as a forklift driver but has built a stable career in information technology. He finds camaraderie with other gunshot survivors and in advocacy.
Still, trauma remains lodged in his daily life. As gun violence surged in the shadows of the covid pandemic, it shook Harris’ fragile sense of security. He moved his family out of Philadelphia to a leafy suburb in Delaware. But a nagging fear of crime persists.
Now he is thinking about buying a gun.
Harris is one of tens of thousands of Americans killed or injured each year by gun violence, a public health crisis that escalated in the pandemic and churns a new victim into a hospital emergency room every half hour.
Over the past two decades, the firearm industry has ramped up production and stepped up sales campaigns through social media influencers, conference presentations, and promotions. An industry trade group acknowledged that its traditional customer was “pale, male and stale” and in recent years began targeting Black people and other communities of color who are disproportionately victimized by gun violence.
The Trump administration has moved to reduce fe …