About this talk
Acts of gun violence and domestic violence create many of the heart wrenching stories that plague us today. Public Health Criminologist April Zeoli has spent her career analyzing gun and domestic violence trends, with a particular focus on where guns and love interact. She shares that while the media places attention on frightening public mass shootings, the truth is that a majority of mass shootings are “family mass murders” or forms of intimate partner homicide. Moreover, she stresses, most mass murders in this country are committed with guns, “no other weapon even comes close.” When gun violence and domestic violence meet, tactics of coercion, manipulation, and power come to the forefront in a deadly way. Yet, April believes there is hope – will common sense policy changes, she suggests ways for our country to dramatically reduce both intimate partner violence and related mass shootings.
Leaving a lasting impression, April Zeoli speaks up for victims of gun violence and domestic violence through an objective, analytical lens. Watch her TEDMED Talk, “The frightening frequency of family mass shootings,” now on TEDMED.com.
About April Zeoli
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April Zeoli is a highly regarded expert on the connection between intimate partner violence (IPV) and gun violence. She is a professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Public Health, where she focuses on research that combines public health, criminology, and criminal justice. April’s current research aims to identify ways to prevent intimate partner homicide. She studies the criminal histories of people who have committed these crimes to find points where authorities could have stepped in. She also researches how well the legal system enforces gun laws for IPV offenders. This includes studying the processes for ensuring that individuals who are no longer allowed to own firearms actually surrender them. A respected voice in her field, April is on the editorial board of the journal Injury Prevention and serves as the research expert for the National Domestic Violence and Firearms Resource Center. Her work provides crucial insights for creating laws and policies that protect victims of domestic violence from gun-related harm.
